Some call it Chaos We call it Family

 Parenting! What a hard, but extremely fulfilling thing! I learned so much about parenting this entire semester here at BYUI from talking a parenting class and from being in family classes. I learned something new this week that I absolutely love and want to share with you all.   Discipling is always something I wondered how I would handle it. What do I want to do and not do? I always assumed that rewarding and discipling were good ways of raising children. I have learned this week that it is actually pretty disrespectful. I found this shocking and maybe some of you will too. It’s not that parents mean to be disrespectful, it’s just how a lot of us parent or assume it’s how we will parent. To pat a kid on the head, give them a treat and say “good job” for doing what we wanted them to do is disrespectful because it really is just manipulating them to do what we want. When our parenting tactics are to reward and punish, we are really manipulating what behavior we want and don’t....

 Do I work? Do you work? Should we both work? This is all between a husband, wife and God. However, I learned something fascinating this week that sometimes both the husband and wife work to obtain a certain lifestyle. They start bringing kids into the family and both still choose to work, but studies have shown that they actually lose more money than they earn versus those who choose to only have one bread winner. I found that really weird and hard to believe because it seems to make sense that if you have two people working you are going to make more money. But then I started thinking about how expensive day care is or a nanny on top of paying for children. Children alone are really expensive. I can now see how that could really lead to losing money than gaining. My aunt and uncle have two beautiful babies and they both work. My uncle came over from Brazil when they got married and didn’t know English. So, my aunt at first was the main bread winner. My uncle then started working ...

 I don’t know if you all think like I do, maybe yes maybe no, but I always assumed that compromising was the way to do things in a marriage. You have two completely different people coming together to live life together. You both have two different brains that think differently so of course you won’t always agree. So, what do you do? Compromise! But I have learned this week that that isn’t always the best thing to do. Not saying that compromising is always bad, but it can lead someone to feel like they are always giving. It can create a win/lose scenario where one is left feeling like they lost when this should be team work, not a competition.   We know that when we get married in the temple, we form a triangle with God. The closer we get to Him the closer we get to each other. God is a part of our relationship and as such He is the perfect person who can help us with our questions, problems, and decisions. He wants our marriage to success, He wants to help us, and before we g...

     Stress is a big thing that can then cause a lot of stress in the family. There are many different kinds of stressors that can occur in a family. I am going to share a story about a stressor my family went through. Now this stressor I think could be broken up into two different stressors: cumulative and internal.      What was this stressor? It was when my brother left the church. It was about three years ago and I found out when I was over at a friend’s house by a friend who was there. My brother had posted that he was gay on social media on national gay day a.k.a. October 11, which is also my mom’s birthday. Now I would say that before he had come out to everyone it had been an internal stressor which is an event beginning inside the family. Only the family knew. Really only my parents. I know it was hard for them to see him struggle and they did all they could to help him be more confident in himself, feel loved and stay close to God. Then when ...

  This week I have been learning about sexual intimacy in marriage. It was very interesting to learn that sexual intimacy is more than just having sex. It's giving and taking, thinking not of yourself, but of your partner. It is more than just feeling good, but also a huge way to connect with one another emotionally, physically, and mentally.      I had always thought that sex was just…. well sex. That you got aroused, had sex and that was it. It was fascinating to learn more than just what the what the world has been showing me. I always knew it was supposed to bring two people closer together, but it was still more of something that was just pleasurable. But it is more than just that and made it something that I consider even more sacred than I did before. Now, I have never had sex and am not married. But I still think it is very important to learn and know of this stuff before you get married so that you can have a great and healthy sexually intimate relation...

    Marriage is hard and adding in children, even though we love them to death, it doesn’t mean it is always easy. Something I learned that I found fascinating this week was the correlation between having children and divorce. Maybe it is obvious to others, but I was a little surprised. When people first get married it’s all new and exciting. When a couple has their first child it can add strain to their relationship. This strain has been known to lead to divorce. A reason for this is when they have their child the women becomes very involved with their new baby. Babies require a lot of attention and care to live. Women also have a biological connection to their child that instantly makes them over the moon in love with their child. Men don’t have that, it does not mean that they aren’t over the moon in love with their child too, but they don’t have that biological connection that the mother has with her child. So, as the mother is busy taking care of her child the father...