Bond Good Feelings with Good Things. When I lived in a Married Student ward in college with my two little toddlers, there was a movement going on as to how to help toddlers learn to be quiet in church. Many parents would take a fussing child out to the foyer and hold their arms around the child, preventing any movement. The thinking was that the child would come to prefer staying in the chapel and being able to wiggle quietly, rather than go out when noisy and have to be restrained. Some parents were extra thorough at restraining their baby good and long. This bothered me so much, as those struggling babies were surely developing a major dislike of church—they likely cried each time they saw the building! “This is the bad place where Daddy is mean to me!” In contrast, my “Family Relation” class professor taught us to Bond Happy Thoughts with Happy Things. When his little boy got fussy in church, he would take him outside to feed the horse on the adjoining property. Consequently, his toddler son learned to love to go to church! “That is the happy place where Daddy lets me feed the horsey!” One summer, enthusiasm for going to the library was waning. That year, the Summer Reading Program was not so fun, and so it wasn’t as exciting to go visit the library (although they usually enjoyed checking out neat new books when we got them there). I decided to Celebrate Coming Home from the Library! The next week, we did a Drive Through Car Wash on the way home!! A couple of times, we stopped for a quarter ice cream cone to celebrate. The plan was to bond good feelings of excitement with a good thing like going to the library! Family Home Evening is a happy time, so we must bond to it happy feelings. It is not the time for discipline or scoldings or withholding a treat for those who misbehave. We don’t want our children to leave FHE thinking, “I hate Family night!” We must bond happy things with happy feelings. Family night is a wonderful time to teach principles without singling anyone out. It is a great place to listen carefully and respectfully to each family member’s point of view or to let the children bear their testimony or even do the teaching and be praised for doing so. And the family night treat is for everyone, just because he is a member of the family, regardless if he slept through the lesson or rolled on the floor! (Chances are he heard the message, by the way, even if we think he didn’t!) The goal is for each to leave FHE thinking, “Family Nights are fun!” or at least, “FHE is where my opinions are valued and where my parents tell me how much they love me.” Our family got the chance to travel to a special Temple Open House before it was dedicated. It was a choice experience for one of our sons for he strongly felt the Spirit there. After recording the experience in his journal, giving a talk about it, and remembering those special feelings, he will always bond choice feelings with temples. Conversely, our younger son was told he had to stick with us the whole way through. So during the entire tour, he struggled with that. He wanted to go ahead with his brothers, or break away from our control. He totally missed the awesome experience and the choice feelings. I wish we had allowed more freedom and had focused instead on whispering the special things we saw and what we felt, helping him to bond happy feelings with happy places. That same college professor told us about a father who carried a ruler with him during family scripture study. If one of his three children fell asleep during scripture readying, he rapped that one on the head! Well, two of his children grew up to be atheists and a third became an agnostic! The only thing they had gained from scripture study was hatred for the Word! Therefore, when Mark and I began to read the scriptures with our little ones who grew wiggly quickly, I decided that to make Scripture Time a happy time, I would provide refreshments! Consequently, whenever we read together, we ate graham crackers too! The bottom line is this: We must be careful not to make God into The Bad Guy who is disappointed in us. Rather, wait to bring Him up when we can couple it with praise. Never say “God did not like the way you were noisy in church,” but instead, “God must be so proud of you because you were so quiet today in His house.” We want to show our children a loving, merciful God who suffered in order to allow us repentance. The message we must teach is, “He died so we can try again and again to do better,” along with, “We are trying to be more and more like Him so we will be happy! We want to be comfortable in His presence when He comes again.” ideasformypocket.blogspot/2014/06/we-talk-of-christ-we-rejoice-in-christ.html
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 02:58:18 +0000
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