JTBlog

This week we discussed a little bit of everything leading up to marriage. There was a model we used throughout this week and the last. Imagine 4 stairs, at the top is dating, the next is courtship, then engagement, and finally marriage. The main focus these past few days was the last two steps of the model. There are a lot of things we can do to help prepare ourselves for marriage! Some of these preparations should be taking place before we are engaged in the courtship stage. Something that I believe was really important was the connection and merging of the husband and wife. We discussed different things that come along with each step. Some of the things that I had written down under the engagement step were, planning the wedding, learning to plan, founding a family, and preparing to make and keep covenants. I want to talk a little bit about what I meant by the merging of the husband and wife. The way it was depicted was that there were two families, two sets of parents, one set o

This week we discussed many things about dating in today's day and age. We looked at and compared some of the dating norms from today with some of the dating norms from back when our teacher was dating. We also examined some different concepts and teachings from the book "How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk."  It was interesting to see how much things have changed with technology and our culture. Today the word dating has had its definition changed. More often than not people think that dating not only means going out on dates with someone, but it can also mean that you are exclusively seeing this person. I was speaking with one of my classmates and she was pointing out that kids dating today is even looked down upon by other kids. If one girl is going on dates with many different guys she can be shunned or disliked by other girls for doing what everyone one should. Everyone should be comfortable with going on dates, but we have this idea that once we start going

This week's discussions and topics really intrigued me. We spoke a lot about differences in gender and the qualities that come with those differences. We also discussed and took a look at the statistics and some situations that homosexuals have been through. Something we spoke about were the roles of parents in a family. mothers are more aligned with what is going on with all of the children around them, not only their own but the kids at school as well. They are able to determine how the things that happen at school affect their relationships at home and with others. Father's on the other hand are not as good at focusing on everything that is going on, but it allows them to put much more effort and focus on the task at hand a little better. They are able to switch modes in some cases. For example a father at work will be able to focus on being who he needs to be at work and then can switch the way he is with his family at home. Not to say that this is always the case, but

     This week we discussed some interesting topics. The topics we studied showed a lot of the difficulties and different circumstances that many families around us experience. We were examining differences in low, and high social economic standing (SES) families. Along with that we looked at the effects that either a low or high SES situation had on the family. We watched a couple of documentaries on different peoples family situations. These videos can be an eye opener for some people, for me the follow up video was what caught my attention.      In the videos it follows Tammy and her family. They are on the low spectrum of the SES scale so it shows where they live and what kind of a job Tammy has. Tammy is a single mother of 2 boys, the oldest's name is Matt. The interviewer in the video focuses on Matt for a while because he acts like he is above everyone else in his family. He said he wouldn't want to have his friends go to his house because it would give him a bad image

     "Family structure" was a word that was never used in my home, and I am fairly positive that it wasn't one that many others have heard used in their own homes. However I know for a fact that many of the principles and key points that make up a family structure have been discussed daily throughout many homes.      Throughout this past week we learned about the many different family systems, subsystems, roles, rules, and structures that we may find in today's society. We studied Salvador Minuchin's theory on the family structure along with these other principles. There were also different scenarios we played out looking at how the behavior and relationship of the parents can affect a child's reaction to certain situations. I really enjoyed applying these principles in my own life and searching for ways I can use this knowledge to help my own family situation.       I noticed that no matter what it may have been, all of these things seem to connect. A sto