Marriage, Family & Commitments
Duehren--cduehren@iwacademy.org
LAP #3 – Know Thyself: Connecting the Past with the Present
5 Class Meetings
Rationale: Why are we studying this material?
Lap 3 involves the study of two important issues: our emotional history and the Christian model of family. This
begins with an extension of our personal history of connection and bidding with others. Once an understanding of
our own communication is revealed, the lap focuses on Jesus’ message about family and connection. The purpose
of this lap is to gain a greater understanding of commitments in this world through two historical lenses: personal &
theological.
Learning Goals: Upon Completion of this LAP students will be able to:
Day 1: Evaluate your emotional command system and how it impacts your relationships
with others
Day 2: Assess how emotional heritage works within social structures, especially within relationships
in your life.
Day 3: Analyze the reasons and trends throughout single-hood in our society, including living
arrangements and overall impact.
Day 4: Propose how Jesus’ idea of the family coincides with our society’s modern treatment of
family.
Day 5: Identify how the early Christian communities dealt with marriage and family matters. Discuss
adoption, fostering, surrogate, etc.
Open Lab Assignments:
Below are 3 different personality indicators. Choose at least 2 (you may do all three). Take the
personality assessments, then answer the questions that follow. Everyone must answer the final
question.
Choice 1: Myers- Briggs can be found here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
1. What is your personality category? Give a description of it.
2. Do you agree with this description? What parts, if any, do you see aligning with yourself?
Which parts, if any, do not align with yourself?
3. What do you think about the possible careers that are suggested for the type?
4. What information in your type may help or hinder your relationships with others?
Choice 2. The Enneagram can be found here: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/guide-to-all-risohudson-tests/
You will have to register to take the test.
1. What is your highest type (may be a tie between two or more)? Describe your enneagram
type.You may choose the one of your numbers to use are your primary for the rest of the
questions (choose whichever you identify with the most).
2. Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?
3. Look at the levels of health. Think of yourself when you feel you are at your best--does it line
up? What about when you are not at your best?
4. Look at the tips for your type: Do you find any of these helpful? Why or why not?
Choice 3: Take the Highly-Sensitive Person Test found at the link below, then answer the questions
that follow. http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/
1. What does it mean to be a highly sensitive person? Did this genetic trait surprise you, or are
you familiar with the theory?
2. What were your results? Do you agree with them?
3. How might you need to adjust your relationship to a person who is highly sensitive? What
about highly sensitive children you may have?
Final Question: How does knowing yourself help create successful, stable, and happy relationships?
Please answer the question in short answer format (minimally 5 sentences).
Formative Assessment: Complete 2 days “daily content questions” of your choice. Type, print and
submit in hard-copy form at the corresponding day’s class meeting.
CLASS MEETINGS:
DUE
DATE
DAY 1
Readings/Activity DUE at the beginning of the class:
1. Gottman – Discover Your Brain’s Emotional Command Systems (chapter 4): p. 88-135
(found in your textbook) **Complete all of the questions to analyze your systems**
Daily Learning Goal:
- Evaluate your emotional command system and how it impacts your
relationships with others (of differing command systems).
Daily Content Questions:
1. What is an Emotional Command System (ECS)? If we all differ in how much
we like to have these systems stimulated, then why is it important to identify
our own optimal level of stimulation?
2. What happens when you get out of your comfort zone in any system…why?
What are some examples of being out of your comfort zone? What happens
when a system is over-activated or under-activated over a long period of time?
3. When are these systems developed in the brain? Briefly explain each of the
seven systems? Which one are you?
4. How does gender play a role? Why don’t people have control over the level of
activation that they need or don’t need w/in a system?
DAY 2
Readings/Activity DUE at the beginning of the class:
1. Gottman – Examine Your Emotional Heritage (chapter 5): p. 136-167
(found in your textbook)
2. DeGenova & Rice – Why Examine Family Background; p. 38-40 (weebly)
Italy
A
Monday
2/22
Finland
J
Thursday
2/25
Italy
C
Wednesday
2/24
Finland
Daily Learning Goal:
- Assess how emotional heritage works within social structures, especially
within relationships in your life.
