Freedom Begins at Home

What if the key to preserving freedom isn’t politics — but parenting?  n this episode, we go back to the basics. From modern prophets to America’s founders, the message is the same: agency is sacred. But agency requires discipline, truth, and courage.  We explore how early Americans taught children to think, work, memorize, worship, and govern themselves — and why that matters more than ever in a world full of distraction and confusion.  This episode is, "Freedom Begins at Home" and we are so glad you are here!

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Show Notes

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Transcript

Episode 154 - Freedom Begins at Home

Cydni: [00:00:00] I was listening to this very heartfelt, faith-filled story about pioneers and how they had nothing to eat, so they prayed. Not for new food, but they prayed that their stomachs would adjust to what they did have 

Sher: to starving to death. 

Cydni: Kinda. Well, just that they either had to eat these hides or they would starve to death and they didn't pray for quail or something to come in. they prayed with what we have. Can our stomachs adjust and our bodies adjust to make it work. And it did. And the speaker was like, if I was out there, I would've prayed for quail and I was thinking I would've prayed to die. Welcome to the Cydni and Sher podcast.

Sher: Okay. Cydni, we are keeping it basic today. Very basic because we are learning about the basics. We started at the very beginning talking about what happened before we came to Earth with the preexistence and that. Preexistence, our [00:01:00] Heavenly Father taught us. And he taught us about agency and I'm sure all sorts of things. And so we were thinking that learning how to teach children was probably part of the basics. , So this last month we've been talking about teaching our children and also how the founders hope that families would have a Bible and a newspaper in a good school. Now, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago because we did a short intermission, about President Oak's Devotional, and now we're back to teaching again.

Cydni: We are just hoping maybe we could be blessed with inspiration if we put the prophet first. But maybe it'll be next week instead. 

Sher: Yeah, 

Cydni: maybe that inspiration's on a delay. 

Sher: I think with us everything is delayed. But our founders believed that we could only preserve freedom in our agency if people actually took a Bible and newspaper and school seriously. And that we studied them and we valued it. And we treated all three of those things as vital. And so today what we wanted to do is talk about the importance of teaching what agency [00:02:00] means and just the basic principles of agency. 

Cydni: I just wanna say in our home, maybe we're not taking it super seriously, those things, but we are taking very seriously an iPad and the PlayStation and soccer, and I think that's a good foundation sometimes. 

Sher: Absolutely. Cydni. I will say this Cydni. I know you are being snarky over there, but the beer family is really good at doing a lot of things together and that's what's most important, right? 

Cydni: Yeah. We cry together, fight together, call one of the other kids a name together. We're we're really great at that. No, we do, we love games and we love being together. 

Sher: Right. See, that's most 

Cydni: important. I don't really give him agency on this one actually though, but let's not talk about that. 

Sher: Okay. We'll just keep 

Cydni: moving with that. Like you have to. You have to play this game with me right now and I have to win. That's how it goes.

Sher: That's okay. You're the mom. You can do whatever. 

Cydni: Thank you. 

Sher: You're welcome. All right. Well, Satan did not want us to have agency. He wanted control and power, and he just wanted to boss everyone around, and he wanted to make sure that everyone had the same [00:03:00] choices to make, which were none.

He was gonna make all the choices for you, and this does not make people happy. Both the gospel and our founders wanted individuals to have agency, and they wanted us to teach our children how to think and choose, and most importantly, understand that making good decisions is what makes you more free, 

Cydni: which really had me thinking about how God's plan really is about progression. And when you have agency and you get out there and you try and you fail and you fail and you fail some more or you try to walk on water and you almost drowned, at least you walked on water.

There's progression. But Satan's plan really is about keeping people so. Locked down and sheep and a lot of people call religion sheep following people, but it's Satan's plan that is more sheep like, in my opinion. 

Sher: I think that's a good opinion to have. 'cause God has your opinion also 

Cydni: in God's opinion.

Sher: Yeah. 

Cydni: That I read about in the Bible. 

