A Lesson for Parents --- From a Dance Class

Many folks my age regret the fact that only now, when our children are grown and gone, are we learning valuable principles that could have helped us be better parents when they were small. For me, one of these is the principle of agency. Instead of reasoning with children and helping them understand the "why" behind certain expected behaviors, I probably did too much ordering the children around.

A few days ago I was reminded of this kind of behavior as I was walking through the parking lot at Home Depot. A man was beginning to load some items into the back of his SUV. His wife was standing alongside with a boy of about three. The boy began walking around the rear of the vehicle, and the mother erupted, "GET OVER HERE!" and yanked on his arm. The boy began crying, and she continued to yell at him. It might have been different if she'd taken a moment to gently take him by the arm and point to the possible dangers of either getting in the way of his father or being hit by another car.

Understanding a child's perspective can help us avoid a lot of unpleasant situations, as in this story told by Gerald Lund at a seminar I attended at BYU in the summer of 1986:

When I was a junior in high school, our teachers held a dance as part of gym. I did not dance. I am not saying I did not like to dance. I did not dance. The reason was that I was deathly afraid of stepping on the girl's toes and making a fool of myself because I did not know how to dance. So during the dance I took my chemistry book and went to the top row of the bleachers and started studying chemistry.

About halfway through the dance, they announced a girls' choice, at which point I promptly buried my head deeper in my book. Then I heard footsteps coming up the bleachers. I can remember refusing to look up and thinking, Oh, no! Don't do this to me! But finally there were a pair of legs and a skirt standing before me. I looked up, and she said, "Jerry, would you dance with me?"

I said, "I'm sorry, but I just can't."

Well, you can imagine how she felt. She turned around and started down the bleachers. At this point, the girls' gym teacher, who had been watching the whole thing, came over and took her by the hand. Now the two of them were coming back up the bleachers. I knew this was not going to be pretty. The girls' gym teacher was also my math teacher, so she knew me. She said, "Jerry, this young lady has come all the way up these bleachers to ask you to dance. Now you're really not going to tell her no, are you?"

I said, "Yes, I am. I do not dance."

She said, "I know how you feel, but you can't tell this young lady no."

I said, "Oh yes, I can."

She said, "You won't tell this young lady no."

I said, "Oh yes, I will."

She started to get angry and said, "You will dance with her."

I said, "No, I won't."

So she took the girl and down the bleachers they went. Of course, the girl was flaming red by now—and as I think of this now, I cringe to think of what it must have meant for her. But I was so wrapped up in my own worry and low self-esteem, I could think of nothing but myself.

I watched the sequence of events that followed from my perch. The teacher dropped the girl off at the bottom of the bleachers and went straight across the gym floor to the coach, who was also my gym teacher. He looked up; she talked; he looked up again. He motioned to me to come down, and I shook my head no. It was at that point that he decided to teach without mildness and meekness.

The coach turned the record player off, went to the microphone, and said, "Could I have your attention, please." The gym immediately quieted down. "Sandra," he said, "has just walked all the way up to the top of the bleachers to ask Jerry Lund to dance. Jerry Lund has said no. How do you feel about that?"

Well, you know what the kids did. "Hey, Jerry," they shouted. "Come on!"

I just shook my head, and then my coach, who was very famous for his temper, got angry. He said, over the microphone, "You will be off those bleachers in thirty seconds or you will take an F in this class." And I said, "Coach, flunk away!"

I took an F in gym that term. You see, I would rather have taken the F than face the pain of being a fool. And when the coach backed me into a corner, there was no way I was going to come out.

Now let me tell you the sequel to that story. Remember, at the time I was a junior in high school. Time passed. I graduated from high school, spent six months in the service, went on a mission, and then attended BYU, where I met a young lady named Lynn. She loved to dance! And guess who ended up taking a dance class? We actually made a trade. I loved to play tennis; she loved to dance. So I took a dance class; she took a tennis class. I learned to dance and even reached the point where I enjoyed dancing.

I have thought of that often. How many times do we try to back people into a corner and force them to do what they ought to be doing? I knew what I ought to do. I did not want to hurt that girl in the least, but my pain was more important to me than her pain. The coach tried to ensure my cooperation through force, coercion, peer pressure, and an attempt to shame me. If he had just loved me enough to try to understand me, maybe great things would have happened. ("Strengthening the Bridges," in Selected Writings of Gerald N. Lund).

In a separate article Gerald Lund wrote this: "I once heard Elder Henry B. Eyring give a wonderful talk about teaching with the Spirit. He began his address with a story that just hit me like a sword in the heart. He mentioned a mission president who is a good friend of his. He said as they were talking he had asked the mission president how to better prepare a boy for a mission. He was expecting the mission president to mention that one should teach a boy how to work, teach him to love the scriptures, and so forth. The mission president instead told him that many missionaries come into the mission field not knowing they are accepted and loved and worthwhile, particularly by their fathers.

"I thought about my son, fifteen years old, who is a good boy. He does his priesthood duty without me prodding him. He goes to church. When he goes out at night I don't worry about what he is doing. And yet I am constantly on his back. Why? Because he is not doing the little things I want him to get better at. And it occurred to me that I have never said to him, 'We really love you and appreciate you.'"

Sounds too much like me.