So the offended members should be mad at the other parents then, correct? What happens when one of the kids who is giving everyone the most difficulty is, in fact, the bishop’s son? Can I then heap my blame upon the leadership?

Additional consideration should be given to the following questions:

Who is teaching the principals which the parents are supposed to teach to their kids? Who is encouraging that this teaching be done at home? Who is responsible when both of these actions fail?

I would suggest that the church leadership is at fault, and if the chain of responsibility is traced it leads directly to a failure of the church leaders themselves. In fact, if the failure traces itself, systemically, back to the leadership then the whole body of the church is to blame.

A major corporation demands someone be a college graduate and then afterwards have years of on-the-job training before they made responsible for major corporate assets.

In the LDS Church our biggest asset is our youth and yet frequently we get youth leaders who have not a clue of what to do.

My first couple of times as a leader went miserably. Then I moved to another ward and stake that had a very well established program and training support.

It showed that nearly 80% of LDS youth that participated actively in Mutual, Seminary, Church, Scouts, etc. went onto be active adults in the same religion.

This compared to only 10% for Catholics and 40% for most other Jews and Protestants.

The LDS Church studies also confirm that about 80% of youth that complete Mutual, Duty-To-God, and earn Eagle Scout will go onwards to serving a mission and marry in the temple.
This number drops significantly for those youth that do not complete those youth programs.

I hear this a lot in many of the stake and general church youth leader training meetings that I’ve been to.

I am not sayign these problems don’t exist, I am saying they are not institutionally the fault of the LDS youth Program.”

San Antonio has the same types of problems YM/YW programs experience in other places. The children of church leaders are alloted preferences all the time.

I would suggest one of the problems with youth programs is the leadership of these groups are not much older than the kids themselves. Usually they are mid 20’s and newly weds. What life experience do they have other then basketball abilities?

So with whom does the blame lie, Sally?

Kim pointed something out to me last week when he was here. I was making some frustrated comments in regards to a church leader who wasn’t seeing things my way and my inside voice let out this comment “Well if women were the leaders then we wouldn’t have to wait so long to get things done I hate waiting”. Kim pointed out that just as there are good men and not so good men in leadership positions so are there good women and not so good women. Having a woman as a ward or stake leader would not guarantee that things would run any smoother.

I can empathize with you when you say you are having a difficult time right now and are frustrated. But just as you would not expect all your children to be the same you should not expect all the leaders to be the same worldwide. Leaders are not really trained to be social workers, psychiatrists, den parents, child councilors etc. Most times they are given a manual and a here you go sort of thing. People make mistakes. But the oneness of how our children react to situations needs to come from themselves and from us as their parents.

I don’t think it is the job of the church programmes to teach my children how to be, how to live etc, that’s my job. And if they see these experiences (which they no doubt will at various times) I hope I can prepare them enough to rise above it. I just wish I had been able to do that when I was young and I wouldn’t have wasted so much time disliking myself.

However, I have to agree, it isn’t an LDS youth problem it’s a problem period. I was one of VERY few LDS in my high school and I had a worse low self worth and these issues were bigger there, than at church. At church it was relatively minor until we got into a stake level. On hindsight I see that some of the so called cliques were more likely to be more shy, insecure youth. Teenagers are so wrapped up in their own world it is hard to see that when in it. This isn’t a knock on teenhood. It is pretty much reality, teenagers (at least when I was young) do think that most of the world is focussed on them (hence the prevalence of embarrassment) so of course I thought everyone thought I was a dork. Of course many did :) But not as many as I thought.