Lesson 12

Today we are going to be talking about divorce! Most people now a days believe the famous statistic that has been widely accepted that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Now it was very interesting to me to find out that this statistic isn't actually true. The real divorce rate actually circles about 36%. Divorce isn't as common as everyone thinks and it is actually a very serious action that deserves more thought before it is actually done. Divorce has definitely become more common than it used to be, in fact Mexico has made it necessary to renew your marriage after just 2 years, and if you separate before those two years there is no paperwork required. But just because divorce has become more common does not mean that divorce has become a smarter option.

There are a few interesting things about divorce as re-marriage that should make you think twice about the decision. Most divorces stem from a lack of communication or a lack of willingness to forgive. Between the second and fifth year of a marriage and the birth of a couple first marriage is the most common time for a couple to divorce, but after 7 years the divorce rate significantly decreases. Even after divorce the majority of couples, in fact about 70% admits that their marriage was savable and that they only had to try harder. Now I have had my fair share of regretted decisions, but when it comes to finding and staying with the love of my life i plan on having no regrets. Whatever happens I want to be able to say that I am giving me all to the person that is my all. Remember the affects that divorce will have on your children, and love them enough to stay together. I promise that you will be happier that way!

This will be my last post about my learnings in this class, but I am incredibly grateful for all those that read what I had to say and I hope that I could help you in some way! I know that God is our loving Heavenly Father and that our Lord Jesus Christ lives and loves us! Share the love my friends!!

Lesson 11

Hey guys! Well today we are going to be talking about the something that I though was very interesting this week. Today we are going to talk about so of the do's and do not's of parenting. I think that this topic is very cool.

So in my family my father was always the one who was sent in when we really needed to learn our lesson. When dad came in the room we knew we were in trouble for something. Now some of the punishments that we received were very much deserved, but others weren't. My dad's famous form of torture was putting a whole spoonful of Tabasco in our mouths and making us swallow it. I have not been able to enjoy spicy food ever since! 

Now there are some things that we should never do to punish our kids such as refusing contact and physically hurting our kids. What I found most interesting was that the most effective way to teach our children is to let the consequences of their actions teach them most of the time. There are only three situations where we as parents should intervene. These three situations are when it is too dangerous to let the child experience the consequences, when their decision will affect another person, or when the lesson we want them to learn is too far into the future. More than 80% of lessons can be taught by natural consequences. 

If you are looking for the right way to teach your kids this seems like the easiest and frankly the most sensical way to me!

Lesson 10

Alright guys today we are going to talk about some pretty interesting things! Today we will be talking about fatherhood and finances! Now I know that fatherhood is a topic that is highly debated, some people have fathers that are very much involved in their lives while other people haven't had the displeasure of meeting the father that abandoned them. Either way there is studies on family that show the importance of the father and some of the differences in finances between families with two sources of incomes.

The thing that I found incredibly interesting this week was one study that showed the difference in income for a family where the father and mother are both working full time jobs and paying for childcare. Now as we know that with jobs comes multiple expenses such as transportation and food. Well this study showed that on average families were making less money with two full time jobs than families that only had one of the two parents working. Many may ask how could that be, but it is certain. The costs for childcare alone can stack up quite fast, and the purchase of transportation and gas can evaporate the income from that second job.

As you can imagine mothers that are left alone with their kids, or visa-versa, have an extremely hard time providing for their kids and having to pay those expenses by themselves. Many believe that divorce is the answer when in fact divorce makes their situation much worse than what it once was. over 70% of people that divorce look back at their marriage 7 years later and admit that their marriage was savable. Please, if you are thinking about separating this holy bond, reconsider your options and your priorities and do what is best for your kids. Protect the traditional family, after all it is all that really matters.

Lesson 9

Hello friends! Once again I am very sorry for not posting for this last couple of weeks, my life has been very interesting towards the end of this semester, but to those of you that have read every single one of my posts I thank you because I do put a lot of effort into them.

