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One of my great pleasures in life is coffee. I started experimenting 3 years ago and now drink it every morning. This has brought with it some good and bad. I have found some other closet coffee fans and have enjoyed morning discussions with them at a local coffee shop. I also felt very judged and rejected “coming out” to a longtime friend group before a camping trip. Those relationships have never been the same. Most of my larger family and friends don’t know and I’ve decided to keep a temple recommend, but got my doctor’s recommendation to keep drinking it for my health to cover my bases, just in case. I have told all my kids, even though it took me a while to do this. I was worried that it would force them to decide that either dad was bad or the WOW (and the Church) was stupid. They all had the WOW lesson in primary and YM/YW yesterday. They came home and were like “why were they making such a big deal out of tea and coffee, it was so weird.” They have seen me and lots of other friends’ parents and teachers all drink coffee and seem like very active, healthy people. The discussion yesterday in their classes did not make any sense because it was all framed around health, which does not make sense now that nearly everyone has embraced regular caffeine consumption, in the form of Diet Coke or Yerba Matte, like my wife. We were able to have a really good family discussion after. My wife and I talked about that people get overly fixated on the “don’ts” and for us the WOW is important in giving us an emphasis on taking care of our god-given bodies, staying healthy, exercising and indulging in some things in moderation, including caffeine. We also talked about the dangers of addiction and our family history with alcoholism. That seemed to make sense. I wonder how many other kids reacted the same way yesterday and how long the Church can keep talking about the health dangers of tea and coffee.
I remember going to an event at a Seventh Day Adventist church that had free childcare. When we picked the kids up, they had questions. They had reportedly received a lesson about the genesis story and how the sabbath was supposed to be on Saturday. DW and I were not very pleased that our children had been indoctrinated on things unique to the SDA church (whereas we did expect general Christianity indoctrination). But putting it in perspective, I realized that our own church does this sort of thing all the time. If your kids go to primary, they will be taught LDS specific ideas as if they were the gospel truth.
The year that I was a primary teacher the focus was on the family proclamation and we had to memorize “The family Is of God” song with its heavy emphasis on gender roles. I even spoke to the primary president that I was worried that kids that didn’t come from traditional two-parent families might get the impression that their family structure was undesirable.
I learned that both the song and the theme was dictated to us from higher up but the PP did try to interject now and then that sometimes families can look different and that is ok too.
It seemed strange to me that we were bombarding these kids with gender roles.
Now my kids are both teenagers and we have had lots of conversations about how the way that people at church see things is not necessarily the way that we see things. Yet we still find value in goodness, even if we don’t agree on every detail. It sounds like you have met your own challenge successfully and did a wonderful job!
I think both of you have demonstrated what home centered, church supported should look like, even when the church is not necessarily supporting exactly what is taught at home. Nothing much to add other than a funny coffee thing. My daughter told me in high school that basically ALL the early morning seminary kids developed a post-seminary coffee habit to cope with the lack of sleep, which I found both funny and sad, but mostly funny. Their parents don’t know because I’m not a narc. hawkgrrrl wrote:
Nothing much to add other than a funny coffee thing. My daughter told me in high school that basically ALL the early morning seminary kids developed a post-seminary coffee habit to cope with the lack of sleep, which I found both funny and sad, but mostly funny.
My caffeine habit was developed originally to manage to stay up past my normal bedtime on Pathways nights:)
AmyJ wrote:
hawkgrrrl wrote:
Nothing much to add other than a funny coffee thing. My daughter told me in high school that basically ALL the early morning seminary kids developed a post-seminary coffee habit to cope with the lack of sleep, which I found both funny and sad, but mostly funny.
My caffeine habit was developed originally to manage to stay up past my normal bedtime on Pathways nights:)
Coffee helps me out of my stupor of morning depression I normally wake up with. Emphasis on “helps” not cures,
I read this thread with some glee. I’m not into coffee but as strange as it seems coming from a midwest catholic upbringing, I never acquired a taste for it. Beer on the otherhand! I echo the long line of alcoholics, and my need to keep within check. I think that is the point of the WoW, not to get too far into addictions that hurt (energy drinks do more damage vs green tea imo). Rather than an absolutist view of never consuming something listed in the WoW even if it might be beneficial.
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