posted
What are teens supposed to be doing on the Sabbath? I ask because my kids are so busy on Sunday that we literally don't see them until late evening.
They have BYC. Then they have meetings for their presidency. Then they have a Bishops night or Fire side. It seems a bit much to me.
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posted
What's BYC? Edited to add - bishops youth counsel? We have that during week.
I'm under the impression that families are supposed to be able to spend time on Sundays. No regular extra meetings should be scheduled or at least not much. I know in many places they do happen, because people can't fit them in their schedules during the week.
Here we have for the youth with this bishop, a bishop's night every two months I think (had it monthly on Saturdays when dh was the bishop), a fireside for the youth about once a year. I think's that's enough. I wouldn't mind a monthly fireside or monthly bishop's night, meaning two nights away a month, when it means we still would have a 4 hour block together at home on those Sunday's too.
posted
If your kids were in our ward, they would have BYC once a month. We hold ours right before or right after church. It lasts 45 minutes.
Class presidency meetings, again: once a month. These are held at various times, it depends on the class and the leaders of it, and when they can get together.
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We have BYD (bishops youth discussion) once a quarter, on a Sunday evening. It lasts an hour.
Then, the occasional fireside...I'd say one or two every 6 months.
In 52 weeks, that is about 20-25 Sundays? And that is, of course, only for those that are the presidents of the quorums or classes. BYC is only for them. So it effects 6 kids. The rest of the kids, it would only be about 8-10.
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DS has a BYC once a month. He has sacrament to the shut ins for about 30 minutes every Sunday. And once a quarter/every 6 months we have a fireside.
DD doesn't have her presidency meetings On Sunday. Well, she didn't when she was a beehive. Right now there are only 2 mia maids so the other girl is the president and there are no more presidency. Don't know if that will change or not.
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posted
My ward's youth have BYC for about an hour immediately after church on the fourth Sunday of the month. Presidency meetings for the classes and quorums take place after BYC. Then at 7 pm on that same night, they have an additional discussion session at a member's home - usually either the home of one of the youth or of a bishopric member, but once in a while at the home of whichever couple is actually leading the discussion - or a fireside at the Stake Center.
Our Young Men collect fast offerings on the first Sunday of the month, and our ward is geographically large enough that they only visit about half the ward each month, and alternate which side they focus on first. Since I don't have a priesthood holder in the home, I have no idea how Sacrament for shut-ins is handled.
Mini generally spends Sunday afternoons with her father and his family. Unfortunately, I can't control what kinds of activities happen there, and Sunday is apparently the only day that he has available to spend with the kids because of his work schedule. On the days that he doesn't pick her up, we choose from a small selection of movies that I've deemed Sunday appropriate, or we listen to my MTC station on Pandora while we read or work on craft projects.
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I was always glad when my teens were actively engaged in the Lord's work on the sabbath. They rarely chose their own pursuits so well.
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It seems like we get those letters about not overscheduling on Sundays periodically. Sometimes it takes for a little while, but it never seems to become permanent. The Stake President sometimes tries to get the wards to cut back on Sunday meetings, but there are problems.
For example, when can you do choir practice? Have you EVER tried scheduling a regular choir practice on a day other than Sunday? If so, did you end up with any people in your choir? In my experience, it just does not work. I have seen a huge choir become almost non-existent when we just changed the time due to year-end change in meeting time. If you have a secret that will get this to work, I would love to hear about it.
How about Home Teaching? We have tried scheduling Home Teaching on weekdays with every family we home teach for the last several years. Very little success. We tried asking our Home Teachers to come on a weekday. Very little success. I realize that in theory, they are supposed to work around the schedule of their families, but unless you make things convenient for your home teachers they sometimes just don't come. I would rather have them come on Sunday than not at all.
One meeting that I have been highly impressed with is something the Stake Young Mens President schedules about once a month, called Priesthood In Excellence (P.I.E.). I thought it was another one of those superfluous meetings, until I went to one once. Wow. Really, it was just a small fireside, but it was geared towards near-future missionaries. The speakers were all missionaries, either recently returned, current full-time, or those that already had their call and were leaving shortly. And, of course, they have pie afterwards. My sons can go to that meeting any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
My wife and I have discussed the presidency meetings, planning meetings, and firesides on Sunday. I gotta admit I have the same issues with a lot of it, but the other thing that I noticed was that like pnr says in general, my children don't choose to do things that are any better if I just leave things alone. Which means if I want the Sunday Family Time thing to be any good at all, I have to plan it. At least, I try to be a presence and restrict usage of TV, computers, and mobile devices. Sometimes, even books. And I try to get some sort of gospel conversation going a few times during the day. But then again, if I'm not there actively refereeing things, sometimes it decays into arguments or stupid competitions, and then I think maybe watching Veggie Tales isn't so bad.
