I Don't Know Is a Fine Answer for About a Week

I think "I don't know" is one of the best things a parent can say to a child with a gospel question, and I think most of us waste it by stopping there. Saying it takes about a second and a half. The hard part is the following Sunday, when nobody remembers the question except the kid who asked it.

I've got one man as my evidence, and he sold irrigation equipment.

The Sunday School teacher who wrote it on a deposit slip

His name was Brother Haskell and he taught the fourteen-year-olds in our ward in St. George, which put me in his class in 1993. He wore short-sleeved white shirts with a pen in the pocket, and the pen leaked, so there was always a blue patch about the size of a quarter over his heart.

We loved him without ever saying so.

One Sunday a boy named Travis Lund, in the middle of a lesson about something else entirely, asked what Jesus did between being twelve and being thirty. Every Sunday School class has a Travis and every Sunday School class has heard what usually comes next, which is "that's a good question, let's get back to our lesson." Brother Haskell said "I don't know" in exactly the voice he used for the chapter number. Then he pulled a bank deposit slip out of his shirt pocket, turned it over and wrote the question on the back.

Travis rolled his eyes, and I assumed the slip was a way of ending the conversation with extra steps.

The next Sunday, right after the opening prayer, he said "Travis, I've got your answer," and opened his scriptures to Luke 2. He read us the forty-second verse, where Jesus is twelve and they've gone up to Jerusalem for the feast, and then he skipped down to this.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. (Luke 2:52)

That was all of it, he told us, the whole eighteen years in one verse. He'd asked his wife's father too, who had been a bishop for nine years, and he didn't know any more than Brother Haskell did, so that was where we were. Then the deposit slip went back in the pocket and he taught the lesson he'd planned.

I could have recited that verse for you at fifteen and still it took me until I had kids of my own to see what he'd done, which was three things. He said it flat and without any embarrassment, he wrote the question down where he'd see it again, and he came back, though the only person who'd have noticed if he hadn't was a fourteen-year-old who had already rolled his eyes.

Take away the writing down and the coming back, and "I don't know" is a polite way of saying stop asking.

What it looks like at our house

Last Wednesday Caleb wanted to know why the Word of Wisdom says "hot drinks are not for the body or belly" (that's D&C 89:9) and nothing at all about the Diet Coke his father pours himself at 2:30 every afternoon. I knew half of the answer. I know what we've been taught the verse means, which is coffee and tea. I also know what we do about it. Why the verse is so short on reasons I couldn't say, and when I read all twenty-one verses that night I didn't find one.

So I told him exactly that. He said "so you don't know," I said I knew what it says and what we do and not why it stops where it does, and he took it the way eleven-year-olds take most things, with a nod and a question about root beer.

I don't carry deposit slips. I wrote "Caleb, hot drinks" on a sticky note and put it on the cabinet over the toaster, where it's still curling at one corner, and that note matters more than anything I said to him at dinner.

Where I look when I want to be sure

The scriptures first, with the footnotes, because half the time the answer is a cross-reference somebody already made. Then the Gospel Library app, which has the lesson manuals and a section of topic pages on questions people ask a lot. Then a person, if it's a real puzzler, meaning somebody in the ward who's been reading longer than I have and won't hand me an answer just to end the silence.

I stay off the open internet when the question is doctrine. A stranger's confident video is exactly the thing I don't want Caleb learning from, and it's exactly the thing I'd believe at eleven o'clock at night if I went looking.

I think D&C 9 gets used backward, since the Lord tells Oliver Cowdery "you must study it out in your mind" and only then "ask me if it be right" (D&C 9:8) and the study comes first.

When "let's pray about it" is what I say instead of looking, I've got the verse in the wrong order, and my kids can tell.

What if I look and I still don't know?

Then you tell them that too, along with what you found and where it ran out. Some things stay open for a while.

Nephi is the one I think of. An angel asks him if he knows what the condescension of God means and he answers with exactly what he's got.

I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things. (1 Nephi 11:17)

Nobody scolds him, and the angel tells him who the woman in the vision is and keeps going, and a few verses later Nephi sees her again with a child in her arms. Nobody gets the whole picture at once, and that includes a man in the middle of a vision. I have no problem with my eleven-year-old learning that early.

Frequently Asked Questions

Won't my kids trust me less if they see I don't have the answers?

I think it goes the other way, because kids can smell a made-up answer by about age six, and what they learn from one is that you'll say something confident before you'll say something true. I'd take being the mom who sometimes says "I looked and I'm not sure" over being the mom whose answers they have to check.

How long should I wait before I come back to it?

I'd say a week and I'd name the day, since Brother Haskell wrote his down in front of the whole class and that made somebody else the keeper of the score. If it's still sitting on a sticky note a month later, the kid has already worked out what you meant by "let's find out."

What about questions I won't answer, like the ones about the temple?

That's a different thing and I try to keep the two apart, because I'd rather say "I don't know" when I don't and "I won't talk about that part" when that's the real reason. They hear the difference. I wrote about how my dad handled it in What I Tell My Kids When They Ask What I Do in the Temple, and the short version is that he said the same three sentences every time.

Is it okay to say "you'll understand when you're older"?

Only when it's true, and then say why, because there are questions an eight-year-old isn't ready to carry yet. If the real reason is that you don't have an answer, though, say that and save the older-and-wiser line for the day you mean it.

The crabapples started dropping a few days ago and Penny and Waffle have figured out that the best ones are under the fence. There is a lot of clucking going on past the window right now, and one of them has a whole apple she's carrying around like she's not sure who to hide it from.

with love, Melissa