This week learning about different theories of the family has been really interesting. As we have talked about each of the theories I understood myself and my family better and the things that we were doing. I thought oh that's why my mom or dad do this or that is why I do that when something happens. Theories are a great way to understand why people do what they do. They aren't laws or set in stone because what people do changes from person to person. So theories about these different things is a great way to understand the family better.

I also really liked our discussion on the family systems. I like the idea of the need to look at the family as a whole. I think often times it is so easy to look at an indivdual and place judgements or ideas about why they are acting the way that they are but without looking at their home life and what their family is like we can be very wrong about our assumptions.

Also, as we learned about sub-sets as part of the family systems theory I began to think about all the sub-sets in my family. I had never really understood before why we divided the way we did or chose to do things with certain siblings but after the idea of sub-sets I understood this much better. For instance my family has always put three of my siblings together and then the other three together. We divided them that way for a lot of reasons like the things we like to do, the way we think, the way we eat, the way we look a-like. We've always had this sub-set for as long as I can remember so learning about it helped me to  understand my family better. I love all of my family but I do tend to relate and connect more with some of my siblings than the others.

Today we talked about family rules and the ones that we follow the most can sometimes be the unwritten or unspoken rules. In my family that was definately the case. They were the things that drove me crazy growing up. For example we didn't talk about somethings in my family like family problems or intimacy or anything like that. They were taboo subjects. I hated not being able to talk to them about these things because growing up I would have liked to talk to them and ask them questions about what was going on in our family.

I think it's really important to be aware of the unpoken rules that we have in our family. They can be positive or negative but if they are unspoken then children may not feel like they can talk to their parents about it. That is how I felt as a child and teenager and I didn't like it. So in my family I want to take a step back and make sure that I am realizing what those rules are and I want to make sure they are positive.