Teaching Moments: On a Kitchen Stool

Years ago when our son Andrew was four years old, I invited him to sit on a kitchen stool and talk to me while I prepared lunch. As he sat there, I told him about Joseph Smith’s First Vision. He listened intently. The next day when I began fixing lunch, he climbed on the stool uninvited and said, “Mom, tell me about Joseph Smith again.” This time I elaborated more than the day before and felt almost as if I were bearing my testimony to my son. The next day the same thing happened—and each day after until Saturday.

On Sunday his Sunday School teacher approached me and asked, “What have you been doing with Andrew?”

“What do you mean?” I replied. “Has he been a problem?”

Tears began to slide down her cheeks as she told me how he had recounted the story of the First Vision in class—with greater feeling and detail than she had thought possible from one so young. His testimony had moved her to tears, and she had arranged for him to give a talk the next Sunday. “Please don’t help him prepare,” she asked. “I want him to tell the story of Joseph Smith just as he did in class today.”

Later, when Andrew became a teenager, I asked him if he knew that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet. He looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Oh, Mom, you know I do.” I asked him when he had received his testimony of Joseph Smith. He thought deeply for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I think I’ve always known he was a prophet.”

Looking back, I think he gained the beginning of his testimony while sitting on a kitchen stool watching me prepare lunch.

We can’t always set aside a certain time and expect to teach a great lesson to our children. But if we stay in tune spiritually, we’ll always be able to discern when the time is right for those special teaching moments whose lessons will be long remembered.—Mary Morrill, Bountiful, Utah

Illustrated by Kay Stevenson