Emo Res

 The Church has developed a 10-week emotional resilience course. My stake is trying out a shortened version for the youth (shortened meaning the lessons are only 30 minutes long as apposed to an hour+). Jake (who has now been bishop for 3 years [sidebar: in Catch-22 Dunbar cultivated boredom to make time slow down; being a bishop or being married to one is another way to slow time, i.e. it's been a long 3 years]) asked me to lead the Emo Res Youth Group for our ward.

To train for this assignment, I attended another ward's meeting where I was forced to confront the green-eyed monster. This ward has a youth program like the one I grew up in, the kind I always assumed my kids would also have: lots of active youth who know each other well and enjoy being together. There must have been 15-20 kids there. 

In contrast, at our first meeting the following week, there were four kids: Claire and Anne and the 2 teens of the family we asked to host. My job is to lead the discussion, which should primarily by the youth talking. Getting comments from this group was difficult and awkward. Anne didn't want to be there, and only attended because I made cookies and promised to keep it to 25 minutes. A few weeks later, 2 additional youth showed up, bringing our numbers up to 6, and the lesson was quite a bit more enjoyable, but alas. Those 2 never showed again, and now the host family has lost interest and we're down to just Claire and Anne and Julia (who is a couple years too young, but as it's now at our house, we invite her to join). We trudge through the lessons as best we can. ("best" is used loosely here; our lesson on anger management featured yours truly raging for the full 30 minutes, i.e. my anger was not managed unless you concede that I never threw anything or physically injured anyone).

But this past Sunday we finally had a lesson that felt slightly less torturous. The lesson was "Building Healthy Relationships." We learned to use "I" messages rather than "You" messages, as "I" messages are less likely to offend. The manual gave some examples: a "You" message would be "You never listen to anyone, and you're not really listening to me now." The "I" message version would be "I feel hurt when I don't think I'm heard. Looking at me when we talk helps me feel like you care." 

Julia caught on quickly: "You are a brat" was her example of a "You" message. Her "I" message was, "Callie and Lydia, I feel you are a brat." (I typed that correctly: more evidence that kids are having difficulty recovering academically from the Covid years.)

Later that day (which happened to be Father's Day) Jake got this card from Claire: