When my first child was born nearly twelve years ago, I was more concerned about learning how to change diapers and breastfeed than I was about what would happen in the future. Somewhere along the way I forgot that I had a girl who would someday grow up and start turning into a woman. Suddenly that far-off someday is here and my daughter is turning twelve in six weeks. It’s been nearly two decades since I had anything to do with the Young Women prgram and twenty-five years since my own twelfth birthday, so I’m feeling a bit panicked about the fact that my little baby is now starting middle school and youth activities at the end of this summer. Due to being the only new Beehive this year she got special permission to attend Girls Camp earlier this month. My own experiences with Camp were mixed and I worried a fair amount during the week she was gone, but when I picked her up on Saturday morning she was both sunburned and smiling and is now counting the weeks until she can officially join her new friends every Sunday.

As my daughter looks forward eagerly to her upcoming birthday I have been trying to dreg up my memories of experiences as a youth to see if there is anything I can offer her. It feels like a different time period in many ways—there was no social media, and I grew up in southern California in a ward with many converts and a mobile population from local military bases. Now I live in Utah and most of my daughter’s friends are active Church members. Plus youth programs change and evolve over the years; it feels like youth are so much busier now than I was at that age. As I look at my daughter turning twelve, I see her moving into a world with weekly activities, youth choir, temple trips, service projects, and, in just a few years, seminary classes. Although I like our local leaders and (from what I can see) think they are doing a great job, I worry about the “spiritual escalation” talked about in this blog post. Do our youth need bigger, flashier activities? What about family time or time to just relax with friends?

Thinking about my own experiences as a youth, I’ve realized that I don’t actually remember much of the lessons that were taught or most of the activities (apologies to all my leaders and teachers). I know I finished Sunday School and Seminary with a solid background in the scriptures and read all four standard works before I graduated from high school, but individual lessons all seem to blur together. I remember a few big activities—like the youth conference where we were assigned to “missions” and I ended up at Fijian man’s house eating chicken curry off a communal plate with my fingers. Or the Young Women lip sync contest between mothers and daughters where the mothers stole the show by putting their bras on over their shirts and dancing to Madonna.

The most memorable, lasting experiences I had as a youth were ones where we engaged in some kind of meaningful service. One year for youth conference our stake helped put on a carnival for a group of children that were in state custody. I was about fourteen or fifteen and didn’t like little kids; I didn’t babysit and generally thought I wasn’t a “kid person”. But I got assigned a sweet five-year-old girl; and, after getting over my initial terror at being in charge of her for a few hours, we had a great time together. I have no idea if she remembers that day, but I do. Around the same time, a few of us in the Mia Maid class decided that we wanted to have a sacrament meeting program for the Young Women. My friend and I were put in charge and planned a program with a song for each of the values and a short talk for each one presented by a different girls. It was such a good experience that we did it again the next year. And, of course, there was the “mini mission” I got to serve during the summer after I turned seventeen. I spent a week living with the sister missionaries fifty miles away from my home—I studied, taught, and tracted with my companion just as I would several years later as a full-time missionary. It was amazingly hard (riding bikes in suburban Maryland in July is not for wimps), but taught me that I could do hard things and that being a missionary might be something I would like to do some day.

These are the kinds of things I hope my daughter will get to experience during the next six years of her life. Unfortunately mini missions no longer exist, but hopefully she will have opportunities to really serve and not just be entertained. Contribute and play an active part, and not just be expected to sit and listen. Acquire a solid testimony and real scriptural knowledge, not just collect a bunch of trinkets with cute sayings. Although I’m a little nervous about entering a new stage in both our lives, the truth is that I’m also excited for my daughter and her new opportunities and hope that the next few years are just as amazing as she thinks they are going to be.

More experienced parents: please tell me that you have freaked out a bit about big milestones for your kids too. Also, what do you think should be the goals of youth programs at church? What are the most valuable things we can do for our youth?