Introduction to the Course

 Introduction

Dealing with conflict and stress in a marriage relationship creates chaos in the world today.  There seems to be a lack of communication between men and women, which leads to bad feelings, and sometimes divorce. “Effective communication is critical for building and maintaining strong couple relationships. Communication includes more than words and grammar.  In fact, the emotional layer of communication may be one of the most important to couples” (Wiley, 2007).

Program Details

This family life education program addresses communication and conflict management in a marriage relationship. There is a need for communication skills to deal with conflict and stress.  Recognition and wanting to work on these important skills can help strengthen and fortify relationships.  The activities and research will be valuable lessons for all that participate and will be beneficial to helping couples become closer and more unified in their relationship.

Objective

Because of the need to better learn communication skills in marriage to avoid so much conflict and stress in a relationship, there is a need for teaching a family life education course on these topics (Driver and Gottman, 2004).   The objective is to strengthen and help participants with conflict management in their relationships.  Communication is key to understanding each other and to working through any problems that will arise in any relationship.  

Lessons

    This family life education course consisted of five lessons posted to the web.  This was taught in

conjunction with an upper division course in the Marriage and Family Studies major at Brigham Young

University-Idaho, entitled: Teaching Family Life Education.  The first lesson focused on

communication. We then moved on to conflict resolution and how communication is essential to

managing conflicts. Third, we learned about the importance of emotional intimacy in our relationships.

Fourth, we explored the need for positive self-esteem if we want to have good relationships. In our final

lesson we covered specific communication strategies to help increase the level of happiness and

satisfaction in your relationships.

Portfolio

    This portfolio is a summary of all professional activities associated with developing and teaching

 the family life education program.  There is the introduction, the program structure, and the target

audience.  We focused on communication skills, how to improve our self-esteem and our spouse’s self-

esteem, intimacy, and some other strategies to be successful in our relationships.  The target audience

for this family life education program is young married Latter-day Saint couples.  These couples are in

their twenties and thirties and are in the middle of having children. These couples come from middle-

class families and are in the many different stages of raising children of all ages.  These couples have

also noticed a decrease in marital satisfaction due to increased conflict and not having the needed skills

to communicate effectively. 

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