Who learns more...the kids or the parents?

Once again it's Monday night and I was tired and knew I wanted to have a little family night with my kids even though Jason wasn't home. So it almost felt like a cop-out that I thought "Hey maybe Bekah would be willing to do it tonight." And it turned out even better than I would have done. This isn't the first time Bekah has done the lesson, but it was one of those moments I just sat back and admired her intellect and animation. And her ability to be so right-on.... Sometimes I wonder how I got to be her parent!

So just about the time I was going to ask her if she would be in charge of the lesson for tonight's Family Night she asked me, "Mom, please can I do the lesson?" She typically likes to be in charge of everything she can be, so since tonight wasn't really structured, with Jason being gone, I said "Sure." Her favorite topic the last few months is "The Plan of Salvation"...this is because it was her favorite lesson I've taught her about six months ago for family night. I know the ideas for that lesson were inspired from above on how to teach it on her level. She was struggling with being six, being the oldest, having to obey her parents instead of tell her parents how things were going to be done...I don't remember all the challenges she kept having but things weren't going too well with behavior and emotions. Suddenly it struck me that maybe it might help if she knew why she was here, where she was going, and what Heavenly Father wants her to do so she can see the big picture and how bad days can be overcome. So one Monday (we're usually alone for family night since Jason has class late and James goes to bed early) I said to Bekah that I had a very important plan to tell her about and we each got a piece of paper and I drew a part of "The Plan of Salvation" just like it had been shown to me in primary and she copied what I drew on her paper while we talked. It was amazing! That lesson lasted about a half hour and she was excited and kept asking all kinds of questions! I realized she listens much better when she can hear, touch, feel, and see what we are learning all at the same time. And she felt so important getting to copy what mom was doing. I didn't have to prepare any great visuals ahead of time, I didn't even really think too much about preparing for it. We just sat down and drew pictures together. I share this here because I was so amazed by this experience and thought maybe others might benefit from what I learned from the Spirit that day.

So today she taught me about The Plan. And she asked me to pretend I didn't know anything about it. She made a sort of game out of it where you had to guess the answers to what was on the pictures. Then this last page was really precious.

It says "3 planets. Heavenly Father wants us to be here..." complete with sun, moon, stars, happy, okay and sad faces. (I know this page would be confusing to anyone not of our faith, but it's something taught to us from our scripture.)

Wow. She gets it. Boy does that feel good to a parent when something you taught your kid sticks...or should I say something the Spirit taught. Now she reminds me on bad days what the big picture is. Heavenly Father sure knew what He was doing, putting us in families.