To Have or Not to Have: Response to Sarah's Promp

The decision to have children is something that I have considered and thought about more since I came to college. I used to think I wanted children because I grew up with so many siblings, and family life was all I knew. I had always gotten along pretty well with children, and still do. I think babies are adorable, and babies in costume are my weakness. I love watching family vlogs on YouTube.

Even through all of this, I still have doubts about having kids of my own. When I think about having kids, I get a lot of anxiety. It is such a responsibility. I would be in charge of an actual human life. There are times when I cannot even take care of myself. Also these people are completely dependent on you. I do not like that idea; that is so much pressure. As it can obviously be seen, I have a lot of anxiety and fears about having children. I feel like these anxieties are common ones that I have heard from friends. It has been interesting having conversations with my friends about the decision to have children. I have found that a majority of my friends, do not want kids. I have yet to figure out if this is coincidental or not. 

I am also at a point where I do not know where my post-college career is going to take me. I have always wanted to be super successful in my career. I am not saying that children would hinder that, but I just do not want to jeopardize that. 

Taking Family Communication has helped me understand how families function, however I am still undecided on if I want kids of my own. At this point in my life, as a 20-year college student, I have absolutely no idea if kids are in my future. The question to have kids is one I feel I cannot answer at this moment in time, because I am so unsure of pretty much everything else in my life. At the end of it all, I could see myself being happy with or without kids. Only the future knows what is in store. 

(Top: Holly) (Left: Danielle)

(Right: Jackie & Michelle)

Secrets, Secrets: Response to Kenna's Prompt

So as I mentioned in my last post, my sisters do not think I can keep secrets. When they first called me out on that fact, I was really angry and got defensive. However, as time has gone on I have realized that I am terrible at keep secrets when it comes to my family. I tell my mom everything, about everyone. So when I say I will not tell anyone, my mom is the exception. Recently, I kept a big secret from my mom. Only to find out that she already knew.

Here is how it went down. Holly, being the social butterfly that she is, wanted to have a Fourth of July party at our cabin. Side note, our cabin is two hours away from our actual home base. Holly asked my parents if she and some friends could go out to the cabin to celebrate. My parents said no because they would be out of town and did not feel comfortable will people being there without them present. This did not go over well with Holly. So, being the rebellious child that she is, Holly stole the cabin keys from my parent’s room and headed up to the cabin with friends. She told my parents that she was going to her friend’s grandparent’s cabin. She even went as far as turning all location finding services off on her phone so nobody could track her phone or find her location. So fast forward a week and my mom finds the cabin keys in Holly’s car. Obviously my mom confronts Holly, and Holly says that she took them before she asked to go, and never put them back. By this point, Holly had already told all of the sisters. Fast forward another week and my dad is chatting with our neighbor at the cabin at the neighbor mentions Holly being up there with some friends over the Fourth of July. My dad does not do anything with this information. Later that week my mom finds photos from Holly’s trip on the computer, prints them off and confronts her again. All Holly has to say is oops. My mom goes to my dad, and my dad just goes ‘yeah I know, Mike (our neighbor) told me.’ In the end my parents did not punish Holly. It is something we all just laugh about now.

For me it strengthened my bond with Holly, because I was trying to prove to her that she could trust me to keep these bigger secrets. I was doing a pretty good job of it, and was super proud of myself for keeping it. But then my pride was shot down when I found out literally everyone else in the family knew about it. In the end, Holly has started to view me as more trustworthy, which is good because it creates a relationship where we can open dialogue. The family was not super affected by this secret. Like I said, it is something we laugh about. With my family, it is really hard to keep secrets from each other, just because I am so close with my sisters, and we talk about everything, secrets get shared. At the end of the day, I really like that I can have an open dialogue with my sisters and that there are not any secrets between us.

Too Many Nicknames: Response to Emily's Prompt

Looking at the four elements of intimacy I can see how they all apply to my family and how we function. However, the most profound would probably be closeness.

Closeness is a big thing in the Dooge household. My sisters are my best friends, and I would be very lost without them. My family and I are very interdependent on each other. Whatever happens to one of us, happens to all of us. Obviously the event in question affects some more than others, but the family dynamic is still affected. For example, my twin sister’s play on different basketball teams. Playing on different teams puts a bit of a strain on their relationship with each other, but it also puts a strain on the family dynamic because we have to divide and conquer their different game schedules. My sisters and I share everything with each other. I usually know more because I’m everyone’s favorite sister. Actually it is because I like to listen and am always willing to sit down with each of them and work out their problems. My mom and I are also very close. I am really bad at keeping secrets from her, something that my sisters have pointed out to me on numerous occasions.

The sisters also have our own private language in the forms of nicknames for each other. Here’s a list of some of them:

Danielle: Dilly Bill

Stephanie: Steponie, Stiffy Bear

Holly: Hill Bill

Jackie: Jickie, Jickie Bear, Peanut

Michelle: Boo Bear, Boo, Pumpkin

Out of all of us, the twins, and especially Michelle, seems to have the most nicknames. I’m not really sure why that is, probably because they are the babies of the family and they are more accepting of nicknames.

We use these nicknames all the time. So much so that I have noticed I call them by their nicknames in public and I get some confused looks. But it does not bother any of us because it is just part of our language with each other. Recently I have noticed that I only call them by their real names when talking to people outside of our family. But even then I still bring up what their nicknames are.

I think through all of this the other elements of family intimacy can be seen.

We are all committed and dedicated to each other and being a family. Before we go to bed our Mom always says “Goodnight, love you, see you in the morning.” And that’s like her thing with all of us kids before we go to bed. In fact, when we were younger, I believe it was Holly, would not go to bed unless our mom said that to her and we said it back.

We also self-disclose to one another. As I mentioned above we share our problems with each other and work through them together. Overall, we look to each other for advice.

I think the Dooge family has a very strong sense of family intimacy. There are times where it is stronger than other times, but overall it is pretty high and has not really changed for the worst, a fact I am grateful for.