Shake 'n' Bake

Mixing a family can be really difficult. There are so many diversities coming from each individual involved. One or both parents have been in a failed relationship and one or both have one or more children. Each have had disappointments in their lives and all come in with certain expectations.
With all the pressures and differences that come into the already fragile situation, there are 3 suggestions to help the transition go smoother.
1. It Takes 2 Years for Normalcy
       This gives you an approximate end goal. Because of all the changes, it will take 2 years for everyone to
       feel comfortable with the new expectations
2. The Bio Parent Needs to Discipline
       It's very important that the biological parent of the child is the one to lay down the law. They have an
       established relationship with the child. The child knows the parent loves them, but if the step parent tries
       to discipline the child, they feel it's out of dislike or spite of the child
3. The Step Parent Needs to be Supportive of the Child
       There needs to be a relationship with the step parent and child before there can be discipline. Acting like
       an Aunt or Uncle is the best way to establish a relationship. The step parent needs to support the bio
       parent's decisions but also needs to show the child that they care about them.
Remembering these 3 things can help prevent fights and trials that a blended family face. It won't always be easy and there will still be struggles along the way, but they can be overcome with time and patience.

Hardest Thing

Parenting is one of the hardest jobs anyone will have. At the beginning you do all the work in the relationship, then as they get older, they fight with you about everything. You rarely if ever get a thank you and have absolutely zero pay. In fact, you pay thousands of dollars to have these little rascals in your home.
So why do people have children? Because it really is the most rewarding thing some of us can do in this life. It is an innate characteristic for most of us to want families. That's part of the Lord's plan for us. Within the family, we become more and more like God himself. Through our spouses we learn all the traits we need to be gods and goddess.
Parenting gives us the chance to understand and feel what Heavenly Father does. We have created life, and raise our children. We watch them grow to be like us (or in our case pray they'll be better than us). These experiences are what make it all worth it. The first time you hear your child say mama or dada. Or when they thank you for doing something for them. Or when they turn to you in their later years and tell you that you are their hero. I'm not sure there's anything more powerful and meaningful.
Although it's not easy. Letting your children govern themselves within boundaries as they get older helps them to do those things that will bring you those sweet moments. We just have to remember to be active parents; not doormats or dictators. Blessings will come, always they will come.

Women Empowered

 "Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels." --The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

                The special abilities of a mother and her role in a family is ordained of God. There's a saying in my family, "If mama ain't happy, nobody happy." And it's true. The parents are the glue that hold the family, and dare I say she plays a large role of that.

                The world has made the life of working outside the home (for both men and women) enticing and exciting. That if you aren't out in the world you are isolated and holding yourself back. But truth be told, women who decide to stay at home with children are no less likely to be in touch with the world around them. In fact, some are more involved than those in the work force.

                The article we read this week, gave a few ideas of how women can keep up with the world. Listening to educational radio and television, joining book clubs, etc. Does anyone have any other ideas how moms can help participate in the community without feeling the need to leave home and children?

What Does That Mean?

                When relationships struggle, people always tell you that you "just need to communicate more". But what does that really mean? It's actually a fairly broad topic.

                Those who tend to give the "more communication" advice tend to mean that you need to talk more often to each other. According to the dictionary, one definition of communication is "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior." But I would like to take it even further than that. I would like to add meaningful information should be passed between you. One can exchange all the information about WWII or what's going on in Wall Street and it will make little difference to the strength of your relationship.

                I appreciate the dictionary for stating that communication doesn't just happen through verbal cues, but there are many things we say by the tone we use, the way we position our bodies, or even the way our eyes look. This is where meaningful communication sprouts. We can say "That's great" and have it mean several different things. It can be enthusiastic, sarcastic, monotone (as a mere response), or hesitant. All have incredibly diverse connotations.

                Now it's not always easy to have that evocative communication with one another. But some helpful knowledge  I was given this week is how the Prophet and the general authorities counsel with each other.

                                1. Tell Them How Much You Love and Appreciate Them and All They Do

                                2. Pray

                                3. Discuss to CONSENSUS What the Lord's Will Is

                                4. Pray

                                5. Enjoy Treats Together

                When you have this sort of pattern, you tend to open up more to those you are engaging with.  You feel more comfortable and valued. This is the Lord's way of meaningful and effective communication. 

