The Las Vegas Children’s Book Festival

The Las Vegas Children's Book Festival, November 7, 2009

Yesterday, for the second year in a row, my wife and I took the kids to the annual Children’s Book Festival, sponsored by Target and part of the city’s larger Vegas Valley Book Festival. 

We agreed that out of all the local events we go to, this is our favorite. 

It’s held in the beautiful Centennial Plaza, which is hidden away downtown across the street from the federal courthouse, somehow all but invisible from the surrounding areas.  Parking was close, easy, free, and convenient.  Dozens of booths offered kids free books from charitable contributors, as well as private authors hawking their own excellent work, and crafts, gifts, and other activities thrown in for more fun.  Kids can get some free books, get their faces painted, and dance to the music piped in for the performers on a nearby stage. 

We got our gift bags and made the rounds, starting with a couple of free snow cones, and meeting some characters in costumes as we went.  My wife quickly found copies of the two volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia that we’re missing being given away.  There was an area off in one courtyard for the “grown up” authors and readers, where authors were doing readings and autographs.  The kids made bookmarks and coloring books at an arts and crafts booth.  A booth sponsored by UNLV gave away posters for their sports teams.  (I got three basketball posters–one for the boys’ room, one for my classroom, and one for my garage.) 

At the end of our tour was a stand giving out Hebrew National hot dogs.  We passed a great reproduction of the liberty bell on our way over.  As we sat by a water fountain in the shade for our lunch, a local children’s orchestra started playing.  The toppings available for our dogs even included jalapenos, and these were the sweetest ones I’d ever tasted.  

Two random children (possibly crazy people). Also, a big red dog.

I told my wife, “This is the kind of world I want my kids to grow up in,” then it got better: I noticed that the woman sitting next to us was wearing a T-shirt that said “Rearden Steel.”  I told her that I’m also a fan of Atlas Shrugged, and asked where she got the shirt.  She gave me a web site.  Here it is: www.johngaltgifts.com.

There were people there of many different races and ages, but clearly we all shared a love of reading.  There were plenty of people with multiple tattoos and piercings, but you know what?  I didn’t hear a single person swear.  Not once, the entire time.  Clearly, this cross-section of our diversity was the cream of the crop, the exceptions to my “judge a book by its cover” rule, and it made me happy that so much variety could exist when literacy and civility are the norm. 

Total cost of three hours of perfect family fun: zero dollars.

The weather was pleasant, the plaza was never crowded, and everything was spotless.  I hope this festival remains a secret.

Except for you.  I hope to see you there next year.  I’d like to enjoy this oasis of joy with my friends’ families. 

 

 

Journals For Little Kids

Eight years ago I had the idea to sit my little kids down each week and talk to them about whatever was on their mind.  I would type what they said as they spoke, and that would be their journal.  It’s been a huge success.  I’ve started with each kid when they are two and can communicate in cogent sentences.  As the oldest two got to be about seven or eight years old, they started keeping their own journals, but these first, early journals have been priceless. 

Not many people can say they have journals going back to when they were two years old. 

My younger daughter loves it so much that she asks to write in her journal almost constantly.  She just turned five and already has 29 single spaced pages written. 

As they get older, sometimes the kids will ask why they should keep journals, and then I just pull up these files and we look up whatever they wrote around this time of year throughout their lives.  Two days ago, my oldest son went back and looked up his thoughts about a Jimmy Neutron costume he wore five years ago. 

It’s because of these journals that I know what my oldest daughter, now 12, was thinking about on Saturday, October 20, 2001, when we started doing this: “Today I don’t feel good.  My tummy hurts.  I love to go swimming.  I love my Ellie.”

MSP: Requirements 4a, 6, 11, 12b, & 13-14 = Tenderfoot Done!

I ended up doing exactly what I planned NOT to do: I waited until the last week of my scheduled time to finish the requirements for this rank.  I could have done it earlier, and I had wanted to add the extra time to my next rank, but life got the better of me. 

