Dating...

    This week in class we talked about dating, and not just finding one person dating for two months and then dropping them. Dating is going on lots of different activities with a whole bunch of different people. a date should consist of somebody who is planning the date and is paying for the date and has invited a special someone to come on the date with them and only them. dates only work if they are planned paid for and paired off. I believe this is the secret recipe to having great dates.

   Planning a date does not have to be hard and does not need to take a whole lot of thought. Planning could be asking somebody if they would like to meet you an on Thursday at 4:00 o'clock. That is planning! this helps the other person work their schedule so that they can be with you. The planning could be going on a picnic, going to a movie, going on a canoe adventure, playing board games, or enjoying each other's company over a piece of pizza. these do not have to be hard, and they do not have to be super expensive.

     The best part is paying for something does not have to involve money. paying for something could be using the resources you have. for example, if you wanted to go do a service project use your resources to find a service project and go to the service project for a date. grab a couple buddies make them find a date somebody they can be paired off with, and go find a flower bed to weed, or leaves to rake, or a garden to plant. there are so many service opportunities that you can do for free in your area. one of the best resources to find service projects isjustserve.org. justserve.org is a resource where people can put up their service projects looking for volunteers to come and spend their time working together to complete A cause. there are thousands of volunteer opportunities, and it can be fun.

    The whole idea behind dating is being one on one with somebody. getting to know them to get to talking and enjoying each other’s company. as we start to get older and find people who want to go on dates with us, we need to remember these three simple key principles to a great date. the planning paid for and paired off. dating is the first step in the four steps to getting married.

    The first step of course is dating searching around mingling with other people trying to find who you really want to be with for the rest of your life. The next steps would be courtship and I know it is kind of an old-fashioned word spot courtship is where you find the person you want to be with. Once you find the person you want to be with after dating lots of different people you decide you want to be with this person a whole lot more than just once every couple of weeks. courtship is getting to know each other talking about yourself your family and getting to really know the person that you are with. Now not saying you must stop doing amazing dates with awesome other people but just it happens to be with this one person all the time. That is what courtship is. the fourth step in the steps to marriage is engagement. The engagement process is finding the one that you really want to be with for the rest of your life and proposing in a sincere way knowing that you know this is the person you want to be with. engagement can be anywhere from three months to two years but usually, it is anywhere between six months to a year and a half. during the engagement. You are planning a wedding finding all the fun things the flowers, the dress, the suit, the venue, the guest list, and on and on and on. After you finally choose a date, and you decide to get married this is when married life begins.

    Marriage is hard nobody said it would be easy we still have to date our husband or wife and we must work together to make a great team to raise children to grow the family be part of a community and just be great people. Dating is important and it is the first of very many steps to a happy healthy life.

Gender is Essential

 

I know I know this is a touchy subject but this week in class we talked about genders. Not only why we have two separate genders of male and female but need a central role in the biology behind these two separate genders. We talked about the differences between boys and girls and males and females, and we got to watch an interesting video about these essential roles and the differences between boys and girls. We made a list of what girls do and what boys do. on the girl’s side, we wrote down facial-focused and nurturing. on the boy side we wrote down startled reflect, protecting and providing, and reactions.

When we look at the tendencies and just the natural ways that boys and girls differ it is surprising how early in childhood boys and girls differ. We can tell the boys and girls are built differently and wired differently by the way they pick toys. We read an article that says even infants will know which toys they are playing with. Baby girls tend to carry around baby dolls or stuffed animals and carry them around wrapped in some sort of blanket or washcloth. They are focused on the facial features of the baby doll or whatever they have wrapped up in their blanket. A baby boy really our action-focused hey focus on the movement of the ball in your hand or just your hand in general. As infants turn to toddlers, they are naturally geared towards their gender-specific toys. Little girls love stuffed animals with faces baby dolls and anything they can Playhouse with or be a mom too. Little boys love trucks cars playing in the dirt and being a little bit rougher.

