Communication and Mutual Problem Solving

How do you communicate? The first thing that comes to mind is using words, but is that what we use most? Is it mostly with your words, nonverbal actions, or tone? On average studies have shown that we communicate with each other using words 14%, nonverbal 51%, and our tone is 35%.  What is the communication process? First we have a thought or feeling which we encode so the other person will understand. Next a medium or media is used, which is tone, words, or nonverbal actions. The other person then decodes the message they are receiving. Then the person has a thought or feeling and the process is then repeated.

Somethings we talked about in class is that how harmful sarcasm is. The reason sarcasm is so harmful is because your words mean one thing but your tone and actions mean different things. This can be very confusing with people you are communicating with. Even though they may know you are joking when it comes to a serious matter they may find it harder to know when you are being sincere. While it is important to be transparent and open that does not mean the same thing as being brutally honest. Just because you thought it doesn't mean you have to share it.

When problems arise with in a family or relationship here are some steps to help you.
1, Express love and appreciation
2. Open with prayer
3. Discuss to consensus
4. Close with prayer
5. Refreshments (have a treat together)

Always remember that problem solving isn't a competition speak with love and kindness. "Get Curious, Not Furious" Don't create problems they will come one their own. There is no way to avoid problems all together but there are ways to come out of them stronger together.


 

The Family Under Stress

What are the things that come to mind when you think of the word stress?  Somethings I thought of were anxiety, headache, challenges, and things not going your way. What about when you think of the word crisis? Crisis to me is something that flips your world around, breaking pointed, and a stress level not kept in check. An easy way I remember the difference between stress and a crisis is stress is like a pole that is getting bent. It doesn't take too much work to bend it back into shape. A crisis would be when that pole snaps in half. A lot more work is needed to make the pole whole again.

If you ask anyone for the most part they just wish all their stresses would go away, but would that be a good thing? In life we need stresses to make us stronger. Just like our bones and muscles need stresses to make them stronger. The stress working out and every day life puts stress on our bodies to keep them strong. I think stress in our lives can also make us strong.

How do we go about stress so that it makes a stronger as a family and so it doesn't drive the family apart? The most important thing to do is to handle stress together. This helps build the relationships between every family member. Don't let stress build up until it becomes a crisis. Be open and talk about things that are causing stress. A good model on how to go about stressful situations is the ABC Model. A stands for Actual Event. Talk about what the situation and what happened. B stands for Both Responses and Resources. Talk about the responses of those who are involved and talk about the resources you have to fix it. C stands for Cognition. Cognition is how each person saw the situation. A, B, and C all add up to be the Total Experience. When you have the total experience it is the easiest to over come the situation correctly. When you take the time to do things correctly the first time, things last longer and require less work later.

Sexual Intimacy and Family Life

Children are getting exposed to sexual things earlier and earlier. The sources they are getting exposed and learning from are things such as other children at school, pornography, TV, the internet, and etc. These are not the best sources to learn from. These sources don't love your child like you do or will. The best way to have your children learn is to be proactive in teaching them. This conversation will probably always be a hard one to get started. A child will probably not be the one to come to you with questions, so it the parents job to start this conversation. Where do you start? On LDS.org there is a entire manual called A Parent's Guide dedicated to properly teaching your child on this subject. The manual has instruction for infants all the way up to what to say to teenagers. Things to teach infants would be about their bodies and how special they are. For teenagers would be the sex talk and the importance of saving it for marriage.

In today's world we are quick to tell children the dangers of pornography, unprotected sex, and sex outside of marriage. Something that doesn't get talked about as much is the beauty of sex and what it brings to a marriage. In a marriage having sex isn't just having sex a better term to use would be making love. It isn't just the action, but emotions, closeness, joy, and selflessness that is expressed. Studies have shown that a healthy sex life is a good indicator of the rest of a relationship. If a couple can communicate successfully about intimacy then they can usually discuss other personal issues in the relationship. While it is important to teach children the dangers of sexual intimacy we should also teach them the joys of sexual intimacy in the right circumstances.

While raising our children we have or will have it is our job to open and help them with question they may have. If we don't answer them or aren't ready to answer them someone else will, but no one will love your child like you do or will.

"Love is not how many times you say I love you but how many times you prove it" 

Transitions in Marriage

Many people look at marriage as a goal to meet. I'm sure we all have heard things like "Oh when we get married things will be better". If only that was the case. Marriage is more like a starting line of a race than a finish line.

After getting married many transitions happen in order to have a happy and successful marriage. In class we made lists of these transitions for the first month and the first year.

First Month  

• Combining Schedules
• Defining Roles
• Setting Boundaries with Family and Friends
• Sharing everything
• Sharing a Bed/Room
• How to talk about important issues

First Year

• Finances
• Schooling
• Habits/Rituals
• Pressure from Family and Friends
• The "Baby Decision" 
• Coping with Disagreements

This list was just a few things that newly married couples have to cope with. When couples experience these struggles they are real and frustrating. Sometimes it is easy to think that if a couple cohabited before marriage it would be easier transition for these types of struggles, but studies have shown that cohabiting actually creates the opposite. Brother Williams used an analogy to explain why. In life people all have their own line. When a couple gets married their two lines join. They now share everything. When a couple only moves in together they are still separate lines. They are parallel lines but still separate. They may share some things like a bed and living space, but for the most part he still has his stuff and she still has her stuff.  Even after couples that got married after cohabiting still had the mindset of cohabiting. 

