King Mosiah is one of my all time favorite characters in the Book of Mormon. I was reading in Mosiah 4:14 where he talks about the treatment of your children (notice how he helps you tak possession of it by saying your children not just children in general). He first points out that we should take care of their temporal needs and then he goes on to say, "...neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil...the enemy of all righteousness." This sounds to me like we need to keep them spiritually fed as well.
When my children were young we had many methods for recognizing and dealing with quarrels and fights (ask the siblings they have lots of stories, some of which are actually true). Where there was only nine years separating our children it was constantly a challenge to deal with sibling rivalry and each unique situation while still having general guidelines. I remember Shawn getting so upset with them, (not that I didn't too) and when I would walk through the door she would say something to the affect, "you need to deal with this now!" That usually meant that Mom wanted DAD to paddle some little bottoms or something. Before I did deal with the problem, I usually tried to get what I could from the mama and then I would sit down with the offending party away from the mama and have a P.P.I. (Personal Priesthood Interview). Most of the time the problem was not a big deal and the mama had just had enough for one day. Once in while though I would hall off and whack the offender. This always made me feel bad in the long run and inadequate as a father. What was I feeding my children by that example. Spiritual JUNK FOOD! All they saw was an angry Dad. Quite literally a tool of the Devil. Then to save grace I would almost always apologize. The PPI method was much better. I braided my whip and was able to render righteous judgment usually with the child or children in agreement with the punishment. I remember once just so the mama would think that I had rendered righteous judgment (in her mind) taking one of the children into my bedroom and after finding out that it was not a huge problem and the child was in a penitent spirit, which they usually were at a moment of the immanent spanking, saying to them, "Now look Mom thinks you need a spanking. But I will make you a deal. If you will try never to do this again I am going to spank you, but I will put my hand on your bottom and spank my hand real loud. Now you yell real loud so that Mom thinks you got what you deserved." All parties were satisfied! It is amazing the report that I l received from my children with a little restraint at the right times and showing them spiritual food and mercy.
I am glad to be through those years, but they were by far the most memorable. So much was trial and error, but we dutifully brought our children spiritual food enough to balance out the junk food. The Lord said, "suffer the little children to come unto me" and my hope for us all is that we never get tired of the Savior's beckoning to have the children come to us. Let the little ones never fear you enough that they will not want to come unto you.
Happy Sabbath,
Mom (the mean old G'ma) and Dad (the G'Paaaaa)
"Missionaries in the Making"
P.S.
Just a brief note to thank Jonathan, Sharice and Shellianne for the most appreciated feed-back pertaining to how I should distribute my Dad and Mom epistles. They will now be posted on a very nicely prepared blog that you all should have the address to now. If you would no longer like to receive them in email form, please let me know. I believe that you will receive notice of the new ones on the blog. I will continue to send them by email to those of you that prefer it that way. If you have any comments or if you have a topic that you would like us to address or any suggestions, we would much appreciate it.
Thanks Again to you all.
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