My husband assigned our four-year-old son Cole the FHE lesson last night. About half hour before FHE on the way home from a playdate he and I got around to planning. It went something like this,
Me-What do you want to do for the lesson tonight?
Cole-I don’t want to do the lesson.
Me-Well, it’s your turn. It will be fun.
Cole-The lesson is never the fun part.
Me-You don’t like to learn about Jesus? (Yes, meant to ignite a little guilt and feeling of obligation. This question would have worked like a charm with my 6-year-old daughter. She loves to comply and please. Cole on the other hand, answered like this–)
Cole-MOM, I am not doing the lesson!
Me-The lesson can be fun. You can do it about whatever you want.
Cole-Okay, let’s play Candyland bingo.
Me-Well, that’s more like the activity; that’s not the lesson.
Cole-See, I can’t do what I want.
Me-But you can choose to read a story or talk about being kind or choosing the right. We can play a game based on something like that for the lesson.
Cole-I want to read a story.
Me-Great! What scripture story should we choose?
Cole-Ahh, not a scripture story! Just a story from a book. I want to read my library book about dinosaurs.
Me-Can you think of a way that connects to the gospel?
Cole-Jesus created dinosaurs.
Okay, so here I’m thinking to myself . . .it’s not exactly written down in any standard works nor has it been said by any of the general authorities that Jesus created the dinosaurs, but I think he probably did, fuzzy creation time periods aside, I mean, who else could have created them?
Me-Okay, we’ll read from your book and talk about how Jesus created the earth.
Cole-Okay.
After dinner my husband asked him what the lesson was about. He smiled, “How Jesus created dinosaurs.”
His big sister piped in, “How did he do that?”
Cole, “I don’t know! We’re gonna’ read about it from my book.” (Semantics, tee hee)
So we changed some of the lyrics in the opening song, “Whenever I hear the song of a bird, or see a picture of a dinosaur” (as opposed to “or look at the blue blue sky”). Cole giggled through that, and I hoped the next time he was in charge of the lesson he’d have good memories of this night. After reading several pages of the book, Dinosaurs Everywhere! which had simply outlined the history of dinosaurs and informed us that what we know about dinosaurs has been learned through the study of fossils, my husband stopped and asked, “So, how do we know that dinosaurs lived on the earth?” I’m pretty sure it was a follow-up question and he was expecting the kids to say something about finding fossils, yadda, yadda. But instead Cole said, “Because we have brains!”
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