Marriage and Remarriage

Homes today are more complex than they were 20 years ago. Homes these days can  consist of a

1. Mother and father
2. Step-parent
3. Single mom
4. Single dad
5. Foster and/or adopted child

and so many more! Some parents remarry several times or even remarry an ex.

A couple facts about children in the US:

1. Aprox. 40% of children are born outside of wedlock
2. Aprox. 60% of children in US will live with someone other than both parents at some point in their life.

Because there are so many different family units and structure's in today's world, many people ask how to manage the family that they have and all their differences.

The truth is, every family is so unique that although there are some great guidelines you can follow, there is no exact set of directions to follow.

My Family Relations professor said that he had a realization about the holiday "Pioneer Day," which is mostly celebrated in states like Utah and Idaho. This holiday is not only to look back and appreciate ancestors who came across the plains in such harsh conditions to create better lives, it is also a metaphor for us. We must be pioneers, willing to go to new territory and do what is hard. This also relates to breaking family trends, habits, or traditions. 

No-fault divorce was established in the 1970's starting in California. This meant that people could file for a divorce without having any of the 3 "A"s for divorce.

3 "A"s for divorce:
- Adultery
- Abuse
- Alcoholism (chemical abuse)
- Abandonment (in some cases)

This law made more opportunities for divorce but caused greater complications for who received custody of the children. 

With the 3 "A"s system, they could easily determine that whoever committed the adultery, abuse, or other would not receive child custody. 

What other challenges come with divorce besides deciding on custody? Well depending on the custody, there may be difficulties of communication between parents, emotional and mental challenges faced by the children, and so forth. 

According to the readings from our class, many people do not often heal from the end of the first marriage until one or the other moves on with a new partner. 

We learned that 2 years after divorce, 70% of Americans divorced think they should have fixed the marriages instead of ended them. 

We also learned that 2 years after marriage, 70% of men are remarried.

As my professor who has done marriage and family counseling for many years said in class, "You can get divorced but you can't get unmarried." Brother Williams

The wisdom I find in this is learning that although some people should definitely get a divorce our of their situation for various reasons, there are many times where couples can benefit by learning all that a divorce entails. The hardships, the positive outcomes, and so forth.

I know that if you are reading this and have been divorced, you may have some strong opinions on the subject of divorce. As I said in the beginning, every family is different! Every person has a different experience, and your experience was uniquely yours with its struggles and triumphs. 

Feel free to share your thoughts or experiences below, I'm curious to learn about how you dealt with those hard times.

If you would like to learn more about the subject, I recommend clicking here and reading from the different blogs listed. 

I would like to end with this poem on hardships in life. Because even though it doesn't say the word "family" in it, we know that with family comes great responsibility and difficult times:

Good Timber

by Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight

For sun and sky and air and light,

But stood out in the open plain

And always got its share of rain,

Never became a forest king

But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil

To gain and farm his patch of soil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:

The stronger wind, the stronger trees;

The further sky, the greater length;

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth,

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars

Whose broken branches show the scars

Of many winds and much of strife.

This is the common law of life.

Until next time my friends.

Kirie

Top 5 Parenting Techniques

Refer to Cathi Gulli's article, "http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-collapse-of-parenting-why-its-time-for-parents-to-grow-up/" for more information on these points.

I have often hear people say that they wish there was a clear guide to parenting. It can be the most challenging experience that some people face in their lives. 

However, depending on the results you want personally from raising your children, here are some great tips that can help you in the difficult process.

1. Establish healthy boundaries and stick to them

According to Sax, there are ways that parents often step in to a role of consulting with children "about issues that symbolize nurturance like food, we put them in the lead.” 

He talks about how this will often bring out a natural survival response for them to be in the lead and therefore start taking an "alpha role," or in other words, bossing around the parent.

Children need to feel like they are being taken care of. My Family Relations teacher told us of an experience when he was a teenager of a boundary set between him and his parents that he broke. 

The rule was that he could drive and use the car, but he had to be back before midnight every night and let him parents know he was home. 

If he did not follow that rule, he would lose privileges to the car for a week and could not go on any dates at that time. One night, his friends took to long to get in the car and he was 30 minutes late past midnight coming home. 

He let his parents know he was there and went to bed. The next day, he was getting ready for a date he had and his dad kindly asked him where he was headed.

"I have a date tonight." His dad replied with something like, "Oh, actually you wont be able to have that date tonight. Remember when you got home past curfew? 

What is our rule for getting in past curfew?" Even with the attempt to sway his dad's rule, my teacher was unable to get out of the consequences and had to cancel his date that night.

However, the part that stood out to me the most in this story was the face that my teacher ended it with, "The interesting thing is that I felt like my dad was respecting me by enforcing that boundary. I felt like he was treating me like an adult."

How can simply enforcing one boundary help a child feel like an adult?

2. Teach them right from wrong

In Cathi Gulli's online article (referenced above), she said that, “Kids are not born knowing right from wrong,” says Sax, pointing to longitudinal studies showing that children who are left to discover right from wrong on their own are more likely to have negative outcomes in the future: 

“That child in their late 20s is much more likely to be anxious, depressed, less likely to be gainfully employed, less likely to be healthy, more likely to be addicted to drugs or alcohol. We now know this,” he says. “Parents who are authoritative have better outcomes, and it’s a larger effect than the effect of race, ethnicity, household income or IQ.”

3. Be the decider

Cathy Gulli also talks about Andrea Nair, a psychotherapist and parenting educator in London who says, it's hard for parents to learn “'[h]ow to respect their child but also be the decider' of the family." 

Gulli continues, "Part of the challenge lies in the fact that parents don’t want to fail—at nurturing and governing simultaneously—and they certainly don’t want their children to fail in their personal development, in school and at social networking." 

4. Don't hold your child to another child's standard

Most parents want to know the best way to raise them and help them be successful. Therefore, we often seek out other sources to learn from on what to say or do with our kids. 

However, it's important to remember that nobody knows exactly what to do as a parent and that there is a lot of trial and error.

 We can learn from other sources who have had success but it's important to remember that our children will be different from someone else's children and may need different kinds of support.

5. Forgive quickly

In the article, Gulli talks about Nair's book when she says "that parents must 'have a higher tolerance for things not going well.' 

How they recover from their own occasional mistake, outburst, loss of patience or bad call may say more to a child than how they are in happy times. 'We’re missing that opportunity, which is how learning works,' she says. 'That’s how we become more confident.'”

Until next week,

Kirie