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My oldest daughter just turned 11. She is not enthusiastic about church, scriptures, or prayer. When the subject comes up, she is pretty ambivalent about God. Normally, now that she turned 11, it would mean that she would move onto YW in January 2021 instead of November 2021. I have been dreading this for the last 15 months or so when policy changes made because I think that she needs those additional 11 months minimum. As the time has rolled by, it has been proven to me that she is not ready developmentally for the social and executive functioning requirements imposed by weekly youth meetings. We are not ready for the weekly carting her around and other obligations. None of us want to deal with handling Baptisms for the Dead.
I don’t have a temple recommend anymore and I don’t plan to get one. This makes temple trips tricky and required thought to plan for in case she wanted to go to the temple. A good year ago, I talked to my mom about the situation, and we came up with the (not false) narrative that if my daughter wanted to go to the temple, my mother wanted to be there for the first time to support my daughter. Since my mother lives so far away in another state, this gave us a socially acceptable “out” for why our family won’t be participating in branch temple trips as soon as my daughter is old enough for the recommend (at the time, it was January 2021; pre-pandemic and other circumstances).
I talked to my more orthodox husband (whom I feared would push policy and its blessings over our developmental situation) and he quickly and without hesitation agreed that our daughter is not ready for those activities yet. This brought a fair amount of comfort to me because it meant that I wasn’t acting from my own disbelief bias.
I had conversations with my daughter who on her most social days was in favor of an activity case-by-case basis approach with me involved as a leader in the activities. Most days, she was like, “Huh? Why?”.
Weeks later, I had a phone conversation with our Primary president who reminded me it was possible in the handbook to keep her back in a socially acceptable manner. She also was willing to advocate with our branch president regarding the situation. The conversation focused on what my daughter needed, and how the program could support us – namely by practicing the same routines of Primary 2x a month and R.S. 2x a month for Sundays, and Achievement Day activities 2x a month, lead/co-lead by me.
Within days of that conversation, I had emailed our branch president expressing our wishes, citing the handbook passage mentioned by the Primary president, and our plans for my daughter’s Primary attendance when/if things approach physical activities safely. I also contacted our current Y.W. President and let her know our plans (mostly in case she had ideas of surprising our daughter with intro to young women presents) – she reported wanting to support us but being sad that our daughter wouldn’t be joining Young Women’s right now. Within 72 hours of my email to the branch president, he wrote back and expressed support for our desires and our strategy.
I worried a lot over those last 15 months about what could go wrong and make us pariahs in the branch on the way to our inactivity. But I am grateful for all parties involved that we found a way to support my daughter and the rest of our family where we are most comfortable.
I’m glad it’s working out for you and your daughter and everyone seems to be in consensus. Sounds like you have some good people in your branch and that is something you should be thankful for. I am aware of a similar situation in a neighboring ward where it did not work out so well. You did lots of groundwork to prepare for a successful resolution. Congratulations! This is wonderful! Incidentally, we used similar reasoning for why DD (now 14) was not participating in youth temple trips (DD just doesn’t want to go). We stated that we wanted her first temple visit to be a special “mother daughter” trip. That was enough to delay the questioning for a while. Then the pandemic hit. Once the pandemic lifts and the youth temple trips resume DD will probably self advocate if she does not want to go. DD is fairly advanced in her ability to self advocate and stand her ground in the face of pressure.
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