Tag Archives: parenting

GCBC Week 16: “Protect the Children” by Elder Dallin H. Oaks

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This week’s talk is one of those powerful, direct talks with a good dose of doctrine and apostolic warning. Elder Oaks reminded us all of our obligation to care for the children of the world. His stern reminder reinforced the absolute necessity (in God’s plan) for righteous parenting.

Protect the Children By Elder Dallin H. Oaks

dallin-oaks

What stood out to you from this talk? What can we do to obey and honor this principle in a world that is failing many of God’s children? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

(A reminder to those of you who are new to General Conference Book Club: You’re welcome to return to this post any time this week and leave your comment and thoughts in the comment section below. You may also want to see what others are saying about the talk and engage in a conversation for mutual understanding and encouragement. A new talk will be posted each Sunday and will be studied and discussed throughout the week.)

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GCBC Week 8: “Becoming Goodly Parents” by Elder L. Tom Perry

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It’s already late, so I’ll just post up this week’s talk and chime in another day with some of my own thoughts. This was the first talk from the Saturday p.m. session of conference.

Becoming Goodly Parents

by Elder L. Tom Perry

What did you like and learn from this talk? Please share in the comments below some of your insights.

(A reminder to those of you who are new to General Conference Book Club: You’re welcome to return to this post any time this week and leave your comment and thoughts in the comment section below. You may also want to see what others are saying about the talk and engage in a conversation for mutual understanding and encouragement. A new talk will be posted each Sunday and will be studied and discussed throughout the week.)

In Love and Righteousness, by Melanie Jacobson

Posted in Family Proclamation Celebration by


I love the Proclamation to the World because it talks about the most sacred thing on the planet: the family.

I love my family more than anything, both the one that raised me and the one that I’m raising. It is the primary tool that God gave us to understand His love for us. I’m not sure there’s any other way to comprehend God’s love without functioning within some kind of a family.

Everyday I fail at something as a mother. I rack up the same mistakes over and over again: impatience, impatience, impatience, and impatience. And also impatience. But nothing else I’ve ever done could ever school me to develop patience the way my family can. And being a mother and wife is also working to refine my spirit in ways that nothing else in the whole breadth of my experience could. And my experience is really, really broad. I’ve helped my own parents die. As a teacher, I’ve nurtured hundreds of other people’s kids along a path that was about so much more than grammar and verb tense.

But family is the incubator for the most vital resource this world will ever know: the next generation. And each new generation is the most important one because they will move us forward. (And if we do this right, take care of us when we’re old. I’m looking at you, Eden.) And I am called to shape that. Each of us who raise children are architects of what the world will become. This is what I believe, taken straight from the Proclamation:

HUSBAND AND WIFE have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalm 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

I want to answer before God that I brought my children up right. I’m trying to raise them up unto the Lord so that they can lift everyone around them. I feel the weight of this every day. Sometimes I try to hide from it inside books, TV shows, exercise videos, or girls night out with friends. But when I return to my kids, it always brought home to me that my husband and I were given these spirits to raise, and I can’t fail. I can’t fail in doing the most important work I’ve been given to do on this earth.

It can be hard to remember when that work looks more like cleaning up an overturned box of cereal or plucking dirty underwear from the boys’ bathroom floor. It doesn’t feel like Great Work to drive my kids between a million different appointments or supervise them outside while they play on the cul-de-sac. Then again, I don’t guess the Egyptians slapped the pyramids together in a day, either. Or even a year. I bet they took entire lifetimes to build.

So sometimes after an escape from reality, I have to remind myself that I only have a short window of time to lay the foundation for the lives my children will build for themselves. And I get back to work, one overturned bowl of cereal at a time.

Melanie Bennett Jacobson is an avid reader, amateur cook, and champion shopper. She consumes astonishing amounts of chocolate, chick flicks, and romance novels. After meeting her husband online, she is now living happily married in Southern California with her growing family and a series of doomed houseplants. Melanie is a former English teacher who loves to laugh and make others laugh. In her down time (ha!), she writes romantic comedies for Covenant and maintains her humorous slice-of-life blog. Her fourth novel, Smart Move, hits shelves in October.

