Have You Got Style?

     Parenting style, that is. Although it would be nice to have good style fashion wise as well. Hopefully I will have some someday!
      So, this week we discussed a specific parenting style. This style is called "Active Parenting" by Michael Popkin. This style discusses the fact that there are un-met needs behind child's misbehaviors. So the way to solve them is to address the unmet need, not necessarily the misbehavior. I'll give some examples...
     Say a child is constantly spending hours on the computer or in front of the TV when they are in the middle of final tests at school. You've tried everything to get them to work on homework. You've threatened with punishment, bribed, cajoled, pleaded, been angry... but nothing has had any effect. You don't know what to do with this kid. So lets define the behavior-- they are showing undue avoidance. They are avoiding stressful or difficult situations. And what is their unmet need that is driving this behavior? They need to have positive withdrawal. We all need to take breaks. We all need a moment to relax, breath for a moment, get our thoughts together. Especially during stressful times. But we need to have appropriate withdrawals. Instead of avoiding situations, we need to take a break and then get back to things. But this child doesn't know how to appropriately withdraw, so they just avoid. So what you need to teach this child is how to withdraw from a situation and come back, instead of just avoiding it.  You can do this by setting an example, by coming in and saying, what do you say we spend an hour working in the yard and then go grab a jamba juice for a break before we finish the yard? Teach proper withdrawal also by withdrawing appropriately yourself. If you spend hours in front of the computer when you are stressed, thats how your children will learn to handle it.
        Other examples would include children rebelling, or trying to control others. Their unmet need is to have power, power over themselves and over their environment. So you give them choices--choices that are age and situation appropriate so they can have some control over their lives. Children who are seeking undo attention-- like always throwing tantrums to get mom's attention or acting out in school to get parent's attention, or hanging all over a parent, never letting go, being loud and obnoxious, etc.-- these children need to have contact and feel like they belong. This includes physical contact. Parents and others should offer touch and contact freely. After a few weeks of excessive physical touch, the behavior should improve. Or so they said in class. :) You should also teach them to be a contributing part of any group they are in. They need to feel like they belong to whatever group they are in and that they are wanted. This is done by being a benefit to the group, not just trying to get something out of it.
      These are just some examples. I really appreciated this parenting style. When he presented it it seemed so logical. I mean, kids don't go around saying 'oh how can I bother mom today and be the most frustrating?' Kids don't know why they are acting out, they just are. They are just trying to get their needs met. Now I've never parented, but it does seem to make sense. The kids have needs that aren't being mets, so they act in a way that will fulfill those needs. I hope this can help me as I parent!

Just a Housewife?

            

                                                                THIS                      VS.                       THIS

    We talked this week about families where both parents work. Of course that led to a discussion of women in the work force... So thats what I wanted to talk about here.

          Obviously we know what the church teaches about women in the workforce. "The Family: A Proclamation to the World gives us guidance on the roles of women in today's world. President Benson said:

       "Since the beginning, a woman’s first and most important role has been ushering into mortality spirit sons and daughters of our Father in Heaven.Since the beginning, her role has been to teach her children eternal gospel principles. She is to provide for her children a haven of security and love—regardless of how modest her circumstances might be. In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow—not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother’s place is in the home! I recognize there are voices in our midst which would attempt to convince you that these truths are not applicable to our present-day conditions. If you listen and heed, you will be lured away from your principal obligations. Beguiling voices in the world cry out for “alternative life-styles” for women. They maintain that some women are better suited for careers than for marriage and motherhood."

      We believe, according to church doctrine, that a woman's call in life is to be a wife and mother. Her place is to be in the home, raising the children while the husband provides a living. But there are a lot of women today that are a part of the work force. And a lot of those women are LDS. Now, we know that there are a lot of life circumstances thrown at families that create a need for the wife to go to work. The prophets have spoken about that too. And there are probably lots of LDS women out there that stay in the work force after children are born because they just want to be. It doesn't really matter to us what their reasons are. But this issue will probably affect all of us at some point. So what does matter is what we think, what we decide and how we decide to do that. The decision for a wife and mother to work is completely between her, the Lord, and her husband (unless she's a single mom... and then the decision is usually made for her by life!). So the thing I wanted to point out is the importance and sacred nature of the calling of motherhood. No matter what choice you make at whatever time in your life that you are faced with this choice, your job as a wife and a mother should take precedence over any job or career you might have. 

