Marriage

Marriage is such a wonderful thing.  For my Family Relations class I had to read a chapter about getting married.  I was reading some of it in the car as my husband and I were on our way to Idaho Falls.  There was one part I read talking about things that suffer in the first year of marriage. 
-approving and complimenting the partner
-making the partner laugh
-telling them "I love you"
-doing something nice for the partner
-showing physical affection
-discussing their feelings and problems
-talking over things that happened during the day
I brought these up to my husband and we had a wonderful talk about these points.  I was surprised how we were still doing well with some of those points, but the ones we were struggling with we talk about ways we could do better with them.  I love my husband and how well we can talk about things and figure out ways to make our marriage better. We are so blessed to have the opportunity to get married. I hope that everyone can have a happy marriage!

Gender Differences

Are gender differences as bad as some people make them seem? Should we all be equal in every way? Personally I feel it is good to have differences. How boring would it be if everyone (males and females) were all the same? Differences are good, they make life interesting.  It even says in the family proclamation that, "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal and eternal identity and purpose". I think this also refers to our role differences in society and in our families.  I feel that these differences is what makes and keeps the family together.
I am glad that there are some jobs that are more populated with male workers and others are populated with female workers. I don't see this as a bad thing. I don't think this is being sexist. Males are better at somethings than females just because they are male, and I don't think we should try to change that.

Parenting

Why do some parents only prepare for new borne babies, but not for toddlers, teenagers, or young adults? Why do we worry so much about the babies? Shouldn't we want to be the best parents all throughout our child's development? I think we should constantly be preparing for every stage of our child's lives. We should never think that our parenting doesn't have to change as our kids develop. We need to change along with them. We can't parent our kids like toddlers when they are almost 18. It just wouldn't work. We need to constantly be preparing for every situation that could occur in our parenting. According to Laurence Steinberg, the author of The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, there are three situations that parents can come across with their children. There are situations where we have time to think before we react, so that we can make good decisions. There are situations where we have a little bit of time to think, but our decision is more on the spot. The last situation is on the spot decision making. We need to make sure that we are prepared for when those situations occur that we will always make correct decisions and not regret anything we say or do. Parenting is very important to a family's happiness.

Roles and Rules

A few insights from my Family Relations class:
When a new member is born into a family, that family shouldn't just think of it as a new member. That family has become a new entity. This means the family needs to reorganize. They need to reorganize each members role and make sure those roles meet everyone's needs.

We all have or have had rules in our family growing up. What were these rules? How did we know they were rules? Were they written down or said out loud, or were they never really stated? There are unstated rules almost every family has. These could be things such as:
-seating arrangements at the dinner table
-who controls the volume while watching tv or a movie
These unstated rules can be good or sometimes they can be bad. We should look at our lives and find these unstated rules and make sure they are improving everyone.

Where has the family gone?

Why have we lost sight of what the definition of a family is?  In today's literature different experts are defining the family differently, or not at all.  This really makes me sad.  We are told that our family is the main thing that will get us back to heaven with our Heavenly Father.  We will be able to make it to the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom.  I think Satan knows how important families are and he doesn't want us to make it to that greatest glory. When there is a crises families tend to hold on to each other, but when we are doing okay we let go of our families and cling more to those things of the world. 

One thing that could be hurting the family is all the research that is being published.  We need to be savvy consumers when we are looking into research dealing with the family.  We can't always base out thinking on those results.  We need to know what we are looking at and understand when there could be potential errors that could make the results invalid.

I love the family unit and feel so blessed to know the truth about families.  I hope that someday the trends will go the opposite way and people will start getting married before they live together, and that parents will decide to bring wonderful children into their family and into this world.

Testing Testing 1, 2, 3...

Just testing out my blog. First day in the works.