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.

We were talking about blended families today and I ended up getting up and drawing it on the board. It made me think of what I include as family.

First I have myself

I just got Married in November so I have started my own family 

I have my Dad and Ralyn as well as Cindy and David as my in-laws

Originally my family was just us four 

We've grown a bit. So for those who are keeping count 4 sister in-laws (three my husbands sisters which is all of his family besides parents), 2 brother in-laws, 1 best friend, 3 biological siblings, 3 adopted siblings, 3 step siblings in the picture and 3 step siblings out of the picture, 1 sister in-law and 5 (1 in heaven) parents not in this picture .  Grand total of  25 in my family, 14 in my immediate family with out marriages, 10 more added on because of marriages and 1in heaven.




Yes, it is complicated to answer questions about my family. 

One of the hard things is not understanding where you place is. It is easy to get lost in such a big family, especially when we all have so much baggage to go with it. I really worry about my family. I worry it wont work when I despicably want it to. We talk of the statistics of a blended family and that half the time they don't make it. It been 2 years since they got married and things have been crazy. It felt good to hear in class that  blended families should 1. wait at least 2 years for normalcy (mine might need a bit longer) 2. have bio parents do the heavy parenting (which is done) 3. make step parents more like a good uncle or aunt (getting closer on that) and 4. conferencing together (  think this is getting better but really I don't know because I am not part of that. Which is how it should be). Really we are on the right track our track just happens to be more like a hot wheels race track than a train track. But that is okay, it doesn't mean we can't be a family or that we won't make it. It just means more work. 

VS

Parents have ears too

                                        
There is something to be said of a good listener no matter what your age and who you are. When you are with someone who listens well you feel validated and appricated and what to be closer to them. It is a good thing we have ears. Doctor Popkins points out the errors that some parents make by being passive listeners and instead of addressing the needs of their teenager they

1. Be a know-it-all/lecturing ( here's what you don't know)
2.interrogate (why did you do that? when? where? how?)
3. command ( you will do this)
4. use sarasm (yeah....that'll work *not*)
5. give advice ( advice is good as long as it isn't something you are just saying to say like if you teen comes in and says I am tired you don't just say " well them you should get to bed earlier to keep your body healthy and strong")
6. have negative expectations ( don't worry you wont make it anyway)
7. psychologize them ( how does that make you feel?)
8. focusing on mistakes ( its just like this time that you didn't do what you  were supposed to)
9. moralizing (when I was a kid we had better morals than you do now)

Really listen to what the person is saying, listen to their tone and body language. When you ask "how are you doing?" and someone says "fine" that doesn't mean that it is fine unless their tone and body language said so as well. I know that I have used these before on people I am talking to and I am not even a parent yet. I fall under 1,5 and 7 most of the time, but when we recognize that these are weaknesses we have we can better prepare to listen to our kids (or friends or co-workers or whoever) and instead of being great responders.

Fatherhood

These are the fathers in my life right now. To the left is my father, to the right is my father-in-law. Some people wonder if fathers are necessarily or if mothers are enough or if parents are needed at all. I would say YES! We need our Dads. Fathers help us to Build confidences by giving us a chance to fail in a safe environment, Communicate in that they help children expand linguistically, Disciple is focused on following rules and fairness, they prepare children for the real world in that they focus on the consequences of actions in future life. Give a look into the world of men in showing both boys and girls how men should act and treat women. 

I remember being terrified of driving outside of the lines. I would stare at the road just three feet in front of my bumper and wobble the car back and forth trying to keep in perfectly safe and I usually hugged the white line because I was scared of oncoming traffic. On one of these drive to a work site the road was very narrow curvy and downhill dissent with a sheer drop on the right side of the car. Dad was having me drive and I was freaking out about it. Finally at a straight part of the road he told me to cross over the middle yellow line, when I thought I was their he told me I wasn’t even close. He then had me drive into the other lane and back again. He had me do this until I could touch both lines on either side of the road comfortable and understood where the car was actually at. He told me to look into the distances and not so immediately and that I would automatically keep the car where it should be if I were looking in the right place.

