Disciplining children can be hard because you want your kids to be brought up thr right way but maybe we don't always know how to go about doing that, or every child is different, or we might be wrong.  I think discipline is important but more importantly how it's done.  I don't know the right way to do it and I wish too that there was a mannual that came with each kid so that we would know.  There are things however that I think are important to teach kids and those I learned from my parents.  I think it's important to teach your children how to work and teach them the worth of a dollar.  Give them opportunities to learn and grow by making these type of decisions on their own so that they can learn from the concequences of their actions.  I really liked talking today about natural concequences and not to focus on bad behavior because it reinforces it.  I am nervous about doing everything perfectly but I'll just do my best cuz no one is perfect. :)

Today we discussed with partners in class some good ideas that we've gathered either from our readings or from our own families the things that we want to incoorporate for our children.  I really liked what my partner said about having her family work outside or on projects together.  I do think it's important for families to work together  in a sense that they share experiences with one another that bond them together so that they feel emotionally closer to one another.  This is definitely something that I want to do with my own family.  I want my family to work hard together, play hard together, and be happy together.

Today in class we talked about the roles of men and women and which one works and who stays home and the trends that there have been in the past.  I personally think that women should raise their own kids but, I also think it's important for them to have time for themselves and maybe have some kind of job on the side.  I also think that it ends up benefitting the kids as well because then they have that opportunity to socialize in a day care.  My mom worked and was also a great mom!  Course she did have the perfect job for it since she only taught half a day's worth of school, kindergarten.  She was home when we were home and had summers, weekends, holidays, and nights off to spend with the family.  I too want to work like my mom and also be a great mom.  I currently work at Gold's gym and so in the future when I have kids I will take them to the day care there at the gym while I teach or I will plan my classes and personl training sessions around my kids school activities.  I think it's important for everyone to do something for themselves especially mothers, I think it's only when they do something for themselves that they become the best mom's and happy people to be around. 

So on my last post I said I was going to do an experiment with my non verbal communication.  I noticed some pretty interesting outcomes.  I noticed that when I was fully engaged with my non verbal communication and keeping eye contact the people that I talked to had a lot more to say.  It was almost as if they were giving me more details and telling me more of the story/conversation.  Whereas if I wasn't engaged non verbally and just engaged with comments like yes, uh huh, hmm, but I wasn't keeping eye contact or engaged by my actions (which was actually hard to do) the conversations seemed to end sooner and were a lot shorter and less detailed.  It was kind of fun to do this and just experiment on people.  It was intersting cuz I actually felt bad for not engaging in some of my close friends conversations so I actually turned it around at the end of the conversation which also was interesting.  One seemed suprised that I actually heard what was being said hahaha.

I thought it was interesting how we talked about communication today and how people are more liekly to believe non-verbal  communication than verbal.  All day I've been watching people's communications and their actions and how true this is.  This week I'm going to do some experiments with non verbal and verbal communication :) I'm going to experiment listening to people's conversations and truly engaging in them and then I'm going to listen to people's comversations and not fully engage and compare the responses with each.  Will report back my findings!  Should be interesting!

This week I took notes when talking about marriage and the relationship between spouses.  I thought it was really interesting that just alone being aware of what we talked about helps your chances of overcoming and preventing those things we talked about from happening to your marriage.  I came home and shared my notes with my husband and we talked about the things that were discussed in class.  It makes a lot of sense to both of us and we talked about how we could maybe help those in our family who may be in need of the same knowledge.  So grateful for the communication that my spouse and I are able to share and that we are open and talk to each other about things.  I know it's important in a relationship and that it's been important in my own relationship.

Weddings and the stress that they can cause on a family and maybe some advice to those who still have this to look forward to!  Let somebody else take charge and plan your wedding and don't be too picky!  hahaha My wedding was honestly stress FREE for me.  Not sure about my mother but I do know that she had lots of friends that helped her and I who pitched in and offered their help freely.  I was really lucky and fortunate to have my wedding be as stressless as it was.  I'm also so lucky that my mom pretty much took care of the planning and things that needed to get done.  She would come home with all these great ideas and stuff and ask me what I thought so it wasn't like I didn't get to have it my way.  I wasn't very picky at all though.  If it looked nice and it was cheap I loved it seeing as how my dad gave me a budget to work with for my wedding (even though I didn't really work with the budget my mom did) and then what was ever left over I got to have in cash!  What an incentive to having a cheap wedding right?  Weddings can still be nice and classy and still be cost effecient!  Especially when you have the help and service of so many friends and family.  We had a wonderful temple sealing, the most beautiful reception outside with the nature of my mother's flower beds being pretty much decorations.  We got nice picture frames for center peices and my colors were brown and pink so my mom planted all brown and pink flowers that year to match.  Try to incorporate as much family and friends as you can for your wedding!  Make it stress free so that you can enjoy that wonderful day!  Don't sweat the small stuff and remember what's important!