Individuality

I know that this blog is an epic fail this semester-sorry. But, on a brighter side, I remembered this week. (point for me)

Last week we we focused on parental roles and the importance of both the father and the mother in the home. It allowed me to reflect a little more about how I want my future family to be. How I can prepare now to make sure that I have the family that I want. How I can take what my parents did and make it my own.

I want to be able to raise my kids better than my parents raised me. One of the things that I want to focus on is to treat each child as an individual and get to know their temperament. While I know my parents did a good job on that, I feel that it is something that I can improve on.

I have come to recognize the importance of making your children feel important and loved. Everyone is loved differently, and over time it changes. We need to be able to recognize our children's differences and cater to them. I'm not saying that we need to spoil our children rotten-but we need to understand that each think and feel and learn and understand differently.

We all hate being treated like everyone else, so why should we put our children through it? Nothing could be worse than teaching a child something, and knowing that they don't learn in the way you're teaching. For example: I learn by doing something-I can't just be told, I have to try it myself. Work things out-watch someone-then do it myself. My sister can just hear instructions and do something. She is precise and mimics the instructions to the T. (And that is just one example)

But enough of my ranting-I need to focus on more topics to write about.  Till then...

hope

There is nothing better than having hope.

Hope in the future.

Hope for yourself.

Hope for the world.

Hope for family.

Hope for values and morals.

How in the world can we continue to become better people and citizens if we don't have hope for something? We are not able to hope for something better, we will not have progression-without progression we have no purpose.

We exist to progress.

Tradition

Tradition.
Patterns.
Habits.
Characteristics.
Family.

All of these words became something new to me as we were discussing our own families and how we are able to understand them better. One of the ways was through genograms-it is pretty much just an intense family tree showing relationships and the patterns that we create over time.

Something that I've come to realize with my own family is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ inhibits bad traditions from forming, and they start new ones that allow the individuals to grow. Having the teachings of the Doctrines of Jesus Christ truly allow us to become like Him. It will stop harmful habits from polluting generations. A genogram can help identify these traditions that happen over time and can help us either encourage the growth and development, or actually stop something that is harmful. As we learned in class, when we study our family, it becomes a powerful tool for us to start the shaping of our posterity.

Why do we do the things we do?

So I forgot to actually post this last week-haha sorry guys!

A common phrase in my household was "why do you do the things you do, when you know the things you know?"

Recently in class we were discussing this concept in adjunction with some of society's biggest trends. Some of the topics included: Cohabitation, premarital sex, fatherless families, divorce, the age of marriage, etc. After pondering about a few of these topics further, I've come to realize that despite religion or moral values, our own personal experiences are a primary factor in our thinking.

Through the example of my own family and others around me I have been influenced in different ways that have shaped my opinions. I know that a father is essential in a family, but divorce can also be the best thing for a family in different situations. I know that cohabitation does not lead to marriage, but is the start of a downward spiral and a fatherless child.

I am coming to understand that our experiences combined with moral and religious values determine who we are and because of this, we act upon our understanding on life, and do what we know is to be right and true. We learn absolute truths through religion and also how to obtain eternal happiness. and from our families, schooling, and everyday experiences we learn the rest. So we need to do our best to learn the best and be our best so that we can raise the best family we can. Funny to think that our life's preparation goes into our family. hm :)

The Learning Model

The Learning Model can be applied to not only school, but family activities. Something that my husband's (David) family LOVES to do is scuba dive. Upon getting married, I was able to get certified and go on my first dives with David and his family. What a party it was to not only get certified, but also be taught by David and his family about the ins and outs of scuba diving. We were able to go to Bali and  experience so many different things including seeing different types of tropical fish, a ship wreck, and coral fans. The learning model allows us to prepare ourselves (getting certified), teach one another (family teaching family) and then ponder and prove what we've experienced (analyze the dive and prepare for the next one). The following photos were taken by my father-in-law while we were diving. 

David and I on the wreck dive

A sea urchin/starfish thing 

Little clown fish in sea anemones 

An eel from a night dive

I call this a marshmallow starfish :)