Good morning. My name is Carolyn Wall.
When I was three-years-old, my mother had me on a leash. Literally. During a family outing to the St. Louis Science Center, my mother strapped me into one of those zipper-in-the-back child leashes. It was bright yellow, just to help you visualize this. It didn’t even have one of those cute backpacks they put on the leashes now to help the kid feel more fashionable and less….leashed.
I don’t remember being a particularly roaming child, but I must have stressed my mother out enough that she felt I needed something more firm than a held hand. At some point during the outing to the Science Center, someone let go of the leash. I believe the current winning story is that my mother handed the leash to one of my older sisters and she got distracted looking at either a cool scientific display or a cute boy.
Whatever actually happened, I escaped, leash and all. After a search, some crying from both of us, and announcements over the loudspeaker, I was reunited with my mother and all was well.
Regardless of whatever leashes we put on our children, physical or otherwise, they will probably make choices we don’t like. Actually, not probably - they WILL make choices we don’t like.
To be clear, I’m also speaking of the children we can parent but we aren’t the parents of. When I say “our children” in this context, I’m speaking of the children we teach at church, nieces and nephews, neighbors, any child whose life we are a part of.
We love them, we pray for them, but we know they will still make mistakes. I’m sure our earthly parents felt the same about each of us and maybe still do. I know our Heavenly Father has a similar perspective - He loves us, wants us to make the best choices, and knows that we will still fail.
So what are we to do? As with all things in life, I feel we should look to our one perfect example, Jesus Christ.
In the premortal existence, a plan was presented for us spirit children to come to earth, gain physical bodies, and return back to our Heavenly Father. Knowing we would make mistakes along the way, our Heavenly Father needed a way to deal with us sinning and becoming fallen. Lucifer, who would become Satan, proposed to force us all to chose the right. No choice, no sin, no problem. Jesus, who would become our Savior, proposed that a sacrifice could be made and an Atonement provided. The second plan would preserve our agency, our ability to chose and prove ourselves.
The second plan was the one selected and here we are now, with the ability to chose and sin and repent. Jesus Christ felt the gift of agency was so important that he was willing to suffer immeasurable pain and agony and die to allow us our agency.
We must allow children their God-given agency. Anyone controlled and scheduled from sun-up to sun-down has very few opportunities to exercise their agency. I use the term “exercise” deliberately. Agency is a gift from our Heavenly Father that we must learn to use correctly. It takes practice and work. Each child must learn how to chose and what consequences mean.
When a child is young, we can start small. Some of the ways I’ve implemented this that have worked well are having a child choose between two options for a meal, choose between two punishments when being disciplined, choose which chore to do first. Especially when a child is young - and sometimes older - letting him choose between two options, either of which the parent is fine with, is a good way to help them exercise agency.
As the child gets older, I’ve expanded that to more open-ended choosing. Choosing when to go to bed, choosing to do homework or not, choosing a punishment when being disciplined. Though I do sometimes reserve what we call “veto rights”. Proposing watching two movies on the couch as a punishment gets vetoed, for example.
Obviously, we must make room for teaching and boundaries need to be set and enforced. Obedience to commandments, laws of the land, and cultural norms need to be taught. But there comes a time, oh so quickly, in a child’s life, that he or she must be given the opportunity to choose whether to obey or not.
We cannot, and should not attempt, to force children to do things, even things that WE are certain are best for them.
In an October 2016 General Conference talk, President Uchtdorf spoke about a woman who prayed for years that a daughter to who had left the church would return. He says,
“She needed only to understand that, as painful as it might be for our Father in Heaven, He will not force anyone to choose the path of righteousness. God did not force His own children to follow Him in the premortal world. How much less will He force us now as we journey through this mortal life? God will invite, persuade. God will reach out tirelessly with love and inspiration and encouragement. But God will never compel—that would undermine His great plan for our eternal growth.”*
We cannot, and should not, attempt to pray away someone’s agency. I can promise you that it won’t work. That’s not to say we can’t pray for a child who is making less than ideal choices. We should pray for them, pray for a softened heart, pray that they feel our love and our Savior’s love, pray for opportunities to teach and share testimony. But we can’t pray them into changing unless they make the choice to change.