I don't know who my husband would be if he didn't have his father. Both of these men aren't talkers, but they are so good at serving one another. At times through out my marriage my husband has taken the insensitive about cleaning the house when I have been stressed and he knew that I couldn't handle it. I can see where he got that from his dad. We got a free Geo for our wedding so we got temporary licences, but hadn't taken off the plates. While we were driving we got pulled over and told we needed to take off the license plates. Chris was frustrated at the police officer and a little embarassed. We told the story to everyone just to break up the mood. In the morning however when we got up we saw that the license plates had been taken off. My father-in-law goes to work at 5 in the morning so he must have gotten up early so he could do that. He knew that my husband was feeling up set so he just did a little thing to help out. I see the same thing in my husband because of it. 

Reference:

Stanton, Glenn. "The Involved Father - Focus on the Family." Focus on the Family: Helping Families Thrive. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 June 2012. <http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/parenting_roles/the_involved_father.aspx>.

Communication/problem solving

What is the top complaint of those going into counseling with a spouse or family? I just don't know how to communicate. Here's the thing, it is natural to be able to talk, but to actually say what you meant and have it heard the way you want it to is a lot harder. With words only being 14% of the way you communicate what you say doesn't matter as much as how you say it. What you are doing is encoding your ideas into words or actions sending them to the person your talking to who has to decode your encoding and then send back a reply message which could be not saying anything at all. It is important to remember that this is a cycle so when you interrupt someone talking you are causing it so they can't finish encoding their message and just get frustrated. I used to do that to my husband and wondered why he wasn't talking anymore. Good thing we can learn how to communicate so we can fix these kinds of problems. Now on to Problem solving. Problem solving is learning to come to a consensus on issues while validating both people opinions, giving each time to think and express what they feel and not giving in just because you don't want an argument. One of the best ways to do this is the council method which I feel Elder Skousen and President Eyring describe it best (watch video). This is  how you should have your family, especially your spouse. We all have different perspectives and all receive different answers different ways. For those who are religion it is from God, from those who are not it is inspiration. counseling brings unity. Any problem solving you do should bring you closer because it isn't about winning, it is about finding out what is right, what is best for the family and it is easier without side help. 

Are we human or are we dancers?

The song human by the band Killers inspired by the quote " America is raising a generation of  dancers" by Hunter S. Thompson. So are we able to think for ourselves or will we just conform to the patters of society or the culture or even in our family that we are used to. I am not trying to give a big stink and say we all should be rebels wear our pants backwards and never do any traditional thing ever again in our lives, but we shouldn't be afraid of doing something different. The different thing I am thinking about for today is admitting that we, as human kind, are  vulnerable . We have always been that way, emotionally, physically and mentally.  We build up in our minds that we have so much power and then something happens to us to show we are vulnerable and suddenly we aren't following the normal steps that we should by being weak. When my mom died four 4 1/2 years ago it was hard for me to think I was so vulnerable, that I was so weak that I needed to ask others for help. It felt like if I mentioned it to anyone it was like a trump card, I was playing the victum. It made others uncomfortable and hesitate to share experiences in their lives because mine was just so big. This week we have been talking about family crisis and how we handle it.
One way to look at it is the ABCX model  the picture basically explains it. So the event with how you react to what it makes you think equals your total experiences. This is why we have people within a family that experiences crisis or two families that experiences the same crisis and their experiences is completely different. Part of behavior and cognition is copping patterns. What behavior or thinking do we use in order to help protect ourselves from pain. Many copping mechanisms work in the temporarily, like alcohol, addiction, denial and avoidance. For that day or week or whatever amount of time it works for you, but some of them compound the problem and cause the crisis to be bigger. A good copping pattern is reframing, all you are doing is changing how you think about a situation. Nothing about the actual even changes, just how you are looking at it. Most religious people are good at this. We have something really crappy happen to us and then we look back on it and think that it has changed us for the better. That it helped us have a better relationship or prepared us for something else. However reframing is not saying that because it happened I know I can handle it so at this moment of great need I am going to try and take care of everyone else and ignore all of my negative feelings because I should have those because this is a good experiences. That is called avoidance. I had this problem because I didn't want to be seen a a victim and then people would call me strong and then I would feel  hypocritical because I wasn't that strong. What I didn't understand then was that is is alright to be vulnerable and even if an emotion doesn't make sense you can't logical yourself out of it. It is your feeling you need to bridle it, not run away, not beat it to death, not drowned it, but bridle it. It takes practice and work and it helps to talk to other people.