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Click here to read a complete version of The Family: A Proclamation to the World. The celebration will continue through Sept. 30.

Remember that during the world-wide-web Family Proclamation Celebration, you can read more posts every day at We Talk of Christ, at Chocolate on My Cranium, and at Middle-Aged Mormon Man.

Every time you leave a comment on any of the Proclamation posts or participate in any of the Blog Hops, you are entered in a drawing to win a giveaway prize.

← The giveaway this week is a gift certificate from Family Tree and Me redeemable for any of their Photo Family Proclamations, including the shipping cost. Readers of the Family Proclamation Celebration can receive a 25% discount off the price of the print if you use this code:  Family Proclamation Celebration.25 The discount is good until September 30th. All those comment on posts will be eligible for the giveaway.

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We have four categories of art with a variety of options available within each one: Photo Family Trees, Photo Family Proclamations, Missionary Photo Art, and Photo Family Mission Statements.

GCBC Week 17: “Love Her Mother” by Sister Elaine S. Dalton

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When I heard this talk in general conference, tears quietly rolled down my cheeks.  My poor husband probably thought he was failing miserably at her message; he wasn’t, but I just felt so touched that she was addressing this important subject in conference.  I felt so grateful for my good husband, for my good father, and for my sweet daughter.  I hoped my boys will someday grow into the kind of fathers that are found in their family’s legacy.  I loved Sister Dalton’s charge to fathers that loving their wives and being the guardians of their daughter’s virtue can bless young women in very important ways.  It’s so true.  There is nary an example of this kind of father in the modern media of today, and oh, how the girls need to see it in their own homes.

Love Her Mother by Sister Elaine S. Dalton

[http://youtu.be/tuyGiF7URpE]

“How can a father raise a happy, well-adjusted daughter in today’s increasingly toxic world? The answer has been taught by the Lord’s prophets. It is a simple answer, and it is true—“The most important thing a father can do for his [daughter] is to love [her] mother.”1 By the way you love her mother, you will teach your daughter about tenderness, loyalty, respect, compassion, and devotion. She will learn from your example what to expect from young men and what qualities to seek in a future spouse. You can show your daughter by the way you love and honor your wife that she should never settle for less. Your example will teach your daughter to value womanhood. You are showing her that she is a daughter of our Heavenly Father, who loves her.”

Friends, this would be a great week to invite your husbands to join you in GCBC study.  What stood out to you as you studied this talk? Feel free to sing the praises of your own husband or father, and please express your love and appreciation to them.  If you are a single mother or do not currently have a husband that can carry out this role, what positive message can you still take away and learn from Sister Dalton’s talk?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

To anyone who is checking out GCBC for the first time, the goal is to read one General Conference talk a week and discuss it together as an on-line “book club.” If you want to learn more, go here, and join the discussion here each week.

GCBC Week 9: “Children” by Elder Neil L. Andersen

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Children are much less “popular” these days. They’re quite inconvenient. Some see them as a burden. Many see them as an option; not a natural, integral part of any family. Some people simply prefer pets. There’s a different climate in the world today about what family means and what our responsibilities are with respect to having and raising children. That’s why I love Elder Andersen’s clear voice of an apostle declaring the Lord’s position on children and family.

My own children have never been “convenient,” but they are absolutely part of God’s plan for me and my husband. (See him up there with my daughter?  I’m a lucky woman.) They are loved by their Heavenly Father, and He helps me become who I am supposed to be through them. And that’s a gift.

Children by Elder Neil L. Andersen

“It is a crowning privilege of a husband and wife who are able to bear children to provide mortal bodies for these spirit children of God. We believe in families, and we believe in children.”

What about this talk stood out to you?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

To anyone who is checking out GCBC for the first time, the goal is to read one General Conference talk a week and discuss it together as an on-line “book club.”  If you want to learn more, go here, and join the discussion.