Divorce

It seems like Divorce is such a common lifestyle these days. It happens to multiple people, most everyone knows someone who is divorce. And most of the time we are related to someone who is divorced. So has it always been this way?

Divorce has happened for quite some time, but it has never been this common. About 4 decades ago California and New York created the no-fault divorce. Before the No-fault had been created it took a lot to get divorced. It went to court where the whole community could join. The spouse wanting the divorce would have to prove that they were seriously neglected (Lots of proof); continuously physically abused; or sometimes they could prove their spouse had committed adultery. Now just because you could prove one of those reasons did not mean you would actually be able to get a divorce. 

Once California decided to pass the No-Fault divorce, divorces sky rocketed. The peak of divorces happened in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Everyone thought it was better for the children that they divorced, however now that no one was at fault there wasn’t a “good” parent the children automatically went to. Children in divorces became the property and were split in half. 

A divorce almost always has a negative effect on children. Most feel neglected. Lots of children will turn to drugs and result to substance abuse. Children who come from divorced families are also more likely to have eating disorders. Later consequences come in other forms such as lower levels of relationship commitments.  They struggle with trust, anxiety, and have difficulties with love.

Not all divorces have these effects on children, however more often than not they happen.

Parenting styles

In class we talked about the different parenting styles and ways to address conflict and problems with your own children.
Obviously I do not have children, which means I do not have experience of my own that I could bring to this blog. I do however understand the different types of parenting that parent’s use on their children.

Authoritarian

Authoritative

Permissive

Neglect

These are all forms, most of them are BAD except for neglect. If you are neglecting your child then this is serious and you need to STOP it. If you know neglect is happening to a child this is considered abuse and must be addressed.

Now, let’s get back to the rest of the styles.

The best way for me to explain authoritarian is saying “my way or no way” If you can imagine a parent who does not listen to their child, but tells them constantly how things will be run this is authoritarian. Most people have been raised on this sort of parenting style. Parents usually know what is best for their child and you want what is best for them, naturally you will tell them what to do. This level of parenting is a bit more extreme. If you can think of the mother in Tangled (The evil one, not the queen) she is a fantastic (and extreme) version of Authoritarian.

Mother knows best

The YouTube video is one where you can see the mother talking of how she knows what is best for her daughter. If your parents were authoritarian,  I am not saying they are bad. So don’t be upset at me J

Permissive parenting is when the parent is relaxed. They don’t really care what you do as a child and are there only to be a friend. There really aren’t any set boundaries in the home and mostly can get away with whatever you want. We talked about in class how it seems that even though a parent is permissive sometimes they jump back to the other extreme of Authoritarian. 

Authoritative parenting is also considered “Active” parenting. This is a parenting style that teaches boundaries in a warm way. They also are good at listening to their children but also making it known that they are still the parent and have rules. Our text book states “Parent-child interaction is generally characterized by affection, a certain amount of give-and-take, but relatively clear expectations for the children’s behavior.” This type of parenting in the end develops the strongest ties and relationships with their children. The children trust you and know they have security with their parents.

When it comes to addressing discipline remember to use logical consequences. Before your child doesn’t do something, set them down and decide on logical punishments together. Brother Williams shared how he was going out one night. His parents sat him down and decided on a reasonable curfew. They also said, “We trust you, but just in case, if you do not come home by curfew what should your consequence be?” Together they decided that if he missed curfew he would have to miss going out the next weekend. Well, Brother Williams was a teenager and missed curfew by a half hour. The next week he was grounded and understood it because he had created the punishment as well. He said he never let the reason why he was late to ever happen again. The logical consequence was set so he could see how the punishment correlated with the incident. He also helped his parents decide on how to discipline.

I also liked how we talked about how you should let natural consequences teach children. UNLESS:

1.       Too dangerous 
2.         Too far in the future
3.        When it affects someone else

Father & Finances

This week in class we talked about the importance of fathers and also finances. I want to address a bit about fathers before we move onto the money matters. It just so happens to come close to father’s day and I believe that it’s important to honor fathers every day.

This is not a movie bash, just recognition of what I realized; I recently went to see Brave, the new Pixar movie. I thought it was cute and had some fun parts that made people laugh in the theatre. While watching the movie though I couldn’t help but noticed how idiotic the creators made the fathers and males seem in this film. I understand that this movie was meant to focus on the relationship between the mother and daughter, but that absolutely doesn’t mean that the men should be down played. I really didn’t feel comfortable thinking that children all over the world were shown this video of how the men that raises them are stupid and can’t lead their families. The father is the head of the family, the mother is meant to be there and counsel with her spouse, but ultimately he is the head. I personally don’t want my children thinking that their father is someone who is to be disrespected. He is as important in the family as I am; he has different roles that he is supposed to fulfill.

This is not the first movie I’ve seen do this to the dad, I believe it’s becoming more common. It goes along with the gender differences. The male is not stupid. I’m not sure why society is taking this turn towards the father as being someone who isn’t necessary in the home. He is vital to the family and is an amazing role in the home and family.

Now! To finances: biggest reason for divorce in the family. Why is financial trouble such a problem in the home? One of the main reasons is because if we are not financially secure then we are stressing about it constantly. Maybe we lash out on our spouse because we are stressed about the money coming in and really not because they did something wrong. You don’t mean to be upset and take it out on each other, but it’s affecting every relationship around you.