Society today is trying to meld the two genders together and they are trying to make just one gender-neutral toy. Now don't get me wrong I love gender-neutral toys and I love gender-neutral books and all the things that little kids love to play with but genders are essential to who we are and how we interact with the world around us.

I remember when I was younger, I did not really love playing with cars or trucks or even being dirty I loved playing house and playing with baby dolls or Barbie dolls. Not only because I am a girl and that is what was catered towards me, but I had an opportunity to play with every type of toy. My mom ran a daycare for 20 years and gratefully she got to raise all three of her children in a very safe environment where we could explore who we are. We were always able to play with cars trucks and other boyish things or even gender-neutral things. I typically gravitated towards the baby doll the kitchen set and coloring. Whereas my brothers gravitated towards cars blocks being outside and the boy types of things that they had. I had thousands of opportunities to play with the cars and the blocks, but I did not just because naturally, I wanted to play with the girly things. My youngest brother loves sports. he plays three different sports and three different seasons of high school he plays football in the fall basketball in the winter, and he plays golf in the spring. He's always loved playing with balls like footballs and basketballs and was in sports at a very young age. He was so naturally talented in sports that my mother elected to put him in a higher category just because he loved it so much. he played with older kids so that he was not the star of the show and could be challenged by the way others were playing.

I know it is hard to wrap your head around two separate genders, but the science is here and there really are not two separate genders in the world. It is just natural for boys to gravitate towards boy things and girls to gravitate towards girl things. It is not in the way we were raised it is in our biology it is in our genes. we are here to knowing who we are and what we can do for society. society is made up of males, females, boys, girls, infants, toddlers, elementary school kids, high schoolers, Middle schoolers, College kids. We are all essential to society. We just are essential in our genders to society.

 

The rules and roles of the family

     This week we talked about the family and the rules and roles that the family has. We talked about some unspoken rules and some important roles in the family. One of our unspoken rules in my family is when an elder like my grandma or grandpa walks in the room you move and give them your seat. No matter the age or rank in the family hierarchy. When they walk into the room you move and give them your seat. I remember my mom talking and teaching us that when grandpa comes in the room you give up the chair and the tv. This is just one of the family rules in my family, and this has been a rule in my family for at least 50 years. every kid knows it and every grandkid knows it as well.

    Even though every household and family has rules they also have roles. I think one of the best examples is my mom and her sisters. my mom Teresa has three younger sisters Penny, Jennifer, and Holly.

    My mom is the oldest of the four sisters in the family and her role in the family is keeping everybody is safe happy and she is also the visionary of the four sisters. If anything, medical or important happens in the family my mom is the one to take care of it. when my uncle had sepsis while hanging out at a family gathering my mom took him to the hospital and was the designated visitor in the hospital during this crazy covid time. Four years ago my mom and her sisters started an event decorating small business and out of the four sisters, my mom is the one who sees the whole event come together. The centerpiece is the colors the vibe of the whole event she just sees the big picture.

    Her sister penny on the other hand is the organizer. She takes care of all the bills and any financial situation with my grandma, and she is the one who organizes all the decorations and event things that we have bought over many years. We are a new small business, and we do not have a big trailer or anything to carry all our supplies to the venues and event spaces so instead, we pack up four different cars and empty the four cars, and somehow everything we need is packed neatly by penny so that we have everything that we need the day of the event. She also organizes the house that my grandma lives in and her house that she lives in and usually during the summer she will go and visit her other siblings in different States and help them organize and declutter their spaces. she really is the most organized one out of the four sisters.