Elder Robert D. Hales taught in General Conference 1993 how to handle a child making poor choices,
“How should we react? We understand and respect the principle of agency. We pray that life’s experiences will help them regain their desire and ability to live the gospel. They are still our children, and we will love and care about them always. We do not lock the doors of our house nor the doors to our heart.” +
The best way to respond to a child’s bad choices - or his good choices for that matter - is with love. The adage of “hate the sin but love the sinner” is true. Even if the poor choices make it necessary to be physically separated, either for the child’s safety or our own, that doesn’t mean the love should stop.
In addition to not just allowing, but encouraging agency, how do we interact with the children in our lives so they can continue to grow once they learn how to choose? I can let my children exercise their agency every morning by choosing between pancakes or waffles for breakfast, but they still won’t be able to cook their own pancakes or waffles. By the same token, there’s a necessary gap of several years between when my children could choose which breakfast to have and now, when they are starting to cook things by themselves.
“Intelligent observation tells us that growth comes one step at a time. The scriptures say precept upon precept, line upon line. Just as the baby learns to walk one faltering step at a time and learns to speak one word at a time, we learn to care, to serve, and to love one step at a time. We learn to master everything one concept at a time.”^
We shouldn’t jump too quickly from a child exercising agency to being responsible for each choice, and its consequences, in her life. But the responsibility must come as it makes sense for each child and waiting too long will have detrimental consequences for both parent and child. Babies learn first to crawl, then walk, then run. Responsibilities for a child can follow the same path: first he can pick up toys, then he can put away laundry, then he can sweep the floor, and so on.
The offices of the Priesthood clearly show that this method of adding responsibility is also the Lord’s way. The different offices of the priesthood build upon each other, giving more and more responsibility as the priesthood holder grows and proves himself. As in these things, with a child doing chores at home, help and teaching is provided.
The path of teaching a child a responsibility is show, teach, supervise, and trust. Let’s use saying prayers as an example. First the child sees people praying: at home, at church, etc. Then both at home and in Primary, we teach about prayer: the correct way to start and end, what a prayer means. Then the child is given chances to say prayers by himself, with maybe a little help from adults to start off with. Then we eventually trust the child to say prayers by himself, both for groups and personally.
When Nephi was commanded to get the brass plates from Laban or he was commanded to build a ship to carry his family across the vast waters, he had already been through years of being taught, making choices, dealing with the consequences, watching others choose and observing their consequences. Once he was mature enough, the Lord commanded him, through his priesthood leader - his father, Lehi - to take on responsibility for these difficult tasks.
From Elder Bednar:
“Remember, Nephi tried several different approaches before he was able to successfully obtain the plates of brass from Laban. And he did not learn how to build a ship of curious workmanship all at one time; rather, he was shown by the Lord“ from time to time after what manner [he] should work the timbers of the ship”.” $
We are taught line upon line and as a child grows, she is given responsibility the same way.
It can be hard to give a child responsibility and the chance to fail, especially since the benefits of giving children responsibility aren’t always seen immediately. I had a long talk with a child in my life recently. Without going into details, I felt she wasn’t taking sufficient responsibility for her age for a particular aspect of her life. In full sincerity, I told her that of course I want to just take care of this for her. I want to take care of Everything for her. But me doing this thing for her wasn’t what she needed to grow. I told her that I’d be hurting her in the long run by doing it for her now instead of her learning to do it for herself.
Along with encouraging the exercise of agency and giving responsibility slowly, but not too slowly, I need to revisit the necessary boundaries I spoke of earlier. Discipline and boundaries are very necessary as we do our best to help these precious children grow. Our Heavenly Father has given us many boundaries in the form of commandments and metes out punishments as necessary when we break those commandments and sin. Examples of this are all throughout ancient and modern scripture.
