Life in the eyes of Dee

I think that there is a huge purpose to parenting. Parenting in my opinion is the process of helping a child to grow, but it is also a maturing and learning process for the actual parents. We all went through trials and got through them, and we need to learn how to teach that to our children so they may not go through the same thing possibly. Micael Popkin said that his idea of what parenting was to "Protect and prepare children to service and thrive in the world they will live in." I think this is a great way to look at parenting because it reminds us that we are preparing a child to thrive in the best possible way in the time that they will grow up. We need to understand that the things they will grow up surrounded by will be different than what we grew up with, and we have to be able to see that and incorporate it into how we raise our kids. There are steps and things to do to discuss consequences with children. These go as follows: polite request, "I" statemen...

     This week we were able to go into depth on communication and a little more on how it works, and how it is used within relationships. We also got to talk a little about counsels within relationships.      Communication is not just limited to the words we speak. We are never not communicating. There are different parts of communication including words, nonverbal signals and symbols, and tone of voice. I learned some interesting statistics about communication during one of our class periods- that is that only 14% of a message that we are getting comes from the actual words that are said. 35% of the message comes from the tone of voice that is used with the words, and then a whomping 51% comes from the nonverbal stuff. There is a process of receiving information in communication. The first part of it is when we ourselves have a thought or feeling that we wish to convey to someone else. Then we take that thought or feeling and encode it. This means that we...

     There are a lot of different factors, examples, situations, and other things that come to mind when we think of stress. As I go on to talk about stress in the family, we need to understand that stress is different than a crisis. Stress is just tension that is built up from different factors. It is the feeling of strain and pressure and unpleasant emotions. On the other hand, a crisis is something that actually necessitates change. You can have stress and not have it change anything, but when you have a crisis, things have to change in order to be solved. We learned that when you write crisis in Chinese, it puts two words together that we are familiar with. That is danger and opportunity. I feel like this really puts an understanding to what this word means and how we should perceive crisis in our lives. The first word, danger, means that there is something going on that is causing problems. We know we have to fix it in order to be okay again. However, the word opport...

     This week we had the opportunity to talk about marital intimacy! At first I was really nervous for this topic because it is something that doesn't get talked about too frequently. However, as the week progressed it was easier to talk about because I was understanding it better.      I had the privilege of growing up with parents that we had a very open relationship with. We were raised understanding that if we ever had questions about anything, we could go to our parents and they would answer it without condemning or making us feel like we were in the wrong for asking such questions. My mom was very close with both my older sister and I, and she made it a point that anytime we had alone, quiet time together, that she would open up a question discussion with us and we could ask any question or talk about any topic. My mom was always very honest with us, and if it was important enough, she would even share personal experience from her and my dad which h...

     Like I talked about in my last post, I am so very excited to get married! I am aware that marriage is a very big step to move forward in my life, and one that will impact almost everything in the rest of my life in every way. Marriage is a joining of two people that can not be taken lightly. Depending on how, why, and when you are married, can determine how successful it is. Marriage is also a step in the process of becoming a family, and is one of the most vital parts. The first child is a transition, and every child after that continues to be transitions.      There are many different reasons that people get married, despite the idea that it was always for love. Some of these include the need for intimacy, social expectations, social ideals and personal fulfillment, desire for children, and for practical solutions. Personally, I would want maybe a couple different ones of these in my own marriage! I want there to be a mutual agreement to have kids, ...

     Marriage is something I am SOOO excited for!! At the same time it terrifies me. I hope it will be in the relatively near future, I want to be married before I am twenty-four years old. So that puts me getting married in the next five years. I would like to learn as much as I can and get the preparation in now so that my marriage will be more likely successful. I know, as I mentioned in one of my first posts, that I believe it is my responsibility to get married soon in life and not put it off. It is our responsibility to get married and start a family. I am looking forward to finding an eternal companion that will be my best friend and get to start my own family with him.      This week we were able to have conversations about marriage prep in more depth than we have before. We talked about the ways you date, how dating should happen, and the differences between men and women in dating. In potential mate selection, there are different factors that can...