I really liked the pamphlet that Marvin J. Ashton has published. It’s called “One for the money”

One for the money

In this pamphlet he addresses the different areas that we can target and learn more about the finances. He encourages that children should be involved in making money decisions. Money decisions that they can make, as in what they should save their money for. They should be aware if there is any struggle in the bank in order to understand why they are not able to spend money on eating out.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to make sure you not only are out of debt, but have 3 months of expenses saved in the savings account.

Communication = texting???

Think about how much we communicate to people during the day? You’re probably thinking about how much you’ve talked, but is that all you’ve done through communicating? What about the times you smiled at someone? Or maybe you don’t like to smile, maybe you frowned at a person walking by. Either way, you’re communicating to that person a message. 

I love this picture, it reminds me of the different ways to communicate. There’s Verbal, nonverbal cues (Body language), and tone. One of the girls, Regina, is verbally talking to someone on the phone. Caty, on the far left, is standing looking a little impatient with her arms crossed and staring at Regina. She is visibly communicating through nonverbal cues. And if we were watching the movie we could hear the tone of the girls and understand what they are trying to convey.

Most people think that we communicate the most through our words, however, studies have shown that only 14% of our communication is conveyed through words. 35% of communication comes from the tone of our voice and how we say something. And the last 51% comes from the non-verbal cues we send to people.

With all of that said think about how many times you’ve gotten upset over a text message, all because you misunderstood what they were trying to say. Who’s fault is it that the communication failed? Was it the sender or the receiver?  That’s hard to really determine.

The Communication process:

We each have our thoughts and feelings, when we want to share them we encode them into a message and send them through some sort of medium. The receiver then will try and decode our message and that’s when their own thoughts and feelings come in. After they “understand” what you were saying they will encode their own thoughts/feelings into a message, send it through another medium, and it comes right back to the initial sender.  I’m not sure if that made much sense, but it really is just a cycle of confusion. While we might think it is easy to understand our own message, the receiver might interpret it completely different than what we were really trying to say.

Not to mention there sometimes is static/noise that interferes with the message we wanted to get across. This noise is often the body language, tone, or maybe the mood of the other person.

So! The real question is how do we make sure the other person understands what we are trying to say? How do we become better communicators and decision makers together?

I suggest to everyone to pick up M. Russell Ballard’s copy of Counseling with our councils 

This is the book I plan on reading once I have the money to buy it… So if anyone of my family/friends wants to donate to the “Help Hannah communicate better” fund that would be fantastic! J

In this book Elder Ballard teaches the way to communicate by revealing how the Quorum of the twelve and the First Presidency holds their meetings. You might think this sounds a bit odd, but what better way to learn how to communicate than through our Prophets’ methods?

Feeling a little stressed?

In class we finally got to the part that makes every family go on the rocks: Family crisis. It happens in every family and it can either strengthen or break the family apart. It’s just a part of life. No matter how hard we try to avoid a crisis, it will happen and it’s up to us how we respond to it.

Brother Williams taught us the A+B+C = X method of understanding a family crisis.

Actual event

Behavioral response

Cognitions

____+______________

       eXperience

It’s easy to think “Well when the crisis happens we will be ready for it and it’ll all be smooth sailing through it all.” Easier said than done, right?

The A in our equation is basically the constant. The event that happens represents the A, we can’t change it, we just take it. The B stands for how people respond to the situation, they might be the type to shut down and go basically in a coma and they don’t respond to anyone. The Cognitions is the thought process that everyone has. Sometimes what we are thinking doesn’t reflect in our behavior, at least not that other people can easily see.

Through this formula we might be able to understand how someone’s experience will come about based on how they handle their situation that is presented to them. Even if I’m experiencing the same crisis as someone else in my family, I will most likely have a different outcome than them because my behaviors and thoughts are different.

In our book it talked about how the death of a child in a family is possibly the most intense and severe events that can take place in a family. If you had a child that passed away it would be heart wrenching. I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to mourn the death of a child. However, I would suggest to the parents that you make it known unto each other how you are feeling. Don’t throw it to the side, thinking it will get better on its own. This is one wound that can become infected if left alone and only worsen the situation. Remember it’s not the other’s fault or your own fault. If you need to, get professional help, together. Don’t be ashamed for getting help, it’s better to receive than to drown in all the troubles.

Intimate relationships

This was probably one of the most entertaining weeks so far in class. Not favorite because of the topic, in fact that would be the part that might be a little awkward. It was more entertaining because our teacher, Brother Williams, had to address the topic of sexual relations in marriage. He didn’t go into detail about how things are done, that would’ve made it extremely uncomfortable. It was more him talking about the differences between men and women during this time. I think it’s safe to say that most of you on my blog probably understand how babies are created… They come from the mailman of course. So I will leave it at that and address the next topic

The next class, Thursday, we discussed about the importance of educating our children about the “Birds and the bees” There are the extremes that most people hear about. You know, when a child asks their parents why their baby brother has something funny down there while changing the diaper, we automatically say “We don’t talk about that”. Well that’s really not helpful at all… Just explain they have outside plumbing and girls have inside plumbing ;) haha, I’m playing. But it really is important not to shut down their questions. Maybe also keep in mind that a 2 year old doesn’t necessarily need to know everything if they ask how the baby got into mommy’s tummy. Find a balance.

Also, you’re not left alone to figure it all out. The church has a manual for parents. You can find it at this website

 Parent's guide