Mariah's Blog

Taking this class has taught me so much about the family life. My all time favorite item that we talked about that if your parents growing up weren't the best at parenting together meaning working as a team or just not the best in general then you can change that for your future children. I know that for me I want to change some parenting techniques that my parents did while I was growing up. My parents had 2 different techniques on parenting and only one of them actually worked and the other one just made me fear that parent. The technique that worked for me is the disappointed technique. I will change it a little bit so my children don't feel too bad when they get into trouble. I also really enjoyed learning about the genogram of a family. Like I said in my genogram blog my dad took on a role as father with his siblings and he still has that job today. It's been 22 years since my grandfather passed away and my dad still is taking care of his mother and his sisters. Wh...

All of us have grown up in different ways. Some may have grown up with both parents in the home or even only one parent in the home. Maybe even both parents, but one parent is always out of the house and they only see each other on the weekends. That one would be the hardest for me only seeing one of my parents on the weekend and the other one every single day. I'm going to tell you a little about how I was raised in my home with both my parents. As I've said in may of my other blog posts my dad is a stay at home dad. Growing up my parents had different techniques of talking to the child when they were upset. In class we talked about how parents should punish their child. How children who are talked to calmly rather then being yelled at can be more effective.  Let me tell you that I was yelled at also talked to very calmly and I'd like to say that the calmly talking hit me harder then the yelling, but they both got to me. When I got yelled at it made me fear that parent...

I personally know many families that didn't grow up with a father. Either it was due to a divorce between the parents, the father never knew the child existed or the father just left and never came back. I know that in my father played a huge roll in my family and life growing up. I have an aunt who got a divorce from her husband and she got custody of her two children. The kids were always at my house for summer and everyday after school until my aunt was off work. I don't know for sure, but I think having my dad staying home as a stay at home dad helped one of my cousins (who grew up with no dad) see how he is supposed to act. My dad has taught him many things to fixing his car which my cousin does by himself now! My dad was my cousins roll model of the male figure. In my life though my dad taught me many things too. He didn't teach me how to fix a car even though it would've been fun. Instead my dad taught me the true meaning of a father figure. He taught me how ...

There are 5 steps in order to get the right message through to another person. Have you ever sent someone an email or  text message and the other person gets upset because they think you are upset with them, but you aren't and they just read the text wrong? I know that has to happen in a relationship more times then expected. An example that I'm going to go off of this for the steps is...  "Hey, babe just wanted to let you know that I'm not going to be coming home tonight right after work. Tonight my coworkers and I are going out for dinner. I figure it will be fine with you since you went out last night with your coworkers." The 1st step is the disarming technique. Rather than putting up a guard to defend yourself you need to drop that guard and take in all the information that is truth. In our example the truth in is that the other person had gone out the night before with their coworkers so they should be fine that they go out this night. I know a lot of gi...

Have you ever had a crises in your family? If you can't think about a crises right now let me tell you what it means to have a crises. A crises normally involves more than one person in the family. I know that when I was having this lesson in class I couldn't think about a crises that I've had in my family, but now that I've had more time to think about it I have thought about a time I had a crises in my family. I've had a lot of crises happen in my life, but I will only tell you about two of them. The first one I'll talk about is when my aunt was getting a divorce from her abusive husband. They had adopted two daughters in 2012 (I believe). My grandparents went to visit my aunt, uncle and kids in Arizona when they lived there. While they were there my aunt had realized that her husband was abusive and she needed to get her and the kids out. My family in Washington was hearing all about what was happening in Arizona and all we could do was send love to my aunt...

This week I learned a lot of interesting things that I never would've thought about. This might be a touchy subject for some people, but I know that this is also a good subject for people to know. Not a lot of people know about fidelity and I'm here to tell you about it. My teacher told a story about two different couples who used to go running together every morning. Let's call them couple NN and MM. One day the wife of couple N wasn't able to run because she had hurt something and the husband of couple M had responsibilities to take care of. Eventually it was only the husband of N and the wife of M running in the morning. The husband of N started to get excited to go running because he wanted to tell wife M about what happened the day before rather then telling his own wife. He realized what he was doing was bad and he wanted to change. Husband N ended up stop running all together because he thought he was being a bad person to his wife. Advice when it comes to fi...

