Just like your parents?

 Do you ever have those moments when you feel like you sound exactly like your parents? Or when a friend or sibling calls you out for being just like your mom or dad? Or sometimes being like your Grandma or Grandpa? Well this week in my Family Relations class Brother Michael D. Williams said something that really stuck out to me. You know, like those moments when someone says something and it's like a light switch got flipped and all of a sudden you understand the world. That is what this comment was for me, he said "The word familiar comes from family. That's why we feel like we sometimes feel like we turn into our parents." It clicked for me in high stress situations or high emotion situations we go to what is familiar to us. That is why we turn into our parents. It is literally how our brain is wired. Our family is our family, good or bad, for better or for worse. These habits can be changed with a lot of hard work and constant, consistent effort in hopes of being better for our children and grandchildren. But how do we know what to work on? Or how to work on it? Well we learned about this in class as well. It was actually kind of funny. Brother Williams asked for a few volunteers; he picked a guy and two girls and continued to explain that the guy and one of the girls would be the parents, dad and mom respectively, and that the third volunteer would be an eleven year old daughter. He asked them to step out into the hall as he pulled in two benches and told the rest of the class to “watch this”. At this point most of the class moved to the edge of our seats and we got ready to see whatever it was he was so excited for. Well we found out quickly because it took less than 2 minutes after they came back in for the family dynamic to become clear. The “daughter” sat quietly and made herself small on one side of “Mom” and “Dad” sat on the other side on the edge of the second bench. Without knowing it this “family” wrote their story just by the way they walked into a room and sat down. The experiment continued and they created their own strengths and weaknesses and they wrote their story on the spot in front of the class. It was interesting to watch and got me thinking about my own family. What would my class see if it was my family that walked into the room? What would I see if it was my family now that I know what I know? The Professor explained that when a family walks into a room there are a few points we can quickly pick up on, like how they seated themselves and created a story of a distant dad and a lack of a relationship between him and his daughter. But he also explained that there are a lot of important things that are better understood through conversation and having each family member share their point of view. In the end the ideal conclusion to draw is that both parents meaning a mom and a dad are a team easily interchangeable, their efforts picking up where the efforts of the other leave off. So in our efforts to not be like our parents or to be like our parents we should work on how we respond in high emotion situations and work on being one with our significant other working together with the same end goal and your children's best interest in mind.