Divorce is something that a lot of people have the wrong information on. For one a lot of people have heard that one half of all marriages end in divorce. This was a predictor that was made in the 70’s. The predictor was pointing out that if the trends continued then divorce would happen in half of the marriages. The fact is that around 72% of people who are married die married to that person showing us that marriages are better off then what everyone puts them out to be.

            However not all the news on this subject is good. Sadly studies have found that the average father lives 400 miles from their 12 year old child. This is because of many factors that the mom could be running away from him, or running to her support group which is further away, and the father finds a better job far away from where the mom is living. This is really sad because of how important it is to have a father figure in the family like I have talked about before. This also becomes particularly hard because of the fact that age 12 the child starts to participate in out side of school activities. With this going on it becomes harder for the child to bounce from house to house because then they miss things that they are signed up for.

            A common trend into day that I have talked about with others around me and with my wife is that we tend to fall into this pattern of if something is hard we give up on it. Especially when it comes to marriage. With the ability to become separated or divorced from a spouse readably available for people they tend to give up and not try other options. This leads to what studies have found that 70% of people wish they had tried other options then just giving up and getting a divorce. This has no longer become our last ditch effort but now is plan A and thinking there was no other way. When there are a lot of other options that could have a couple stay together this will help children growing up in this new generation believe in marriage and want to trust and care for others. The truth is that people who get married and already have kids have a high chance of getting divorce and putting themselves in a hard spot once again and their kids in an even harder situation. The truth is people need to try more and give things more thought. What I have learned over the past three months is that we do not try as hard as we use to. We like to take the easy way out but marriage is not easy or does it come naturally. It is the greatest thing to be married and have kids but to make it work right it takes heart and love and understanding to make it though. There are a lot of predictors that we talked about in class on if a couple will get a divorce and there are a lot of reasons to get a divorce as well. However the best reason to stay and fight is because the greatest joy that we can get in this life is the joy that comes from having a family and changing to help those that we love and care for.

            Family is something we in the world take for advantage today. We are wrong for doing that we need to love and care for it so much more then we are right now. This is something worth fighting for.

            Having kids is one of the hardest tasks that a couple can take and some how it is also the most rewarding task that the couple can do together. Children shape us and build us into adults just as much as we shape and build them into children, and young adults. The simplest way to put parenting is to say that parenting is the process of providing, protecting and building our kids in a way that they will thrive in society that they live in. Now there are a lot of ways that children are raised these days. Some are raised in military school while others just simple do day care. There are a lot of ways that parent’s raise their kids but the best way is between a mother and father as a family.

            One of the best studies that I have looked into is one that simply states that we need to raise our kids with courage, self-esteem, responsibility, cooperation, and respect. To explain further in what I mean for each of these, because each of these words can be taken differently. Courage meaning to have the confidence to take a known risk for unknown purpose. A child needs to build up their self-esteem so that when things get hard they know their option of them self and have the confidence in their ability to succeed. Cooperation in having the ability to work with others towards a common goal that they set up. Finally respect to treat others as valuable human beings rather then objects that they have to work with.

            Another study that I like points out things that all humans need and how we can teach our kids to have these in their lives. The first thing that is needed is contact and a sense of belonging. This is simply taught be touching and being involved in things. For me when this was pointed out to me it made total sense. My son has a hard time letting my wife sleep in peace during the day. This is because I am doing homework or watching videos and not touching and playing games with him. To get the contact that he needs he then runs to my wife’s door and bangs on it. I now realize that all he wants is to be included in what I am doing and for me to play games with him. When a parent does not do this then the child latter on will act out in attention seeking manners like bothering people, acting out in public places and so forth. Kids also need to have a sense of power; if they never get this then they act out in rebellion against power figures. The best way to teach a child this principle is to have them contribute in planning and family manners so that they have a feeling that they have a little power in what is done. Something that I never really thought of was that we need to teach our kids to withdrawal. When this is really never taught in the home kids seem to be avoidance in a lot of situation and tasks through out their lives. The best way to teach this is to take breaks regularly. This can be done in chores and homework. When homework is done for 45 minutes with a 15-minute breaks grades tend to get better. Some thing that I think kids are not being taught a lot of is challenge. Challenge needs to be taught to kids so that they try to learn and push themselves through life with out thinking they will get everything they will ever want. When this is not taught correctly kids will take overdue risks and give up easily. The best way to teach challenge is to try and teach kids different skills working up so that they see that struggles lead to achievements and all things that are hard can be done in time.

            How family life has changed in the past 20 years is amazing. Some of the things that happened in the past were that families lived in less space on average then they do now. Back in the day when my parents were young wiper snappers they lived in about 900 square feet for a family of six people. The other major things about the past is that they had one parent working and one staying at home with the kids and taking care of them. Then things changed over time parents started to both work to try and make more money with more people working the costs of keeping companies up were up so prices went up. This lead to become the norm all across the states even though it really was not that important for both to be working.

            This really leads me to the point that the way things were is really better then they are now in some areas. Now a day’s people have 2,300 square feet for 2.5 people in a home. This is sad because now we have more space but really no one for that space to be spent with. Families are smaller and with more space between everyone. This show how much we think we need but in reality how we really do not need as much as we think that we need.