Well let's dive in! Today we are going to talk about communication! How does communication affect us? What are the most effective types of communication. Well we all know various forms of communication such as verbal, physical and non-verbal. Now many would think that the most important of these three would be the verbal communication seeing as that is the way that we express what we want. Before I reveal the most important of these three I am going to ask a question. How many of you have said that you were fine with doing something when you actually had your heart set on doing something else. Could be a Friday night activity or a board game, but surely we have all done it! Well this is one of the reasons why verbal communication is not as important as other forms of communication. The most effective type of communication is actually the non-verbal communication. Some ways to communicate non-verbally are face expressions, sighs, rolling eyes, stance, these are very important to the communication between us and other people.

I remember as a 12 year old I was not pleasant to be around for some people, my sister can testify of that. I knew when I was getting on her nerves because she would roll her eyes at me and try to ignore me. Whenever this happened I knew I was close to getting her to crack. Thankfully things have gotten better since, but without telling me verbally I knew what she was feeling.

In these exact ways we can discern what our family members need without them saying. This could save us from countless arguments and lead to thousands of smiles and good times. It is very important that we use this skill to read body language and facial expressions to interpret how best to deal with a situation. This is one of the many ways that we can defend our beloved families and take care of the ones that are close to us. Just as God watches over us and knows what we need and delivers we can emulate him and help others and be what they need.

Lesson 8

Today I would very much like to talk about how families are under stress and how this stress can be relieved. For this post I would like to talk to you guys about something very personal to me and something that has changed the course of my life forever.

At the top of this post is a picture of my seven and a half year old nephew. His name is Cole and he lived in Orlando Florida. Cole and his older brother Trent were my best friends when I was a young teenager. When they would visit we were inseparable; we would jump on the trampoline, swim, and play video games together. When I was twenty years old I left the Unites States to go serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ as Latter Day Saints. When I had returned after two short years I finally got to see my nephews again. We road go carts and played football and everything was just like it was before. A month had passed since I had returned home from my missionary service and I was once again separated from my nephews when we received a heart-braking call from my older sister. My nephew Cole has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor sitting right on his brain stem. Over the next six months we gave the best life we could to my little nephew and we pleaded to God that he would save our awesome little soldier Cole. One month ago Cole died.

I share this story because this is on situation that puts a family under stress. There is no pain that even comes close to the pain of losing a child. A family is stretched thinner than they can possibly imagine. More importantly i share this story so that I can testify as a personal witness that comfort is possible to obtain and that God loves his children. Even when it feels like your world is falling apart I testify that God holds us together. Whether you believe or not, God believes in you and knows you personally. You can't see him, but he can see you and he will help you stand when your strength has failed you.

We take chances on so many things and even having a kid is a risk because you might lose them. We take chances standing for what we believe in and supporting the structure of the traditional family, but no matter what the risk or the stress that comes with our good decisions I can promise you that the Lord will fortify you and he will build you up. I testify that he lives and that he loves us. Love him and love one another.

Lesson 7

Hey guys! I wanted to talk today about something that hits very close to home for me! Today we are going to talk about the green monster that is jealousy! I admittedly am a jealous type. Jealousy in my eyes is like a sickness, it turns you against those that you love and it can bring about feelings of self-loathing and a low self-esteem. My problems with jealousy started ever since my very first girlfriend. I caught her cheating on my with another student from our school and I remember having my heart crushed. Since that day I have been very protective of my girlfriends and I am very suspicious. Now many girls might see this as repulsive while other girls are flattered when their boyfriend gets jealous over them.

