Guest Author - Terrie Lynn Bittner

Teaching No Greater Call has a story in the section on likening of a Primary having a problem with teachers giving the children treats, which, the manual says, detracted from the Spirit. This rule upsets many teachers, but that story offers a clear reason for the rule.

We have been counseled to avoid feeding the children during Primary, except in nursery, unless the lesson calls for food. This, to me, means if the lesson manual calls for food, not if you can dream up a long-stretch to make it seem like the food is part of the lesson.

Why do we have this rule and why is it important?

Over the years, food has occasionally entered my classroom through leaders or parents. Each time the children obsessed over the food. “When are we getting our treat?” “We’re hungry!” It seems it’s all they can think about when they know a goodie awaits them. When my children were young, and I asked them what they learned in Primary, they’d answer, “We got candy.” That, in their minds, had been the point of class.

As the teaching manual suggests, food detracts from the spirit. Just as were those who followed Jesus for the free food, children who go eagerly to Primary to get their treat are coming for the wrong reasons. A teacher who bribes the children to behave or to like her by giving them food not only does a disservice to her students, but she does a disservice to herself. She is suggesting she is incapable of controlling her class or being liked by them any other way, which is most likely an untrue assessment of her skills and personality. You can’t, as we’ve often heard, buy love, and with children, we don’t have to. A skilled teacher will make the lesson so special the children never even notice the lack of food. It takes practice, but you can learn to do it.

We want children to feel the spirit when they’re at church. For some children, especially those who most tempt you to provide bribes, this is their only chance to experience the gospel and the spirit. It’s our job, as teachers, to make sure every moment of our class time is peaceful and spiritual. We have a mere forty minutes to reach them each week; we can’t afford to waste even one moment of it. Anything at all that takes away from the spirit, or distracts the children from the lesson being taught, can rob a child of eternity. You don’t know which week, which lesson, will be the one that could be changing everything, and you’d hate to be wasting your time on cupcakes when the moment arrived.

If you’ve used food to this point, you’ll find it takes time to break the children of the expectation of treats. Be prepared to gently tell them they are there to feast on the word of God, not treats, and never once back down. If you ever again provide food, even when it’s called for in the manual, you’ll have to start all over again. There isn’t a single lesson in your book that can’t be taught without it, so I never use the food activities suggested.

There are, even beyond the spiritual reasons, practical reasons not to feed your students. They are headed home for lunch, and parents get cranky when their healthy lunch is ignored because the child has been eating junk food. Some parents don’t allow sugary treats or prefer to regulate it. You can’t serve something unless you’ve asked the parents for permission, so if a visitor arrives alone, you will have to withhold it. Brothers and sister whine when one child gets a treat and another doesn’t.

However, the most important reason for not offering food is this: Heavenly Father said not to. If He said not to feed the children during His Primary, how can we decide we know better than Him? When on the Lord’s errand, do as the Lord commands.