Doctrine and Covenants section 121 gives us very specific guidance on how to discipline and it applies very well to disciplining children:
“Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;”
While the concept looks simple on paper, actual execution can be extremely difficult. I know that personally, when one of the children I deal with has done something worthy of a sharp reproval, usually the last thing my imperfect self wants to do is show them love.
Showing a child love during discipline can take many forms, depending on the age. Giving a hug, reading a book together, asking about his day, doing a chore together. All of these things boil down to time.
As President Uchtdorf said,
“In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time. Taking time for each other is the key for harmony at home.” %
When I was pregnant with our third child, I felt pretty disconnected from the rest of my family. I remember contemplating what I could do to show them that I loved them since I felt I wasn’t doing a very good job. I decided that I needed to spend more time with them. This was before my children were in school and my husband was already working from home. So when that inspiration came, I kind of laughed at it - I couldn’t think of anyone who literally spent more time with their family than I did - I was in the same house with them pretty much 24 hours a day. Then I realized that I was being inspired to actually SPEND the time with them instead of just coexisting in the same space. I made an effort to spend both group and individual time with my family where I was truly engaged in what we were doing and talking about. My older son was about 18 months old at the time so his one-on-one time consisted of reading books and watching him jump on his bed. But he seemed so happy to have my undivided time and attention for a little bit that I was sure I had made the right choice.
I can promise you from personal experience that on those occasions I’ve been able to humble myself and show love, even when it’s difficult and even when it’s not visibly reciprocated, my relationship with the child is always better for it.
Another humbling and difficult, but equally important aspect of parenting a child is apologizing. And no, I don’t mean just telling our children to apologize. We’re commanded to repent and to forgive all men. I feel that included in both those commandments is the commandment to apologize, even and especially to a child.
Sister Patricia Holland shared a story where she felt she needed to apologize to her daughter and what her daughter shared afterward.
“...[my daughter] confided in me that my willingness to say “I’m sorry, I’ve made a mistake, please forgive me” gave to her a great sense of self-worth, because it said to her that she was worthy enough for a parental apology, that sometimes children can be right. I wonder if personal revelation ever comes without counting ourselves as fools before God? I wonder if reaching and teaching our children requires becoming more childlike ourselves? Shouldn’t we share our deepest fears and pain with them, as well as our highest hopes and joys, instead of simply trying to lecture and dominate and reprove them again and again?” #
I want to share that apologizing to my children when I do wrong to them has been one of the governing principles of my parenting life. I’ve apologized to everyone from the yet-unborn for not feeling grateful for her while she was digging her feet into my ribs to the crying infant I felt anger toward to the misbehaving toddler I yelled at when it wasn’t necessary to the sassy pre-teen that I sassed right back.
We teach our children from the youngest ages to say “I’m sorry”. The way we teach the Sunbeams who are 3 years old is “If I can say hippopotamus, I can say ‘I’m sorry’.” Shouldn’t we take our own counsel? Trust me, children will figure out we’re imperfect at some point. Teaching them that we know it and that we want to do better is a powerful lesson to teach even the youngest among us.
As Sister Holland said, consider what it means to a child when we apologize when we make a mistake, the unspoken messages we convey:
I’m not perfect either.
I need your forgiveness.
How you feel about me matters to me.
Your opinion matters.
You matter.
(and most especially) I love you.
I mentioned earlier that when I speak of “our children”, I want to be clear that I’m speaking of any child in our circle of influence. We don’t need to be parents in the sense that we have children we’re raising day-to-day in our home to parent a child. Some of the greatest influences I’ve seen on children have been from a Primary teacher, an aunt or uncle, a friend.
I very much agree with how Sister Patricia Pinegar put it in April 1997 General Conference:
“Parenting is a godly responsibility necessary for the salvation of Father’s children and important for our preparation for eternal blessings. Rejoice in your opportunities to love and care for the souls of children. Our Father has blessings and eternal rewards available for each of His children, whether they are married or single, parents or childless. Our circumstances may be different, our opportunities may be varied, but the end result of our righteousness can be the same—eternal parenthood, eternal lives. Helping to care for the souls of children will help each of us prepare for this eternal blessing.” @
The influence we can have on children, regardless of our family situation, is enormous. As a child and teenager, I was taught and influenced by many adults in addition to my parents. Teachers at church, teachers at school, neighbors, my friends’ parents, my parents’ friends. There are great blessings and lessons for us as adults as we influence, teach, and love the children around us.