The reason why jealousy ties into our lesson this week in my family relations class is because we talked about how we can avoid any arguments or any doubts that we are completely faithful to our partner. So I have a girlfriend that lives in Mexico and I met her while I was doing missionary service in the Dominican Republic. She was also doing missionary service and when we both returned home we kept talking. Well one night I was on my way to my dorm when I received a text from her. I had responded to her text about three hours before and she had not responded for all that time. So I asked her where she had gone and told her that I was worried about her. She then went on to tell me that she went out alone with this old friend of hers, a guy that had been very successful. I remember in that moment feeling very offended and betrayed. Now whether or not I had reason to feel offended or not everyone has their own opinion, but for me that was crossing the line, especially because I know she would have been irate with me if I had done the same to her. In that moment I doubted that my girlfriend had remained faithful to me.

In many marriages in this day and age there are many couples that doubt whether their spouses are loyal to them and their are many that are unfaithful. So how can we eliminate these misunderstandings or doubts from coming about. Well the first step is to truly be faithful to your spouse. After the dating period and moving towards the marriage our partner should be the only person in our life that is truly important. Family members are clearly an important part of our lives, but no one should be more important or as important as our spouse. So before we get married we should be willing to make that person the most important part of our lives no matter how hard things may be. If that is so than there shouldn't be anything that jeopardizes the relationship we have with them.

If you find yourself in a similar situation please do your wife or husband the pleasure of eliminating anything that comes between you so that you can start building trust again! This will help to make a functional family full of joy and peace!

Lesson 6

Hey guys, today i want to talk about marriage and the preparation that we can make to become married and some of the problems a newly wed couple can have. I am sure that most of the people that are going to read this probably have more experience than I do on this subject, so I would love to hear your opinions if you are willing to comment!

My two oldest sisters are married and my oldest brother is divorced. Now I mention this because I am going to try to analyze the differences in their marriage and try to give my insight on how a couple can prepare to be married. Starting with my older sister, she is married and has two kids with her husband. They have lived in Florida for a long while now, but one thing that has always affected me about them is that they always fight! Daily they are bickering about something. My next older sister has two kids also with her husband and they live in California. They have a very balanced marriage where arguing is a very rare thing. I don't think that I have heard them argue since they have met. After many hours of wondering what the differences between these two are it seems to me that my oldest sister has a husband that has poor communication skills while my other brother in law is great at communicating his opinion and feelings.

I have thought a lot about marriage and I have found that every time that I look at my oldest sister's marriage the idea of marriage scares me. On the other hand, if I picture my marriage as one similar to the one that my sister has I am pretty excited to get married.

So what is it about communication that is so important? Is it better to beat around the bush and keep things pent up? Or should we express our feelings and thought even though they might upset our spouse?

In my personal opinion it is better to be straight forward and just say what is on your mind rather than keep your spouse guessing. It is odd though; even though I find this approach to be more effective I tend to take the opposite approach because I am scared to hurt anyone's feelings.

How do you guys approach your disagreements with your spouses or partners? do you have any advice that you have found particularly effective?

There will always be complications in a marriage, heck there have always been problems between men and women since we were tiny, but we as a couple are commanded to be one flesh and to suffer with the partner that we choose. So men support your wives and women support your husband and keep going forward together.

Lesson 5

Hey guys! I am so sorry that I haven't written for a few weeks now, I had a family issue that has taken up a significant amount of my time. I am not quite ready to share what has happened with my family, but it is a beautiful story and I do plan on sharing it soon so stay updated. This week I would like to talk about the fifth lesson that I have learned in my family relations class. Today I would like to talk about the three types of love, agápe, éros and philia. Now many of you may have heard of these words, but I will explain them anyways. These are the three greek words for love, they are similar but different. Agápe in the greek language means love, this words refers to the selfless love that one has for his brother. Éros also means love, but this word refers to more of a sexual intimacy love. Philia means, you guessed it, love, and refers to the love that exists between friends.