       This has been an issue I've been looking at lately... I want to have my photography business. But I follow a lot of photographer blogs of women who are also mothers and they talk about how busy they are all the time and how they have to juggle that with having children and being a part of their lives. And that is so important to me as well. I've always wanted to be a stay at home mom. But when I got into photography, I was thinking, this will be really good for a stay at home mom to do. But this could so quickly become a career for me. I could easily get carried away and so busy that I would have weddings every weekend and shoots during the week and then add in editing and mailing and advertising and consulting and .... phew. I've just lost my 'stay at home mom' title. Even if my business is in my house, I wouldn't be 'at home'. I would simply be in the house. So its just been on my mind lately. This is a situation I'm going to have to be aware of and careful of if I'm going to be doing this business thing. So just something to think of.

     One more comment. In reading the chapter on this for class, there was one section that really bothered me. It was the end of the chapter and they had been discussing ways that women who work can kind of take care of themselves even if they have pressures of a job and home life. Here is a direct quote from the book:

     "It is interesting to note that self-care strategies include giving oneself permission to be less than perfect as a housekeeper, wife, and mother."

       Okay this is what really bothers me. Now, I'm not saying that we should be so hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up for not being perfect--no way! We should give ourselves some slack. But what bothers me is that these 'self-care strategies' were for working mothers. So what are the areas that they are supposed to give things up? The ones that are most sacred and that are their divine callings. So the self-care strategy that I think we need to use is to give ourselves permission to be less than perfect as an employee. How important is that job? Obviously you need to keep your job, but if you are giving some anywhere, it shouldn't be in the role that is most eternally important for you to fulfill.

     So remember the pictures at the beginning? How about neither on of those and we can do this instead?

                    

        Then we don't have to be crazy stuck in the kitchen wearing pearls and dresses (although wouldn't that be FUN? ...sorry, I love the 40's and 50's) with no rights and just smiling happy for our husbands constantly. And we don't have to be totally driven, focused career women who have no time for their families. We can be in the home like we should and make decisions outside of that with the Lord

Counsel

      So what we talked about last week can directly relate to this weeks discussion. This week in class we talked about communication within families and the problems and issues that arise because of communication. We also discussed that one good way of communicating is to hold a family council. We'll talk about counseling with our families and how that relates to crisis in just a minute, but I just wanted to touch on a few of the communication problems that we talked about. 

     First off, we have the challenge of nonverbal vs. verbal communication. Think about all the different ways you can say "I love you." You can say it tenderly or passionately as you would to a spouse, you can say it laughingly and happily, as you would to a good friend, you can say it sarcastically or as a question. There are tons of ways to say I love you and they all have a different meaning. But you are saying the same three words each time. So what makes the difference on the meaning? The WAY that you say it... your tone of voice, your facial expression, your body language. It has been estimated that 50-80% of what you're saying is nonverbal (NV). That means that only half or less than half of what you say are your words. When communicating with family members then, it is a challenge to always understand each other when their NV may not match their words. This can be a problem because sometimes you are just tired or upset about something else, so family members may read into your NV when really, you just want to sit down and put your feet up. A  daughter may think her dad really upset with her, when really, he thinks what she is doing is just fine, he just wants to sit down and relax after a long day at work. 

     This brings us to a second problem, which is that of interpreting what others say. We all do it. It's part of how we listen. If we didn't do it, we wouldn't be able to understand what people say. But it is also a problem with communication because we all interpret things differently based on our past experience. So I interpret things differently then even my sister who grew up in the same house as me, with the same parents and is also a girl. We are just different. 

      So there are just two of the issues of communication that we talked about. They are good things to be aware of I think, within a marriage relationship, as well as a family one. And even outside of family, we communicate with tons of people every day and our nonverbal and interpretation affect them too.

    Alright so family councils. We read a talk by Elder Ballard about counseling with our families and it was so good.  It was actually an interview, I guess, with him and his wife. They talked about how you can have a family council very easily. It doesn't always have to include all members of the family, formally sitting together around the table. Elder Ballard talked about how sometimes he would have a council with one of the children as he tucked them into bed and night and discussed their concerns about their lives. The Ballards said that any time two family members are talking together about any kind of problem, incident, issue, etc. (even something simple like keeping the toilet seat up or down), it is a family council. They discussed the benefits to having a council--they said it was very important to involve children in this council because it allows them to have experience in problem solving and helps them be more willing to follow through on the solutions to the problems. If a mother says 'our house is messy all the time and you are going to clean the bathroom and vacuum every week to help out, so hop to it.' That response is likely to be met with rebellion and frustration. But, if the family were to sit down and say, 'our house is often messy and we would like to keep it nice so that the Spirit can more easily dwell here. But mom is busy and doesn't have time to always be the one doing the housework. What do you think we can do to help her out and keep the house clean?' Then you can ask the children for suggestions, sincerely ask them, not just hope they end up at the same conclusion you did. Children can be wise too. So ask them what they think, come up with a plan together, and then they are more likely to be happy to go along with the plan, since they helped create it. (Obviously some children are too young to really be thinking up plans on their own, but it's still okay to include them in the council.) So councils can be very beneficial for a family. It makes the issues and problems that arise, the family's problems and issues. Not just the parents or not just the husband or not just the teenage son's problem. We are a family and we care about what everyone is doing, so we need to all be involved and help to solve the problems.

