The Perils of Family Scripture Study

As I thought I understood it, the goal of family scripture study is for each family member to gain greater comprehension of the scriptures and gradually build stronger faith and testimony. But now I think maybe that is too lofty a goal at this stage in our family's life. Our goal is usually more along the lines of: Have 33% of the children holding still at any given moment and don't end abruptly due to fighting. The 33% holding still is almost always the child who is reading at that particular moment. We often get side-tracked with questions about various topics that may or may not have anything to do with the chapter we are reading. Here's an excerpt from last night's "study" session:

Me: "And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth."
Daniel: "It's floating in the sky?"
Me: (pause, because I know him so well)..."Sort of."
Daniel: (a look spreads across his face like this is a building he definitely would want to visit)

Then I explain that this is not a good place and the reason it's "floating in the sky" is because it has no foundation, so eventually it will fall.

Daniel: "What if a meteor hits it?"
Me: "Um. I'm sure it would fall."
Daniel: "What about a tornado?"
Me: "Yeah. That would knock it down, too. But let's get back to what we were reading..."

A few verses later.

Me: "and they did press their way forward, continually holding fast to the rod of iron..."
Daniel: "What if you hold onto the rod of Satan?"
Me: (caught off-guard by the question, pause, thinking of a response)
Daniel: "Is there a rod of Satan?"
Me: "No. It's more like a gradual downward path leading to a slippery slope."

And we quickly closed that discussion before anyone could make a connection between the "slippery slope" and the thrill of skiing and ask why you even need the iron rod when you could just ride the ski lift back up.