Side note revelation before real post

I like copping by avoidance, meaning that I know the problem is there and I recognize it but do nothing about it. I use my computer to get away from the world, which then makes me feel guilty for not doing what I am supposed to be doing and makes me more stressed and more likely to avoid things. Now that I have found this cycle I am going to kill it....don't know how yet, but I will...most likely...as long as I don't look at pinterest. *sigh* Its harder when you think about it.  I often feel like this picture.

If life was easy it wouldn't be hard

There is a new myth that is flying through the cosmos, that life can be easy. We don't have to put effort in to get something out. THIS IS WRONG. So many movies show that relationships just end up working out. You take someone home, get physical, get to know each other and  then  after a few years get married. This is the formula for a long term relationship and happy marriage. THIS IS WRONG. There have been many studies done on cohabitation and how it is detrimental to a relationship because instead of meshing all of your life together you have parallel lives that are very close together. It is his and hers instead of ours. Though a couple can change this with a lot of work it would be so much easier just to start off on the right foot. Some people are confused in thinking that  a relationship is like flying a kit, you get it up and going and then direct it to the best places the the best flight and that the wind (or things around you) will make it work or not. THIS IS WRONG. Starting a relationship is like shooting a cannon, however you start is how you are going to end up unless something drastic hits it off this course. This is the reason that we start out with dating without having our lips on each other so we just get to know the person.

 The Relationship attachment model was developed to help explain how a relationship should be made. In the world we have this idea that we see if we have good sex and then everything else will follow. Though good sex is a symptom of a good marriage it is not the reason the marriage is good. It you don't know someone you don't understand what they are doing so it is hard to trust them. If you don't trust some one it is hart to rely on them. If you can't rely on someone it is hard to commit to them. When you do things in the proper order physical intimacy inhances your relationship. If you get started on the wrong foot then it hinders your relationship. This is just how I feel and this is some of the patterns that are emerging in society today which show the decay of the family. The more I learn the more I realize that family is the most important accomplishment we can have. 

SOMETHING WE SHOULD TEACH EVERY TEENAGER IN THE WORLD!!!!

Misattribution of arousal. What does this mean? Why is it important?  A funny example of this is in the TV series Drop Dead Diva where Deb a model dies and comes back in the plus size lawyer Jane. She has Jane's smarts, but can't remember her life. She ends up meeting Jane's husband who she married so he would have health insurances for his cancer. At first she things that she is still in love with him because she feels hot and her heart starts to flutter and it gets hard to breath. After a while she realizes that Jane was actually angry not in love. This is the problem, the symptoms we attribute to love are linked to adrenalin. This is the answer of why your friend would date that jerk you know is cheating on them and is no good. Guys have learned this subconsciously/ culturally; if you take a girl to a scary movie she'll like you more. That if you are kissing someone that they feel like  you really have a relationship. I know I want to teach my teenagers to keep their hands and lips off of other  people if they really want a relationship. The is so much in the media that says it is about that arousal that this is love, but it isn't always. A study done by Meston and Frohlich in 2003 showed that people who got off a roller coaster. It was shown that those who were questioned after the ride rather than before the ride were much more likely to say they were more attractive and desirable date. Other studies have repeated these findings. On study had women rate the attactiveness of 10 men , watch 20 minuets of war footage and then rate the same men again. IN ALL CASES THEY RATED THE SAME MEN MORE ATTRACTIVE THEN BEFORE THEY WATCH THE WAR FOOTAGE. Does this stick out to anyone else like it does to me? Because when we are "in love" this usually causes an adrenaline rush so we think of it in that way, but being afraid or angry can cause the same actions. Perhaps this is why you have good people both male and female who date jerks thinking they are in love when they really aren't. So when you talk to your children about what good relationships are don't just say it is true love and happily ever after. Explain the needs of what a relationship needs. About how it takes work. How you need to knew someone before you give your trust and commitment and that just physical responses aren't enough to keep a relationship together.

