Ideas For My Pocket: a Support Group for Families: Ready for Conference Yet? You Bet!!

Conference time is a special time, to sharpen the saw and to be renewed by the words of prophets. But the sessions are long. Little guys get wiggly and Big guys get sleepy! How can we help our family members learn to enjoy General Conference?

Loreen found that the key to a good Conference time with a family was preparation. Getting to bed early the night before, having a healthy breakfast, the house picked up, and everyone dressed all helped. But even more important than that was her and Bill’s excitement about the upcoming Conference. The more she and Bill talked about it ahead of time, and the more important is was to them, the more important it was to the kids. They prayed for the Church Leaders in Family Prayer, as these men and women prepared for Conference. They expressed how excited they were, to hear from our prophets!

One morning, Loreen arranged to have the phone ring when the family was at breakfast. She went to answer it, and said, “Yes, this is she!” “It’s who??” “President Monson?!!!” “Yes” “At our house?!” “This Weekend?” “Of course! We’d be delighted to have you!” “Thank you so much.” She appeared visibly shaken as she hung up the phone. (Her children’s mouths were dropped in surprise!) “President Monson is coming to our house this Saturday!” “Isn’t that Amazing! The Prophet. In our very Living Room!” Her children were dumbfounded about her charade, until finally she told them: “Yes, it’s true. He is going to come and speak to us on our TV at Conference! It’s that exciting!!” Years later, her now grown up daughter remembered vividly that phone call!

When Conference starts, point out to them the prophet. “Even the young children can feel the sweet Spirit when they see the Prophet.” Have them raise their hands to sustain the apostles—make it a meaningful moment.

Ed & Kathy really talk up General Conference with the same excitement they would an upcoming holiday. This creates anticipation of a great event. Their kids know to expect sitting and watching all of the sessions. And Kathy makes a fun brunch for after the Sunday morning session.

They have given each of their children a special General Conference journal (a composition notebook they each decorated), that Kathy keeps and gives to them each conference. The older kids take notes—she was surprised at how well they do on this. The little kids draw pictures from what they hear or the tie the speaker is wearing, etc. As they can, the kids write in a few words, that usually end up being quite funny. Kathy comments, “It's fun to see into their little minds. These journals will be treasures one day.”

The Carter family choose General Conference weekend to rotate their 72-hour emergency kits. While they watch Conference, they eat the granola bars and energy bars that were in the kits, and replenish them for the next 6 months!

The Tanners watch Conference at home on Saturdays. But it has become tradition to go to the Stake Center for the Sunday morning session. Though not as easy as turning on TV, this has proved to be worth the extra effort for them. It is a reason to dress up, and listen more reverently, and is a change in routine that helps everyone pay attention. They have noticed that the Spirit is especially strong for that session. (It was a great day when they finally made it through an entire session without taking any little ones out to the foyer!) For the afternoon session, they like to go to Grandma’s to watch. Extended family sometimes joins them after the session for a wonderful visit after a wonderful day. Members of the family comment on their favorite part of Conference.

One family decided to copy King Benjamin and set up a tent in the family room, with the door towards the speakers. See Mosiah 2:6 in the Book of Mormon. It was a fun way to watch and a special way too. See “Conference Reverence Tent.” https://www.lds.org/friend/2008/10/conference-reverence-tent?lang=eng&query=General+conference+tent

The week before General Conference Joe & Suzanne have a home evening about ancient and modern prophets and how they tell us how to live happily. They then challenge the children to listen for one thing the prophet said that they could do to make them happier. They reminded them prior to Conference that each would report in the next home evening what we heard. One year they changed it up a little. Everyone wrote a question or two that they had. Joe and Suzanne told their kids that if they prayed for it and listened carefully, their question(s) would be answered during Conference. Afterward, whoever wanted to share their experience receiving their answers could.

I wanted to help my children better appreciate General Conference and better understand who these men were. So I took out the insert from the Ensign that had all the General Authorities’ pictures, and cut out each picture of the prophet, his counselors, and the twelve apostles, including each ones’ name below his picture. Then, I took them to a copy store and blew them up til they were almost 5 x 7 size. These were black and white, and not the greatest quality, but it worked. I liked it that the counselors’ pictures were

I found some simple facts about each one from the backs of the 8 x 10 pictures of them from the meetinghouse library and wrote these facts on the backs of the pictures, then laminated them. (As I found out more facts at various places, I’ve added these with permanent marker.) For example, on the back of Elder Neil L. Anderson, I wrote:

For a Family Home Evening, I handed out one of the pictures to each person, 2 or 3 to older ones. The family took turns telling about “their” General Authority, with me filling in details from the backs of the meetinghouse library pictures I had checked out. My family came to know these men as real people, businessmen, fathers, with various talents and stories. One of my very young boys has the middle name Joseph, and he connected immediately with Joseph B. Wirthlin! That was HIS General Authority, and for years he searched for him at each conference and listened well as he spoke. He brightened whenever he heard that apostle mentioned!

