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.