Class #10 (Spring 2012)--Teaching Your Children to be Valiant

Think about (ponder) how you teach.

Pondering takes time, energy, and honesty, but not guilt.  It is to gain understanding and insight and inspiration.  Guilt beats yourself up and stops the insight.  You need to make quiet time to ponder.  Use the time when you are in the car going to pick up kids from school.  Turn off the music and ponder.  Ponder when you are laying in bed trying to go to sleep at night.  Ponder while you are vacuuming.  Ponder while you are in the shower.  You need to find time to ponder.  If you can't find time then create it.

How do you teach your children the gospel?  Some teach reactive.  They let something happen and then react in the moment.  Some do FHE (organized once per week) which is good, but how is the teaching the rest of the week.

You need to teach your children to fortify them without teaching curiosity.

Story: Jana played volleyball in high school.  She was jut younger than Tracy.  Tracy was very athletic.  Jana takes after her Mom.  She is good, but she isn't great.  She came home from volleyball in tears one day and went straight to her room.  Sister Tanner went to check on her and found out that while they were in practice she was having problems serving.  Tracy was an ace server.  The coach was not patient.  The coach said, "Jana you really aren't doing this right." and then walked away.  She knew it wasn't right.  She was humiliated.  He didn't stop to teach her what she was doing and teach her the correct principles to get it over the net.

Are we teaching like that coach?

How do you change from helping your children be good to helping them be valiant?  How do they become stripling warriors where they stand true and are willing to give their life?

The stripling warriors mothers had a great impact on their learning process, but if you go back further their fathers had a fabulous impact on them when they were laid down their lives to keep their covenants.

What are the methods we will use to do this?  Proverbs 22:6  " Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."   The verb is "train".

Think of a training program.  The muscles you haven't really used get really sore.  They loathe the 1st two weeks of training in a new sport because they knew they would hurt.  They were using muscles they haven't used before.  1.  It's hard.  2. Those being trained say it hurts.  What does this mean in training your children to be valiant?  1. It's going to take lots of time on your part.  2.  You are going to get flack from your kids.  In the end you will have a champion though.

Naomi Randall wrote "I Am A Child of God".  A few years after she wrote the words "teach me all that I must know" Spencer W. Kimball suggested changing the words to "teach me all that I must do." 


Are we teaching them all that they must know.  It's not enough to just know.  We teach them to become valiant when we teach them what to do.

"To testify is to know and to declare. The gospel challenges us to be “converted,” which requires us to do and to become."  The Challenge To Become by "Dallin H Oaks, Ensign November 2000

We have a testimony of saying morning prayers, but how many of us do it?  We know not to yell, but how many of us do it?  We know to keep the Sabbath day holy for 24 hours, but do we do it?  We believe the scriptures are true, but do we read them everyday?  Can you tell what happened in General Conference 6 months ago and how it changed your life?  Does what we know affect the way we live our lives?

We as parents don't know how to teach "to do".  If we don't get the gospel into the "to do" of everyday living our children won't be fortified enough to leave home.  Even the best will be wounded, but not killed if they are fortified enough. (like the stripling warriors)

"Are there so many fascinating, exciting things to do or so many challenges pressing down upon you that it is hard to keep focused on that which is essential? When things of the world crowd in, all too often the wrong things take highest priority. Then it is easy to forget the fundamental purpose of life. Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction. He would have good people fill life with “good things” so there is no room for the essential ones. Have you unconsciously been caught in that trap?"  "First Things First" by Richard G. Scott, Ensign May 2001

Is your life so full of good things you can't create essential experiences?

In the first class "Take Time To Teach"----1.  Knowledge  2. Understanding  3. Act

All education outside the home school/primary stops with the process of getting knowledge.  It's all competitive. 

When it comes to "sharing in class" some are struck with fear.  They think...I love this class, but I don't know how to get up and tell what I've learned.  The reason is the element of competition.  What if I don't give the right answer/  You have been programmed to do that by teachers to learn knowledge.  We are teaching our children to be non-thinkers.  They want to know, "What do you want me to say so I'll be right."  There's a right and a wrong and I want to tell the right.  Did I pass?  Did I fail?  We want to be sure that our children are ready when they leave home to be disciple leaders.  That they can think for themselves.

This learning model needs to be incorporated into our homes.  It teaches children to be valiant.  This is harder that just teaching knowledge.  This is the graduate course.  It sets them out in the world. 

To create leaders we need to make sure that it's safe for them to think for themselves.  They need to know that they have the right to think differently than their peers or the crowd.