6. Demonstrate how to display, raise, lower, and fold the American flag.  Last week I emailed the principal of my kids’ school and asked if we could use the flagpole for this demonstration tonight, adding that I have my own flag to use.  He wrote back that it was fine, and this was the first activity in my family’s weekly home evening tonight.

As we drove over, I recounted all the material from the handbook about displaying the flag.  When we got there, I showed the kids how to fold and unfold it, then one kid helped me attach it to the line, while the little kids helped me hoist it up and then down again.  While it flew at the top for a minute, we decided to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  Afterwards, the oldest child folded the flag, as I had shown them all, while I held the other end. 

11.  Identify local poisonous plants; tell how to treat for exposure to them.  I went over the handbook’s section on this, adding my own warning about oleander, which are very popular in Las Vegas.  Of course, one kid pointed out that it was unlikely that any of us would ever eat one. 

MYTH: “You have to live together before you get married”

Last Saturday, I heard this one over and over as people used it as their talking point for a radio audition.  I’m sure we’ve all heard this reiterated endlessly.  It always surprises me how blithely people rattle this one off, with little thought for how vapid the argument really is.

First, this thesis is usually followed by their one and only line of defense for it: “You don’t really know someone until you see how grumpy and grungy they are in the morning.”  Seriously?  You have to live with someone to know that they’re grumpy and grungy in the morning?  Isn’t everybody?  And if we already know this, then we don’t really have to live together first in order to learn it, now do we?  News flash, folks: that special someone you’re thinking of making a commitment to also has really bad breath when they wake up.  And I didn’t even have to live with them first to figure it out!  There, I just saved you the cost of some moving boxes.

“But,” interjects our torridly anxious co-habitants, “you need to live together first in order to truly know them and see if you’ll work out together.”  This “reason” is even more lame than the first one.  When, exactly, do you know if things are going to “work out” with someone or not?  After six months?  Three years?  Ten years?  What magic sign of “working out” are you looking for? 

Job 1:5 On Parenting

Job 1:1 says that Job “was perfect and upright.”  Perhaps part of that is due to his exemplary parenting as shown in Job1:4-5: “And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.  And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.  Thus did Job continually.”

I see six aspects of Job as a father that are worthy of emulation here:

1. He “sanctified” his children, which probably means he performed priesthood ordinances directly for them.
2. He “rose up early in the morning,” showing his commitment to sacrifice his comfort and serve his children seriously.  This appears to be a formulaic commandment to disciples to prepare them and for them to show their devotion to the Lord in the scriptures (see fo example Exodus 8:20 and 1 Samuel 29:10). 
3. He offered burnt offerings for them, another example of his gospel-oriented labor for them.
4. He offered those sacrifices for all of them–there were no favorites and no empty chairs. 
5. Job said that he did these things because they might have sinned.  This was preventive maintenance.  No matter what their actual spiritual status may have been, Job wrestled spiritually for them as much as he could so that they might have all the4 blessings they might receive, for when they might need it. 
6. And Job did these things “continually.”  He didn’t let discouragement get to him, he didn’t let his own trials slow him down, and he never, ever gave up.

When I find verses of scripture that I really like, I’ve started looking them up on BYU’s excellent “Scriptural Index to the Latter-day Prophets,” where they show each instance of every verse of scripture being quoted in official teachings by church leaders, from Joseph Smith and other 19th century leaders in the Journal of Discourses, to more recent leaders in General Conference.  Strangely, Job 1:5 seems to have never been referenced in a major teaching setting. 

I hope that other parents will see counsel and comfort in this verse in the future.

Book of Moses Commentary Part IV: Fathers Must Teach Their Sons the Gospel

[Previous installments here, here, and here]

Quick, who can spot the pattern in these two verses?

“Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God, wherefore Enos prophesied also.”  Moses 6:13

“And Jared lived one hundred and sixty two years , and begat Enoch; and Jared lived, after he begat Enoch, eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.  And Jared taught Enoch in all the ways of God.”  Moses 6:21

This formula is certainly used or suggested elsewhere in scripture: in the Book of Mormon, for example, Nephi starts off by telling us that he had been “taught somewhat in all the learning of my father,” (1 Nephi 1:1), just as Enos begins his story by declaring that he, “knowing my father was a just man–for he taught me in his language, and also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord…” (Enos 1:1), and King Benjamin had three sons whom he also “caused that they should be taught in all the language of his fathers, that thereby they might become men of understanding; and that they might know concerning the prophecies which had been spoken by the mouths of their fathers…” (Mosiah 1:2). 

