Emotional Coaching

If you are studying the family or marriage you will find that you love the work of John Gottman, Ph.D., at least that is the way I feel. Right now I have been reading  7 Principles for Making Marriage Work  and Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children.  I love them!! If you haven't read them please do. They are amazing. It is focusing on making things right instead of putting out the fires of things going wrong. I appreciate a proactive approach to my relationships because I don't like drama. The book I want to focus on here is Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children. I used to think I was a really good listener in high school, but after I got married I realized I was good I making conflict feel uncomfortable around me it didn't come. Though the book is for raising kids I have been using it to become more emotionally intelligent. I basically do accept the emotion and then look for ways to cope/work with it. My problem is that I try to promote my "parental agenda" or in lame man terms I push the goal I think they talker should be pushing for instead of listening to what they are saying. This leads me to "side with the enemy" as I am trying to make sure those I talk to don't become close minded. And in all of those attempts I try to just give them an answer so they can be fixed and feel better again. I have learned that I am bad at validating emotions that I don't agree with. That doesn't mean I should pretend I do, my poor husband has been my guinea pig in this and that got us no where. However when he told me that he didn't like his teacher or his class in an attempt to follow the emotional coaching book I didn't go with my first instinct which was to tell him that his teacher wasn't that bad and that he just had to find different solutions to do better like get a tutor  (notice how I had my own agenda their for him to be a good student, I sided with the enemy and tried to give the solution).  But I didn't do that. Instead I asked if his what was going on in his class. He talked about how he wasn't understanding the information. I repressed my desire to talk about better study habit's and instead validated his feelings of frustration. All in all what happened is he firugued out that he was frustrated that he had two big assignments due this week and he was feeling that his efforts to understand the information were fruitless and he had talked to his teacher about it and gotten now where.  This was something he didn't realize that he was even feeling at the time that he made his first comment and something I wouldn't have know about if I had just tried to "fix" the problem. Because he realized that was what was irritating him he made a plan to get to the computer lab that could help with his projects (something I didn't know was a resources and would have wanted him to do anyway).  Because I was being emotionally intelligent I was able to be closer to him. Really I am only on chapter four of this book, but I am going to keep it forever.

Graphs are misleading

 When talking about marital satisfaction this kind of graph will often be shown. After having children it shows a dramatic decrease in the score. I don't know about you, but when I look at it it seems to show that marriage will have times when you hate it and then you will just come to love it. Really it is stabler than that. Also the crater in the graph is really only a speed bump when you look at it and see that 1.80 differences for wives and 1.75 difference from husbands because it numbers 0 to 54, not 1 to 6.  This was a cross sectional study (take a bunch of people at different stages in life and survey them then) which excluded divorced couples.  Which could be a confounding factor or later satisfaction. However longitudinal studies (survey the same couples over a long period of time) which shows that marriage satisfaction steadily increases over time. So having a child don't make your marriage a misery, but is an added stress you must learn to function with in marriage. DON'T BLAME THE KIDS!PS: information cited from Do Children Make a Marriage Unhappy?, by Richard B. Miller

