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Just want to say I am finding Seminary very hard. I have to get up very early, sometimes after a very long evening working on my PhD or work (often to wee hours in the morning). I question the value of forcing the kids and parents to get up that early every morning. My daugther is often very drained as she is of slight build. She did aay that one reason she goes is that she feels the spirit — provided a certain disruptive youth isn’t there. Nonetheless, I have to confess, I am not really a proponent of early morning seminary. I would love to hear reasons why it’s so great to have early morning seminary though, to temper the negative sentiments I feel about it….
Having had two kids go through the program and two more currently attending, my sentiments match yours almost exactly. DW was seminary teacher for three years, so that made it a bit easier since she had to go anyway, but it was a very difficult calling because she works full time. I’m not a huge fan, and some days we do have difficulty getting the boys up and going and sometimes they have trouble staying awake at school. If I had to give a positive, DW does say that they told her as a seminary teacher that BYU does weigh seminary graduation heavily and the seminary teacher endorsement is at least as weighty as the bishop’s. Not sure if they told them that to make them feel important, but of my two that graduated they both got into BYU and both got scholarships. On the other hand, they were both smart (a valedictorian and a fourth in the class), so I’m sure that does play a role.
DarkJedi wrote:Having had two kids go through the program and two more currently attending, my sentiments match yours almost exactly. DW was seminary teacher for three years, so that made it a bit easier since she had to go anyway, but it was a very difficult calling because she works full time. I’m not a huge fan, and some days we do have difficulty getting the boys up and going and sometimes they have trouble staying awake at school.
If I had to give a positive, DW does say that they told her as a seminary teacher that BYU does weigh seminary graduation heavily and the seminary teacher endorsement is at least as weighty as the bishop’s. Not sure if they told them that to make them feel important, but of my two that graduated they both got into BYU and both got scholarships. On the other hand, they were both smart (a valedictorian and a fourth in the class), so I’m sure that does play a role.
Thanks — I’ll pass that on to my daughter. The more practical reasons there are for doing it, the better. She does want to go to BYU, so this is another reason to go…
I HATE it, and it has had a negative impact on my sons’ grades and their overall pleasantness. They love(d) going. Their friends are(were) there. It’s essentially a requirement to get into BYU (my oldest is there now; his brother is still in HS and going to early morning seminary daily). Given that our in state tuition option is double the cost of BYU (as is the U of U where we don’t have residency) and neither school is as academically good as BYU, we are basically stuck with early morning seminary. That means DH and I take turns getting up at 5:20AM every other day to get my son up and off to school. He routinely gets 6 hours or less per night of sleep, which isn’t good for our son’s health, his growth or his grades. Both boys have had issues with grades that I believe are directly related to the lack of sleep. Honestly, the school is complicit because the HS has an earlier start time than either the elementary school or the middle school. The start time is two full hours earlier than the elementary school. The lack of sleep also hurts my husband and me in our ability to manage our jobs effectively. We are not farmers. When I was living in Asia, I often had to be on calls with the US at midnight or later. I was completely unable to support getting the kids ready and my husband had to quit his job to help them out.
So, not much positive to say here except it’s necessary if you want to capitalize on the low tuitions that your tithing dollars have subsidized. And the kids don’t want to miss out on it. I would love to see the church care about this and offer either an afternoon option or an online option with a weekly meet up, but there appears to be zero chance of that.
My son is the worst at getting up and going in the morning. I have found seminary a great way to wake him up so by the time he gets to school he is actually awake and thinking. He attends about 50% of the time and will probably not get enough to graduate but it helps him in school when I get him going in the morning. I don’t get too worried if he will graduate or not. I just take him when I can, and let him (and me) sleep in some times too.
Does your daughter ever like it? If they feel the spirit sometimes, whatever that means, that can be a good thing for them to experience.
It is the only option in some places other than home study or online, and a lot of kids simply don’t do well at home or online. Some kids, especially recent converts or those with no home support, are hungry for interaction with others who share their faith, and early morning seminary is the only real option for them outside of Sunday meetings. When we lived in Missouri, there was a young lady like that – and the chance to have early morning seminary in our home was, literally, to her and her mother, a godsend. We were the only two LDS families in the town, and the regular ward class was 40 minutes away. It was early morning in our home or not at all – and, since she couldn’t attend church regularly, early morning seminary was a spiritual lifeline. Some kids have incredibly busy schedules (which is another issue all on its own), and early morning is the only time they can attend.
We forget, sometimes, that many of our issues are problems of relative luxury (and I don’t mean financially) – and this is one of those problems, imo. If she likes it and feels inspired by it, it might be another case where you simply have to take one for the team.
