Our Conference Weekend Setup, and the Parts That Never Work

The First Presidency's letter about this weekend has been on my phone since the first week of September, and I'd read it three times before I noticed the order of the verbs. It asks all of us to listen to, study, ponder and apply, in that order. Listening is first and it's the only one of the four that anybody under twelve in my house can do on a Saturday morning with a pretzel in one hand.

We encourage all to listen to, study, ponder and apply the counsel given.

So that's the job I've set for this weekend, and I've kept it small on purpose. Conference is Saturday and Sunday, October 3 and 4, with sessions at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Mountain time both days and about two hours to each. Everything else I do is logistics for getting five people through eight hours of sitting in a living room, and I've been at it long enough to know which logistics earn their keep.

What goes in the snack tins

Each of the older two gets a muffin tin. Caleb's has pretzels, apple slices, cheese cubes, dry cereal and a handful of the chocolate chips I keep behind the flour, and Lily's is the same except the apple is cut thinner because she says thick apple is "loud."

The tins come out about twenty minutes into each session, all at once, and nothing in them is earned. I tried the version where you get a cup for every talk you can name a topic from, and I'll say why I quit further down.

Sunday's roast goes in at nine, before the morning session, so the house smells like dinner by the time the afternoon one starts. That's the only meal I plan. Saturday we eat sandwiches off the counter and nobody complains.

The listening sheets for Caleb and Lily

Caleb gets a half sheet of paper with "A question I'm bringing" across the top. He writes it Friday night before bed and I don't read it unless he hands it to me. Under that are three blank lines for something he heard, and that's the whole sheet. He turns twelve in February and he has a bishop's interview ahead of him that hasn't happened yet, so I'm curious whether he has any question at all, and I'm not going to ask.

Everything I read this month says older kids do better when they arrive with a question. It matches what I saw in five years of third grade. A child who's listening for something sits differently from a child waiting for it to be over, even when the two look identical from the doorway.

Lily's sheet is a page folded in half, with "I heard" on one side and "I drew" on the other. In April she drew horses through all four sessions and I let her. This is her first conference since she was baptized on June 27, and I'd love to tell you that changes how she listens, but I can't tell yet.

What I'm planning for Ben

He turns three at the end of October and he is not going to sit through a two-hour session.

I've stopped pretending he might.

He gets a bowl with a lid, dry cereal, one cheese stick, a sippy cup and a short stack of picture books that live in the hall closet and come out only on conference weekend. They're the same books as last spring and the novelty has worn thin but he still reaches for them.

He stays in the room for the first ten minutes of each session and for every hymn, because he likes to sing at the top of his lungs and a hymn is the one place nobody minds. After that he goes with whichever grown-up is on Ben duty, out to the back patio if the weather holds and down to the basement if it doesn't. David and I trade by session. Whoever has him listens later to what they missed, on a walk or over a pile of towels, since the talks are posted for anyone who wants them.

I've written before about real jobs for a two-year-old, an eight and an eleven, and conference gets its own job for Ben: he turns the hymnbook pages, in the wrong direction.

Why bingo and the rest quit working

I'll give you the list, because lists of what works are everywhere and mine is the shorter one.

Bingo goes first, since the Church puts out free printables and I've printed every one of them and watched Caleb mark off "temple" with great satisfaction while the speaker was talking about something else entirely. A game that pays you for catching a word teaches you to hunt for the word, and by the second talk he's scanning like a man looking for his keys. I had paid in cheese cubes for attention that went somewhere else. It's the same trouble I had when I praised a sandwich and he stopped sharing, only with more printing.

The family that sits through all four sessions with a shining face in the picture exists, I'm sure, and I'm happy for them. By about 3:30 on Sunday we have a living room full of people whose eyes are open and whose minds have left. Some years we do three. One year we did the two Saturday sessions and Sunday morning and split the rest between the app and a very long walk.

Then the family photo on the couch at the start, everyone sitting up and smiling. That one's mine.

I take it every time and it's been a lie every time.

Making Caleb report back at dinner doesn't work either, because asked in front of everyone what he took from a talk he hands me an answer the way a boy hands over a permission slip he remembered at the bus stop. The answer isn't dishonest, but it isn't quite his either, so I've gone back to asking one person one question in the car on a Tuesday, when nobody is looking at anybody.

The one I'm still trying is expecting the weekend to be free, and it won't be.

There will be laundry Sunday and a fight over the good cushion, and Ben will spill something on the carpet during the speaker I most wanted to hear, because that's how he is.

Is there a verse for sitting through it?

There's one, though it's about a different event and I don't want to stretch it. In Nehemiah 8 the people gather in the street by the water gate and Ezra reads to them from morning until midday, and then this:

So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.

Nehemiah 8:8

I used to take that as a verse about Ezra, and these days I take it as a verse about the other men, the Levites named in verse 7, who stood among the people and helped them understand. When the day is over, in verse 12, the people go off to eat and drink and send portions to others "because they had understood the words that were declared unto them." The eating comes after the understanding.

I won't make more of that than it can hold. But I notice nobody in that chapter was handing out squares.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do my kids really have to sit through all four sessions?

Mine don't, and I'd pick the sessions you'll watch with your whole attention and let the others run while people fold things or go outside. The letter says to listen, and I can't find where it says to do it in one chair for eight hours.

What do I do with a toddler who screams during the prophet's talk?

You carry him out, without apology, because the talk will be on your phone Tuesday and nobody in your living room is grading you.

Should I prepare my newly baptized eight-year-old differently?

I'd ask her one thing: is there something you're wondering about? Write it down, or let her draw it, and then leave it alone. If you hear something that touches it, lean over and tell her quietly, once, and I wouldn't do it twice.

Bingo or the Church's squares cards, which one for an eleven-year-old?

Neither, for mine, since a blank half sheet asks him to think of something himself. If your eleven-year-old loves a game, give him bingo and see what happens, since it's free and the sheet can go in the recycling.

I still don't like how much of this weekend hangs on one adult holding the tins. The tins, the sheets, the plan for Ben, the roast timed for dinner, the decision about when to call it for the afternoon: it's a job, and most years it's mine. I'd like conference to arrive in the month without anyone managing it, and so far it never has.

with love, Melissa