I would like you to think about how old you were when you started to think about your wedding day. Many girls about age 12 is when they start to dream about their wedding day, but what's wrong with that is that the marriage continues after the wedding day. The wedding day is just ONE day and marriage is for eternity. Did you know that a typical wedding costs about $27,000 - $38,000? That's a bunch of money that you could be using for something else like your honeymoon, your future children or just to have fun and buy random items you don't need, but want. Save more money on the wedding and spend it on other important things. I know many people in my family that have saved money on their weddings and it was still a very special day. One of the weddings I went to was in the backyard of my grandparents house! All the bride and groom needed to pay for was the chairs that were rented and the arc with flowers on it. The arc you think would've been real expensive, but it r...

Have you ever wondered what happened to the dating scene in this generation? I know that my mother has and asks me about it. All I can really tell her is that a date is now just hanging out with a person getting to know them. I know that sounds like a date, but it really isn't because there are three requirements that need to happen in order for it to be date. One requirement that needs to happen is the date needs to be planned out. Your date isn't supposed to pick you up and then ask you what you want to do. They need to have that planned out before they even pick you up. If your date is planned out it's just like the role that the father plays according to The Proclamation to the Family of presiding. Those of you that don't understand the meaning of preside it is "being in the position of authority in a meeting or other gathering." (Google.com) That being said then the person in charge of the date (male or female) that person is in charge of what is goi...

We all grow up believing that everyone in the family has a certain role, but what happens when that role in your family is different than the role in a different family? That has happened in my family actually and I've had people think it wasn't normal, but to me it was normal. In many families the father is the provider for the family and the mother is the care taker of the children. In my family that isn't the case. My parents switched roles when I was about a year old because my father hurt himself at work and wasn't able to work anymore. My mother went to work to provide for the family and my father stayed home and took care of us kids. Many families the kids are closer to the mother because she stays home with the kids during the day while the father is providing for the family at work. The kids just have more of a relationship with the mother then with the father. That wasn't the case for me, I was closer to my father only because he was always home when I...

Have you ever been judged by people around you by the things that you wear, dress or the things you own? I have in my life. I've had friends while here at college ask if my family is rich. The reason they ask is because my parents pay my tuition for school and also some of the things that I own. I just tell them that my parents work really hard and when they found out they were starting a family they set money to the side for each of us kids every year. People don't understand that not everyone is rich or has money even though they look and act like they do have money. I've known many people in my life that dress and act professionally, but actually are in the low middle class. People around them would guess that they were in the upper middle class or the low upper class. I watched a video that shared a story about a lady named Tammy and how she lived. She was in the lowest class (poor) and her oldest son wasn't loving that class. He was always trying the dress diff...

This week the topic made me think a lot about my family at home. A genogram is just like a family tree, but instead it shows the relationships in the family as well. I made a genogram of my family and I'll tell you a little about what I learned. Let me tell you about my dads side of the family. My dads father passed away in the Fall of 1996. It was a death that everyone was dreading, but knew would be for the best. My dad took on the role of the father in his family, even though he had a family of his own at home. When my oldest brother turned 16 he took on the role of a father because at that time my dad was a stay at home dad due to him getting injured at work and not being allowed to go back. My dad was still our dad, but he would be off taking care of his side of the family or he would be down due to his injury. When I turned 16 as well I took on a small role of mother of the family. My mom would leave me a list of things I had to do for that day.  I would do the grocery shop...

In the 2nd week of Family Relations class we talked about the different positions on family. I learned that the average marriage age for LDS people is 24,26, but if they aren't LDS it's 28,30. These numbers really surprised me because I'm a LDS person and I have seen many friends or family around me getting married before the average marriage age both for the world and LDS. Even family and friends that aren't members are getting married before the average age. Another one that really surprised me was that Co-habitation is going up while the marriage is going down. I know many people who are co-habituating as well. Some of them are engaged and others are just living together. Majority of them have kids with each other which isn't always the best because if they decide they don't want to be together anymore than the kids will be have to be living every other week or weekend with the other parent if they get joint custody. Which isn't the best on the kids beca...