feminists and homosexuality

I believe that I am a feminist, I believe that women should be respected and given equal opportunity as men in the work forces. I also believe, however, that men and women are different and that is for a specific reason. We work best that way. When Adam was given Eve it was as a help meet. In Hebrew it actually means same but opposite. Just think of it as your hands. Your hands are the same, but opposite using both means you get the most done and you use each hand for different things. I feel that extreme feminists are trying to make it so we are all just one huge hand with 10 fingers on in. Where we try to make men women and when that doesn't work women gain more manly characteristics and we call them feminine. It is alright that we have different physical and mental abilities. Men in general see the big picture while women generally see the fine details. I find  the difference to be amazing and how we come together in marriage to be something more than just ourselves a miracle. But the world seems a little confused. It is probably because of my LDS background that I see this, it is something that we are taught along with that family being the central part of the eternal plan of happiness. . Wouldn't it make sense then that Satan would attack the first step of the family, marriage. He makes people feel that marriage is binding the freedom women and that it stifles their potential because we can't be just good for being mothers. I agree that women can do more, but being a mother is more exulted then anything else you can so. I think that this also has to do with the myths being projected in the media about homosexuality.  Here is where I feel it gets tricky to talk about the homosexuality myths. First some people don't separate people, children of God, from the classification. Suddenly it is part of their identity which means that when you say anything which could be construed as against it you are attacking them. Wrong there are an equal amount of good and bad between heterosexual people as their are homosexual. What I am not talking about is the person I am talking about the concept. This means it is a generalization of what being homosexual is there are many personal exceptions. Something which had been shifting in our society is that boys must to boy things or else they are gay. The little girl who acts like a tom boy is seen as cute, but not the little boy. I think that the teaches little girls that they can be anything and are great no matter what and that little boys are only as good as they fit a stereotype. This is what pushes more men to say that they are gay. It starts with the expressive qualities instead of instrumental. Usually expressive qualities are usually seen as feminine and  instrumental qualities male. So the boys who are sensitive, you are more into conversation and building relationships are shunned from the regular boys and even in elementary school they are called gay. So later on when a experimentation or a tramatic event like molestation happens their hindsight see that they must be gay because they were always called that. Which means that two women somewhere in the world wont get married and have families. I find it heart breaking. I think that instead of trying to make our boys into girls we should be helping them to become gentlemen. That girls should understand how to respect the opposite gender as much as boys do and that there are only two genders and confusion in between. 