Sher: All right, Cydni. I want you to read [00:04:00] something. It's by President David O. McKay. Case. Cydni gonna read it to help save my voice a little bit 

Cydni: and to expose the school. I went to read. Everyone knows I didn't pass that class, I was thinking of Dumb and Dumber where he was like, Tahi, 

Sher: No, I hated that show because really? Yeah. I'm gonna tell you why. 

Cydni: Okay. 

Sher: Because I had just started teaching middle school when that show came out, and it was like I was sitting at work. Why would I wanna go to a movie and watch my students? I don't. 

Cydni: I liked it 'cause I was like, you know, it's good to see people like me on the screen.

Sher: Oh, all struggle. The struggle was real.

Cydni: All right. David O. McKay Even though you spelled McKay wrong, but we're reading so it's fine. 

Sher: I didn't spell McKay wrong. Good observation there. 

Cydni: Thanks. I was just trying to find your weakness. 

Sher: I'm glad you just pointed out that weakness, because I have other weaknesses that are a lot more noticeable and a lot worse, so thank 

Cydni: you. Oh, those are out there. I have a secret Instagram page. It's called Shares weaknesses. make sure you're following that one. Okay. This is all just to [00:05:00] procrastinate reading out loud. All right. But I'm going to, now next to life, we express gratitude for the gift of free agency. When thou did create man, thou placed within him part of thine omnipotence and baed him. Choose for himself, liberty and conscience. Thus became the sacred part of human nature freedom. Not only to think, but to speak and act is a God-given privilege.

Sher: Thank you, Cydni. I. Loved this because he said that next to life itself, the next gift that God gave us was our agency, our freedom. And when I read this, it reminded me. Of something else that I've read, it is, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . These two things together for me. They just clicked because our founders read the Bible. The Bible and the [00:06:00] Holy Spirit was their guide as they put together the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution and those two things. Together, they created our government, and this is meant to protect our God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They created a country that followed God's principles of giving individuals agency. And this is what I think is so incredible about our founding, is how well read our founders were and how well they understood gospel principles, that they embedded it not only in our declaration, but throughout our constitution to protect our agency that God gave us as a gift. 

Elder Robert D. Hales said, agency used righteously allows light to dispel the darkness and enables us to live with joy and happiness. This is what we learned about last year, having this agency not only chases out darkness, but allows us to live with joy and happiness. And we learned last year that this [00:07:00] opportunity to think and to choose and to govern yourself leads to a happier life. And from studying the Bible, this is what the founders also believed in, why they wrote the words in the declaration.

And if we can learn to make good choices, we have a better chance of happiness. Now I was thinking about these things. From modern prophets and what our founders wrote, and I thought, Hmm, I wonder how early Americans taught their children how to think and how to choose, and how to govern for themselves.

I looked up some of the things that they believed back in the day and I'm fully convinced that this is the reason why I was born now because I am clearly a big, huge fat baby. don't think I could have done this Cydni, 

Cydni: but we do think about them when we take out the trash. When it's cold outside.

Sher: Correct. And that's about as suffering as I wanna get. Is that, i've talked before about how early Americans taught their kids to read at school, but what about at home? So I looked it up and it [00:08:00] said that in most homes when America was first started, kids were expected to read daily. They were expected to read aloud, which I've never liked that word aloud. I always said out loud because it just bugs me. 

Cydni: Really? 

Sher: Yeah. 

Cydni: Most people don't like the word moist. Moist. 

Sher: I don't like it when you say it. 

Cydni: Not offended. 

Sher: Anyway, they were expected to read every day. Aloud in their home. They were expected to read the Bible, the New England primer, which we've talked about. It used biblical stories and rhymes to teach children how to read. They read sermons and moral essays I'm okay with this part. I could read that would be fine, sitting by the fire reading aloud to my mom as she, I don't know, swept the floor.

Cydni: probably did do some of this though. Does that sound like your childhood a little bit or was this your childhood? it's a straight from your journal? 

Sher: Uhhuh. This is 

Cydni: a journal entry. 

Sher: I just picked it up and read it. Yep. 

Cydni: When you were 13, this is what was [00:09:00] happening. 

