Teaching Kids to Fish

As parents, we are constantly teaching our children...by words and especially by example.  The other day, Kaylee started bossing her brothers around and she sounded just like me...whoops!  I also just got a new calling to teach the 5-6 year olds at church so teaching children has really been on my mind lately.

Elder David A. Bednar said: "Giving a man a fish feeds him for one meal.  Teaching a man to fish feeds him for a lifetime. As parents and gospel instructors, you and I are not in the business of distributing fish; rather, our work is to help our children learn "to fish" and to become spiritually steadfast."

Alma 1:26 - "For the preacher was no better than the hearer, neither was the teacher any better than the learner...and they did labor, every man according to his strength."

Elder Bednar goes on to say, "Are you and I helping our children become agents who act and seek learning by study and by faith, or have we trained our children to wait to be taught and acted upon?  Are we as parents primarily giving our children the equivalent of spiritual fish to eat, or are we consistently helping them to act, to learn for themselves, and to stand steadfast and immovable?"

I hope that as a parent, I am teaching my kids to "fish" by showing them how to learn and act for themselves.  Like the scripture in Alma says; the teacher and the learner are equal...I have found that as I teach my children I learn new things myself and they end up teaching me.