            Now the other point that I really want to point out that I found out this week is that we really do not need to working parents to survive. This is something that my wife and I discovered as when we had a child. When we were first married both of us worked at the same time making more enough money for us to be able to have fun and save up for other things. Then we had our son and this made more things complicated. We sat down and did the math on if we were both to work at the same time how much a sitter or daycare would cost and if it was really worth it. We found out that really if we were to both be working at the same time with our son in day care that one of us would be just paying for daycare. So we found that we needed to put our work schedules on different times in order to make any money. This put a strain on our relationship because we really never got to see each other but we got enough money to make it through school and living on our own. This really showed us that after college that, really only one of us needs to work in order to make it because if we both worked we would be just paying for day care with the extra job. This is something that a lot of couples and families need to sit down and do the math to see if it is even worth trying to work at the same time. Now another sad part on my gender is that women tend to work at home 35% more then men even if they work the same amount of hours. Now this can lead to problems in the home and lead to unnecessary conflict in the couple. If more families worked towards having one person working and one staying at home this would really help families be more happy and healthy and show the world that love can keep going and that we families are important to society.

            This is really the best idea that families can have to help create a more functioning more involved family.

            Communication is the greatest tool that we have in relationships. It is also the tool that we abuse to destroy and make rock relationships. As we talk we need to know really what takes part in communication. Communication is created by three parts; words, tones, and non-verbal. The interesting part of these three parts how much is paid attention to by people. 14% is words, 35% is tone and 51% is non-verbal. This helps us understand really what we need to do in our conversations to help others better understand us. This is one of the biggest reasons on why exaggeration, and sarcasm are really poor ways to communicate. I want to talk today on good communication skills that are needed during arguments and disagreements that might get a bit too heated.

            Great communication during heated moments takes empathy, assertiveness, and respect. Empathy is probably the hardest one to master because it takes time to learn to step into others shoes and see their perspective on the situation. One of the best ways to start on learning empathy is using the disarming technique. This is a way to drop ones own defenses and help the other person drop their own defenses so there is no more attacking the other person. The disarming technique uses finding a kernel of truth in what the other person is saying and going off of that. This is hard because sometimes the truth is hard and hurts a lot. This happens all the time to me, my wife will wake up and see the house a mess and we get into a small fight. She tells me that I’m lazy and don’t help around the house and some other things. For me to find the kernel of truth I need to tell her that yeah sometimes or a lot of the time I do not help around the house. I don’t try to retort with facts or thoughts but own up to my own mistakes. After this I need to express empathy on her thoughts and emotions. This helps feelings be spread and helps both sides know more about the situation. The last part of the empathy part of this way of how to settle down fights is inquiry. Talk more on the topic so that there is more understanding and each person really knows every thing they can about the discussion.

            The next part that I need to tell you about is being assertive. This is being very clear and direct in what you say and how you say it. This is a four-step process to really be assertive. The first step is talking about when. This needs really direct like “Yesterday when you made fun of me in front of our friends”. This tells when and where really helping the other know what is going to be talked about. Then you say I felt statement. This is not going to be I felt like you didn’t like me. This is not a feeling. Instead say something like I felt betrayed and sad. This shows what the action did to the others feelings, then the third step is why. This is why the action hurt one’s feelings. This could be “this made me feel hurt and sad because you made me feel that you would do anything for a laugh” or “you made me feel sad because you seemed like you really only want me around to make fun of me”. The fourth step is setting up what you hope they would do in the future. This could be as simple as “in the future I would like you to find other material to make jokes”.

            The last part to helping the situation is my favorite respect. This is a single step that is super simple. Express gratitude and authentic appreciation. This is just showing that no matter what you love and care for the other. This could be as simple as “I really like that you show love for me by doing the dishes every night”.

            Finding the best way to have a happy healthy family is hard and does not come naturally. Family is work and takes time. The best way for a family to be together is by having a man and a women married and close together, this couple is to have set up clear boundaries between them and every one else. This includes their children, and on top of that clear set boundaries between the family and everyone else. This helps the family be together and the parents can build in love and care for one another. This then leads to the family to be health without many problems arriving.

            Many problems come about commonly when a family is not set in the example I talked about last time. One of the more common family trends that are problematic is when the women is close to one of her children more then her husband and the husband is close another one of the children. Many of times there is also in this mess one child left out and not close to any of the parents. Now there might be clear cut boundaries but this doesn’t help in the family because the mom and dad are not close to one another and the children are separated this can cause a lot of problems as one can imagine.

            That is why I need to restate the importance that a family in the right way is something that needs to be worked for and needs to be something that the parents need to constantly work at. The natural thing is to form better relationships with one of the children and then that leads to poor relationships with the parents and causes rifts in parenting skills. The best thing that one can do for their children is to show by example a healthily relationship of trust and love with ones spouse; this is best done by doing activities like going on dates or family activities.

            Something that a lot of people try to avoid in a relationship is pressure and stress. Couples find this to be a bad thing, however when really looking at what this can do for a couple it is quite good. I like to talk to my parents and grandparents about their lives when they first got married they always talk about how it was hard, but they always say that it was worth it and helped them grow. They do this with a smile on their face and true love between the two of them. Having these hard times in a families life is an amazing catalos to help the family grow together and to form stronger relationships.

            The best way to help form really strong relationships with a significant other is by following this formula. An actual event happens and the response is formed by certain traits such as recourses available, response, and cognitions which leads to x happenings. For example if the event of a car crash happens in my family the result of this action will be formed by. What recourses do I have to lean on now, this could be money public transportation, parents, and credit score to try and get a loan for a new car. The responses from the wife and from the husband will also affect the situation and how the couple reacts. If the wife or husband respond positively things will be good but if the response is given or received negatively then the problem will grow in size. The final factor that results in the final story of the situation is how the person receives or does not receives the information and how they process it can change how the situation goes.