Nice to know I’m not the only one that kind of resents the toll of early morning seminary on parents. Does anyone know if the church looks at whether the parents are full tithe payers when considering whether to admit a youth to BYU? It would be like the church to not only consider where there was seminary graduation, but whether the parents are full tithe payers when considering to admit a youth/young adult. Unfortunately, our experience was all negative, so don’t read further if you only want positives 
We stopped going for some of the reasons others have stated. My girls went from lovely, pleasant teens to grumpy, miserable sods. The school called me to discuss what was going on at home because they were falling asleep in class and their grades had dropped. They would be in tears each night trying to finish assignments/homework when they were too tired to think straight. I was suffering from headaches almost continually from the time I started taking them until we stopped and it was dangerous for me to be driving some mornings with my health issues.
We have no option of BYU and no one could actually explain to me any other good reason to actually attend. There were disruptive kids in the class that meant learning was hit and miss anyway and this made it even more unbearable for them. The teacher is a lovely person, but had no flexibility or empathy to parents or students. She has no children and doesn’t work and lives a 5 minute walk from the chapel! We didn’t appreciate her attitude when the homework wasn’t done – even when YW was on the night before and they didn’t get home until 9pm.
Perhaps if it was at a more reasonable time, or we lived closer to the chapel, it may have been different, but we had to leave home by 5:40am each day and it was just too much for everyone.
Seminary was one of the nails in the coffin for us with church. It was a truly horrible experience and we could not find a single positive in it.
SilentDawning wrote:Nice to know I’m not the only one that kind of resents the toll of early morning seminary on parents. Does anyone know if the church looks at whether the parents are full tithe payers when considering whether to admit a youth to BYU? It would be like the church to not only consider where there was seminary graduation, but whether the parents are full tithe payers when considering to admit a youth/young adult.
My third just completed his BYU application (early deadline was Dec. 1). There isn’t a tithing question. There is the bishop’s recommendation, but the (online) form does not specifically mention tithing, either. So, it doesn’t appear that whether parents or students actually subsidize BYU through church tax or not has a bearing.
Thought I would share the reaction of my daughter when I told her that seminary graduation is a requirement for BYU admission…her eyes bugged out of her head. I think it strengthened her commitment to go to Seminary. She started nodding her head and said that it was another reason to go. Funny how no one plugs the “get into BYU” reason in my state (far removed from Utah). Thanks everyone for enlightening me on this one.
This is kind of a sore subject for me, and it became a big source of contention with my kids. My last kid is in seminary. The teacher is a great person but doesn’t relate well to kids, so it isn’t a great atmosphere. My youngest was excited to start, and after one month was begging me to stop. It was tiring, it was a negative environment, they had stomachaches every day, and they lasted all day. I mentioned the BYU requirement, which they didn’t believe, so I let them look it up. My child and I decided they would attend 1/2 time, and they have until high school graduation to make up the days that they miss. I’m hoping the teacher next year will be more in tune with the kids, and it won’t be an issue, but this way they still have their foot in the door in case BYU is where they decide to go. This has helped alleviate the overall tiredness factor, as they aren’t doing it every day.
The most positive aspect of early morning seminary, IMHO, is that they get to spend a little time with their church friends in the morning and all head off to school together. That is a plus as long as they get along with their church peers. It does give them a little sense of camaraderie in that they are all in this early morning club together. The tiredness factor is a huge negative.
I think it is really hard for anyone to really focus and learn much that early in the morning.
hawkgrrrl wrote:I HATE it
Please Hawk, don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel.
I didn’t do seminary very well.
I found much more fulfillment in institute and did graduate while attending my state college.
I have one child in early morning seminary. She loves it and I do not like it at all. In my opinion it deprives kids of sleep and takes time from learning more important things like core subjects of math, science, language, etc. My stake has an online version which have to get permission from the stake president to do, which is difficult. I personally know youth in my ward who change their sports activities because they have to attend seminary (cannot participate in early morning track practices so they don’t go out for sports for example). That being said, my daughter loves it and I have never fought her to attend. In fact sometimes I’ll tell her she should not attend so that she gets more sleep before an exam or something and she ignores me.
To clarify one thing in this thread. Seminary is not a “hard and fast” requirement for BYU admission, but a very high percentage of students do graduate from seminary, something like 80% plus. It’s a de facto requirement for admission but there may be mitigating circumstances.
Leaving my daughter and her lack of sleep out of it, it negatively impacts me. I drive my daughter to seminary twice a week and one those days I find suffering from inadequate sleep. I also get migraines brought on for lack of sleep, and seminary contributes to negative health consequences for me. It also negatively impacts my relationship with my wife (yes think intimacy here) because she drives the other half of the week and one of us is always tired at night.
If I had a say, I’d offer online seminary much more freely.
Just one more thing to add. The people who are called to teach early morning seminary are true saints. I honestly couldn’t get up that early every single day and try to bring the spirit to a room full of sleepy teens. Yes, they are often cheesy, sometimes ill-informed (one went on an anti-evolution rant that my son was upset about), but they do this with no pay day in and day out. God bless them. God bless them. I’ve substituted a time or two, and trying to do it every day would be hard. The experience for the kids is so highly dependent on the teacher, and there are some good ones. Some make the kids feel good about themselves.
I wish they had release time where we are. But they don’t.
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