Fatherhood!!!

 In class we had a unit about fathers and the important role that they have on the family. According to The Family: A Proclamation To The World " By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families." I never really thought about how having a father involved in your life is so important. there is a great website:Fatherhood.org that teaches and has great tips on being an involved dad. Somethings that I got from it was play with your children, and read to them. I was and am very lucky to have 3 dads that love me. My biological dad, taught me many things, he would play Lego's, and games with me and my sister. I loved it! He would also read to us which gave me such a love for books and for reading. I always looked forward to the weekends when my dad was able to read to us. I have a step dad that has the Priesthood and is able to give me Priesthood blessings when needed. he has also taught me many things. I as well as everyone else has a Loving Heavenly Father that had given me so much and I'm so grateful for him. I love all my fathers and have truly been lucky. I look forward to the time when I am married have children of my own. I would hope my husband would teach my children many things, and play with them.

I love how at the end of these it says It takes a Real Man to be a Dad! that is so Great!

Family Crisis

Family Crisis is when something happens to a family that changes the family structure or making members of the family take another role. in class we talked about the ABCX of family crisis. this is: A-actual event
B-Behaviral
C-Cognition (thought)
                                       
Total eXperience

At first I was thinking to my self I didn't have anyone die in my family that want a great grandparent, like other people in the class has. so i thought i hadn't had a family crisis. after a while though i started to think more about it and realized that i did have one at least it was for me. It was when my parents got divorced. That is the Actual event. my behavior was I was angry, and I shut away from people for a little while. when my mom remarried i wasn't totally excited about the idea but now that i have grown up and realize that because of the divorce I am going to church more and have  a strong testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We all will have hard things to overcome in our lives. That is just life. I know though that if we will help each other as a family and also allow Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to help out we will learn something from it.

The Birds and the Bees

The Bird and the Bees, aka the sex talk, something every parent dreads. we talked about how important it is for the PARENTS to teach their children about  their body and about sex. It is important to talk to your kids according to their age and understanding. here are some suggestions that we came up in class about talking to your kids about sex. 

Don't:

1. Tell your children that sex is bad

  2. Use improper names for body parts

3. Be ashamed or shy to talk to them and answer there questions

  4. Leave it up to someone else to talk to your kids( you don't want kids at school teaching your children!)

6. Shut down(this means not telling them anything or having a panic attack when or if they do come to you with a question.)

Do:

1. Talk to your children openly according to their age/understanding.

2. Be the source your children can go to

3. Talk to your children as husband and wife

4. Answer questions and teach your children when the questions are asked

5. Be positive and not negative when discussing

6. Make sure you are continually teaching instead of just having one "talk"

I am not going to Lie but this topic always makes me feel a little nervous. I grew up in a place where we didn't really talk about it. At the start of this unit i didn't realize that it was so important to talk to your own kids at an earlier age. I guess i have been pretty sheltered at what is going on with the kids these days and what they talk about as well. I want to teach my children about Sex in a proper way. I also thought it was really interesting and I think it is very wise, to talk to your child about what they may hear from there friends and teach them that it is not the proper way or not correct. I never thought i would say this but this really truly is an important thing to talk to your kids about!

Marraige

we talked a lot about marriage and what different stages there are involved in it. the first step is the proposal. Being a senior here i have seen many couples get engaged and have even helped with a couple proposals. It always surprised me on how much to do some girls want and expect for the proposal. I know for my self i just want something thoughtful, and somewhat private. we talked also about how important it is to get the Parents blessings. when this happens there is a relationship that starts with the couple and the parents. Since my major is marriage and family studies, i have been learning a lot of marriage and family life in my classes. something that i have learned in all my class and mostly in this class, is that you have to continue to court and spend time together. I am sure when kids start coming there is less time for the couple but it is so important to have a date once a week and the parents to spend alone time together. I work at a nursing home in Rexburg and I have seen so many wonderful couples that show TRUE LOVE. there was someone in there and couldn't walk, talk or really do anything for them self but their spouse was there for them all the time. they would come in and read and push them around in the wheel chair. they never left and would hold their hand. this touched me. I thought they had to have true love for each and thought how exciting is it going to be when i do get married. I want and hope as we go through life together and eventually having true love for each other. Something that i have learned to love is the triangle affect. this is when the two spouses man and woman are at the two bottom corners of triangle and the top point is God. when the two spouses continue towards God, continue to keep their covenants, and to keep true to each other, then the points will gradually move together till eventually there is only one dot! how great is that! so excited.

I love this video!

Hanging out, Hooking up, and Celestial Marraige

This is a speech we read for our class by Bruce A. Chadrick at BYUs devotional. I thought this talk was really good and it explains a lot of what is going on here at BYU-I. At times i wish we could go back to those times when people court and go on actual dates. Now days the thing to do is to hang out instead of going out on dates. I don't think it is wrong to hangout with the opposite gender but there does need to be some dates. in the speech he talked about suggestions for the students. 1. Cinderellas and Prince Charming, throw away the glass slipper. this means that even when you are married to someone in the temple, Life is not going to be Happy fairytale ending. Marriage is work but so worth it. we need to be cautious of this and realize that it does take work and not look for someone who is perfect. 2. don't wait for others to carry a glass slipper to find you, in other words don't wait for God to drop off a Man/Woman on your front door steps. You have to be proactive and seek someone you like. this is easier said than done. We all know i get super shy when it comes to talking to guys that i like.

Boys vs.Girls

In class we talked about the difference between boys and girls, emotionally, physically, cognitively and behavioral. In The Family: a Proclamation to the World it says this very important phrase concerning gender. "All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."  Every gender has a purpose and each gender has divine characteristics. for example boys tend to be more aggressive in play, Competitive play, and task oriented. Girls tend to be more nurturing, cooperative play, attention to detail, communicating earlier,  and there is up to 5 times more connecting tissue between emotional and verbal areas of brain. I remember growing up with playing outside a lot in the dirt, playing with legos, barbies, and playing house. my sister and I weren't very girly girly, but we weren't tom boys. I had a great time playing with all those things. as i grew older I would be more interested in girl things.

My Name is Shalynn Jensen, I am a senior at Brigham Young University Idaho. I am majoring in Marriage and Family Studies and Loving it. I love my Family so much. Family is so important to me. it is important to me to stand up for the family, which is something that is looked as not as important as it use to be. I am a Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and love it. www.lds.org      Through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, my own family experiences, and classes I have truly loved the idea of having a Family, and standing up against all the anti family things going on. Being LDS, I know and am truly grateful that Families can be together forever!

"The Family is Central to the Creators plan" This Amazing quote is from The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Families are so important in so many different ways and every member of the family affects the family in some way. There are so many Anti-Family things out there that are are hurting families. Families are becoming more and more unimportant in the world. So many people view Families as something that is going out of style and think that you have to focus on self and only self.  In my Family Relations class we have been talking a lot about Family Roles and Rules. It took me a  while to figure out some of the unspoken rules that my family had. After thinking about it for a while I thought of some. we were to ask before we used it or wanted something, and you treat everyone with respect and kindly. Every Family has unspoken rules, these are the things that you just do in your family without being told. something else we talked about is how every member of the family affects the whole family. we were taught this by an example in class. Brother Williams had some volunteers go up in front of class and hold hands in a circle. He then would come behind one of the "family members" student, and would pull them back, saying that some kind of stress is going on with that family member and that the rest of the family has to adjust and help hold him together with the family. An example of this in real life could be a father losing his job, and the mom having to go to work so she could help provide for the family, the family would have to help each other and support each other to get through that hard thing.