(Maybe this post should have been called, “Fathers must teach their sons the gospel…and, apparently, literacy skills.”)

The relative silence in the scriptures about the training that comes from mothers, or towards daughters, shouldn’t be construed to mean that no such teaching takes place, nor should this emphasis on father-to-son teaching be taken to mean that no other teaching is important in the family.  After all, the Book of Moses reminds us that as Adam and Eve started having children, “Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters.”  (Moses 5:12)  Adam may have had some personal priesthood interviews with Cain, Abel, Seth, and his other sons, but certainly the first family also had plenty of family home evenings where the teaching was more generally dispersed. 

Family Conference

Thinking about General Conference last week gave me an idea: if we hold General Conferences for the whole church, stake conferences, and ward conferences–and the purpose of the church is to support the fundamental unit of society, the family–then why don’t we have family conferences?

What is the point of conferences?  To sustain officers, conduct business, and receive instruction from leaders.  All three of these could be enhanced by holding a Family Conference.  In addition, it could serve to reinforce the importance of the Church’s other conferences to family members.

Here are some possibilities:

• General Conference has been held annually and semiannually every six months since its founding in 1830.  With that in mind, I might suggest holding two Family Conferences per year around the time of your anniversary and six months in between.  By this logic, your “first annual Family Conference” would be your wedding day.
• Begin the conference by having the conducting authority recognize the presence of those who preside (Mom and Dad). 

April 2009 General Conference: 3 Month Review

We have a tendency to take a General Conference of the Church and discuss it, analyze it, work on applying it, and cherish it in every way we know how…for about three weeks.  Then we forget it until the next Conference six months later and by then, that last Conference might as well have never happened.  So instead of posting my notes on April’s meetings along with everyone else, I want to put mine up now, three months afterwards, halfway between that Conference and the next one. 

I hope that we might all be reminded of things we missed before, or have renewed motivation to live up to the teachings given.  Just this week at a home teaching meeting, a man in my ward mentioned that President Monson had taught in the priesthood meeting that every Melchizedek priesthood holder should be studying the scriptures every day.  I didn’t remember that; it wasn’t in my notes.   I looked up the talk and there it was.  The prophet did say that.  I was grateful to my friend.

When I take notes, immediately after each talk I write a title for that talk in the right margin of the page.  This is my way of summing up the most major point or topic.  My titles for each talk are given in parentheses after each speaker’s name.  It’s always fun to compare my titles to those later published online and in the Ensign.  Here are some highlights from my notes:

Saturday Morning

Elder Hales (“Overcome Debt & Addictions w/ Provident Living”)–The most impressive thing here was just the subject.  Along with Elder Perry’s “Let Him Do It With Simplicity,” this is the second consecutive Conference to begin with a talk about providing for ourselves better by scaling back our materialism.  That fact alone speaks volumes.  Perhaps the best things here were his admonition to “joyfully” live within our means, and the subtle chastisement that debt is money that we could have used to serve others.  Application: Have I reduced my longing for physical possessions through Elder Hales’s prescribed cure of service, obedience to the commandments, tithes, fast offerings, and a family budget?

Elder Christofferson(“Covenants”)–

Crazy Babies

Why is it that when you’re at home, small children always want to be held, but when you’re at church, they only want to get down and run around?

The Left Needs To Make Up Its Mind About Marriage

It’s ironic that America is now embroiled in an all out cultural war over whether or not gay couples should be able to get married.  It’s ironic because for the last several decades the cultural left has been waging a war against marriage itself.  The mantra with which we’ve all been bombarded is that marriage is “just a piece of paper.” 

