Purpose of Parenting

Parents are meant to protect and prepare children to survive and to thrive.  There are four main points that need to happen in parenting.  First there is courage.  This is necessary to have in parenting their children.  The next is responsibility.  I really liked how my teacher split the word into response.ability.  We need to have the ability to have a response.  There are a few different parts of responsibility including choices, natural consequences, and logical consequences (1 too dangerous, 2 too far in the future, and 3 if it affects others).  The next is cooperation.  I thought it was interesting because my teacher talked about how it is important to let kids work out their arguments so they can learn how to cooperate.  The last part is respect.  We need to respect our children if they are to respect us.  They learn through example.  It is also important to remember that children understand the tone of the different words that are being said.

Fathers and Finances

In class this week we talked about the differences between work and recreation.  It was interesting to learn that during the time of Adam and Eve, all the way until the Industrial Revolution, working together was the way of life.  They had to learn how to work together and get some major perseverance in the family.  The mother and father had to teach their kids, become parents, and were all about building.  After the Industrial Revolution, the Dad is gone 60+ hours a week, mom is more fragmented with all of the at home responsibilities, and children who used to be contributors but are now consumers.

The benefits of working together are patience, understanding each other better, be more open with each other, fall into the different roles, laughter, and having fun together.  There are also dual earners, which just means the mother and the father are working.  It is difficult in all sorts of situations.  The children are put into daycare which gives the care, time, and parenting to the sitters.  The household duties are also put all onto the children or get really behind.  I liked this quote from an old man in this story who said, "You can buy anything in this world with money."  The old man in this story is Satan.  I think that people don't need money to be happy, and money definitely doesn't find true love.

We also talked about finances in class.  The law of sacrifice should be a constant in the home.  The booklet that we were introduced to "One for the Money, Guide to Family Finance."  I actually really liked it.  There are a few different sections that are on it that I specifically liked including, regulate spending, use a budget, and pay tithing.  I know that it is important in my life that as I start my own family, I will be able to teach them early.

Communication

Communication is an essential part of everyone's lives and a part that a lot of people struggle with.  There are the people who can't communicate how they're feeling and then the people who say way too much, but it's still not what they really mean.  In this world of total confusion, I am glad that I have this class to help me sort through all of the nonsense.

In class I learned about the communication between two different people.  There are of course thoughts and feelings on both sides of the equation because this equates to each person.  When one person is communicating something they are encoding, but then there is media that gets in the way, so when the other person tries to decode the information they have a higher chance of being wrong.  The encoding is usually done subconsciously, so we have to make sure that we check back and make sure that we understand and decode the right information.

There are three different types of communication: two are verbal which consist of the words itself, and the tone or emotion that comes out when using those words, then there is the non-verbal which could consist of gestures, face expressions, eye contact, touch, or proximity.  Out of a 100% scale, words are only 14%, tone is 35%, and non-verbal is 51%.

One of the biggest problems that happen through stress is finances which causes a lot of stresses with the family.  Another huge issues in families now is sarcasm.  Sarcasm is sending two different messages in two different directions.  One is the words and the other is tone.

Stress and Coping

In class this week we talked about the stresses in life and how to cope with them.  It was interesting for me to learn that stress in life is not always bad, it can be a good thing.  When we cope for stresses and experiences that may come into our life, we will become better prepared if those types of problems come back around.  I believe that we can even become grateful of the crisis's that we have had after they have happened, it can be one of those blessings in disguise.

The method that I learned about with stress and coping is as follows:
Actual Stressor Event
Both Resources, Responses
Cognition
________________________
Total EXperience

ABC will eventually give us the end result of X.  There is the possibility of learning from our mistakes and stressors and cognitively seeing it as differently.

Stressors can pull at families which leads to people coping with different outlooks:

• drugs or alcohol
• religion
• avoiding the problem
• self blame or blaming on others

The most important aspect that I have learned from this class is to be involved with the children and be very open with communication.