Tag: family

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culture

5 Evidences of Our Broken-Family Culture

grandmother
Photo by Peter Dahlgren

When I saw a link to an article titled 5 Ways Retirement Is Different For Women I hoped to see a profound insight or two in the article. Unfortunately what I got was proof of how broken our cultural views are related to families. There’s no way to argue the facts behind the 5 points in the article:

  1. Women live longer.
  2. Women are more likely to fly solo in their later years.
  3. Stepping out of the work force is easy; stepping back in is not.
  4. Retired women are poorer than retired men.
  5. Part-time work rarely leads to a solid retirement.

The point of #3 is that women pay an ongoing price if they step out of the workforce to rear children. My immediate thought was, “great, let’s keep convincing women that raising children is a burden on their lives.” When it went on to say that taking time to care for aging parents can be even worse financially than taking time to raise children it clearly suggested that families are a financial burden.

Points 4 and 5 were really sad because they would be completely non-issues if we had a culture of lasting marriages rather than a culture of disposable marriages. As I thought how lasting marriages would affect each of these points I realized that healthy, loving families mitigate all five issues listed in the article. Let’s see how.

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culture

Rediscovering the Forgotten Parent

Photo by Phil Scoville

A recent article on the impact that fathers have on a child’s development brought this topic to mind. The article cited studies out of Oxfordcorrelating infant/father interactions and behavioral issues of young children. Better interactions between a father and a 3 month old correlated with fewer behavioral issues at a year and beyond. This is hardly a unique finding but it was a good reminder of this critical aspect of building strong families.

When we acknowledge how important good fathering is to building strong families the statistics about the absence of fathers is all the more alarming. Of course this is not a problem exclusive to fathers but the statistics on absentee and ineffective fathers is indicative of the overall weakness of the family in our present society.

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Categories
culture

A Holistic Approach to Building Families

Photo by SuziJane

I fully support the idea that the family is the fundamental unit of society and that societies can’t be stronger than the families within them. While agreeing with that sentiment I find it interesting that whether is is expressed by the First Lady of Uganda or published by the World Congress of Families (WCF) nobody seems to give a straightforward definition of what they consider to be the boundaries of the family unit. The closest I can find to a definition is from the Madrid Declaration of WCF:

We affirm the natural family to be the union of a man and a woman through marriage…

While I agree that the foundation of a whole and healthy family must be the union of a man and a woman through marriage I do not believe that fully encompasses the fundamental unit which defines the strength of societies and nations. I also strongly suspect that the WCF does not mean to limit the definition of family to that one statement.

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Education life

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy

When all attempts at progress either backfire or have no discernible effect its time to seek further insight and experience. Such has been the case for us recently as we have found it impossible with only the expertise of ourselves and our families to address the unacceptable behaviors that have been grinding upon the life of one of our children and by extension adding tension and discomfort in the lives of everyone else in the family. Our first visit with the therapist introduced a very hopeful path for us called Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. After the visit I started doing some research to find out what else I could learn about this therapy. What I found was that virtually all the information available was directed at a clinical audience – in other words it was all textbooks for therapists and those studying to become therapists. Besides that, I also learned as I talked with our therapist at the next visit about what I had found, that much of the information that is available is either inaccurate or simply out of date. She said that it seems that those with experience with PCIT have little interest in making information available to a lay audience because the information is most valuable when professional coaching is being given to the parents as they implement the principles of PCIT. While I have no expectation that parents without the help of a trained therapist would be able to get the full benefits of PCIT, I also believe that parents who are hearing about this and wondering if it really is useful for their situation, or perhaps parents like us before we met with our therapist who recognize a problem like ours but have no idea what might finally give them the breakthrough they need, should have more information available that is geared towards them which would provide an overview of the therapy. Because of that I have determined to take notes of our journey through PCIT and write publicly about this little adventure.

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life pictures

Welcome Noah

After weeks of Laura feeling like she was ready to be done with this pregnancy (despite the fact that we hoped it would last a little longer to get a few more things done around the house) we got the news on Tuesday that the midwife was concerned that the baby was breech. She had Laura go to the hospital to have the baby turned on Wednesday and said that if the baby was breech again for the visit next week she would want us to turn the baby again and induce labor. We spent a couple of days expecting to enter next week with the prospect of inducing labor – someone had other ideas.

Laura was having contractions off and on for much of Friday. After a Thanksgiving dinner with my side of the family we came home and Laura had concluded that labor was imminent. She planned to go to bed when we got home (at 5:00 pm) so that she could be rested. She took a sleeping pill and laid down – not five minutes later her water broke.