So on one hand, a huge segment of the cultural left in America clings to its established dogma that marriage is outdated, oppressive, or irrelevant, while a growing faction of the same population battles to convince us that marriage is a crucial necessity worth fighting over.  Thousands of flexible, hip, cohabitating straight couples all blithely ignore the foundational covenant of civilization, while at the same time thousands of aggrieved, angry, entitled gay couples take to the streets to campaign for what seems to be a life-or-death need.

Perhaps it’s just traditional marriage that’s bad.  Alternative marriages–surprise!–are great.

This contradiction makes the convenient, experimental wishes of the left ever more difficult to take seriously.  Will America’s counter culture please make up its mind?  Either marriage is important or it isn’t.  Either it’s a vital ceremony with real value, or it’s just an optional piece of paper.  It can’t be both.

When you come to a consensus, let us know.  Then we can talk.

Another Bad Parent Story

Here’s another one I just dug out of my journal, to add to the others I’ve collected.  From Monday, May 10, 2004:

Last Thursday, a mother called me at work to ask for advice about getting her teenage son in line.  After listening to her litany of complaints about all the awful things he’d done, I started explaining that she seemed to have given up her authoritative role and needed to take it back.  Ironically, she cut me off to suggest that I talk to her roommate instead, because the roommate spends more time with her kids than she does.  I told her no, and that it was her priority to teach him immediately that she was in charge.  She sounded disappointed.

Notice what all three of my posts have been about today.  Gee, I wonder what’s on my mind?

Octomom vs. John and Kate vs. the Duggar Family

Three large, real-life families have been in the news this year.  Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets, bringing her total brood to fourteen; the stars of John & Kate + 8 had their image tarnished when John was caught out over night with another woman, bringing to light their feuding over Kate’s domineering attitude and John’s dissatisfaction with the media’s intrusion into their life; and the Duggar family of Arkansas released a book about their family’s history and life, following the birth of their 18th child in December. 

There was a story in the newspaper last week about Nadya “Octomom” Suleman, where she admitted that she had “made mistakes,” though she didn’t specify what exactly one of those mistakes might have been.  Was it having all of these children with a man to whom she’s never been married?  (We have her word on it that all 14 kids have the same father.)  Was it having these kids with a man who is in fact already married…to someone else?  Was it having fourteen children when she herself has no steady source of income? 

At any rate, she has recently agreed to star in a reality TV show.  I’m sure that’ll do her kids some good.  (sarcasm alert!) 

I certainly do not condone any of the acts of violence against her that have been reported, but neither will I shrink from condemning the “lifestyle choices” of anyone if those choices are demonstrably harmful to children.  Her vague admission of “mistakes” reminds me of a clip I saw from the Dr. Phil show once where the family of Ozzy Osbourne went on to simultaneously make teary confessions of their tragic failures as a family, and denounce anyone who dared to criticize them for their tragic failures as a family.  It’s all about integrity, isn’t it, Sharon?

Speaking of reality TV, I’ve never seen an episode of John & Kate + 8, but apparently the attraction for viewers isn’t seeing a large, young, dynamic family in action so much as it is to watch the fireworks between mismatched John and Kate.  Whether or not they break up, if their high-profile and volatile home environment continues, one must wonder how it will affect the children.  For the better, perhaps?  No doubt.  Hollywood has a long history of turning out well adjusted children from dysfunctional celebrity parents.  (another sarcasm alert!)

That leaves us with the Duggar family,

How To Raise Up A Family To The Lord

I just saw that Gene R. Cook’s Raising Up a Family To the Lord must be out of print: Amazon.com only has marketplace copies, Barnes and Noble doesn’t list it at all, and even Deseret Book’s Web site only offers an audio tape and a couple of translations. 

That’s too bad, because it is far and away the best book about parenting that I’ve ever read.  Cook, a general authority in the LDS Church, wrote the most specific, organized, detailed, inspiring, and practical family guide ever set down on paper.  What most especially impresses me is that he published this book two years before the church’s famous Proclamation on the Family.  Talk about prophetic!  Actually, Elder Cook’s book is the best manual for implementing and living the Proclamation that anyone could ever ask for.  That’s why it’s so tragic that it seems to have fallen by the wayside.  It should be in every home.  Couples should study it regularly.  I’d love to see it become popular, or even come back into print. 

