Once

This week, we discussed and read about divorce and remarriage. I have always thought that divorce would be very difficult to handle, but I hadn't really considered how hard remarriage would be. We talked about blending families and how many things are involved when blending families. I think that in order to "successfully" blend families, everybody involved must desire for that family to stick together and everybody must constantly work together. We have seen and heard from sad experience that divorced and blended families usually struggle with knowing their boundaries and with their roles (and not only families that are divorced or blended, but even "normal" families struggle with this). That is why it is so important to understand family systems, and boundaries and roles within your family system.

Diez

Well, we talked about parenting this week and we had to watch these videos about being an active parent. I'm not going to lie...the videos were a bit cheesy, but they had a lot of really good, helpful information in them. Something from the video that I really liked and thought was important is active discipline. Sometimes I wonder how I will discipline my children. I don't like contention and so sometimes I worry how well I will be able to confront my children and discipline them. The video talked about how when you actively discipline your child, you should be firm and calm. Be firm in what you are saying (don't "give in" or "let your child break the tiles that you have set") and also say it in a calm way. As I thought about this, I feel more confident in my abilities to discipline (not that I hope that my children do bad things or break the rules so that I can discipline them, but I feel more confident that when the time comes, I will be prepared).

Nueve

This week in class we talked about how fathers impact family. In today's world, it seems like the role of "father" has almost disappeared. We are seeing more and more that fathers are not actually being fathers. As sad as it is, it is as thought fathers are non-existent or not important. We know that fathers are very important and having a father in the home is an indicator of success in the family. I really enjoyed reading about fathers this week because it helped me realize how great my dad is and it has truly inspired me and to be a good father and to stand up and be an example of what a father should be.