Enjoying General Conference Together

When I was 6 years old, I got to go with my Mom and Dad and baby brother to Conference!  It was rare to be alone with them, and I was excited!  I don’t remember the counsel given, of course, but I do remember sitting in the “Cry Room” partitioned off behind glass windows at the back of the Tabernacle.  And I remember life savers to suck on when Conference started to get long, and a fun box lunch that was provided there on Temple Square!  I have grown up always feeling happy vibes toward General Conference!  I love it! That experience with my Mom and Dad bonded good feelings toward listening to our beloved leaders at Conference time!

Conference 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?

Ideas Families have Tried:

1. Be Excited

We have found that the key to a good Conference time with a family is preparation.  Getting to bed early the night before, having a healthy breakfast, the house picked up, and everyone dressed all has helped.  But even more important than that has been Mark’s and my excitement about the upcoming Conference.  The more we talk about it ahead of time, and the more important it is to us, the more important it is to the kids.  We remember to pray for the Church Leaders in Family Prayer, as these men and women prepare their messages for Conference.  We try to express how excited we are, to hear from our Prophets!

One morning, I tried out this idea I had heard about.  I arranged to have the phone ring when my family was at breakfast.  I 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.”  I tried to appear visibly shaken as I hung up the phone.  (My children’s mouths had dropped in surprise!)  “President Monson is coming to our house this Saturday!”  I announced!  “Isn’t this Amazing!  The Prophet.  In our very Living Room!”  My children were dumbfounded about my charade, until finally I 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, my now grown-up daughter told me she remembers vividly that phone call!

When Conference starts, we can point out the Prophet to our little ones.  “Even very young children can understand and accept things of an eternal nature.”  Cheryl Lant,  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/04/that-our-children-might-see-the-face-of-the-savior?lang=eng   We can encourage them to raise their hands to sustain the Apostles, and make it a meaningful moment.

My friends—I’ll call them Ed and 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 that Kathy will make a fun brunch 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 draw 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 commented to me, “It’s fun to see into their little minds.  These journals will be treasures one day.”

2. Make Conference a special time.

Make it different from normal Sundays.  Different activities can keep kids occupied as they watch.  Different foods than usual are fun.  It can be a different day altogether.

My friends choose General Conference weekend twice a year as the day they rotate their 72-hour emergency kits.  While they watch Conference, they eat the granola bars and energy bars that were in the kids, and then replenish them for the next 6 months!

Another 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 Reverent Tent.”  https://www.lds.org/friend/2008/10/conference-reverence-tent?lang=eng&query=General+conference+tent

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

One time, the week before General Conference, we had a Family Home Evening about ancient and modern prophets and how they tell us how to live so we can be happy.  We then challenged the children to listen for one thing the prophet said that they could do to make them happier.  We reminded them prior to Conference that each could report in the next FHE what we heard.  Another time, we changed it up a little.  Everyone wrote a question or two that they had.  We told our kids that if we prayed for it and listened carefully, our questions would be answered during Conference.  Afterward, whoever wanted to share their experience receiving their answers could.

My Favorite Idea:

3. Become Familiar with the Leaders.

I wanted to help my children better appreciate General Conference and who these men were.  So I took out the insert from the Ensign magazine, 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 slightly larger than the apostles, and the prophet’s was slightly larger than the counselors’, making the prophet’s picture the largest of all.

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’s card, I wrote:

*raised on a farm in Idaho

*served a mission, and later as Mission President in Bordeaux, France

*MBA from Harvard

*Businessman in Tampa, Florida

*Speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French

*Four Children

On the back of David A. Bednar, I wrote:

*Quarterback in High School

*His Father, not of our faith, let him go on a mission to Germany

*President of BYU-Idaho

* PhD in Organizational Behavior from Purdue

*Professor of Business at Texas Tech and U of Arkansas

*3 Children

For a Family Home Evening, I handed out one of the pictures to each person, 2 or 3 to the older ones.  The family took turns telling about “their” General Authority, with Mark and 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 with Joseph B. Worthlin!  This 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 tapes 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 spoke about, so they won’t feel left out and can add that Apostle to the stair rail.) Many of the Conferences after that, we have done various activities with these pictures of the prophets and we continue to put them up.  The children have become use to these names and more aware of their messages.

4. Reverence and Attention

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!”

My little boys were active, and I knew that they would have trouble lasting through the two-hour meetings.  I 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 (Stake Conference), I saved their absolute favorite activity that engrossed my 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.  I 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 my very youngest could not last, so Mark or I would take him to the foyer where he could run around a little and not bother anyone.  Once Conference, I discovered that the sound was piped in to another classroom, one that had nursery toys!   I could sit in there and listen while my two youngest boys played.  If they got noisy, I told them how much I wanted to hear the special words of prophets, so would they please play quietly.  I tried to keep a good attitude about going to Conference, even though it wasn’t easy, so that my kids would grow up wanting to hear the inspired words.

Another friend—I’ll call her Tera—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 kids heard that word in a talk, they got to eat that snack!  Tera found out that if a word was used throughout the entire 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 another one.  It was neat to see how much more her kids listened with this incentive.

Our Primary gives out General Conference packets that contain things to do as the kids watch.  Some of these are available online as well.  As the kids grew out of the coloring pages and games, they would transition themselves into not-taking.  We didn’t even have to coax or teach them.  Mark and I had been doing that all along, and one by one, the kids started doing the same.  Of course, sometimes Seminary teachers encouraged note-taking during Conference, but even before that, some of the kids began taking a few notes on their own.  For Family Night, they could go through their notes with us and comment on their favorite ideas and stories.

5. Review with the kids.

The more we review what our kids have heard, the more these teachings will stick!

After Conference, on the drive home or at the next meal, we often talk over what we have heard.  Remember the story about the little boy who prayed?  Wasn’t it sweet about Elder ____’s wife?  What do you remember most?  Monday night following Conference, we often have a family home evening with questions about General Conference.  The older ones open their notes and share what struck them.  Everyone can share a story they remember or what touched them the most.  It was a good way to talk about different stories and principles we learned.

Our neighbors in the adjacent ward have a fun tradition for the Family Night after Conference.  A Conference Game Show!!   In advance, they invite two other families to come over that night and bring their notes from conference.  With the three families all mixed up and divided into two teams, they are ready to play.  First, everyone writes down questions from their notes of the talks given.  Then one team asks one of their questions and the other answers then they switch back and forth.  Someone keeps score, but really it’s not very competitive.  It’s fun—and neat to see how even the little children could answer!  Afterwards, there was a yummy treat, of course!

How do you bond good feelings with General Conference?  Thanks for commenting below!