The final and most important lesson we can learn from our Savior for how to parent is found in how He interacted with children during his time on the earth. Weary from travel and teaching, when his apostles, trying to be helpful, asked the little children to stay back from the Savior, Christ said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.” (Matthew 19:14-15)
And then after His resurrection, during His visit to the Nephites in the Americas,
“And when he had said these words, he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them.” (3 Nephi 17:21)
Jesus Christ loved the little children. He blessed them as circumstances permitted. He blessed them one by one. He prayed for them. He Loved Them. All of the other tenants of parenting I’ve mentioned are expressions of love, though they might not feel like it to either the adult parenting or the child in the moment. However, we can’t rely on the child to recognize discipline and responsibility as expressions of love. From my own experience as a teenager, I can tell you it could take years before they feel the connection.
We need to SHOW and SPEAK of our love to all children. President Ezra Taft Benson said,
“It seems easier for many mothers and fathers to express and show their love to their children when they are young, but more difficult when they are older. Work at this prayerfully. There need be no generation gap. And the key is love. Our young people need love and attention, not indulgence. They need empathy and understanding, not indifference from mothers and fathers. They need the parents’ time. A [parent’s] kindly teachings and … love for and confidence in a teenage son or daughter can literally save them from a wicked world” ~
As we work our way through parenting the children in our circle of influence, I’d like to leave you with two final thoughts that have given me strength and understanding when I feel that I lack both.
First, from the very wise Dr. Seuss: "A person's a person, no matter how small." And to awkwardly quote myself from something I wrote to a friend several weeks ago who was asking for advice for dealing with her young son, I wrote:
“Sometimes it helps me to take a pause and remember that despite whatever crazy thing one of my kids just did (tonight's fun was emptying a bottle of dish soap onto the living room carpet), this is a whole human I'm dealing with. Small and learning but a complete human. Also, never be too afraid or embarrassed to say you're sorry when you mess up. It helps when we get to remind the kiddos that we're human too.”
Second, from President Gordon B. Hinckley:
“Never forget that these little ones are the sons and daughters of God and that yours is a custodial relationship to them, that He was a parent before you were parents and that He has not relinquished His parental rights or interest in these little ones. Now, love them, take care of them. ...control your tempers, now and in all the years to come. ...control your voices, keep them down. Rear your children in love, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Take care of your little ones, welcome them into your homes and nurture and love them with all of your hearts” =
I bear testimony that as the Psalmist wrote, “Children are an heritage of the Lord.” The relationships we build with the children in our lives can be for the greatest benefit or the most tragic detriment or (more often) somewhere on that vast spectrum. I know that as we try to parent these precious children of God as the Savior has taught us to treat others and as our Heavenly Father teaches us, both parties will grow closer to each other and to our Father in Heaven in love. I testify that our Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered and died for us to apologize and repent when we do wrong. He did this for love. The love that He and Heavenly Father have for each of us.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
- ^ https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1982/04/an-invitation-to-grow?lang=eng
- @ https://www.lds.org/ensign/1997/05/caring-for-the-souls-of-children?lang=eng
- ~ (“To the Mothers in Zion,” in Ezra Taft Benson, Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1990, p. 36). - https://www.lds.org/ensign/1996/02/once-children-grow-up?lang=eng
- = (Gordon B. Hinckley, Salt Lake University Third Stake conference, 3 Nov. 1996; in Church News, 1 Mar. 1997, 2). - https://www.lds.org/ensign/1997/05/caring-for-the-souls-of-children?lang=eng
- % https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/of-things-that-matter-most?lang=eng
- Sections in italics to be included if I needed to fill more time.
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