Sher: You just made me sicker. This is the part I would not have liked. They were also expected to memorize and then recite it so early Americans believed that memory was the foundation of thinking. So they wanted them to memorize scriptures and prayers and poems and all sorts of things. And I can't memorize anything. 

Cydni: yeah, but we have Google now. You don't need to, right? We don't need to. We have the ease of technology. So they needed to because they didn't know how to make ai. But we do, we do. We as an like a collective, other people, 

Sher: definitely not us, 

 Wow.

Cydni: Rudy is dramatic today. 

Sher: That was a dramatic poetry reading by Rudy. 

Cydni: But the memorizing part, it does terrify me, but I think we're also a product of so much distraction. I mean, one, we don't have as much cause and purpose to memorize. We should, we should memorize scriptures and poems and sometimes I think about it, I think about memorizing one of them. We just have too [00:10:00] much ease. 

Sher: It's true, but they're right in the fact that the few things that I did memorize when I was a kid, I still remember 'em. I still think about 'em as well. Like they'll come to mind because I've memorized them That was another dramatic reading by Rudy in the background.

Alright, moving on. Early Americans also taught their children to make good choices by doing things a little bit differently than what we do now. Starting at the ages of five to seven children, were expected to contribute to the family for their survival. So girls were typically responsible for spinning, sewing, cooking. Attending gardens caring for younger siblings, cleaning and food preservation. Boys were responsible for the farming, chopping, wood tending animals, repairing tools, assisting in a trade or the family business.

And again, this wasn't done to get an allowance or it wasn't necessarily a chore. It was you have to do your job because there was a real consequence if you [00:11:00] don't, for your family. So you need to get out there and you need to work. Do you know how to spin or sew or cook? Let's start with that one. 

Cydni: I have like apps on my phone that let me pretend I'm doing it. You just like tap the screen and it sews for you and I turn up the stove and so yeah, like technically technology wise, yeah. I can do all those things. 

Sher: You've got the caring for younger siblings. I do. Only they're your children. 

Cydni: But when I was growing up decades after when you were growing up, I was thinking about the eighties, nineties children. We weren't too far off. It was just kind of more like find coins in your couch and hit the road for the day and drink out of hoses. We like had our own way of surviving and kids now have their own way of surviving kind of luxuriously. 

Sher: Right. It's almost the same. 

Cydni: Minus the spinning, sewing and cooking. Okay. Bana can make mac and cheese 

Sher: So she's good. 

Cydni: Yeah, she's 

Sher: good. Or repairing tools or tending farm animals. 

Cydni: I mean, we've lost the snake again, but yeah, 

Sher: I forgot about your horrible [00:12:00] snake. 

Cydni: We found it since I told you and then lost it again since we told you.

Sher: Oh my gosh. All right, moving on, because that is horrible. They didn't have to deal with that creepy snake escaping all the time and slithering around the neighborhood. 

Cydni: I know. 

Sher: All right. At the ages of about 12 to 14 children, were expected to have an apprenticeship. 

Cydni: need. We need to bring that back. 

Sher: I think apprenticeships are good. 

Cydni: I think so too. I think that if you can learn a skill. That can turn into a career that's so beneficial. I think we will come back to that being more popular.

Sher: I do too. Maybe not starting at 12, but 

Cydni: a little older. I mean, Titus is trying to start a YouTube channel, so I feel like he's right there. He's doing it's look at me as a parent. 

Sher: You have your apprenticeship going. So one of the things that they did not have the luxury of doing back in the day is micromanaging their kids. Because they all had to help work to survive, and children were just expected to do their duty and they weren't necessarily being watched, but there was a real consequence when they didn't follow through. So this [00:13:00] leads to, children learning how to govern themselves. Early, Americans believed that children needed to have self-mastery, temperance, fortitude, industry, and to help with this, they were expected to participate in civic life.

They're expected to go to church regularly, listen to long sermons, sit quietly and be attentive. Go to town meetings and understand community responsibilities. Cydni, have you ever been to a town meeting? 

Cydni: No, I have not. 

Sher: I did once 

Cydni: Really 

Sher: when I was a kid, and I don't think I have been since, 

Cydni: but we do have Judge Judy now, and so I've kind of been in a court.

