Parents PLEASE.....

Teach your kids to sit through a story without interrupting. I am BEGGING YOU!!!

Okay, so it is vacation Bible school week. I normally run "games" but this year I decided to be a "crew leader" which essentially means that I get to take a group of kids around to different stations and interact with them. A lot of the kids that attend VBS do not attend our church, They are friends or neighbor children of our regular church kids. It is so fun to get to be with these kids for a week. You really get to know them well as you lead them around to the different activities and you see and hear lots of things about their lives. It is an opportunity that I am grateful for.

Having said that... I discovered something this year that I had not know previously. I have worked with children in various positions throughout my life. I discovered early on that I LOVED to be with kids. Perhaps it is because at 4 ft 11 inches tall, I will always look like the perpetual kid, but nevertheless, my talents lie with interacting with children. As the years have progressed, I have seen trends establishing in our current generation of children that have enlightened me. Some of these trends disturb me, some frustrate me, some I find amusing... but the one I discovered this week has me angry.

Our stations at VBS include things like games, crafts, snack and an adventure, bible-related video. The kids do love those things and do fine for all of those activities. Also included is an interactive Bible story. Our story leaders use props and involve the kids by having them act out things. These are not boring drawn out stories, they are intriguing stories drawn from the most interesting book on the planet, the Bible. Last night, for instance the kids pretended to be Christians in flight from Roman guards after Jesus' crucifixion. Of course they enjoy things like the wind and waves of being on a boat in a stormy sea with Jesus, or crawling into the smelly belly of a whale(complete with tuna odors!) BUT when it comes time for the story leaders to do a 10 minute discussion of the lesson, the majority of these kids could not sit still and be quiet long enough for our leaders to finish a sentence! More than half of the children present simply refused to listen without talking. There were numerous interruptions, without bothering to raise their hands. The leader had to regain their attention so much that the gist of the story was lost in all the commotion. For those kids who were trying to sit politely and engage in listening to the story, it was VERY frustrating. When asked to answer questions, these wiggly worms would ramble off stories of their own that had no bearing on the message or content of the nights subject matter. It was a very sad and frustrating thing to watch. I also quizzed other leaders and discovered that my group was not the lone rangers in this, it was a trend for the week.

So, please, if you have not already done so, would you turn the tv and computer games off and read some books to your kids? If they try to interrupt then PLEASE teach them the manners to hold their thought, AND Tongue, for just a minute so you can finish the page/chapter/book? I am begging you?

I have to wonder how these kids get anything accomplished at school. And please don't tell me that you have to be homeschoolers to learn this. Or that the mom has to be a stay-at-home mom (or dad) to teach these things, and that it is a product of society's fast pace. My brother's kids are some of the most well behaved kids I know and both their parents work full time. It is not the situation your family is in that produces kids who know how to behave in each situation they find themselves... it is training your kids in how to act that makes all the difference; and THAT takes time and energy.

Please parents, if you haven't done so yet, invest some time and energy into your kids. Not so that I will have an easier time with them at Vacation Bible school, but so that they will have the best possible life that they can live.