Family Strengths

Like a few of the other bloggers on this site, I also enjoyed Tuesday's lecture about the characteristics of strong familes. I would say that I have a pretty traditional family, I would say that in relation to these particular qualities we would be considered a strong family, at least majority of the time.

The first quality we talked about in class was committment. This is definitely a prominany quality in my family. My parents have been married for 25 years, and they're still going strong. My parents work extremely hard at there jobs to give my brother and I the lives that they think we deserve; they always, always put family first. The second was appreciaiton & affection. This may be an area where we aren't as strong as we should be. All of our affectionate contact is appropriate, but we don't have a whole lot of affection in the first place. We usually show affection at sad times, happy times, if someone is going away and won't be seen for awhile, or in the case of a home-coming. So I guess this could be considered "frequent & simple."

The third characteristic that was explained in class was positive communication. This is definitely one of our strongest areas. As for me, I can tell my mom just about anything and I know that she won't judge me, she will support me with anything and everything. With my dad, it's a little different, probably just because of the oppisite sex relationship. I still tell him a lot, i just tell my mom different types of things, more "girly" things if you will. With my brother, we aren't the closest but I know I can always count on him to be there if i need to talk. The Fourth, time together, is not the strongest part of my family but it still very important to us. Every person in my family leads an extremely busy and hectic life, so at times it may be hard to find time for eachother, but we do try to get together as much as we can. Though, when we are together it's like we were never apart.

The fifth is spiritual well-being. This is a big part of my family, i was raised catholic ever since i can remember; my brother and i both attended catholic grade school and high school. My dad, who was not always catholic, decided to join the RCIA program at our church to join the Catholic faith. They was a huge step for him and out family. The sixth and final characteristic is Ability to cope with stress. As i said above, every member of my family lives a hectic life, and even if we get under eachother's skin once in awhile, we know when it's time to leave the stress at the door and let we're out of other's way, unless we need help getting through it, in which case we can confide in one another.