Sher: This is true. I didn't even think of that. Look at all the law shows that are on TV now. 

Cydni: Right. 

Sher: So if we count that, then we've been to hundreds, 

Cydni: And I grew up on Jerry Springer, so I know what happens if you're not faithful to your spouse, so I think we went into this negative, like, oh my gosh, they were doing so much better. But now I'm seeing we are actually quite efficient and my parents, let [00:14:00] me see. A lot more than these kids. Got to see. Thanks to Jerry Springer alone. 

Sher: This is true. I didn't think of it like that. 

Cydni: Yeah. We're doing okay.

Sher: Absolutely. Another thing in the research I found is that reputation really mattered deeply in early America, which encouraged self-regulation. But when I read that, I just thought of the Scarlet letter. The public shaming, so I'm glad we got rid of that. 

Cydni: I honestly thought of the same thing right away too. I was like, I don't know. Growing up in a small town, reputation was just fine. Everyone had one, whether they wanted it or not.

Sher: but the positive for early Americans though is that they really did see children as being capable they weren't necessarily fragile they believed that character was formed through work and study and faith. they also understood that in order to continue to have freedom and agency, it required self-discipline.

And they believed that that began in the home. The school was supposed to back the homes up because they believed that a free people must be [00:15:00] a virtuous people. , And that begins in childhood.

Cydni: I know we've made a lot of jokes about times being different, but it is true that times are drastically different. And I was just thinking in my own head on the way here, I wonder how many books are available in the world today, or how many speeches on YouTube are available? How many. Do it yourself. Videos are available. The knowledge out there is endless and I think that it can be overwhelming and probably why that one talk that exists, the good, better, best, I think that stuck out for a lot of people. 

Sher: It did, 

Cydni: and I think it's for this time because there's so much available to us and there is so much ease. But the basics of this to me is that they taught the Bible in the home and they spent time together in the home as a family.

And I think that's the basic we need to go back to. ' Some people out there are doing the farms and the ranches with their kids still. But that's not going to be the case for most of us. But I think that's why we keep hearing how important it is to have the [00:16:00] Spirit with us.

And when I think about this for my own family. I'm not gonna teach my kids how to sow because I don't know how to sow. But what they do need is the Spirit with them because maybe the Spirit will prompt. One of my kids to learn how to sew, and then they'll have a great story about they were so blessed that they knew how to sew.

My job, I feel like right now in this world, is to have the Spirit with me so that I can teach my children through the Spirit, and hopefully by example, encourage them to have the Spirit with them. 

Sher: I agree 100% with you because I feel like that is what the prophet and the apostles have been stressing so much lately is that it is so vital that we have the Spirit with us and that we do everything we can to stay close to God because everything is so confusing.

Cydni: I was listening to a speech by Kristen Cox. She's actually quite amazing. I didn't know who she was. At the age of 11, she started going blind, she's fully blind now, but. This woman, it's not stopped her. [00:17:00] She has done so much service and she's worked as the Secretary of the Maryland Department of Disabilities.

She's been appointed by George W. Bush to numerous different positions in the National Federation of the Blind. If you look at her bio, it's endless. She is an incredible speaker to, but what I wanted to share is that when she was going blind, she did not want to go blind, and she really fought it.

But when she accepted the fact that as a mother and a wife, and as a woman and a career woman, she was going to be blind, things started to change for her in a positive way. She first joined a bootcamp. It was a four month long bootcamp for the blind, and it was to help her prepare for life without sight and to graduate. The instructors would load you up in a van, turn the music up so it would drown out any familiar sounds and then drop you off somewhere random. You had to return back to your starting point.

Sher: Oh my goodness. 

Cydni: I know. And a lot of the people in the bootcamp were starting to go blind, so they had to wear sleep mask the [00:18:00] entire time. Now here's her own words. She says, 

to get ready for this every day we would practice orientation and mobility skills. So I would go out with an instructor and they would teach me skills and principles like we learn here in the church, true principles, and let them govern themselves.

I would learn the principle and then we would go out and we would practice it. They would stand back and let me figure it out for myself and make sure I wasn't getting into too much trouble.

