Familial Notions by AR

 Hello and welcome All, This week's post may be the last for a while. I also may redefine this blog and continue it later, in another direction.  Parenting is difficult. That can be said about biological children but even more so about step children. "You're not my real mom!" it a phrase that was very often used among my friend group as a joke. Then I got an actual step mom and it wasn't a joke anymore. It was a daily thing that ran through my head. She wasn't my mom, so why was she going around telling me what to do and punishing me when I didn't do what she wanted. Who gave her power over me at the words "I do"? This was insanity. Well, there are some more effective ways to go about what she had to do and I am going to tell you about them and some other patterns that developed in my home over time as we all lived together and actually became a family.  The first thing I would say is that the heavy punishment should be carried out by the birth p...

 Hello,  Welcome to this week's blog! So great to have you with us today.  The title of this post is a little misleading. I am actually quite optimistic about parenting my future children. What I am pessimistic about is ever getting to the point of having children. I have had experiences which indicate to me that I will have children. I trust the experiences and the people who gave them to me and guided me through them. I just struggle to have the faith that I will ever get to that point, even though my courtship relationship is going extremely well.  Anyways, here are some plans of mine concerning my future parenting. I don't want to hit my kids. Not that I will never, but as absolutely as seldom as possible will I hit my kids, especially...no, just especially all the time. How do I teach them not to jut if I am regularly hitting them? The same goes for screen time as well as going outside to play. Children have a natural and innate tendency and need to do the thing...

 People, Peeps, Y'all,  Hey, It has been a whole week since I talked to you. I hope it was a good week for you. It has been considerably enjoyable for me. The highlight has been spending the weekend in Utah with my girlfriend and our families. We didn't make a special trip to meet family. She needed a ride down and we both have family in the same town so we are sharing meals with them all.  This trip goes along with things that I have been thinking about all week. I am staying at my father's house here in Utah while I am down South of my college town in Idaho. My father and I have a great relationship right now, and it wasn't always this way. I think I have shared in an earlier post about how my mother took my siblings and I away from our father in 2008. Divorce papers were served a year or so later. In that interaction of happenings, my mother decided that my father was no good and could not be trusted to raise us children. She decided she was going to be both the fath...

 Hello,     This week's post is about communication. I have been studying communication lately. I have some thoughts on what I have been learning. See below:     Christ is perfect, therefore he is the perfect communicator. What He says can be easily understood by those with soft hearts who are open to listening and trying to understand with a perfect understanding. What Christ says can be easily understood, but that doesn't mean it always is; more on that later. There are certain methods that make communication more effective and efficient. See below for a list of the ones that stood out to me the most.      The method of communication that was taught to me this week is the EAR method. E stands for Empathy. A stands for Assertiveness. R stands for respect. We can break those down even further. Within the Empathy section: The Disarming Technique, Empathy (thought and feeling empathies), and Inquiry. Within the Assertiveness section: "I Feel..." Sta...

 Hello you people! You one, singular people who reads these posts.  This week I have been thinking on family stressors and how I will respond to them. I have been thinking about how my own family reacted to stressors as well. I did not want to involve them in this process of learning because my family and I are not in a good place right now when it comes to family stressors. Half of my family took the other half to court and I was asked to be in the middle by both sides. Not a fun experience, you know? I guess I am more angry about it than I thought I was. It hurt everyone a lot. Some members of my family responded by lashing out and others, like myself, responded by placing space between myself and the rest of the family. This was a really apt case strudy for family stressors.  In my Wildlife Law and Policy class, we talk about cumulative effects. Cumulative effects are defined as effects from actions that have been taken, are being taken, and will be taken. I would say ...

 Hey Everyone,  This blog post is on the subject of physical touch and love. Particularly intimate touch. Read if you will.  I have been studying up on the healthy vs unhealthy ways to go about intimate relationships that involve touch. The touch I studied ranged from hugs to sexual intercourse. It was very interesting and a bit uncomfortable, honestly.  I have learned about what physical touch is healthy and at what levels of commitment they are each okay. It follows the Relationship Attachment Model that I have discussed previously. As each of the four other indices increase, touch can also healthily increase. This can be a very tricky process for someone who hasn't been taught the things I have learned this semester. I have made my own fair share of mistakes concerning getting the RAM indices mixed up and out of order; unbalanced if you will. In my new relationship, I have been working hard to keep things balanced and even.  One thing I have done as I get inc...

Folks,       I can see how people up here at BYU-Idaho can get married after three months of dating each other. I have been dating my girlfriend for a month (singular) now and we are fairly close. eleven more of these and I might ask her to marry me. Marriage is looming, but just on the other side of the horizon. This excites me emotionally and spiritually.      I was doing some reading this week that lead me to wonder and think on the idea that marrying younger (between 19 and 25) increases the chances of success in a marriage. This is due to the increased meshing capabilities of the two individuals.     You see, when two young people get married, they don't go join with each other in marriage with as many expectations of what life SHOULD be like. Those with increased expectations may, and probably will, have less marital satisfaction. They end up more unhappy because their expectations less likely to be met, simply because they have more of...