    My mom's third sister Jennifer is the one that gets stuff done. She has five kids, and she is a kindergarten teacher. She is the one that gets things done on family vacation she well talking with and conversing with her sisters is the one to get everybody up dressed organized and ready to get in the car by a certain time. My mom makes the big picture plans penny organizes everything that we need to do, and Jennifer gets all the kids ready in the cars and off to the adventure. She is super hard working and has been teaching kindergarten for about 20 years. She just got offered a new job as the district kindergarten advisor for a whole school district where she lives. She is over about 15 schools and is the head kindergarten director for the district. She is going to get stuff done in that district so that the kindergarteners can start off their school year and school career on a good note.

    My mom's last sister Holly kind of fills in all the different gaps. she is a little bit quieter than her other sisters, but she is really the one in charge. being the youngest I guess she gets that privilege. while working at an event Holly is the one to direct and organize everybody in their place time and what they need to do. Usually, we do events of 10 to 14 tables and about 8 chairs per table. right as we get to a venue, we set up all the tables and Holly is the one to direct and place all the tables while some people-covered chairs get decorations out and start covering the tables. She is the one that organizes where things need to go and how the event is going to look after everything is set up and ready to go. and even when my mom and her sisters were younger these were still those same roles. their jobs in the family have not really changed over these many years and I do not see them changing soon.

    Every family needs these special roles so that everything in the family moves smoothly and swiftly just like a well-oiled machine. if you ever see her family out in public it seems a little chaotic with 17 grandkids and 6 original children. but we all get it done and we have lots of fun when we are all together, so I guess in the end these roles in the family really do matter.

The Amazing Family

 

    This week in our class we talked about how the family is studied and some of the more controversial topics of the family. Now I am not going to talk about those controversial topics, but I really enjoyed talking and studying the family and what a family will look like, or how the family looks today. We talked about some of the different families like adopted families, foster families, single parent families’ mismatched or combined families, intact families, mixed racial families. Over many years I have worked with all these types of families. I worked with many of these families. Not only in my professional life but also in my personal life. I am the lucky recipient of 3 amazing, adopted cousins. My uncle and aunt were only able to have one biological child. after many years of just the three of them, my uncle, aunt, and biological child, they decided to become foster parents. After a couple of months, they had the opportunity to house a foster baby. 4 years of heartache and love they finally got to adopt their first foster child! she has been in our family for 11 years now and she has brought us so much joy. Long story short they have had about 5 forester children in their home and 3 of them graduated to becoming adopted and being a part of our forever family. We love those 3 children very much.

    They have had lots of struggles and tears for these children. because of the justice system and rights of the biological parents and family. All three had spent some time with the biological families during their stay with my uncle. I have a love-hate relationship with the justice system. For the first child that my uncle adopted it took them 4 and a half years to get approval for the adoption. When they got the notice for a baby that would be placed in their home, they were met with a newborn baby and they took care of this sweet baby who was struggling with some health issues into their home. They raised her from a baby. I remember the call when they said that she was potentially going back to her mother and grandmother. I was sad and their daughter was sad because she wanted a sibling. Once again long story short she was placed back with my uncle and family and just 4 long years later she was officially adopted and was a permanent member of our family.

    Not only my own personal experience with my family. When I was younger, I went to a day camp all summer long. There were tons of kids coming and going every week. Years later I looked back and saw lots of kids in single-parent homes where just mom was in the picture or just dad was in the picture. But no matter what I never knew who was a part of a normal family and who was not. After I was old enough to become a day camp counselor and work with parents, I got to see the side of the kids I never got to see before. I got to see some of the home life. I got to meet and know the parented on a personal level and get some more info from them. Those years at the day camp taught me how to accept families where they were. After years and years of working with children and families, I learned that my family is AMAZING and that I can learn a lot for other families not only mine.

    Long story short… families come in all shapes and sizes some are big, and some are small but all in all, family is where we can be safe and strong. We need to protect the family so that we keep the families together and have families all around the world.

This is my family this is an older picture but still my family. This picture was taken just a couple of months after my aunt and uncle adopted my sweet cousin( the little one in blue on my grandmothers lap)  this was their first growing family photo after the adoption!