Self Evaluated

This past week in class we talked about relationships; parent attachment, sibling subsystems, same-sex attraction, and gender. I'm gonna start with sibling subsystem. In class we talked about how if we grew up as the opposite gender how that would change how we would have grown up and how it would have effected our family system. Me being a girl, if I had grown up as a boy I can think of a lot of different things that wouldn't be the same. First off, my little brother would have a older brother to look up to seeing as he's the youngest with only two older sisters. I probably wouldn't be as close with my mom. Then there's also the effect it would have on my older sister. Then we talked about same-sex attraction, this subject was pretty interesting to me. I never really thought about it, I mean I had some friends who were gay but I never thought how it could effect the world. One of my favorite things someone mentioned in class is this, "Gay marriage effects both genders. For every gay couple you have two women or men left that will never be a mother or a father.". Another thing mentioned was just because a boy is feminine does not make him gay. which leads into my last point, gender. Growing up until the age of about 9 I was into barbies and dress up but then I transitioned to liking more "tom-boy"ish kind of things. I liked playing outside and didn't mind getting dirty, Bugs didn't bother me, and I got really into Star Wars. While my sister wore blouses and jewelry I wore t-shirts and holy jeans. We were honestly like night and day. But just because I dressed and acted a certain way didn't mean I liked girls. Same for boys. Like I mentioned earlier, my little brother grew up in a house of mostly girls, and yes sometimes he'll goof off and act a little girly but this does not make him gay. This just shows he's in touch with his feminine side, which is not a bad thing. I can count on more then one hand were my brother was able to cheer me up because he kinda understood. He is one of the most thoughtful, caring, sensitive, and understanding guys I know all because he doesn't mind expressing himself. In the world there is a lot of debate on what little girls and boys should play with and how it will effect them. There is this misconception somewhere out there that little girls should only play with dolls and such and little boys should only play with toy cars. Honestly I owned a big ol' bucket of cars as a child and it was AWESOME! Another example is if you hand a little girl a stick most the time she'll see it as a wand or something of the sort, but if you give a little boy the stick most the time he'll see it as a sword or gun or in my little brothers case a wizards staff, lol. Kids will be what they want til people start telling them what to be. Once someone is called gay or childish or in some cases unattractive, that's how they will start to see themselves. This is not okay but sadly this is the world we live in but its up to us to change that.

Diversity

This week in class we talked about the three keys of diversity. These three things are Culture, Class, and Ethnicity/race. The biggest factor is Culture. As we talked in class I noticed how big of an effect Culture has on people. Most people believe culture came from where you lived. As this can be true there are some flaws in that. As a kid growing up around the army environment I moved around a lot therefore being exposed to many different cultures. Because I didn't live in one place longer then three years my culture kinda became what my family made it. It didn't depend on where we lived like it would for most. It was more of a blend of how my mom and dad grew up. Then again isn't that true for most families? I mean yeah a lot of people live in the same place their whole life but I think their culture is more specific to their family. The place they live can influence some of what they believe and how they act but over all how they live is based directly upon how the parents raised the kids. Back to what I was saying before, growing up in the army lifestyle, we mostly did things our own way. Of course we had developed our own traditions and well being but then there was another fact of what was socially acceptable in the place we we're stationed or lived. For example at one point I lived in the south and there they are very disciplined in manners such as "yes sir" or "no ma'am". Yet in the north, I've used such speech and they take it completely different. This is were culture of region is noticed. Also going along with the different regions you can factor in Ethnicity and/or Race. Even though a lot of the racial fights have been long over there are still some people who have opinions. Its interesting seeing certain people, depending on the location, react when they see my parents together. My mom is white and my dad is half black. For some reason this still surprises or disgust people. Because of how I was brought up, I don't see a problem of issue with them, nor can I understand how other people do. I've noticed though that even though the world has changed people still make opinions on what the "norm" is of what ever color you were born as. This I find very silly. There are so many social errors that are made because people take one look and place you into a certain category or class. Where we all learned this and where it came from is my over all question. Who decided that it was okay to judge people on what that look like, where their from, or even how they live there life. How I see it is we all have a similar purpose, we came to earth to get a body, learn, and then continue on to the spirit world. So in the end it doesn't really matter how much money you make or if your not the same color as the person next to you, now does it.

welcoming or not?

So I was thinking about what I learned this past week and the subject of Family Mapping really stood out to me. There were three general boundaries we discussed. These three boundaries consisted of closed off, over inviting, and welcoming. As we went into detail I noticed some similarities that we described about each of these to people in my life. The first one is closed off. The image that we discussed of this is comparing it to a house with a tall, thick, brick wall around a house. These kind of families are very unapproachable and the atmosphere around them is just uninviting. Then there is the over inviting kind of family. We compared this to more of a house with a open yard and no real fence. Kinda like a house you could just walk into without knocking. These kind of families are very friendly but can be a bit over the top. The last one is welcoming. The image we put with this is a house with a small, white, picket fence around it. This kind of family is the kind that when you talk to them, you just feel happy. They seem very put together and down to earth. Like I said earlier, I've seen these three kinds of boundaries in families I know or have grown up with. Its interesting though that though a family may seem one way, as a teen, I see how their kids act; which is sometimes completely different then what their parents portray. So now how do we really determine what boundaries our family or any other family belongs in. I mean when you first look at people you could think one thing but the minute you start talking to them that view could completely change. Plus there's also the fact that we don't all treat everyone the same so to one person we could seemed closed off but to another we could seem welcome. I guess it all depends on where we want to put ourselves or if we really care what people think.