Final Blog 

I have really enjoyed writing these blogs every week. I hope you have too. For my final post I wanted to share my favorite things that I have written about this semester. My favorite topics have been parenting and communication. I want to share why they are most important to me. 

I picked parenting because ever since I was little, I wanted to be a mom. My favorite game to play was family and I would always be the mom. I things I learned will help me be a good parent in the future. I want to be a good parent in the future. I want to be an authoritative parent. To have a positive connection with my kids. To teach them that certain behaviors have certain consequences and hopeful they will be able to make the decision on their own. I hope the information in my post about parenting will help others want to be authoritative parents and want the best for their kids. Remember that every child is different and will need attention. If you show every single one of your children that you are here for them and you love them, Heavenly Father will help with the rest. I’m so excited about meeting my kids and rising them in this gospel. 

I also picked communication because communication is key to any relationship. I wanted to just make a point on how important it is so I’m going to write about it again. You can never really understand how someone feels if they don’t tell you. Communication seems to be the biggest problem in families. Husbands and wife’s not willing to listen to each other, kids not willing to listen to the parents. Things like this can cause so much miss understanding and anger toward each other. Communication is key to every relationship. It is so important to have a family function properly. Communication is so important in the family. Being able to talk to one another really helps the relationship become stronger. You will be able to tell your family if something is wrong or if you have a problem with how things are working in the family. With knowing what is wrong you will be able to solve the problem together as a family. This quote always comes to mind we I think about communication. "Your most important friendships should be with your own brothers and sisters and with your father and mother. Love your family. Be loyal to them. Have a genuine concern for your brothers and sisters. Help carry their load so you can say, like the lyrics of the song, 'He ain't heavy; he's my brother'." -President Ezra Taft Benson. President Benson couldn't be more right. Your family should be your best friends. 

I hope you have enjoyed what I have had to say about my favorite topics.  I'm grateful for what I have learned in my class and will use what I have learned for the rest of my life and I hope you will too. 

Comment down below what has been your favorite topics that have been discussed. I hope you have enjoyed what I have written this semester. I hope I was helpful and insightful to many of you. Thanks for reading and all of the support. Bye!

Parenting

You might be wondering what an 18-year-old college student, with no kids knows about parenting. And your right I don’t know much. I obviously have no experience in that department. But I have learned a lot by babysitting and observing different families and seeing what type of parenting works best. I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have the best way to parent every single child. There is just no such thing. Every child will need to be parented a different way. For example, my little brother gets away with a lot of stuff. My parents defiantly don’t go as hard on him as they did on me. It’s not because they love him more it’s because we are different human beings and have different needs and personality characteristics.

There are three different types of parenting. There is the coercive parenting style, permissive and authoritative. The coercive/hostile or authoritarian style of parenting is characterized by parents who deride, demean, or diminish children and teens by continually putting them in their place, putting them down, mocking them, or holding power over them via punitive or psychologically controlling means. This is not a good way to parent. It hurts the kids and make them hate being at home. It has been linked to many forms of antisocial, withdrawn, and delinquent behaviors in children and adolescents. I know that no one wants that for their children. 

Permissive parenting is characterized by parents who overindulge children or neglect them by leaving them to their own devices. This style includes a shrinking of sacred parental responsibilities as parents fail to provide guidance and constraint when it is required for the child’s good. “Modern-day prophets counsel parents to provide and enforce reasonable limits to teach their children the clear bounds of acceptable and unacceptable behavior.” (Successful Marriages and Families). The most important thing you could do as a parent is being there for your children. Showing them that you love them. The permissive parenting does not fit well with the proclamation principles.

The optimal parenting style is the authoritative parenting style. Authoritative parenting fosters a positive emotional connection with children, provides for regulation that places fair and consistent limits on child behavior, and allows for reasonable child autonomy in decision making.  This style creates a positive emotional climate that helps children be more open to parental input and direction and allows for parents to individualize child rearing. President Monson once said “To you who are parents, I say, show love to your children. You know you love them but make certain they know it as well. They are so precious. Let them know. Call upon Heavenly Father for help as you care for their needs each day as you deal with challenges which inevitably come with parenthood. You need more than your own wisdom in rearing them." I love this because it is so true. I have seen families do it this way and their children turn out to be amazing disciples of Christ. 

            Remember that every child is different and will need attention. If you show every single one of your children that you are here for them and you love them, Heavenly Father will help with the rest. 



Thanks for reading. I will see you in the next one, Bye! 



All the information I used in this blog came from a book called Successful Marriages and Families Proclamation Principles and Research Perspectives by Alan J. Hawkins, David C. Dollahite and Thomas W. Draper.