How to Prepare Your Child for a Mission

Communication

Your child will need the ability to communicate. This means that your child will have to resolve differences without using yelling or anger. Your child will have to be able to sit down and have a calm conversation about their differences in opinion. The environment should be conducive to the Holy Spirit being present. This skill is necessary for companionship inventory. If your child and members in your home cannot do this, start practicing.

Hygiene

Your child will need to be able to go to sleep and wake up without your prompts. They will need to shower, use deodorant, brush their teeth, and polish their shoes, without you having to prompt them. The ability to self-govern is absolutely necessary. Don’t teach your child these skills; teach your child to teach themselves.

Cleanliness

Your child will need to know how to flush a toilet, make a bed, do laundry, sweep, mop, and clean bathrooms. Furthermore, your child will need to have the desire in them to want to have a clean environment. Parenting adolescents is not about forcing our children to choose healthy choices. It is about helping our children develop the desire to want to make healthy choices.

Emotional Regulation

Your child will need to regulate their own emotions. They will need to not feel the need to change people in their environment in order to achieve a physiological state of peace. Your child will need to be able to feel emotions such as sadness, disappointment, failure, and sorrow, without reacting to those emotions with fight or flight.

Locus of Control

Your child will need to develop an internal locus of control. They will need to believe that they are to act and not be acted upon. They are in charge of their own outcomes. They need to understand that they cannot blame the outcomes of their actions on outside sources.

Differentiation of Self

Your child will have to be comfortable with people disagreeing with them and having different viewpoints. Your child will have to be comfortable with a selfish companion being unhappy with them. Your child cannot spend their mission trying to act perfect so as to not upset a selfish companion.

Criticism

Your child will need to learn to motivate others with compliments and love, not with criticism. If your child is constantly criticizing siblings, your child is not ready for a mission. If you have a family culture of motivating through criticism, your family culture needs to change. People already know their flaws. They are already working on them. People grow faster by pointing out their efforts, rather than pointing out their failures. Your child will need that skill when working with companions and investigators.

Selfishness

Your child will need to be other-focused and not self-focused. Your child will need to enjoy loving others. This is very different from loving others out of a fear that someone will be upset. It is different from loving others out of obligation. It is not loving with the expectation of getting something in return.  It is different from loving others out of a fear of guilt. It is loving others because they enjoy loving.