Your Children:
What Are They Learning?
How Can You Help?

“I’m a tough cowboy!” the four-year-old cried, as his teacher pulled him, wriggling and kicking, from her class and out into the hall.

The commotion attracted the attention of the Sunday School president, who had been standing in the hall talking to his counselors. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“He’s a ‘tough cowboy,’” the teacher said, “and sometimes I’d like to wring his neck.” Then, embarrassed, she continued: “Brother Butler, he’s not a bad boy, really, but I can’t get him to sit still for ten seconds at a time. He runs around wildly, pinches and wrestles with the other children, kicks them with his cowboy boots, hangs out the window …”

The president was familiar with the problem. Sister Thomas wasn’t the first teacher this boy had driven to exasperation, and many attempts at kind persuasion over a period of several weeks hadn’t helped. After a moment’s reflection, the president knelt next to the boy, who was now hanging like a dead weight in his teacher’s grasp, trying to free his arm.

“So you’re a cowboy, huh?” he said kindly. “A tough one?”

“Yeah,” the boy replied, still squirming.

“But Craig, don’t you remember that the really tough cowboys are the nice ones?”

Much to the teacher’s surprise, the boy stopped wriggling immediately. He said nothing; he was thinking, perhaps reconsidering the many movies and television shows he had seen.

Presently, the president lifted the boy to his feet and helped him tuck in his shirttail. “Would you like to go back to your class?” he asked.

The boy went; and from that day forward, he was a model of cooperation.

The Church enters a new curriculum year beginning this month. The teachers have been called and set apart. They are better prepared than ever before. Their lessons and supplementary materials are better than ever; they have better facilities and equipment and resources than ever before. When you deliver your child to the classroom, you can be assured that he or she is in good hands. The question, however, is this: When your children do come to the classroom, will they be “teachable”? In the true story above, a wise leader was able to recognize mixed-up roles in a young boy and effect an immediate change. But many mistaken roles are not so easily altered.

When a child enters a classroom and the door closes, there is little, if anything, a parent can do to help him learn. There are, however, many things parents can do before class to prepare children for the learning experience, to make them teachable and after class to reinforce in their minds the things they have learned. With respect to the “before” and “after,” the following few suggestions are offered to help you help your children get the very most from their learning experiences in Church:

First, instill in your children a respect for and a desire to learn the principles of the gospel. This is best done by example. Therefore, parents, undertake a systematic study of the scriptures yourselves. Read from the standard works. Study the general conference reports. Take the scriptures with you to your priesthood and Sunday School classes. You may wish to consider putting copies of the scriptures into your children’s hands as soon as they are able to read words and sentences. Inexpensive paperback copies will do for young children who are likely to handle them roughly; teenagers should have, and indeed, will require, the missionary version.

The influence of parents is tremendous, and when your children see from your example that you care about the gospel and rely on the scriptures, they will care, too.

Second, teach the gospel in your home every day, and especially during family home evening. A serious obstacle to effective learning is overcome when children—teenagers especially—come to the classroom with some knowledge of the subject to be learned. Each may know only a little about the topic, and certainly all won’t know the same things; but when all know something about it, discussions are accelerated and classes are more stimulating. Because home and family are the very centers of influence and early learning, there can be no substitute for an active program of gospel learning in the home.

Third, teach your children reverence. Teach them that reverence is much more than simply being quiet and passive in the chapel; it is an active kind of honor and respect for the Lord and for the sacred things he has given us, including the principles of the gospel. It is a respect for the fights of others in the classroom who are trying to learn the gospel. Parents, consider carefully the kinds of roles you are teaching your children to respect and emulate. Don’t “saddle” them with “tough-cowboy” kinds of roles while they are young. Such roles may prove destructive to their reverence, and thereby to their learning habits, well into their teens and perhaps throughout their lives.

Fourth, teach your children to pray. Teach them to recognize the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the source of all knowledge. In short, make your children teachable.

When classes are over, there are many opportunities to reinforce the lessons the teachers have presented. Sit down with each of your children and say, for example, “Tell me what you learned in Sunday School today.” Perhaps your smaller children will remember only a key word or two from their lesson. If they have completely forgotten, help them out with suggestions. A question asked of your teenager may start a week-long discussion of a gospel principle!

Such a practice can result in a number of benefits: (1) When the child repeats in a few sentences the kernel of the lesson he has just learned, that lesson will become more firmly fixed in his mind and the teaching will therefore become more effective. (2) You the parent will also know specifically what your child has learned and will then be able to help him apply those principles when special “teaching moments” or crises arise. Teaching thus becomes doubly effective. (3) Perhaps more importantly, a recitation of what he has learned becomes, for the child, a measurement of his performance—one that is sure to help his performance improve.

When your children see that you care whether or not they learn anything in church, they will be encouraged.

In many classes, especially those for younger children, producing crayon drawings and cutouts is a regular activity.

Keep the artwork and other items that your children make in their classes. Display them in a prominent place in your home, and when they are taken down from display, keep them all together in a folder. Keeping everything together for your children to look through occasionally can help give the lessons a sense of continuity and will also let your children know that you value their work.

One mother keeps a folder for each child. At the end of each week, when last Sunday’s artwork comes off display, she puts it in the folders, and at the end of the year she selects the best work to keep for each child’s “baby box,” which she plans to give them when they grow up and marry. When children know you care about their work, they are more careful to do good work in their classes.

Whenever possible, coordinate the lessons in your family home evenings with the lessons your children are receiving in church, and let them report on what they have learned.

Let your older children teach often in family home evenings, using their current lesson materials. This can have a two-fold benefit: (1) Again, it reinforces the material learned, and (2) it gives the young man or woman a significant success experience in teaching a sympathetic audience within the secure atmosphere of the home. Children too young to present lessons have at least learned several songs in Primary and Sunday School. Let them sing! Have your children also draw upon current lessons when they prepare talks for Church.

The sacred trust to teach children the gospel of Jesus Christ rests upon parents. To assist them in fulfilling this trust, the Church provides effective and systematic instruction in the plan of salvation and all its attendant blessings through the curricula of the Sunday School, Primary, Aaronic Priesthood and Young Women, Seminary, and Young Adult programs. This correlated program of instruction is outlined in the following chart. Study it; incorporate it into the program of gospel learning that is operating in your home; help your children to take full advantage of their classes and learn to apply the gospel.