As it is, some of those used copies at Amazon are going for as low as three dollars.  It’s worth a million times that. 

I used my notes below as the text for a lesson once when I was elders quorun president, and got a few laughs because the notes are so long.  Yes, Elder Cook covers all his bases, and does so in exacting detail.  But don’t get the idea that these notes are exhaustive–they don’t convey the wonderful spirit of his dozens of personal stories that carry the testimony of his principles into our hearts.  Not much of what he writes could be considered “commandments,” anyway: mostly ideas for us to adapt and use in our own circumstances. 

Still, any family, of any faith or none at all, would benefit greatly by working these ideas into their home life over time.  I’ll say that the more any family resembles the ideal outlined by Elder Cook, the more happy and healthy they’ll be. 

Please forgive the inconsistent spacing in my notes:

 

Raising Up A Family To The Lord

by Gene R. Cook

 

* See outline of basic priorities on pp. 13-16.

 

I. Most important things: instill habits of personal prayer and scripture study in children by modeling them

as a family; also, convey spiritual values to children through daily living in the home.

          A. Do not rely on church programs to mold children– they merely support the home.

          B. Involve children in home teaching responsibilities; expose them to faithful models (“second

witnesses”) in church.

                    1. “Family duties” to encourage include:

                              a. Weekly family home evening.

                             b. Family and individual prayers twice daily

                             c. Bless food at each meal.

                             d. Make time for family activities.

                             e. Family scripture study

                             f. Have mealtime discussions

                             g. Discuss gospel while working together.

                             h. Use special holidays and occasions to teach the gospel

                              i. Teach tithing and offerings by example.

                              j. Teach the gospel through bedtime stories.

                             k. Hold private interviews.

          C. Teach children these doctrines BEFORE they turn eight:

                    1. Repentance

                    2. Faith in Christ

                    3. Baptism

                    4. Gift of the Holy Ghost

                    5. Pray and “walk uprightly before the Lord”

                    6. Observe the Sabbath Day

                   7. Labor in faithfulness and not be idle or greedy

                   8. Seek for the riches of eternity

 

II. Teach Your Family By The Spirit

          A. Pray with children as soon as there is trouble

          B. How to invite the spirit:

                   

“First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage…”

A recent post I read has impressed upon me that cohabitation and/or actively chosen single motherhood may well be the most critical threat facing families and society at large. 

Ann Coulter devoted a devastating chapter to it in her most recent book, but Joanne Jacobs has linked to a new study that finds cohabitation and voluntary single parenthood so prevalent that it is now very much the norm.  Her report reminded me of this incredible essay in City Journal–part of a theme that they focused on for a while–that details the many problems of our generation’s heedlessly hedonistic lack of values. 

I knew a guy who lived with a woman for a few years, having a couple of kids with her.  After a while, he started calling her his wife, though they refused to actually get married.  When he decided to leave her for another woman, that concept of hypothetical matrimony must have gone out the window.  Now he calls the new woman, to whom he also has not gotten married, his wife. 

Multiply that to a large scale and you see the environment in which the next generation will grow up.

Five Things Parents Need To Know Before Getting Divorced

Divorce is a sensitive subject.  Those of us who have been through it might be reluctant to discuss its lingering problems, because it might lead to an impossible ”what if?” game: “What if I hadn’t gotten divorced?  Would I have more or less stress today?  Could things have been worked out?  Would my children be better or worse off now?”  There’s just no way to know for sure, and especially for those of us who have moved on to new marriages and more children, such debating can only cause unproductive pain. 

What’s done is done, and we need to go forward making the best lives we can for all of our families, but for those who might be in a troubled marriage and are contemplating divorce, I want to share a few things from my experience that it might help you to know.  At the very least, these are things that you will have to deal with if you do get divorced, and it’s better to know in advance what you’re getting into.  Frankly, if these thoughts give some couples pause for second thoughts, the world might be a little bit better off.

1.  If you get divorced, your ability to raise your children the way you want to will be severely reduced.