Seriously Now …

By Bertha Sawyer

When our children were young, we made sure we had uninterrupted attention during the serious side of family home evening by asking them, “Shall we have this many minutes to talk about our Heavenly Father?” Then we set the clock for fifteen or twenty minutes and showed where the hands would be when it was time for games or fun.

As we taught the gospel, we tried to relate everything we said to something our children could understand. For instance, we pointed out that when Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, he was about as old as Uncle Eddy. We used paper cut-out figures to tell stories and picked dandelions for a lesson on flowers and seeds.

We introduced a new song almost every week. I sang the song to teach the melody and words, then told the little ones and any adults present to sing the part of the song I indicated. The children were delighted, for instance, to sing “all is well, all is well” or “love at home.” They could participate this way while learning the lyrics.

We knew we’d been doing something right the family home evening our four-year-old said, “We didn’t have serious time very long, did we? Maybe we better have some more!”