I sometimes feel like as a parent I am constantly messing up. Saying or doing the wrong thing, too many sweets, too much TV, or not enough whatever!
Tonight on the way home from the library (right before dinner), it dawned on me it was Monday night and I needed to prepare a Family Home Evening lesson. (Had I been a really good mom, I would have one already prepared). FHE can sometimes be really effective and sometimes NOT (fighting, kicking, speaking out of turn). Depends on the day!
I quickly remembered a story the kids were looking at in a kid's church magazine. I cut the pictures from the magazine and told everyone to get their scriptures (we need to have them use their scriptures more regularly during FHE).
We talked about the story of Lehi's dream, the tree of life and the iron rod. The kids loved looking at the cut out pictures and the ones in their scriptures. We talked about how we as a family can stay on the straight and narrow path. It was so so simple, but so effective!
Our treats tonight consisted of "mystery bag #1" and "mystery bag #2". I told them it could be a real treat or an onion, pickles or something un-treat like. They were so thrilled about this treat craziness! (It ended up being Oreo's and a Baby Ruth candy bar - really original!)
We ended the night by tying string around the yard, putting a blindfold on each kid and told them to hold onto the "rod" until they got to the tree in the front yard.
Finally...a fun effective night together as a family (no fighting or other craziness). We need more of these!
That is a great idea! Now if only we had a tree...
ReplyDeleteOk, seriously, you have no idea how glad I am that you posted this! A couple of weeks ago as I was making dinner I realized it was Monday and once again I hadn't prepared FHE yet. I was getting down on myself for being so ill prepared and actually had the thought "I'll bet Toby never gets to Monday night without a lesson prepared." I was considering bagging it, but luckily had a brief moment of clarity and quickly found something on a blog I stalk. I honestly don't remember the lesson, but I do remember the kids loved it and wanted to play the game (whatever it was...) over and over. Once the kids were in bed and I was cleaning up, I said a little prayer of thanks that I'd found a lesson so quickly and it had gone over so well. The feeling I got was that the Lord doesn't care so much if the pictures are cut, colored, glued, and laminated. He just cares that you DO IT! This brought me comfort, but I still had the thought in the back of my mind that maybe someday I would be as good as Toby and have things prepared well in advance. So THANK YOU, THANK YOU for letting me know even Toby prepares a lesson on the fly!! - C. Sykes
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