Tabletop Confessions

After church yesterday, Amber got a phone call from one of Aylee's primary teachers. She had some concerns with the reverence and respect in the class as a whole. She said that Aylee is usually really good, but there are times that she chimes in with the rest of the crew...today was one of those days.

Amber and I decided to make it a discussion at the dinner table. I don't believe in singling people out in a group for correction (I prefer to do that in a one-on-one setting), but we thought this might be a good way to get an open dialog flowing. We also hoped that it would help the offender realize what they were doing so that she would decide to improve herself on her own.

We started by talking about their classes at church and how well their class is doing t listening. We asked broad questions about reverence and respect. We asked about who the most reverent people are and what makes them that way. We then asked them about irreverent examples in their class.

After this discussion I asked everyone at the table how their own comportment was for the day and how they thought they could improve. Aylee was still completely oblivious to any wrong-doing and chimed in that she was trying very hard to be respectful and would continue to do so. Johnathan, on the other hand, (who has been doing remarkably well in class this year) opened up and confessed to a bunch of things that he figured was irreverent that he has done in his past primary classes. He ended with a heart felt commitment of change.

It was a pretty funny exchange. Here we were trying to get Aylee to realize some faults and instead, Johnathan catches the wave and opens everything up to us. So, next time should we focus on Alayna's behavior and then maybe Aylee will confess?