Transoculoperspectorecon (To learn by seeing through a different perspective)

I have been teaching 4 and 5 year olds in primary for about 5 months now. It is not the first time that I have taught young children in order to fulfill a calling, but I gained a new perspective over the last couple weeks. You see, at the age of 4 children are still mostly untainted from the sorrows and prejudices of the world, but they are beginning to understand things of eternal consequence. They can be the cutest little teddy bears, or the cruelest little monsters, but they do it with the purest of honesty.

Well it happens that most of these children need to have a parent intervene with them at some time or another. I have watched the interactions, brief as they are, of the children and their parents, and I have noticed myself wanting to soften the hands of the parents. I want to slow them down and show them how cute and precious their children are. It's not that they are treating them mean, or unfair, or anything like that. It's just that the parents seem skeptical or resistant to the absolute cuteness of their children.

With this floating around in my head, I have thought about my interactions with my children. I have noticed that in our yearly family photos my kids come though as just the cutest little things. But I have also noticed that in the day to day life I often fail to see the absolute cuteness that they project. I also began to see that I am like the parents that I observe in primary. It seems so hard generally for parents, and myself included, to see the simple cuteness that is right in front of us.

So why is it so much easier to see the cuteness in other children?

I would like to propose that the answer is pretty simple, and by seeing the answer maybe I can become better, and you are welcome to come along.

I think that we as parents feel a powerful responsibility to teach their children, and we should. But we spend so much effort trying to catch and correct every bad or incorrect thing that we forget to have faith and let the perfect parent, our Father in Heaven be involved too. I wonder how much greater it will be if I can think of our perfect parent's involvement every time I teach or correct my children. And with a little further effort recognize and treasure the daily cutenesses of my children.

Transoculofaithrecon (... through the eyes of faith ...)

In the March Ensign the First Presidency Message is by President Eyring. As I was reading through it again in preparation for home teaching I was caught by a phrase that is a little off topic, but a good spiritual line of thought for me.

"... we must see the reality of who we are through the eyes of faith."

The thing that caught me was that, sure we all 'know' what our potential is, or at least we have some level of knowledge on that, but do we really feel it, and what about our kids. If we can truly help our children to understand and feel the potential inside of them, wouldn't that be the definition of a successful parent?