One of the most important things I learned this week was covenant vs. contract. Covenant is where the superior sets terms and the inferior accepts or declines. A contract is where two parties decide the terms together. We learned this at the beginning of the semester but coming to an end now I think it is important to be reminded. Talking about marriage in today’s society is more of a contract than a covenant. When it should be the exact opposite. Today a marriage contract is easier to get out of than a housing contract. That is crazy! Marriage is a hard thing. It is hard by design, it is not natural. When I get married I hope to have a happy marriage and have no divorce. Something that I have come to know is that generations are following their parents if there is divorce. I want to stop a cycle and keep married. 70% of people who have divorced, after 2 years think that their marriage could have been saved. So I suggest for you to wait to get divorced and see if you can fix things instead of giving up.

        We learned about blending families this week also and it was interesting because I am from a blended family and every situation is different. My dad has not adopted my three half brothers and sisters but they still call him dad. Something that I found really interesting was that some people did not know that their siblings were half. I think this is so weird because I don’t even remember wondering if they were half but I just know. I think it could be because they are white and I am Asian but I don’t really think so. It was really cool to hear someone else’s experience with blended families. I really liked this class and I feel like I have learned more than in any class before! I hope to continue learning and apply what I have learned to my life.

This section is all about parenting. What makes a good parent? Why you need parents? What do you teach as a parent? There are so many things about parenting that are vital to know and very interesting. There are three types of parenting. Authoritarian who are super strict, Permissive who are hands off, and authoritative/active who are more balanced. We learned about active parenting and some of the qualities it involves teaching as a parent. Courage, cooperation, responsibility, and respect. As parents you should strive to instill these into your children. It is a balance to help your children throughout their lives.  The Popkin videos were really beneficial to my learning about how to parent. Something that I feel really strongly about is that when it comes to the approach of parenting we need to focus on the needs of a child not the behavior.  In class there were a lot of examples given of children needing more attention and this would stop some of their thought to be annoying behaviors. This automatically made me think of my niece. I called my sister to tell her what I learned and come to find out she is taking a parenting class. This made me feel really good and we understood what each other was talking about.  There are always good approaches to dealing with behaviors but there are plenty of bad approaches also. I think that as we are trying to teach children we need to find the best possible approach. Most importantly, meet the need instead of trying to change the behavior. In the end because the need is met the behavior will then change. 

There was not a lot of class this week but there was a really thought provoking article to be read and discussed. The article was called "Does a Full-Time Homemaker Swap Her Mind for a Mop?" This article was arguing whether people who stay home with their children are wasting their brain instead of going out and having a "real" job. As I was thinking about this I came to my own conclusion to the topic. It's simple. People who stay at home with their children are not wasting their brain. Period. In fact I think they learn the same or more. Just because you are not out of the house all the time does not mean you are not learning but you are just learning different things. So for all you, just think about this and come to your own conclusion. 

I loved talking about communication this week. There are so many times where I have heard of people have communicating problems and it makes so much sense when we break it down like we do. So I learned that there are 3 different ways of communicating: Words, tone, ad non-verbal. Not only are those these three ways of communicating but there are also ways of communicating through sarcasm. Sarcasm is using words but there is an underlining to it. Between the three ways of communicating we usually take the sarcasm statement based on the tone. When using sarcasm things can be misunderstood and misread so it is important to be careful. Not only can sarcasm just be misread but even a look when communicating. Sometimes people just are super focused and people think you are mad. Something that I found super interesting was the feedback loop thing. So it first starts with thoughts/feelings that then get encoded into a message, passes through a medium, the message gets encoded by someone else and then leads to their thoughts/feelings. Then their thoughts/feelings go through the same loop and it is a continuous circle. If someone does not decode the message in the way it was meant things could turn messy and lean to problems. It is very important to look at the context and really understand what is meant.

        Power- Synonyms: manipulate, control, dominate, authority, Influence. There are many types of power. Expert power = talking with an experience base. Legitimate power = a legal kind of authority. Informational power = Telling someone if you understand this chunk of information, you will get this part. Reward power = only going to do something to get rewarded. Referent power = doing it because someone else is doing it. In a marriage there are many powers that can be used. As you carry out your life recognize the powers that you use and the strength it has. Every time I laugh when I hear reward power. As women we need to remember we hold a lot of power and to use it wisely. Recognizing theses powers we can know the motives behind someone’s behavior. 

I really liked this week’s topic of crisis because we all go through hard things and experience challenges in our life. First of all I really like learning about the ABCX model. Once it was explained it made total sense. A: the actual stressor event. B: both the resources and the reactions. C: cognition, the way you view the situation. And X: your total experience. Learning about crises I found it very interesting that 50% of times after losing a child, within 2 years it is usually a divorce. I think that everyone should learn to deal with crises so that things can end positively. When a crisis happens I like to think of the cognition part of it. When a crisis happens we usually think that certain events lead to certain emotions when that is not reality. Reality is events happen which leans to our thinking it over which then leads to our emotions. We can affect the way we think about crises according to cohesion and flexibility. If we are flexible I think that you can handle crises better. You are able to mold yourself in a way that you haven’t dealt with stuff before.  Closing I want to say a story that was told in class. There was a girl molested and the man was always asking her to forgive her. The pressure was all of the sudden put on her, Don’t put the pressure on someone else except the perpetrator. Focus should be on him. He should not be asking for forgiveness but is on his knees apologizing until you are convinced it is sincere. Tis story really stuck with me and is a tactic I never realized before. When a crises comes up in your life I know that if we try to view it positively rather than negatively than it will definitely help. 

Wow! This week I learned a lot about sexuality and intimacy. I learned the response cycle: 1) excitement 2) plateau 3) orgasm 4) resolution.  I learned that there are a lot of differences between men and women when it comes to sexual relations. For girls this cycle is very emotional. Hormones like adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine  and oxytocin are all involved. Also, when it comes to intimacy boys usually use sexuality as a way to the feel secure or safe. For girls it is the exact opposite. We need to feel safe and secure and then that leads to sexuality. I just know that when it comes time it is very important to communicate and know the physiology and psychology that comes with sexual relations. 

There are so many things that you don’t think about when you are going to get married. Even things as simple as where your medicine will go, in the bathroom or the kitchen? In class there were some questions that we answered about when we get married. These questions are very legit and things that you should think about but they never really came to my mind as important. I think that even the little things are good to talk about when you are getting married. Marriage consists of a lot of adjustments. Also, this week I learned the difference between dating, courtships, engagement, and marriage. Dating is when you go out with lots of people seeing what qualities and attributes you like until you find someone where they have them all. This leads into courtship where you exclusively date. This is where you prepare to want to marry them. Courtship is a trial to see if you are a good fit together. Next if you decided leads to engagement. Engagement is serious and taking your relationship so far to know this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Lastly, marriage. Committed for the rest of your life. J Something to realize with these stages is the fact that you should not slide but take steps. You can’t just slowly go from dating to courting, or courting to engaged. These things are definitely different and take a step to get to. One thing I would like to touch on is marital satisfaction. The most common years for divorce are between years 2-5. I hope that families can prevail through this time and be happy. By our choices we can change the statistics and keep going strong.