$$$ vs. ^_^-ness

In my capstone class one of the moral dilemmas which we had to make a decision about was if a mexican man who lived in poverty with his family should illegally enter america and get money for his family and bring them to america for better opportunity.  We look at the church's official view of "undocumented workers" is that they discourage people from immigrating from their country, but for those who have they wish for a way that they can "square" themselves with the government. It kind of seems like a neutral cop out, but is there sense? I say yes and so does  Martical L. Bacallao and  Paul R. Smokowiski who wrote the article The cost of getting ahead: mexican family system changes after immigration. What they did is interviewed parents and children about the effect of moving to america had on them and their family relationships. It was qualitative research meaning we weren't dealing with the average number or percentages , but in what they described similarities emerged. When studying the family you can't just look at individuals it is about who all of the pieces work together in order to create something greater than just the sum of its parts. Because the fathers would have to be gone for at least 6 month to get the rest of his family the family system would have to change.  Part of what I brought up in my class was how it would effect his family, that they might not be as happy. Then people would point out that he lived in extreme poverty and that they could die, but it is possible that the family system itself could die or at least change to where it would never be the same. We can't think that we can take out a major factor in our live and it stay the same. That is why separating when you fell like you are having problems in a marriage is the worst thing you can do. You become comfortable with them not being there and it is hard to bring them back in. Many of the children felt much closer to their mothers than their fathers and felt it hard to have a boss again once they were reunited with him. Also the executive part of the family, mother and father, had to relearn reach other. Being gone that long in such different circumstances changes people. Because they had come to america the mother usually had to start working so the family was disjointed and the children weren't raised completely by their parents. Plus the different cultural view of what the family is or what behaviors are appropriate between a parent and child are different. So even though they are "getting ahead" in the end their families really suffered for it. So is it better to be in poverty and have a good family structure or be economically growing and have a struggling family. I know what I think, but also I wont be in that kind of situation where you are desperate to get what your family needs. (There are social theorist that say part of the reason we are civilized is that we have enough food.) But maybe looking into promoting that someone be come an undocumented worker or that we try to pay for them to come to the USA is something we shouldn't do. That we should help them where they are at in what we can. Because these patterns of family decay are even common for those who immigrate legally. The clash of culture and stress on the family is evident everywhere.

Doom & Gloom and the convolutedness of forgetting to communicate

So we have been learning about the family as a system. The idea that you can't just effect and individual part without some reaction from the rest of it. We do this with the rules, roles and boundaries we make in our families. They don't always work, but we will keep them because we are too scared to try something new.  The rules of a family are those things which have repetitively been done and proven the same reaction. Thus the rule don't ask for anything is implicitly made but never spoken about. The roles of a family can be what keeps people from changing. The "problem child" might be their because they are serving a purpose within the family or they could be showing the symptoms of a dysfunctional family. The boundaries of the family are how open they are to the out side world. Some boundaries are ridged (like a cinder block wall), others diffused or unclear (like a fences that only has posts) or clear ( like a picket fences).  The best is a clear boundary where people know where the family is at and they let new ideas in and out of their boundaries. It was Salvador Minuchin (click on name to see a little video of him) who began to look at these relationships and draw maps of the family. One of the things which he is famous for is his manipulation of physical space in order to help the family system of a new experiences in a safer environment. My Teacher is actually a family therapist who uses these methods and spoke of how you can see a dynamic by how they first sit in the office. I thought about my family, which in and of itself is complicated. I have 3 biological siblings, 3 adoptive siblings, 4 biological step siblings and 2 adopted step siblings. Only the only the 7 youngest live at home now, but before I got married I lived their for about a year-ish. When we went to watch a movie we were always segregated. This is the first thought that sends me on the doom and gloom path. Second is the rules, Eliason's (my main family) never beat Lasley's (step family) and some other things which cause inequality between the two families. Then we started talking about how blended families often fail. And then I found out that two of my siblings are moving out for the summer or longer while my dad works two weeks on two weeks off in North Dakota.  And I am just thinking about how I am in a dysfunctional family and that it is never going to last and why did I feel so good about it in the beginning and dooming and glooming. It didn't help that I texted my little sister (the oldest child at home right now) about what the family rules are she expressed that their still was inequality between team Lasley and team Eliason. She is just tired of being at home and being a good responsible  young adult and still treated like she isn't. Shes is going to be heading out to college as soon as she can after her graduation. Me thinking of how families function I ask her basically if she things that it will fall into chaos when she leaves. She explains that Dad is worried about her mostly because she is the only one not getting along with mom. And that mom actually grounded my second oldest step brother at home for a day (this may sound like a short time to you, but he ALWAYS gets what he wants and is never punished so this is amazing) and the oldest step brother who doesn't really care about anything and goes the lazies route possible (partly because he is a teenage boy) she talked to about when it was important to go to church and mutual (an discussion she would have skipped before). I texted her back and just thanked her for letting me  know that something good is coming from this marriage. That the kids aren't just getting screwed up and the parents heart broken. I told her just to send me what good stuff is going on, in a text or email or phone call or face book message, I didn't care. It's just so easy to tell people what is going wrong and it can become so big that we miss the little baby steps that people are talking that after a time become leaps and bounds. The imagination is wonderful at times, but it also can take and twist things into a scarier picture than it really is. Lesson I have learned: It takes time for change so keep track of it all the way so you aren't shocked by the crisis and understand how things are really going.
PS: This is like how the news sensationalizes the new trends in sciences. Like how we were going into an ice age which would freeze the world and then global warming that would  melt all the polar caps and flood the world and now we are just dealing with the climate change and protecting the environment.