Proclamation-Based Principles of Parenting and Supportive Scholarship

 I just read the Proclamation-Based Principles of Parenting and Supportive Scholarship by Craig H. Hart and Lloyd D. Newell (1) and Lisa L. Sine. They do a good job at talking about traditional views of children ( innately evil, blank slate and inertly good) over time and explaining a LDS perspective (born Innocent with potential either way). One of my favorite things which was mentioned was spanking. Lately I have been hearing a lot of NO SPANKING EVER arguments and judgments for parents who do spank that they are abusive. They said "A body of scientific literature suggests that “non-abusive” spanking consisting of one or two mild slaps on the buttocks in limited situations (e.g., out-of-control behavior that poses danger
to the child or others) can be beneficial as a last resort, but only for children between two and six years of age. It can be particularly beneficial when backing up other discipline measures that have failed (e.g., reasoning with child or withdrawing privileges), or when conducted infrequently in the context of a warm and responsive relationship.". They also mention that a child's temperament should be taken into account when determining if spanking would be effective. I personally didn't respond to being spanked, but when my stuffed animal were put in prison (the top of the fridge) for my misbehavior I was sympathetic to their need to get out of there and would change my behavior. what was also talked about was parenting types : coercive  passive and authoritative (not to be mixed up with authoritarianism). That coercive will use force, hostility and threatening  to make their children be good. This makes it highly likely that the child will have negative effects. Passive  parenting is that you just let them go. Sometime this over indulges the child, but often it just leads to instability. Sometimes kids come out with a positive experiences some times a negative, but they are usually defiant to authority  Authoritative parents are those who set up firm boundaries with way that they can be negotiated for more autonomy (self reliance) in the child's life and that they work more for showing love than just correcting their child. Another key point in being an authoritative parent is being able to apologize when you make mistakes (which you will no matter how hard you try). I think that this has really opened my mind to what kind of parent I want to be.

PS: This is a link to the proclamation referred to in the article https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation

The Anatomy of peace : resolving the heart of conflict (the Arbinger institute)

For my parenting class I am reading The Anatomy of Peace. I was expecting it to be a chapter by chapter look into different subjects which help in creating peace. It is actually told in a story about parents dropping off their troubled kids for a program to promote positive change in the kids, but is really addressing how the parents need to change as well for anything to be long lasting. I like the book thus far and would read more of it now if I didn't have so much school work to do. I'll edit this blog until I have reached the end. For right now the thing I have pulled from it is that we should be focusing on what is going wrong when trying to help people or make an environment of peace, but focusing on helping things go right. That means not criticizing and correcting all the time. Instead finding ways to promote positivism. 

picture from the book 

So I have decided that I am not going to go all the way into what I learned in this book. I enjoyed discovering it too much to spoil it for someone else. However I highly recommend it as it has helped me realize that it is common to fall into negative self defeating thinking/behaviors, but if you are aware of how it happens and how to get away from it you will have a heart of peace, not of war. 

Do parents matter?

 Craig H. Hart wrote the article Combating the myth that parents don't matter where he brings up research on how a parents interaction with their children effect that kind of person they are. With so many Homosexual rights activists out there many articles have been published that show that heterosexual parents are unnecessary because men and women don't bring unique contribution to the helping and development of a child. This is untrue. a "natural family" using the correct tools will be able to give their children great success  even more than that of a single or cohabitation  parents. It gives children a place to see how interactions should work and especially for fathers it shows girls how they should be treated. I find it interesting that fatherhood had been so attacked because fathers are often the bread winners of the family and not at home as much as a mother. Studies have shown that fathers matter. I know that fathers matter. I wouldn't have chosen my husband if not for the example of my Dad in how he treated my mother when I was younger. My mom nurtured me  and my dad pushed me out into the world with the knowledge that both of my parents would be there for me. 

Advice for the future

Brenna M. Hicks is a child therapist who blogs about common mistakes that parents make and explains children's behavior. Her article 10 things not to say to your kids makes complete sense, but unless you read it they are things you don't really think about. I am not a mom yet, but I became a co-parent with my other two sisters after my mom died for our three youngest so I have had experience. I think the thing that I used to do which I can tell never worked was the wait until dad gets home (#4). It took sometimes, but we (me and my sisters) stopped that when we realized it didn't work and made the less responsive. Brenna explains that because it is a threat and making the children fearful you are breaking trust. It is better to ask it they wanted to tell by themselves or if they wanted to do it together. So they don't escape the consequences, but can still trust you and you show that you respect the. 

So my dad is getting divorced

I wrote the last entry a while ago and that was then that I was at my most hopeful that things would work out. But sometimes these things just don't work out. I a little resistant to the idea that they should get divorced, but I came to a conclusion: They aren't good for each other any more. They weren't helping each other grow. They were holding each other back. I wish the best for RaLyn, but it just isn't with my dad. It is a funny positively neutral feeling tied all together closure and...I guess the word is peace or ease...no something between that.