5 Principles (from BYU-I Pathways Program)

1. Exercise faith in Christ as a principle of action and power.  
2. To understand that true teaching is done by and with the Holy Ghost.
3. Lay hold on the word of God as found in the scriptures and words of the prophets.
4. Act for themselves and accept responsibility for learning and teaching.
5. Love and serve and teach one another thru the 3 step process of...prepare, teach, prove & ponder.

The foundation of self esteem is you are a child of God and he has given you divine gifts.

Work is good of us.  We are told to pray diligently, pray often.  Don't use the Lord as the bad guy, but as the purpose for choosing what is right.  Faith in Christ our Savior is power.  Love for the Savior increases they will want to make good choices because of their love for Him.

1.  Prepare:

• In home with older children give them a copy of the Ensign and then say next week Johnny will pick and talk and give the FHE on it.  He will let us know ahead of time so we can read it and be prepared to discuss it.
• Following a FHE theme throughout the month.  They come already thinking about it.
• Sunday School class---Do you come having already read the assignment so you are prepared to discuss it?  Are you mentally there?
• Sister Tanner gives us assignments in class so we are prepared to be open and able to listen.
• If you are doing FHE by the seat of your pants that is better than nothing...they can come knowing that you are teaching and that you are having FHE every Monday night.  

2.  Teach One Another"

• Elder Henry B. Eyring told of a time when he attended church with his father and listened to what for young Henry had been a "dull talk." As they walked home, he was trying to think of a way to ask his father why he had been "beaming" during the boring meeting.
  
  "I finally got up enough courage to ask him what he thought of the meeting. He said it was wonderful... Like all good fathers, he must have read my mind, because I started to laugh. He said: 'Hal, let me tell you something. Since I was a very young man, I have taught myself to do something in a church meeting. When the speaker begins, I listen carefully and ask myself what it is he is trying to say. Then, once I think I know what he is trying to accomplish, I give myself a sermon on that subject.' He let that sink in for a moment as we walked along. Then with that special self-depreciating chuckle of his, he said, 'Hal, since then I have never been to a bad meeting'" (To Draw Closer to God [Desert Book: Salt Lake City, 1997], 23)
• You come with that responsibility to learn.  The best way to learn is when we teach each other.
• If you teach a story then 'you' know it.  If they teach the story the Spirit can bear witness that what they are teaching is true.  
• Teaching isn't just giving a lesson.
• We we testify to others it validates us to ourselves.  
• Let your children talk about what they have learned at school or church at the dinner time. 
• They need to teach one another.

3.  Ponder & Prove:

• You want them to try it and see if it works.
• Think about what they have done. 
• Heed the promptings you are given.  
• "O Remember Remember" by Henry B Eyring, Ensign October 2007---Keep a journal of the tender mercies you have seen, it's a learning journal, record your inspiration or thoughts.

Examples:
1.  Preparation:  When her children were all at home she would have them say hello by name to all the widows in the ward.  It was the little things that mean a lot.  It makes them aware.
2.  Teach:  FHE lesson on respect for elderly.  Ask them questions about what they have learned.
3.  Application:  Being nice was easy.  Instead have them visit a nursing home every Sunday for 6 months.  Have your children journal about this.  To retain what they have learned they have to come back to it and reteach/repeat.  Reteach within 2-3 days they will retain better.

Example:  Lesson on the poor
3.  Application:  Take them to soup kitchen and serve.  Go to the Idaho Food bank.  Go to cannery.  They need to do something, but then don't forget to follow up.  The "doing" process changes them from being good to being valiant.

Example:  Eternal families
3.  Application:  Have them find a name and take it to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.

Example: Work
3.  Application:  Plan a service project.  Do something hard.

They have to come back and do sharing!  They have to follow thru.  Let them become the teachers.  They have to not be afraid to speak what they think.

We want to raise them to have courage to stand up at all costs to testify of Christ.

Story: Professor & Chalk

There was a professor of philosophy who was a deeply committed atheist. His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester attempting to prove that God couldn’t exist. His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic. For twenty years, he had taught this class and no one had ever had the courage to go against him. Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him because of his reputation. At the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students, "If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!" In twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say, "Because anyone who believes in God is a fool. If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can’t do it." And every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter into a hundred pieces. All of the students would do nothing but stop and stare. Most of the students thought that God couldn’t exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but for 20 years, they had been too afraid to stand up.

Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to enroll. He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his professor. He was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid. But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought. Nothing they said could ever shatter his faith...he hoped.

Finally, the day came. The professor said, " If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!" The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him, shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom. The professor shouted, "You FOOL!!! If God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!" He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken. The professor’s jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall. The young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared his faith in Jesus for the next half hour. 300 students stayed and listened as he told of God’s love for them and of His power through Jesus.