My Family Home Evening Lesson Lasted Eleven Minutes

For about fourteen years I believed the lesson was the main event of family home evening and the game was what you paid the children to sit through it. I planned the lesson on Sunday afternoon and thought about the treat around five o'clock Monday, and I never once put the two on the same piece of paper.

That was backwards, at least for us. With Caleb at eleven, Lily at eight and Ben at two, the lesson itself is about four minutes of a twenty-minute evening, and what decides whether those four minutes land is everything around them.

The shape we use now

Three parts, and the first isn't a lesson at all. We stand up and sing something everybody knows, once or twice through, with motions for Ben. Lily picks the song and takes the choosing very seriously, so we've had "I Am a Child of God" a lot and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" twice, from a girl who knows exactly what she's doing. Ben turns the page of the hymnbook whether or not there's a page to turn. Two or three minutes.

Then one true thing, told and not read, in my own words. About four minutes. I hold up a picture while I talk because Ben will look at a picture of the Savior or a temple a lot longer than he'll look at me. Then Caleb gets a question I don't have the answer to, and he usually talks longer than I did.

Last comes something with the hands, then the treat, five to ten minutes in all. Pictionary on a sheet of butcher paper, or everyone carrying the folding chairs out to the patio, and either Lily or Caleb runs it depending on the week. We close with a prayer and we're done before Ben has taken the room apart. (I wrote about how we got Lily to the point of saying that prayer in Lily Couldn't Say the Closing Prayer, So We Started Smaller.)

Everyone gets a job. Caleb reads the verse when there is one, Ben holds the picture (sometimes upside down) and Lily runs the game or picks the song, which means she doesn't need a second parent to rule on whether it counts.

"Appoint among yourselves a teacher, and let not all be spokesmen at once; but let one speak at a time and let all listen unto his sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all, and that every man may have an equal privilege."
(Doctrine and Covenants 88:122)

That verse was given to a room of grown men about their own meetings, and I'm borrowing it for a living room with a two-year-old in it. "Edified of all" is still the part I want. I just didn't see how little of it was happening until one Monday in April.

The Monday I over-planned

I had read a two-page story from an old manual twice and flagged a verse with a sticky tab. I had paper cups, a bag of potting soil, a packet of sunflower seeds and five discussion questions that I'd typed up and printed, which tells you most of what you need to know. The lesson was faith as a seed. I'd looked forward to it all day. By about minute three Ben had given up on me, because I was reading and he was on the back of the couch, then on the arm, then holding the soil bag by one corner like a fish. Lily, who was seven then, corrected Caleb's reading of the verse in a voice that carried, and she was right, he'd skipped a line. Caleb said, "This is kind of for little kids." Lily's face went. David lifted Ben off the couch and took him to the kitchen, and there was a long dry second where I could have stopped.

I went on to question three with Caleb studying the ceiling and Lily studying her hands. When I finally said "Any thoughts?" Caleb asked if we could just do ice cream, and I said we weren't finished, which is when Lily asked very politely whether she could go ask Dad if it still counted. Eleven minutes from start to finish, and I'd say the last seven were me.

I had written the whole thing for one child I could picture, an eight-year-old like the ones I used to teach, eager and cross-legged. Then three actual people sat down in front of it. After five years of third grade I should have known better. I'd never have given a single spelling test to a room where half the class hadn't started reading.

The next morning Lily planted the sunflower seeds in the paper cups on the sill over the sink with nobody helping, and two came up.

How long can a lesson be with a toddler in the room?

Shorter than you want. The Church's family home evening materials say you shouldn't wait until your children are school age to start, and for toddlers they suggest something as simple as showing a picture of the Savior and saying, "This is Jesus. He loves you." That counts as a lesson. Ben has sat through a few, mostly looking at the picture and occasionally at the ceiling fan.

Our whole evening runs twenty minutes and I stopped being embarrassed about that. This Monday, up here at the cabin, it was fourteen minutes on the porch because the light was going and Ben had a mosquito bite he wanted all of us to inspect. I counted it.

What about an eleven-year-old who thinks it's babyish?

Some Mondays he does. Caleb is at the age where a song he sang happily at seven has turned into a small act of endurance, and I try not to lean on it.

What helped was handing him the harder end of the lesson instead of asking him to sit through the easy end. He reads the verse and he gets the question without a tidy answer. A few weeks ago he wanted to know why Alma tells his son that small and simple things bring great things to pass when the great things are the ones people notice. I told him I had no idea. He was still turning it over at bedtime.

I try to make sure the question is a real one, because Caleb has been catching me on the fake kind since about fifth grade. If you're after a way to keep the week from turning into one long negotiation before Monday even arrives, What I've Actually Tried With Three Kids Home All Summer covers the quiet hour we use to reset in the afternoons.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I teach one lesson for the big kids and another for the little one?

You can, and I did for a while, but it made Caleb feel he'd been sent to the grown-up table and Lily feel she'd been left with the baby. Now it's one lesson with two layers. Everyone hears the story and the older two get the harder question afterward.

What do I do when my toddler melts down in the middle?

David takes Ben out sometimes and we keep going, and I'm no longer rattled when he comes back with a cracker and a grudge. Ten minutes in the room and five under the table still gets counted.

Is it okay to skip a Monday?

Yes, we've skipped for illness, a fender bender and one Monday when I was simply done. A five-minute version on the couch with a song and a prayer does more than you'd think, so I'd try that before skipping outright.

Does the lesson have to come before the treat?

Ours does, since a lesson after ice cream goes out to a room of sticky, wired people. If your kids can't think until they've eaten, put the snack first. I'd only ask that you pick one order and keep it for a month, because children will argue the order every Monday if you let them, and the arguing eats the four minutes you were saving.

with love, Melissa