Wow.

My Little Man was up around 6am this morning and I just knew that this late afternoon would be his "crash & burn" time as far as his behavior goes. I was in the middle of making dinner when I heard a blood-curdling scream from upstairs and as I raced out of the kitchen, my daughter comes running down the stairs, clutching her stomach. It turned out that Little Man had pushed her down twice and bit her hard enough on the stomach that he broke through skin. I used my very BIG and very ANGRY voice and called him down. It was all quiet up there and that's always a sign that he knows he did something wrong. He slowly came down, sniffling & having tears streaming down his face... yep, he KNOWS he's in the doghouse for this. After he got punished, I told him to get his jammies on and that he would be going to bed after dinner. While he wasn't happy about it, he just meekly nodded his head and got them on.

I then threw dinner on the table, we ate and I reminded him again that he was going to bed after dinner. He apologized to his sister who said, "It's okay..." Then Hero came home and talked with him about how we don't bite and we do not hurt girls. Little Man just nodded and sniffled...

When dinner was over, we decided to go ahead & have Little Man say his prayers... and he said in his most small, little voice... "I had a bad day, help me to do better to Boo." Immediately, Hero & I got teary. Boo decided to go ahead and say her personal prayers too. Then I offered our family prayers. I looked over at Little Man and he was so tiny, so vulnerable that I called him over and held him. He started trembling and sniffling and had tears running down. Boo looked at him and came over and kissed him and then put her arms around him. She was getting teary-eyed too. Then Hero came and gave us all a big bear hug and had the kids giggling. A minute later, I looked into Boo's eyes and said to her that I appreciated her giving loving to her brother even though he made a huge mistake. I gently told her that isn't it a great feeling to know that no matter what, our family still loves each other? She couldn't speak but just smiled & wiped her tears.

What a tender, tender moment it was for all of us... and one that I know Hero & I will treasure as we were able to witness the humble repentence and Christ-like forgiveness from our children. No wonder we are counseled to become like children...

Please click on the link below for the full talk given as it is beautiful. I've posted below excerpts from it...

Henry B. Eyring, “As a Child,” Ensign, May 2006, 14–17

King Benjamin describes that change with a beautiful comparison, used by prophets for millennia and by the Lord Himself. It is this: that we can, and we must, become as a child—a little child.

For some that will not be easy to understand or to accept. Most of us want to be strong. We may well see being like a child as being weak. Most parents have wanted their children at times to be less childish. Even the Apostle Paul used these words as he was about to urge us to incorporate charity, the pure love of Christ, into our lives: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

But King Benjamin, who understood as well as any mortal what it meant to be a man of strength and courage, makes it clear that to be like a child is not to be childish. It is to be like the Savior, who prayed to His Father for strength to be able to do His will and then did it. Our natures must be changed to become as a child to gain the strength we must have to be safe in the times of moral peril.

Here is King Benjamin’s stirring description of what that change to become like a child is and how it comes to us:
“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

We are safe on the rock which is the Savior when we have yielded in faith in Him, have responded to the Holy Spirit’s direction to keep the commandments long enough and faithfully enough that the power of the Atonement has changed our hearts. When we have, by that experience, become as a child in our capacity to love and obey, we are on the sure foundation.

From King Benjamin we learn what we can do to take us to that safe place. But remember: the things we do are the means, not the end we seek. What we do allows the Atonement of Jesus Christ to change us into what we must be. Our faith in Jesus Christ brings us to repentance and to keeping His commandments. We obey and we resist temptation by following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. In time our natures will change. We will become as a little child, obedient to God and more loving. That change, if we do all we must to keep it, will qualify us to enjoy the gifts which come through the Holy Ghost. Then we will be safe on the only sure rock.
Like you, I have felt what King Benjamin meant when he said that we could become like a little child before God. I have prayed, as you have, to know what to do when choices that I faced would have eternal consequences. Over many years I have seen a recurring pattern in the times when the answers to such a prayer have come most clearly.
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I learned from that experience and countless repetitions that the description of the Holy Ghost as a still, small voice is real. It is poetic, but it is not poetry. Only when my heart has been still and quiet, in submission like a little child, has the Spirit been clearly audible to my heart and mind.

King Benjamin taught us how those moments may come more often, which they must in the perils we face. He told us that there are things we can and must do to invite the blessing of that change to a childlike heart.
All of them have to do with doing what it takes to build greater faith in Jesus Christ and so qualify for the help of the Holy Ghost. King Benjamin gave the reason for that:
“And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.”