Nurturing

People in my ward often congratulate me on my monthly Sunday school lessons. I appreciate their kind words and encouragement, but let’s give due credit to the material itself. The church has developed these very prescient “lessons” that are very useful and relevant. (I put lessons in quotes because they are actually designed as group counseling discussions/workshops.) My fellow teachers are tasked with finding a timely twist on The Word of Wisdom or some other topic that, on average, the students have been taught seven times already. I get to teach from a manual from 2006 and covers things like communication in marriage and instilling confidence in your children. They are “can’t miss” even with my shortcomings as a teacher and my present limitations.

This last Sunday the topic was nurturing children. I will share a few segments of the lesson for those who are interested but could not be there (or were not sitting on the first row!):

We began by reading Ephesians 4:6 (Bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord) and reading a quote from President Hinckley that outlined the following characteristics of nurturing:

• Loving
• Teaching
• Protecting
• Helping
• Supporting
• Encouraging

The other night my 8th grader came to me with a homework problem:

4 4/7 + (-3/2)

What would you say to that?

I know my knee-jerk reaction is to solve it. Convert it to decimals and do the subtraction. 4.57 – 1.50 It’s easy. My reaction to just about any problem they bring me is to solve or fix it. That is what I do. But is that on the list? Is that nurturing? What would be a better response? (discuss: to assess her knowledge, to teach, confirm understanding, build self-esteem)

This past week we had a good nurturing opportunity that I blew. Amanda, my oldest, started college at BYU this week. I was looking forward to her spreading her wings a bit. Well, long story short, she had a miserable first morning, and was too ill to attend all of her classes. She called Monday afternoon very flustered saying that she could not find a parking place and feared she would be late to class. She was a mess. This was a problem I could not fix and I kept asking her, “What do you want me to do about it?” As I was telling her I could not help her on this one, my wife took the phone and, in soothing tones, told Amanda to calm down, take a deep breath, and to patiently keep looking. She reassured her that a space would open up soon, she still had time, and it would be OK if she arrived a few minutes late anyway. Calming, loving, soothing, supportive. I went back to preparing this lesson. That is what Amanda needed, not my curt “What do you want me to do about it?” She did calm down, eventually found a place to park and a crisis was averted. I’m glad one of her parents has it down.

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OK, back to the blog narrative. You might be thinking, “So you get up there and tell stories instead of teach the lesson?” Well, kind of. Guilty as charged. Although I do stick to the format pretty closely, I am pretty liberal with the stories from my experience as a child or as a parent. They seem to really add context to the lesson.