♫Zero population♫ is the ♪answer ♫my friends, ♪ without it ♪ the rest ♫ of us are ♪ dooooooooooomed ♫

In the 1989 production Saturday's Warrior's the "cool" teens sing about how the only way that the world will survive is by not having any kids because other wise over population wont leave us with the resources we need to feed them and take care of them the way we should. It was common thinking for that day and even though we don't say it specifically it still effects how we feel about children and big families. For class we watch a documentary about the dangers of depopulation. It was a bit of an agenda-mentary to have people start protecting the family unit, but most documentaries are like that because someone has to have a motive to give the money to make it (ex: An Inconvenient Truths wanted us to be more 'green', Obsession wanted people to take terrorism more seriously).
That isn't the point. The point is that all of these thought about how we wouldn't have enough natural resources to sustain the human population were wrong. It was thought that the world could only support 5 Billion people, we have nearly 7 Billion now and more resources than before. Why then would we worry about the population decreasing, you might be thinking, it has been growing you just said so. This is one of the things in which the Documentary points our a flaw in most peoples thinking. Population rates within countries grow because of immigration and living longer and fertility rates. Since the baby boomer generation we have been seeing a lengthening of the human life span globally, but not a growth in fertility (new babies being born to replace the last generation). What does that mean to you? well it may mean nothing, but to the economy that means we don't have enough workers to support the services and labors which the aging population will need and it will make it so that every new person in the world will have to work doubly hard as the one before because they are coming into spaces where there were two people doing the work which they now have to do.  It also means to me that we lose that support system. Where to you learn to rely on people, to help them and to share? In the family (yes I know their are exceptions, I am speaking in general)?
As we have strives to be individual and have uniqueness, to run away from traditions we are also running away from some of the stability. When in the history of the world have their not been families? Has there ever been a time that they have fallen apart? In Rome the native Romans stopped having families, they were actually taxed if they didn't have families and children and there are historical records which prove people going into fake marriages and pretending to have children through adoption to duck out of their taxes. What happened to native Romans? There are no more of them. I don't think that the human race will ever become extinct, but life can be miserable with too few as well as too many.
My conclusion is that we aren't going to help the world unless we start strengthening the family. This is economically, enviormentally socially, mentally, emotionally and fundamentally. Strengthening the family means that we support mothers, both those who are stay at home moms and those who need to work. Those moms who need to work though need to look out for the two income trap ( look at Elizabeth Warren - The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke either on you tube or in the book to see why to income families still aren't surviving). To teach people how to appreciated children and see how they help and are not a hindrance and a danger to society. To teacher how a family should have a mother and father, but doesn't always work out that way. To teacher that there is hope, love and happiness in marriage and that children aren't a liability in it.

PS: this is the documentary I watched, check it out
(part 1) http://byutv.org/watch/59b6b917-984a-478f-93b1-521a647779c4/new-economic-reality-demographic-winter-part-1
(part 2)http://byutv.org/watch/b3dfa9f3-6e20-4d64-af96-fbf3fd64670a/new-economic-reality-demographic-winter-part-2
And a web sight that points out the laws of marriage in Rome. It is using it to show the repression of women, but it also shows  that I am not making stuff up http://byutv.org/watch/b3dfa9f3-6e20-4d64-af96-fbf3fd64670a/new-economic-reality-demographic-winter-part-2

Testing Testing 1...2...3... Testing