The labor was exciting based on the fact that she had a sleeping pill encouraging her body to postpone labor counteracted by Pitocin in her IV. To make matters more fun, as we neared the crowning the midwife discovered that the baby was oriented oddly again – face first. At 9:11 a swollen and bruised face emerged – just as the midwife had forewarned us when she discovered the orientation – and as I looked to finally identify the gender we had not previously determined I told Laura that “we have a Noah.”

Up to that point we had decided that I would choose the middle name if we had a boy but I had not yet settled on one. I soon knew what name to use – Noah Thomas Miller.

At 6 lbs. 8oz. and 20″ long he’s a healthy and happy little man.

Categories
life

Great Grandpa

On Sunday we attended a baby blessing for our newest niece, Katherine. While we were there Laura and I were sitting next to my grandfather. I was very interested to watch as Enoch suddenly decided to climb over to his great grandpa rather than sitting with Laura. I was fascinated to see the way Enoch looked at Grandpa as if he knew him considering that at Enoch’s age he couldn’t possibly remember the few times he has seen Grandpa before. The way he played with Grandpa left me with the impression that Enoch was trying to take this opportunity while he could get it, as if he knew that such chances might be limited since Grandpa is already in his mid 80’s. It was very tender to watch both Enoch and Grandpa for those few minutes together.

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life pictures

A Look at the Future

It’s always fun for me to write welcome posts when we are expecting a new arrival. We’ve done this enough times now that as we prepare for number six there would seem to be nothing new to say. That might explain why we have decided not to find out in advance whether this will be a boy or whether we have a girl coming our way.

When we went for the ultrasound the doctor captured a cool image of baby’s arms crossed in front of it’s face as if rubbing it’s eyes while waking up from a nap.

That last sentence should have been awkward enough to prove why almost everyone these days chooses to find out the gender of their coming baby in advance. I have suggested that we use male pronouns in odd months and female pronouns in even months when talking about baby but I don’t know if we’ll actually do that. The only thing we know for sure is that if this is a boy he will be named Noah and if this is a girl we have not yet settled on one name.

Categories
life thoughts

Be Where You Ought To Be


photo credit: orkydorky

Last week we had a family reunion at Bear Lake. It was great for the kids to see their cousins and for everyone to have fun on the water and off. In planning for the trip the hardest thing was deciding whether we should come back Saturday night or whether we should stay over Sunday and come home Monday morning. For a variety of reasons we decided to come home Saturday.

We felt good about that decision but as if to confirm our choice, the discussion in Sunday School focused on the importance for each of us to be where we ought to be. Of course it included the declaration that “at this moment Sunday School is where you ought to be.”

As I listened to the lesson I thought about the fact that being where we ought to be, or as it was said of Gideon’s men, “{standing} every man in his place,”(Judges 7:21) is a prerequisite to obeying the counsel that President Uchtdorf gave in the October 2008 priesthood session of general conference that we should stand close together and lift where we stand.

I hope our family can always be found standing in our place and lifting where we stand.

Categories
culture Education politics

Addressing the Symptoms


photo credit: sigma.

As if to prove the point I made in my last post about passing out casts and crutches, the Seattle Post Intelligencer this week published an essay from Brad Soliday, a teacher in eastern Washington, where he shares his perspective about how the increasing money bring allocated to education is being misspent because it is focusing on a mistaken solution.

I doubt it is truly coincidental that while real education spending has risen 49% in the last two decades it is dysfunctional or broken families that have seen a corresponding rise in society rather than educational outcomes (which have flat-lined despite the ever rising funding). This should be irrefutable proof that those perpetually sounding the cry that education is underfunded are either misinformed or intentionally deceptive (I’m sure there are some who fall into each of those camps). Education is under-supported due to the disintegration of a solid family foundation in society but money cannot solve that problem.

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life pictures

Welcome Enoch

Almost 3 years to the day after his older brother arrived we got a new arrival today. Stats and story follow.
Name: Enoch Andrew Miller
Arrived: 11:15 am 11/2/2009
Weight: 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Length: 20 1/2 inches

Enoch Miller
Enoch Miller

We had been expecting him for weeks since his two older siblings each came three weeks early – never again. My new motto is “be ready a month early and don’t plan on anything before the due date.” Enoch was not very late as he was due the last week of October, but he held on long enough to make it into November – boy month in our house since Dad, Isaac, and now Enoch all have November birthdays. Unfortunately siblings (under 14) can’t come to the hospital to visit so we can’t get a great little family picture like we had when Isaac was born. We’ll post the best we can get after Enoch gets home.