Danger Opportunity

              Challenges are something that all of us face; none of us get out of this life without experiencing a great deal of them. The real test is how we perceive and handle them. In the Mandarin  language, their symbol of crisis is "danger opportunity". Some see change as a danger to their way of life while others notice an opportunity to improve their situation.

                I was talking to a friend not too long ago about struggles. Life is like a heartbeat, without those challenges (ups and downs) we flat line. We need these alterations to help us become what the Lord intended us to be. This isn't something new. Lehi was telling his son Jacob that there MUST be opposition in all things. If we don't have resistance, we flat line, we remain in the state we are at. We are damned to not progress.

                Sometimes it's hard to see the good when there appears to be so much bad. But when we try to look for anything beneficial, we gain so much. The Lord loves us and wants us to be happy, "men are that they might have joy". Heavenly Father knows how to make us happy better than we do. We have to keep that in mind in the sight of trial. All things are possible with the Lord. Face the crisis with the sight of opportunity and you will never regret it.

Kids 2 Adults

                In America, it is nearly impossible to live here and not be exposed to some kind of sexual content.  We are constantly bombarded by sex on television, music, posters, magazines, and even friends. It has created one of the worst confusions that our generation has ever seen.

                Because of all these messages about sex everywhere, many young people (children and teens) don't understand the true meaning of what sex is and why it exists. As far as I can tell, the young have always wanted to grow up faster. They want to be like their role models, be independent, and able to have more freedoms. Sex is considered a "mature" action. Since kids want to grow up so quickly, they feel that if they have sex, they have reached "adulthood" and that independence that they crave.

                Like mentioned earlier, sex is so readily available that children can learn about it before they can understand it. Many people complain about how we have so many teenagers being sexually active and try to counteract it by giving them all this information on how to do it properly so as to have less damaging effects (pregnancies, STDs, etc). But the heart of the problem is elsewhere.

                There is a lack of understanding of relationships. If we cannot help them comprehend what  proper relationships with others are, we will never make a dent on the issue. These young people don't know what it means to have a true, mature, successful relationship. So once we can help them realize what relationships are for, what it really means to love someone, etc; only then can we help them become that true "mature" and independent person they long to be.

Mehrigge is what bwings us togefah today

Someone once told me that the happiest state of being is when someone is happily married, next happily single, then unhappily single and finally unhappily married. There are huge social and even personal pressure to find a significant other; a person that will understand and love us. But it's a big risk putting ourselves out there. If we succeed, we can have the most joy in this life, but if failed, we can get in a horrible state of misery. How do we avoid this risk? The thing is, we can't avoid it, we were never meant to. 2 Nephi 2 discusses how there must be Oposition on all things. If we didn't have this conflict, we would never learn and grow and our agency would be limited. Now this is not to say that we will all fail just so we can learn. There are definitely ways that we can help our marriages to succeed. Here's a few tips: 1. Start it Right. Make sure to have a proper meaningful proposal. Make clear family boundaries between the families that you are becoming one of your own. 2. Being Involved. When it comes to the wedding, picking the house, when expecting each child, etc. Stay connected in the big and little thing (talking about your day). We'll leave it with those things for now. For those of you who have personal or side line insight on what has best helped or destroyed a marriage, please sure with the rest of us. There's no reason to keep such valuable information to ourselves.

Your Love Story

Every classic fairy tale has a magical love story where the beautiful maiden meets her prince charming momentarily before they are taken from each other. It's love at first sight and prince charming must then save his princess. And once they have both fought valiantly, they ride off into the sunset and "live happily ever after."

Although these tales teach us priceless lessons and values to apply to our lives, the real way that romance works isn't one of them. We all ask ourselves, "How do you know when you're in love?" If you are basing your findings on Cinderella or Snow White, I'm afraid you are going to find it nearly, if not wholly, impossible to find Mr. Right.

What is love? How do we know when we love someone. My greatest findings this week were those differing definitions given by the Greeks. Our book gave us 4 different types of love; Agape, Storge, Eros, and Philia.

Agape is the love that we have for all mankind, whether they like them or not. Storge is that love that a parent has for their child, the kind where we love the person no matter what they are like. Eros is the kind in those classic fairy tales, the attraction between 2 people. And finally we have Philia that is shared between 2 friends.