During Conference, each family member puts up on the stair rail the picture as that one speaks. The First Presidency’s pictures go above the others taped to a shelf on the wall. (Daddy lets the children know who has spoken in the Priesthood Session and what he has spoken about, so they can add that Apostle to the stair rail.) Each six months after that, we do various activities with these pictures of the prophets and continue to put them up. The children have become used to these names and more aware of their messages.

We parents have to work hard even to get to listen and then not to scold too much, as we want Conference to be a happy time! The message we must give the kids is, “I really want to hear this!”

Kay’s little boys were active, and she knew that they would have trouble lasting through the two-hour meetings. She planned to get out little legos or tinker toys for them to play with quietly (hopefully) in front of the TV. For the sessions when they were all seated in folding chairs for the two-hour meetings, she saved the absolute favorite activity that engrossed her boys the longest. It was a set of plastic templates that kids could draw with, a couple with stencils of animals, a couple with trucks and planes, and a couple with ABCs. She brought notebooks and colored pencils, and the kids could trade around the templates and draw with them—excited, for they had not seen these templates for six months since last Conference!

Sometimes her very youngest could not last, so Kay or her husband Bruce would take him to the foyer where he could run around a little and not bother anyone. One Conference Kay discovered that the sound was piped in to another classroom, one that had nursery toys! She could sit in there and listen while her two youngest boys played. If they got noisy, Kay told them how much she wanted to hear the special words of prophets, so would they please play quietly. She tried to keep a good attitude about going to Conference, even though it wasn’t easy, so that her kids would grow to look forward to hearing the inspired words of Conference.

Tehra tried to think of a way to help her young children pay attention and really listen to Conference. She came up with a plan. She arranged 6 or 7 lunch sacks on the counter, visible from the family room where her family would be watching Conference on TV. She filled the sacks with some varieties of snacks her kids liked; and on the outside of each sack, she printed gospel words, such as love, temple, sacrament, tithing, scripture, etc. The idea was that when her children heard that word in a talk, they would get to eat the snack inside! Tehra found out that if a word was used throughout the whole talk (such as a talk on love would have the word “love” in it many times), it might have to be one snack per talk. Then when another talk had that word in it, they would get a snack from it again. It was neat to see how much more her kids would listen with this incentive.

Janene’s best success when the kids were younger was to use the General Conference bingo. It was a page of many different gospel topics. When they heard a message about one of the topics, they could fill that square with a piece of candy or raisins. When the Bingo Page was full, they got to eat the snacks!

The Griswold kids liked doing the General Conference packets that the Primary gave them to do as they watched. Gina knew that these are available online as well. As the kids grew out of the coloring pages and games, they would transition themselves into note-taking. Gina didn’t even have to coax or teach them. She and Garrick had been doing that each conference all through their marriage, and one by one, the kids started doing the same. Of course, sometimes Seminary teachers encouraged note-taking during Conference, but even before seminary, some of the Griswold kids began taking a few notes on their own. For Family Night, they would go through their notes and comment on their favorite ideas and stories.

After Conference, on the drive home or at the next meal, Tom and Tarmi would talk over with their kids what they had heard. Remember the story about the little boy who prayed? Wasn’t that sweet about Elder ___‘s wife? What do you remember most? Monday night, Tom & Tarmi would have a family home evening with questions about General Conference. The older ones would open their notes and share what had struck them. Everyone told a story they remembered or what had touched them the most. It was a good way to review and talk about different stories and principles learned from General Conference.

The Lymon family had a fun tradition for the Family Night after Conference. In advance, they would invite two other families they knew to come over that night and to bring their notes from conference. With the three families all mixed up and divided up into two teams, they played a “Conference Game Show.” First everyone wrote questions from their notes of the talks given. Then one team would ask one of their questions and the other would answer and then switch. Someone kept score, but things were not too competitive. It was fun—and neat to see how even the little children could answer! Afterwards there was a yummy treat, of course!!