The most successful activity I can seem to get going with any consistency is a singing session. I have a sister-in-law who is the ward music chairwomen/ward choir director in her ward. She loves trying out new music. Plus, she belongs to one of those subscription things where she gets new sample music every month. She brings us some pretty cool stuff sometimes that we have to try out. But not everyone in the family sings, and we hardly ever have a balanced group unless we have visitors. So even that isn't prefect, but it is still almost always a fun bonding experience.
I would love to hear suggestions of what you other board members have done for successful Family Time on Sundays.
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posted
We struggle with what to do too. In our family which includes an EQ president, a YW president, and a Beehive class president, we stay after church for about an hour or so every week except for Fast Sunday. But that's the extent of most of our meetings. We used to have choir on Sundays, for the same reasons Half just said, but even that has gone away because unless we have it right after church people don't want to come back for it, and with all the other meetings right after church, the most faithful singers can't be there.
But honestly I enjoy having church things to do on Sunday, because (again like Half) I have a hard time helping the children do the right things on the Sabbath without a schedule to go to. When we're at home together from noon until bedtime, and all we do is restrict activities, it's a lot of boring. As was said, we need to plan better what we're going to be doing if we're going to actually have a Sabbath that is a joy and a delight. And it's all well and good to say write letters to missionaries, work on Family History, study scriptures, prepare upcoming lessons -- those are all good for adults, but for little children they mean almost nothing.
We haven't had any firesides for the youth in a while, but we used to have them at least once a quarter. I don't think our youth are unreasonably taken away from the family on Sunday; one hour after church once a month and perhaps a fireside less than once a month, on a different evening than BYC Sunday. There are still a lot of family hours left over.
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quote:One meeting that I have been highly impressed with is something the Stake Young Mens President schedules about once a month, called Priesthood In Excellence (P.I.E.). I thought it was another one of those superfluous meetings, until I went to one once. Wow. Really, it was just a small fireside, but it was geared towards near-future missionaries. The speakers were all missionaries, either recently returned, current full-time, or those that already had their call and were leaving shortly. And, of course, they have pie afterwards. My sons can go to that meeting any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
Could you please share more about this. With a son going on a mission in little over a year it sounds very interesting to me.
quote:And it's all well and good to say write letters to missionaries, work on Family History, study scriptures, prepare upcoming lessons -- those are all good for adults, but for little children they mean almost nothing.
Try the missionary letters again. With younger children get out any fun things like crayons, markers, colored pencils, stickers and let them draw a picture instead of write a letter. we are not always good at this, but for about 6 years now we have tried to write to the missionaries on fast Sunday. I keep track of who has written who and then we rotate through the missionaries in our ward. When we have a missionary in our extended family he goes into the rotation.
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quote:Could you please share more about this. With a son going on a mission in little over a year it sounds very interesting to me.
The stake young men president has arranged to build connections with all the missionaries in the stake, and a lot of missionaries in neighboring stakes. He plans these meetings once a month, and invites all the young men in the stake 16 and up. He gets several people to speak each month. I think the recently returned missionaries speak the longest. Those who already have their calls and are preparing to enter the MTC usually just bear testimony. There was one set of full-time missionaries present the time I was there, and one of them spoke for a minute or two.
He also arranges for a musical number, which is why my family was there. We thought we would do our number, leave our boys there, and go home. However, we ended up staying for the entire meeting, and for the pie afterwards. It was just a very impressive meeting.
One of the recently returned missionaries told about his first companion, who hates Americans. He didn't understand the language very well yet, and got almost no help from his companion for anything. He had to learn how to do a lot of things by himself. It was a powerful lesson about adversity and how important prayer and scriptures can be. I think it was also a good way to make sure the young men don't have unrealistic expectations about the "best two years".
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quote: Have you EVER tried scheduling a regular choir practice on a day other than Sunday? If so, did you end up with any people in your choir? In my experience, it just does not work.
If that's the case, then maybe it has to just not work. I mean, if the choice is between over-scheduling your Sunday so you don't have any family time, and having some of those other activities work sub-optimally, I kind of shrug and say "eh, I guess they'll work sub-optimally."
Also, just because your own personal policies might be "Sunday is a day to do dull and cheerless things" doesn't justify implementing more stake or ward activities on Sunday for the families that don't have such policies.
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quote: Sunday is a day to do dull and cheerless things
Someone had to say it.
This from someone who grew up in a family like that, and in that family every single child went in-active at some point. Not saying that was the direct cause or that it always happens.
I just think there's merit to the notion that if a child learns that Sunday means not having fun if your LDS, and that if you're not LDS life is fun on Sunday. The child may have a reason to stop attending before they have a chance to build their own testimony.
quote: I was always glad when my teens were actively engaged in the Lord's work on the sabbath. They rarely chose their own pursuits so well.
And this is the mindset that I see driving all these Sabbath meetings and activities. People seem to feel like they need to provide opportunities for the kids otherwise their Sunday will not be well spent. So my kids show up for all these things, some of which are just ridiculous. Meanwhile the kids who don't spend their time well still don't. The only kids they have occupied are the ones that would already be doing good things.
It drives me insane.
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