It is 8:30 on Sunday morning. Church begins in 30 minutes. Jan finally has herself ready and the baby dressed. She is just sitting down to a quick breakfast when 10 year old Shawn wanders into the kitchen still dressed in his pajamas.

“Shawn,” Jan says, looking up, “hurry and get dressed. We need to leave in just a few minutes.”

“Not going,” mumbles Shawn.

Scenario #1:

“Shawn!” Jan yells, “you march right back to your bedroom and get into your Sunday clothes. I don’t have time for this right now.”

“But I don’t want to,” whines Shawn, his voice rising.

“Go!” says Jan firmly, pointing towards his room. “Unless you want to be grounded all week…”

Shawn stares, then slowly turns around and heads back to his room. A few minutes later, he comes back dressed without saying a word.

Scenario #2:

“OK,” says Jan, “you can choose if you go or not. But just remember that when you don’t go, you make Heavenly Father sad. When we don’t go to church we tell Him that we just don’t love Him anymore. I’d be really disappointed in you too because you know better. So think hard before you let everyone down like that.”

With that, Jan turns back to her breakfast. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Shawn hesitate, then turn and shuffle back to his room to get dressed.

Scenario #3

Jan put down her fork and put her arm around Shawn.

“Shawn, you’ve always liked going to church. What’s going on?”

Shawn stared down at the floor and didn’t say anything.

“Is something going on with your teacher or the other kids in your class?” prompted Jan.

After a moment of silence, Shawn finally admits that a couple of the deacons have been teasing him about his new glasses.


In each of these scenarios, mom is trying to help her son get to church. In each case, she makes it clear that attendance at church is important. In each case, though, her goal is the same but there are different approaches to accomplish the same thing. In the first scenario, Jan enforces obedience by threatening consequences; in the second, she uses guilt. In the third, however, she recognizes a change in Shawn’s behavior and wants to understand what’s changed.

To this point, we’ve outlined our goal of preventing future rebelliousness by helping children develop divine esteem or reliance on the spirit. We concluded that they are able to develop that reliance only when they have a correct understanding of their Heavenly Father. We also examined the importance of having a clear understanding of covenanted responsibilities.

Most children who rebel have been taught correct principles in the home and at church. They know they are supposed to keep the commandments. Many rebellions are not a rejection of the message as much as they are a rejection to our approach and our authority.