My question for all of you is what kind of love should there be between you and your partner? I would bet that almost 100% of people would say that in a relationship éros should be the type of love that exists between the two. Other will say that a agápe relationship is more important. and others will say that philia doesn't really apply to a relationship. Here is my opinion. I believe that love is an evolutionary thing, I believe that love starts always as philia, eventually moves on to éros and with enough effort and practice love becomes agápe. Many may believe that éros is the strongest of these three and that sexual attraction and intimacy is the end all be all of a relationship. For me being able to care about someone more than I care about myself is the end all be all of love. For me there is nothing stronger than an agápe love. unfortunately I believe that people emphasize greatly the importance of sex and sexual rights and they focus less on selfless love and charity. The word of the Lord Jesus Christ come to mind " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13. Love is not about sexual satisfaction, love is about thinking not only about someone else but thinking of their wellbeing as if it were our own.

Reflect on your relationships. Love is to be selfless so make it that way! Become better, not for you, but for those around you! Be a light to all those that see you! I believe in love, I believe in the family and I believe in God. I know that he loves us, so let's love each other.

Lesson 3

Hey guys, I just want to share something I learned in the third lesson of my family relations class. I was born and raised in Irvine, California. Southern California is full of great people and awesome beaches. A huge part of the population in southern California is latin. Growing up I always thought that they were a little weird and reclusive, but I failed to take a few things into account. I feel like I am the perfect person to relate to this subject. As long as I can remember I have been attracted to latin girls, my very first girlfriend was Mexican and my current girlfriend is Mexican also. One of my girlfriends from high school was also latin. I used to spend a good amount of time at her house and I always felt like her parents hated me. They said very little to me and whenever I would come over they would quickly work their way upstairs. For the whole 6 months of our relationship the only thing I could say to them was "hola" and "como estás". It was no surprise they didn't fancy my company. Three years have passed and I have since become fluent in Spanish and my view on her parents have completely changed.

I feel like we falsely accuse those that come from other countries for being reclusive or arrogant, but they are facing challenges that we can't even comprehend. Problems that they face are as difficult as becoming accustomed to a new culture, learning and new language and finding new friends. Usually immigrants drift towards people that are more like them. Families can be torn apart by difficult economic situations and difficult culture situations that come with immigrating to another country. Although these factors play a part there is nothing worth risking the family unity that one has. People often convince themselves that they are strong enough to spend a few months apart, or that it will be better for their family eventually. Nothing is worth risking the love you share between your spouse and your family. Look for people in your neighborhood that are in a similar situation and reach out, they can teach you some pretty awesome things and you could be blessed with a lasting friendship! God speed my friends

Lesson 4

This week in class was definitely and interesting one! Today we are going to talk about gender roles fam! I will start this blog with a funny/ interesting story! So when I was a kid I was a very passive and easy going boy, so much in fact that I would let my older sisters dress me up and put make up on me. I hope you can imagine the look on my dad's face when he came home from work to see his little boy running down the stairs in a blue dress and foundation caked on his face.

My question for all of you is if there is anything wrong with a little boy wearing and dress and makeup? And if so, why?

The world in general has always expected two very different things from their baby boys and baby girls. In general we have wanted our boys to be tough, athletic, leaders, and we almost expect them to be less responsible than girls. We expect girls to be more sensitive, loving and observant.

No doubt there will always be outliers, girls will have more masculine tendencies and visa versa. There will always be the little boy that is easy going and lets his sisters dress him up like a princess. The outlier tend to be made fun of and are pushed towards the opposite gender in search of acceptance.

I thought that this pattern in the history of the world was very interesting and I would like to hear your guys' opinions and experiences! I shared an embarrassing experience so this is officially a no judge zone! Share what you want!

Lesson 2, family dynamics

Hello fam! Well another week has passed and I have learned yet another interesting lesson in my family relations class! You may notice that everyone has a different kind of relation with their parents and their siblings. Have you ever wondered why that is? Let's consider our boundaries. We all love our personal space right? But personal space for you can be public space for someone else. As a kid growing up I found that the boundary between my mother and I was very thin. I am the fifth out of six children and played a key role in comforting my mom. My oldest brother had a drug addiction and this destroyed my mother. Because of the many opportunities that I had to comfort my Mom i found that she was who I went to for comfort and for advice.

