A Test

We had a Relief Society/Priesthood meeting a couple of weeks ago on Reverence and what we can do as parents to invite more reverence into all of our meetings, especially Sacrament meeting. Lets face it, if you're going to be in a meeting with more than 100 children and infants, there is next to no chance of complete reverence and quietness. That said, there are things we can do to improve the tone of this important meeting each week. So..., we put some things to the test. We have a "Sunday" bag that has coloring books and crayons, a few match cars, some crackers for Joe and a bottle. The deal with the kids is if they are quiet until after we partake of the sacrament they can have something from the bag for the rest of the meeting. Pretty good incentive right? WRONG! For some families this might work. For mine, not so much. The kids bicker and whine over what toy they get to play with or ask a million times if it's time to get their stuff out.

So today we took nothing. Not a crayon, paper, toy car, snacks, nada! And they were a million times better! Go figure. So much more reverent. So apparently, they don't need a bunch of "stuff" to keep them busy. They will listen or at least sit more quietly if they don't have all the distractions. I'm amazed.