Sam's Family Relations Blog

Today I’m going to talk about parenting do’s and don’ts as well as my upbringing. There is a very specific parenting technique that I want to talk about known as gentle parenting. There are a lot of people who think that the process of gentle parenting is not punishing your kids when in fact it’s the opposite. Gentle parenting focuses on your child’s needs rather than your reaction. Say for example your child broke a lamp with a ball they were playing with in the house after you told them not to play with it inside. A reactive parent would most likely yell at their kid and take away the toy or send them to their room. With gentle parenting, the first initial reaction should be to check and make sure the child is safe and away from the glass. The next step would be to have the child help clean up the mess and teach them about natural consequences. It can be hard to do gentle parenting because as children, most of us learned to be reactive from our parents. It’s a cycle that needs to be ...

There is a topic that is starting to become more and more controversial in family dynamics, and that is the discussion of finances. Whether you are married or not, if you are living with your partner, a very big discussion that needs to happen is how to take care of things like debt. Now hopefully you won't have to experience much debt in your life, but if you have an accident and you end up having to pay for things like medicare and a hospital stay, it can easily get pricy. Things like this can put a lot of strain on a relationship, and it makes sense when couples fight about it. Assuming we are talking about everyday finances, if you are in a committed relationship and you are living with the person, it's wise to have joint finances. Things like bank accounts and credit cards would be a good thing to work out together rather than having separate savings and spending. There are many benefits to this, one of the most notable ones is that it just makes life easier, especially if...

 Over the week, I learned some very effective and helpful strategies to help de-escalate and solve problems effectively. There is a model that I was shown called the 5 secrets of effective communication. The first thing you want to do when you are in an argument with someone is to disarm rather than be defensive. It's essential to find the truth behind what the other person is saying, even if you think it's false. The second step is empathy. Having empathy will allow you to see the situation from their point of view and give you a perspective that you may not have considered before. Try to paraphrase what the other person has said about the situation and be mindful and acknowledge their feelings about it. It's important to understand that they might be upset at you and feel unheard, so validating what they are experiencing can do a lot for them. The third step is to apply inquiry, asking gentle probing questions will not only help you understand their side of the story, but...

 I want to talk about how stress should be handled in a family dynamic. There's a term that is going around that is starting to become very common, and for good reason. Emotional incest is when a family member, usually a parent, will depend on their child or someone in the family that they are not married to and rely on them emotionally the same way you would rely on a spouse. I've seen cases of this, and it is a form of abuse in my opinion. The most common instance I see is a mother who is too emotionally close to her son and will infringe on his relationship with his girlfriend or spouse. This can cause a lot of unnecessary tension in a marriage and in a relationship with the parent. One of the things I have recently learned is that no matter how close a parent may be to their children, that parent cannot rely on that child for emotional support. That is what a spouse or therapist is for. A lot of the time, things like this will happen because the parent does not have a close...

Today I want to talk about intimacy in a relationship. Believe it or not, intimacy is extremely important. As I have mentioned before, I go to a very religious school, and a lot of things like privacy in a relationship are looked down on. Because of this, many couples get married very quickly so they can have that alone time that they both crave. I personally think it's normal and healthy to want to be alone with your partner, and if things like privacy weren't so criminalized, then there wouldn't be an issue. There also wouldn't be people getting into trouble for things that are innocent. The housing rules on-campus state that a man and a woman cannot be alone in a bedroom together even if they are related. To me, that is too strict. There have been occasions when my dad has had to come over and help me move my stuff and I have had to have a roommate be present. In my opinion, if you give people guidelines and regulations for how to act on dates, then I think it's ...

 I notice that as people get older, especially younger generations have a very difficult time setting boundaries with friends, family, and even strangers. I think a lot of it has to do with the culture we grew up in, of course, every household has a different experience though. I had an experience a few weeks ago where I should have set a very clear boundary with a roommate when she acted very inappropriately. I have five roommates, six including myself, and we all get along very well except for one, who we will call Lilly. Lilly is one of those people that always has to contribute to the conversation regardless of what it is about. She will bring up very inappropriate and personal things even when the conversation is not centered on that topic. I want to be clear, she is very kind, but she is not very considerate. In this particular instance, I was in the living room with three of my roommates and we were all playing with a deck of tarot cards and having a good time asking dumb qu...