The Tietjen Family

A couple weeks ago in church our high councilman gave a GREAT talk about teaching our kids. He said that for every ONE hour of instruction or gospel teaching our kids receive they also get hundreds of hours of influence the OTHER direction. Basically we teach for an hour, Satan teaches them for hundreds of hours. His point was that we need to find every opportunity to teach our kids that we possibly can. So I started thinking about what I could do to find more time to teach my kids. I came up with something that I am absolutely loving and thought I should share. I printed out slips of paper with topics that we could discuss as a family such as, honesty, respect, sacrament, repentance, stuff like that. I put them in our "dinner jar" and the nights that we sit as a family and eat dinner together, which isn't every night, but we try, one of the kids takes a slip of paper out of the jar and we discuss whatever is written on it. I have really loved having these discussions with my kids, even more than I thought I would. I think because it is in a non-teaching setting, we are just hanging out having dinner, they open up so much more and we really have some good talks. I tr to get them to tell me what THEY think things mean, so I can try and help them understand and learn more. I hope this is one "new thing" that we really stick to because I really love it!!