B
Tuesday
2/23
Daily Content Questions:
1. What is your emotional heritage? What did the woman in the story want to
hear from her father on his death bed? Is this a legitimate request?
2. Why would people find exploring their emotional heritage uncomfortable?
Why stir up the past if you don’t have to? What are some reasons to look to
the past (found in Gottman and DeGenova & Rice)?
3. At what stage in our lives do emotional systems in our brains change the most
through experience & why? What is the metaphor about the nervous system
& the fallen snow?
4. Why do siblings/parents/close friends know how to push our buttons? Why is it
so difficult for us to improve these relationships?
5. What are enduring vulnerabilities? What are they results of? What are crazy
buttons? What did we learn from the story examples…Suzanne & Dale?
Who can help you with these vulnerabilities?
DAY 3
Readings/Activity DUE at the beginning of the class:
1. DeGenova & Rice – Categories of Singles; Marital Delay; Why Some
People Remain Single; Advantages and Disadvantages of Being Single;
The Health and Well-Being of Single; Living Arrangements; & Sexual
Behavior: p. 82-93 (weebly) and Flying Solo (See LAP).
Q: In Catholicism, can you have commitment without marriage?
Daily Learning Goal:
- Analyze the reasons and trends throughout single-hood in our society,
including living arrangements and overall impact.
Italy
E
Friday
2/26
Finland
D
Thursday
2/25
Daily Content Questions:
1. Why is single-hood one of the most widely shared experiences of adulthood?
What is the difference in how single-hood affects men and women?
2. What is the difference between the voluntary and involuntary status of singlehood (include the difference between temporary and permanent)? How might
these differences affect people’s lives, relationship, and happiness?
3. What are the reasons for delaying marriage – briefly explain?
4. What are the four reasons for remaining single – briefly explain? Which do you
find the most common and why?
5. What are the advantages of being single? What does the research show? How
does single-hood affect the health and well-being of individuals?
DAY 4
Italy
Readings/Activity DUE at the beginning of the class:
1. Rubio – What Will We Read; Reading the New Testament; Jesus as
Model: Leaving Family Behind; & Jesus’ Message: Questioning the
Primacy of Family Ties: p. 45-54 (found in your textbook)
2. “Intercultural Marriage: Making It Work” article (on the weebly).
Q: What are the rewards/challenges of an inter-cultural marriage? What
does the Church think about marrying someone who is not Catholic?
G
Tuesday
3/1
Finland
F
Monday
2/29
Daily Learning Goal:
- Propose how Jesus’ idea of the family coincides with our society’s modern
treatment of family.
Daily Content Questions:
1. Does the New Testament put the family first (include love of marriage &
parenting)? Why or why not? How do Americans feel about the family?
2. When studying the New Testament, why are there problems with translation,
distortion, mistakes, interpretation?
3. Why did Jesus say: “Spiritual kinship surpasses the accidents of birth”? Do you
agree or disagree?
4. What does Jesus and scripture teach about nurturing & women’s role to care for
the family? What about the role of fathers?
5. What were the two cultures at the time of Jesus & what do they tell us? Why
are we taught that Jesus puts family first?
DAY 5
Readings/Activity DUE at the beginning of the class:
1. Rubio – Early Christian Practice; A New Kind of Family; Why
Celibacy; & Return to Family: p. 54-64 (found in your textbook);
Daily Learning Goal:
- Identify how the early Christian communities dealt with marriage and family
matters.
Q: What are your thoughts on interracial adoption?
Daily Content Questions:
1. What can the early Christians teach us about family? What about the use of
agape & adoptions? How did “family” operate in the early Christian
communities?
2. Are children the reason we get married? How does Jesus view children?
3. What is egalitarianism in the context of marriage?
4. Does marriage come with a status…hierarchy? Are those outside of marriage
excluded…how?
5. Why does Paul talk about burning at the stake or marriage? What is the reason
for celibacy in early Christianity?
Italy
J
Thursday
3/3
Finland
H
Wednesday
3/2
6. What are your thoughts on adoption? Would you adopt a child? Why or why
not? What about interracial adoption? What might some of the challenges be?