Marriage is such a special thing because it is the best way to join two separate lives into one.  

Preparing for Marriage

Choosing who you will marry in life is a huge decision that you hope to only have to make once in your life. The big question is "How do you make the best decision when picking a spouse?" There are so many people on this planet how can we possibly narrow it down to one person?

There are three things that narrow down your search: propinquity, physical appearance, and personal traits. Propinquity is opportunity, culture, shared experiences, and similar interests. Opportunity is the number one thing that narrows down our search. There are so many people on this earth that you just don't get the opportunity to meet and get to know them.  Where you live is usually where you find someone. Culture is what we believe. People who believe things similar to what you believe you are more likely to connect with them. The same goes with shared experiences and similar interests.
Physical appearance is something that draws you towards a person. You have to be attracted to your spouse to some degree. They may not be the most attractive person you have ever seen, but their personality changes that. Researchers have found that on average you marry someone who is similar to your family, by looks and personality. Personal traits is similar to interests and experiences. They shape us to be who we are and people who have the same or have been through the same things are usually more compatible. All of these things play an important role on choosing a spouse.

After all of these things that narrow down our search for a spouse how do we make a relationship work? A good theory to use is the RAM. The RAM stands for Relationship Attachment Model. It has four steps Know, Trust, Rely, Commit, and Touch. All these steps need to be done in that specific order for a relationship to work. Think of all the steps having a lever. Every lever needs to meet the top of the scale before moving on to the next step. As an example if you were to trust someone you were dating before you got to know them there would be higher chances of getting that trust broken. When all these steps are done in the right order the relationship has the highest chances to survive.

Another thing to consider would be the Three T's: Togetherness, Time, and Talk. A relationship must have all three of these in order to succeed. All of the T's result in getting to know someone. If you didn't want to know and continue to get to know someone why would you want to date them or marry them?

Relationships and marriage takes work. It isn't always going to be sunshine and daisies. That's why it's so important our relationships are based on more than just looks and physical touch. I know that it is important that as we look for someone to share the rest of our lives with, that we aren't just looking for a spouse but a best friend.

"Choose your Love; Love your Choice" -President Thomas S. Monson

Gender Roles and Family Life

Over the last couple of decades gender roles and family life has changed dramatically. There is a urge to make everything equal for everyone, whether male or female. Every single person is different. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses this makes the world go round. The differences in people are the best things about the world we live in.

Our different traits allow us to fulfill different roles in our society and in our own families. I think it is important that we realize that all roles are equally important. A father who goes to work to earn a living for his family is as equally important as a mother who stays home to take care of the children. The children also play important roles by learning and developing. Without the father there would be no income for the family to live off of. Without the mother the house would be a mess and the children would be out of control making it hard for them to learn and grow to become a productive member of society. You see every member of the family is important. This is the same for everyone in a society. We need sanitation workers to take away trash just like we need doctors to heal the sick to have a successful society.

Within our genders we have what we have "masculine" and "feminine" traits. In our society we are set on these traits only coming from their assigned gender, but if we see them from the opposite gender they are ridiculed. This in return makes them be an outcast or they suppress the traits. If you were to make a list of traits that were "feminine" and "masculine" you would realize that both genders have traits on both sides. Having traits on both sides is great, you wouldn't want to marry or be friends with someone who only showed traits from one side. Even though we share traits on both sides we still have certain traits we are better at. It's natural and part of our biology to have these differences. Instead of trying to make everyone be the same we should embrace our differences. We can't make it through this world on our own. We need others with differences so we can help each other through this life.  

Social Class and Cultural Diversity

Social classes and different cultures are all around us. We experience them every single day without evening thinking about it. When you think about it the people you spend your time with usually have things in common with you like education, resources, values, behavior, and lifestyle. People who don't share these things with you, you usually don't spend time with them. This is how social classes get defined. In class we watched many videos from the television show People Like Us. These videos showed examples of people in their different social classes. One of the episodes that I really thought was interesting was a lady we would assume was "higher" class was instructing a woman in a "lower" class as her to be high class, by dressing her in a "higher" class way and teaching her a few social aspects of the "higher" class. Later that night the both attended an art gallery. It was interesting that at the gallery the "lower" class woman, even though she had all the physical things to fit in, didn't quite fit in because of the behavior differences she wasn't accustom to. Social classes include more things than just resources that we see up front.

Culture can be a variety of things it can be the place where we are from, what religious group we are apart of, the neighborhood we live in, and even within our own family. In our different cultures there are varying things that we do that other cultures would never do and vice versus. In class, our teacher asked, "Are all cultures valid?" The automatic response for almost everybody was yes, until our teacher started bringing up different cultural beliefs like animal sacrifices, polygamy, and other things that go against what we define in the law as right. Are these cultures valid in doing these things or should their be a line drawn? That then rises the question of who gets to draw that line where it stops? This became very controversial in class because cultures are shaped by feelings, beliefs, and experiences that are all valid, but does that make the actions valid? I personally believe that no culture is completely valid. There is always something that could be done better (not better compared to other cultures, but better within themselves). So what do you think? Is everything in your culture valid?