Little Children to Lead Us

President Packer once said, “One of the great discoveries of parenthood is that we learn far more about what really matters from our children than we ever did from our parents. We come to recognize the truth in Isaiah’s prophecy that ‘a little child shall lead them’ (see here).  He was quoting this verse from Isaiah: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).  The verse is generally understood to be referring to the Millennium, and the safety with which children will be able to place with dangerous animals is symbolic of the peace that will reside in that era.  But since Isaiah’s writings were often dualistic, there’s no reason that we can’t also interpret it for our own day.  We can likewise have peace if we are righteous, and we can have “a little child” to lead us along.  I’m realizing more and more each day that he was right: we do indeed learn more about what is important in life from our children than we did from our own parents.  

                One such experience that illustrated this for me happened earlier this week.  My young son was having a four-year-old moment and decided that he would not go to bed without getting the things he was requesting.  This ended in a colossal tantrum for a very long time.  Finally he settled down and went to sleep, but soon after my daughter who is slightly older called for me from the room they were sleeping in.  She had been very distraught by all of the screaming from her brother and had in vain, like the rest of us, made a valiant effort to help calm him down.  She told me, “Daddy, do you know why he calmed down?  Because I said a prayer to Heavenly Father.”  Well, that of course melted my heart and taught me much about what my first instincts in difficult moments ought to be.  Indeed, children can “speak unto their fathers great and marvelous things” even in our day too (3 Nephi 26:14).

                Of course it’s hard to have little children to lead us if we don’t make the sacrifice of time to be there with them.  One of the great weapons of Satan is surely the busyness that the world creates so that we don’t have as much time to spend with our families.  In the same talk President Packer said, “Too often someone comes to me and says, ‘President Packer, wouldn’t it be nice if … ?’  I usually stop them and say no, because I suspect that what follows will be a new activity or program that is going to add a burden of time and financial means on the family.  Family time is sacred time and should be protected and respected.”  We indeed trade in “diamonds for stones” as the song says if we let the world’s priorities or even good activities take away unnecessarily the time that could be spent with our children (see here).