    One last note  on how this relates to last weeks post... last week I mentioned that we should develop a plan for how to handle crises in our family. Well, what better place to make a plan then in our family councils! It's perfect! (See it's all interconnected :)) So like our family pictured above, who is planning their fire escape route, use family councils to help find answers to problems. And even if it's just husband and wife in the family, councils can still help a lot. Thanks for listening folks!

(If you want to read Elder and Sister Ballard's interview, go here)

Crisis

      This week we discussed family crisis and how different crises affect different families, etc. Family crises come from sources called stressors. There can be many types of stressors and each stressor affects families differently. Some examples of these stressors would be internal (comes from within the family) vs. external (outside of the family), normative  (expected evens such as birth or marriage of children) vs. nonnormative (divorce, war), Volitional (family seeks them out, such as seeking a new job, a planned pregnancy) vs. Nonvolitional (not sought after such as being laid off).

        There are more categories that these events fall into, but these are just some of them. So lets get real about some stressors. What can they be? Well, they can really be anything. Unemployment, a wedding, starting kindergarten, not making the budget for the month, a death in the family, having to take the car in for repair, getting in a horrible accident.... and on and on. What defines it as a crisis is how the family handles the issue. For example, in class we discussed how families might handle unemployment in different ways. One family might say, 'well, we'll find another job soon and we'll all band together during this time. We'll tighten our budget and everyone will contribute what they can and we'll get through this.' They see the situation more as an opportunity to learn and grow together. Another family might say 'This is an absolute disaster. How will we live? How will we ever find something else?' This is the same situation, but it is affecting these two families differently. Why? Well, of course theres the fact that one family might be generally of a more positive attitude than the other. Or maybe they have fewer kids or had more money saved. There are a lot of reasons that they could be affected differently. But one big reason we considered in class is how many stressors these families are experiencing at one time. Perhaps the first family, the one with a positive outlook is only facing the stressor of  unemployment. But maybe the second family just recently lost a child and is facing unemployment. And they are going to care for their grandmother and have another dependent in the home. This family is facing so many stressors that the unemployment is viewed as a crisis in this situation, where if they were under less stress, it wouldn't be viewed as a crisis. So just some interesting thoughts. For me I think it applied in helping me keep an open mind when looking at others. As my mother always always taught me, you never know what they are going through. You can't know. So be understanding. And I think this can definitely apply here. Not that we really judge those who have just lost a loved one. But maybe we see a family that appears to be breaking down over something that we just don't see to be that big of a deal. But we have no idea how many stressors that family is facing all at the same time. So we should reach out and be loving and accepting and helpful. I guess I shouldn't say 'we' I should say 'I'. Cause I know its me with this problem! And I shouldn't be assigning my issues to all of you :)

     One final point.... from all of this learning we decided in class that it is important to have a plan for how to deal with crises in your family. Because they will come. Even if you try to have a positive outlook. I once had a professor who gave me a questionnaire of questions that she felt should be asked before you married someone. They were questions like 'are you a 100% Visiting or Home Teacher' 'do you struggle with an addiction to pornography or anything else' 'do you hold a current temple recommend' and etc. These are obviously quite personal questions that you wouldn't just ask on the first date. But they would be good to know before marriage! So one of the questions was 'what do you want the other to do when you are scared? Do you want to be held, be left alone, etc.?' I think this is such a good question for this post. You will have family crises, so how will you handle them? Will you hold family councils about it or hide it from your spouse or children? Will you dedicate yourself more fully to the Lord or pull away from the church? Will you have the wife work outside the home if it becomes necessary? Is that an option for you and if it is, is it first choice or last resort? Will you lean on food storage? Will you ask others for help in paying medical bills? Who would you have raise your children if you died? What if you died at a young age, would you have your spouse remarry or ask them not to?  These may be really morbid questions, but I think it's better to have a plan for something, instead of just being hit suddenly by life circumstances.