Mother’s Day weekend was a really nice weekend. At church they had the young women take over all of the primary classes so all the women could go to Relief Society together. It has been a while since I have been to that class. They have a new lesson format now. Everyone sits in a circle and it is more of a discussion then a lesson. Today we talked about how we can lead our families in the gospel in our homes. It was a good discussion. I have had a few thoughts I have been mulling over for a bit. After the discussion today I added a few more thoughts to my list. Some of the specific things that have been on my mind are; raising a sin resistant generation, helping my kids having strong relationships with each other and being each others best friends and strongest advocates, having a strong service minded work ethic, doing your best at whatever you are doing.
Doing your best at whatever you are doing.
This is going to be a big focus of our summer. More often than not lately when my kids are asked to do something and they try and squeak by with the bare minimum expectations. It is tricky with school because I am easily distracted with getting them out the door or to other activities so I don’t notice until they are gone. Summer is a great chance for them to develop and reinforce good habits because we can take all day for them to try, and try again until they get it right.
Strong service minded work ethic.
How is this for sounding like a crochety grumpy old lady-kids in general these days are getting so soft, whiny, and whimpy. I tell my kids all the time when they have to do something they don’t want to that they are so lucky I am teaching them to be a successful, independent, confident, happy, capable person. They usually practice their grumbling at this point.
I want them to do service. I feel like they are fairly willing to do service for others. Ryan and I have talked about increasing the frequency of serving others and finding more opportunities for them to serve. Harvesters Food Pantry is always needing volunteers. Matthew has actually done this and likes doing it and wants to do it more, the minimum age is 8, so when Alli turns 8 it will be nice they can both go. We have done tray favors for meals on wheels before too. I want to find some not so fun service things too. It is great to enjoy your service but I want them to do some things that are hard work too so they understand ‘being fun’ isn’t a requirement for service. The point is serving others however they need it. Summer will be a good opportunity for them to learn to serve each other more too. I see glimpses of this from all of them occasionally, which makes me all warm and gooey inside. Tying in with my other thought of them being best friends and advocates for each other I want them to find more ways to serve each other. This past Saturday we had 2.5 tons of rocks delivered to our driveway. Ryan and I put in a few edged beds around our house that we wanted filled with rocks. We had all the kids shoveling, hauling, and placing rocks. It only took us a few hours but I liked all of us working on a big work project together. I remember many Saturday work projects with my family growing up. They are fond memories, I don’t remember how fond of what I was doing at the time I was, but it taught me to appreciate working and to work hard. I want my kids to learn that too. I told them every time they look at those rocks now they can think of how their hard work put them there and helped make our yard look nicer. Emilee considers all the rocks her giant rock collection now so she was tickled, Allison rolled her eyes, and Matthew gave me a sarcastic thumbs up. I think its working.
Best friends and advocates.
This one to me kind of ties in with becoming a sin resistant generation too. I want them to always have two best buddies that they can always rely on to help them, and stick by them. This one can be the most frustrating to me sometimes because it seems like the exact opposite is happening with all their fighting and digging at each other. I want them to develop close relationships with each other and support each other in their triumphs and failures. I’m still thinking on better ways to foster this. This talk from General Conference a few years ago is one I really liked and have read and thought about several times since.
Sin Resistant Generation by Joy D. Jones
The title itself just caught me when she said it. I think it is similar to the phrase, ‘in the world but not of it’ but for some reason ‘sin resistant’ is more clear to me than the other. I of course don’t want my kids to go looking for bad situations, but I think that is one of the biggest differences between when I was young and my kids now. For the most part I had to go to the bad situations, on a normal basis I wasn’t in situations or circumstances that were against the gospel. Today I feel like the opinions and beliefs and norms of society are more and more contradictory of the gospel so just going to school, or participating in regular activities can present situations that I would have never had to face. Pornography, gender issues, sex, drugs, anti-christian/religion were all around when I was young but they weren’t considered normal, ok and even taught in school in some cases. I thought her talk was a clear and direct approach and reminder for the things to help our family be able to understand, and know our beliefs clearly and firmly.
I know the ‘primary answers’ to help our family develop this. I of course want to renew our efforts to read together daily, morning and night prayer and have weekly FHE. Our last few FHE lessons have been focusing on our kids starting to do those things on their own. They all have some good strengths. Emilee is our best little prayer. She is very good at remembering her prayers before bed. Alli is our most frequent scripture reader on her own. Matthew is good at internalizing and applying things we talk about with scriptures. In the morning for prayers most of the time we now have three kids kneeling on the floor with their little bums lined up in the air waiting to say prayers without to much push back. It makes me happy to see them start to develop their own habits and testimonies. We also have been trying to focus more on what we are reading and understand it, then just reading. It took me a while to learn that. I have read the scriptures many times but most of those times it was just reading without the pondering part. I want to help my kids learn how to do that early in their lives. One last thing before I’m done. Each year the primary has a new song that is released that they focus on with the theme. I always love to hear what the new song is. They have without fail been some of my favorite primary songs. I get goose bumps when I hear a group of primary children sing them. It’s powerful. ‘If the Savior Stood Beside Me’, and ‘God Gave Us Families’ are awesome songs. This year the song is called ‘I Will Be What I Believe’ I LOVE IT. We listen to it all the time, and I got the piano music so I can play and the kids can sing it. I think it goes along perfect with being a sin resistant generation too.