If we combine these 4 different definitions of love, we can find our prince or princess. It's not all about "love" at first sight. True love comes in many different forms and grows stronger in each area over time. That is where we get our hard worked for, but incredibly worth it "happily ever after".

Same Doesn't Add to Equal

This week we talked about gender (the differences and similarities). We watched a video about how we are trying to make men and women equal. When the film was originally made, fighting for equallity didn't exactly mean equal. Women were fighting for the right to pretty much be better than the men (they could do all that women can do and also the men). This of course aggravated the men because it attempted to take them out of the equation.

The movie showed that they lowered the standards for women in fields like the armed force and firefighting. Some of the women who wanted to go into these fields couldn't lift the equipment. They couldn't cut a log in half. To me, lowering the eligibility for women is horrible. That's like asking for a doctor who barely passed their medical exams verses the doctor who worked hard and got straight A's.

Don't get me wrong, if the woman can reach the terms the men are required to reach, I'd say all the more power to them. But I don't want the value of my life or that of my friends and family lowered for these so called "equal rights".

Someone told me the argument that in The Family: A Proclamation to the World, it made it easier to avoid anything that didn't fit in our "job" description as male and female. That it was a way out so men didn't have to nurture the children, or women didn't have to provide or preside. In this document, it states that men and women are to have equal part in this. So what do we mean by equal?

I believe equal and same aren't identical as we tend to think. We need to think of all of the differences we have as men and women and enhance them. Use them to build the world into a unique and wonderful place, the way the Lord intended it.

The American Dream

                I was very impressed with some of the findings in the studies this week. The most intriguing study to me was the Hispanic immigrants that come to America. These people don't come here to find riches, get more materials, or even to get away from oppression found in Mexico. Most of the families in the study came so that their children could be ahead of the curve, they would be bicultural.

                But from what I understood from this qualitative study,  what some of the parents were hoping for was actually the opposite. Many of the children reported feeling lonelier, more out of place, and missing their homes in Mexico. Also, the family suffered greatly in regaining equilibrium in their roles.

                These parents wish the very best for their families. They want their families to be happier and closer. Instead, the family dynamics become skewed. The parents executive roles diminish, the children that acclimate fastest to the culture move up to part of the parental partnership.

                I wondered if they realize the trauma that is placed on the family after this event. If so, why do they continue to do it if it creates the opposite effect of their goal? If they don't know, is there a way we could get the word out to prepare them for the transitions?

Family Rules... or is it Roles?

We were talking about how each family has its own rules. Siblings that grow up in the same home tend to have a lot of the same ways of doing things. Take for instance in my home, we were to be very careful who we brought home and when. We were to give our mom at least a few hours heads up before bringing them over. And we were to bring suitable people home. I recall a few times my sisters bringing home some young men that my father was not particularly fond of. My dad would make them very aware that their presents wasn't welcome, all without saying a word... or pulling out a shot gun.

            But the thing is, these aren't just rules in the home. Each person in the family plays a very important role in keeping balance in the family. That's one of the reasons it's so hard to lose a member. My dad in this scenario played the protective father. What would happen if he failed to play his part? What would be different? How would that effect the other players?

            Every family member keeps equilibrium by playing their roles within the family set rules. Where do you feel you stand in your family? What is your role? What happens when you change your role in the family?

Define Marriage

As stated in class, in debate, whoever establishes the definition of a word can usually control the argument. Today, we have a strong debate on what is a family? What is marriage? Because everyone has different personalities and backgrounds, each person defines things differently. This is one of the reasons we have a dictionary. We need to be able to communicate effectively and if we cannot agree, we cannot converse.

I was reading an article about same sex marriage. The author stated that people believe the main reason for marriage is to procreate. He then argued that if this is the reason we don't allow homosexuals to be married, then neither should those who simply can't have children be wed. The author continues to say that marriage is about love and that homosexuals love just as well as heterosexuals. This is true, but marriage is neither singly about procreation or love. Although these are some reasons to marry, marriage has so many dynamics to support its existence.

So I want thoughts from others, why do we marry? Why does it still exist? What benefits do we get from such an institution?