My relationship with my dad on the other hand was very much the opposite. My dad to me was the punisher, and I am not talking about the Punisher that you see in comic books with a machine gun in each hand shooting up the place, but rather he was the person you never wanted to yell your name. I remember as a kid I hated wearing underwear! I couldn't stand it, so I would frequently attend school without underwear. After my parents caught on to this my dad would ask me if i wore underwear... I would lie of course, but when my dad would check I knew I was in for trouble. His favorite punishment was to give me a spoonful of Tabasco, and he wonders why I hate spicy food now.

The point I am trying to make by describing the relationship I had with my two parents is that the boundaries drawn between us are very different. Like I said I would frequently go to my mother for help and comfort whereas with y dad I would generally try to stay out of his way and to this very day I don't keep him very informed on my personal life.

As a class we started to think about what the ideal boundaries would be for a family and we agreed that the boundaries between mom and dad should be a little more rigid or personal and as a result the children would create a strong bond with their siblings, but wouldn't exclude their parents.

One thing that is very common when a couple decides to have kids is that the mom creates a very strong bond with her their children and the father sees that strong bond as a sign that the mother doesn't need the father anymore and he distances himself. In other, less common cases the father sees it as a challenge and establishes that strong, more rigid boundary with his wife. The result of this is that they raise the child with a healthy relationship with both parents. I would like to invite you all to think about the boundaries between you and your family members and think about the boundaries you would like to make with your spouse and children. As you strive to have that ideal boundary with your family you will be able to feel a balance in the relationships. Have fun trying to realize these boundaries and feel free to comment! Love you fam!

So I had an awesome week this week! In class we got to talking about the roles we play in our families. It is an interesting concept if you think of what purpose you serve as part of your family. It could vary depending on how many brothers and sisters we have or how our parents get along with their siblings. For me I feel like I play the balance in the family. My brothers and my father are very hot headed while my sisters and my mom are more passive and relaxed people so I play the peacemaker or everyone's friend. I have no way to tell if my father and his brothers act the same way as our family because we simply have never met any of his brothers, that's right I don't know any of my uncles except for one. My mother is a single child so there isn't much to compare our family to. I love the idea of the family and how each member plays a crucial role and how it gives us a sense of purpose. I am interesting in hearing all of your roles in your family with a short explanation of what your family is like. Maybe just for fun you can try to play a different role and see how your family reacts! Let me know how it turns out!

Lesson 1

This week in class we talked about a very interesting topic. We had a discussion on the population of the earth and how having a large family has become something that is looked down on in recent years. It is interesting to think that in the middle ages and for almost the whole history of the world men and women thought of their kids as their legacy, but something over the years has caused us to see children as more of a responsibility. Many of us are very familiar with the baby boom generation as the generation where people just couldn't stop having babies, but babies weren't the only thing that wouldn't stop popping out. Theories of over-population plagued the minds of the American people and ever since children have been looked at very differently. By 2065 the world is projected to to start depopulating. Children are royalty and they are our personal legacies, the way we teach our children shows a whole lot about how we are as people. I feel like we owe it to our children, or in some cases future children, to be the best we can be and to treat them like the sons and daughters of God that we are. If we see our children like the angels of God that they really are a desire to have more kids will more than likely develop in our hearts. I am eternally grateful for my awesome parents who treated me like an angel even though I behaved like a little devil! The family is awesome and we have the wonderful opportunity to make the world a better place one well taught child at a time.

Introduction

Hello friends! I am Britt LeFevre! I am twenty two years old, I am from Irvine California born and raised. I lived in the Dominican Republic for a couple years of my life and currently I am studying and Brigham Young University in Idaho. I am the fifth out of six children in my amazing family. My father is an entrepreneur and my mom always stayed home to take care of me. I served as a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for two years and I am a supporter and defender of the traditional family.