One day I was at a park across from the training center, and this park was a mess. It was impossible to find my way out of it. I had been walking and I kept getting stuck. I finally just got so frustrated and overwhelmed by the experience that I stopped and I stopped walking and I stopped making progress because I didn't know how to get out of it.

My instructor at the time, Tony Cobbs came up from behind me and he made a very important observation. He said, Kristen, you need to learn how to walk through your [00:19:00] confusion and your fear. You've got to learn to walk through your uncertainty. And this lesson, Sher, it touched my heart just as a fellow human, that I could really relate to the feeling of frustration and overwhelming and wanting to just stop and hearing those words that you need to learn to just walk through your confusion and your fear.

And to walk through your uncertainty helped me just as a fellow human who feels kind of blinded in my own life and not knowing what's going on, but also as a parent. And I appreciated the reminder that if we take away the learning experiences that our kids could have, we're taking away the tools they need to return home safely. And I do feel like it's my duty to teach my kids. But it's not my duty to do everything for them. And if her instructors would've done everything for her and then put her out in the world, the damage that would've done to her and to other people and listening to her talk about this just really inspired me as a parent that we have to be [00:20:00] careful to not do too much to our children. Our job is to teach them and give them the tools to set an example and then to let them go have experiences, and if we do everything for them.

They will not have those experiences and they will not know how to use the tools that are available to them. I loved one more story she talked about because she said there was a little boy who wanted to learn how to play tag and he was blind the instructor wanted to come up with a clever idea to help the little boy so he could play tag at Reese's with his friends, but he couldn't, and he was ready to go. Tell the young guy, you know, you're probably gonna have to sit out on tag. But the next day when he went to go meet with the boy, the boy was smiling and he said, I figured it out. I know how I'm gonna play tag. And what the boy had done is he brought jars of rocks. For each of his friends, and the friends put together a perimeter for where they could play and they had to carry the rocks with them so he could hear the rocks shaking, and he was able to play tag with his friends.

Sher: Oh, that's awesome. 

Cydni: I loved that story so [00:21:00] much and it just inspired me as someone who is around children and does teach children. That they are so much more capable than we realize, and sometimes we do such a disservice to them by overprotecting them or doing everything for them. And if we could just stand back and remember that they are God's first.

We can let God work in their life instead of us doing all the work in their life. So yeah, let's go back to the basics. Let's read the Bible together as a family. Let's really work on having the spirit in our home and let them get out there and be who they're supposed to be.

And she does share this one last idea. The idea of self-advocacy sometimes is a hard one because in the church we are taught to be mild and meek and to serve and to be peacemakers. But I would also like to submit that we are asked to be bold and to be truth tellers. We are asked to make a difference and to have an impact, and that requires the unique skills that we have, and we have to be able and willing to use them.

Our challenge has been said before, but we want to put some more urgency in this. [00:22:00] We challenge you to make steps in your own personal life to connect with the Holy Spirit so that you could be guided as a teacher or as a parent, or as someone who's trying to do better in their own life, so that you could impact those around you.

Sher: This brings us to our final thoughts. Teaching children to think, choose and govern themselves isn't old fashioned. It's foundational for our society. The founders understood that freedom only survives when people know how to use it and heaven understood that long before. 1776. Agency was never meant to make life easy. It was meant to make growth possible. When we teach our children to read and understand truth. To work, to listen, to accept corrections, and to choose what is right, even when no one is watching. We're not just raising good kids, we're raising children of God who can grow, choose God, and become who He created them to be. This is our prayer [00:23:00] 

Cydni: from Cydni and Sher. And even today, sometimes when I walk out to the trash and it's cold outside, I do think about the pioneer women. I do. And I pray in gratitude That I'm not one. And then I pray that one doesn't show up in the dark. 'cause I'm scared and I sprint right back into the house fast. But thanks for being here today. Nope. Why did I say that? I don't know. 

Sher: Tell me if I have boogers in my nose. 

Cydni: Okay. I'll let you know. You probably do. I think it's just a human thing. 

You did great considering how bad you felt. And for Rudy being such a turd face today. Rudy is 

Sher: a turd face. Okay.