Last week’s poll highlighted the challenge of sitting with small squiggling people in church. We love to have them there (such a blessing and encouragement!), but we DO WISH they’d not distract everyone else from concentrating on the Lord (or on all the other things that are already distracting them).
So this week’s poll is on your preferred method for keeping children quiet in church (or – thanks for highlighting this aspect, Icklesis – helping them to stay focussed so that they can participate more fully). As last week, you can add other suggestions, and you can vote for more than one. I’m keeping the results secret this time, though (until I publish them). Oh the suspense!
The Vicar's Wife 
It’s an interesting conundrum. There are very few other occupations where a spouse and children are expected to regularly be ‘on show’. As a vicar’s son I first went aged about five days and then every Sunday for years and years. Eventually I started to resent the ‘forced’ aspect of having to attend (particularly when there were so few people of a similar age) and stopped going for many years. I know many other sons of the clergy who felt the same way. I do go again now but I think that compulsory attendance as a child probably cost me many years of not going. Obviously as a vicar’s wife you are expected to attend and that can create problems when you have young children. Incidentally in the parish I attend now the vicar’s son doesn’t want to be in church and his behaviour is clearly embarrassing for his parents. Good luck.
Correct me if necessary, since I have a six month old, and no idea about older children, but do the things on the list help them to focus, or keep them quiet? I have found already an expectatation of good behaviour, and wonder how we deal with it? I am tempted to tell people she’s a wicked sinner, hopefully saved by grace, when the “good” word comes up.
Tim Walters response above is interesting, and probably very representative. But I wouldn’t want to be in this situation in 14 years’ time. Surely embarassment is the wrong reaction – surely teaching an understanding of children’s hearts to the congregation is better? And (graciously) not bowing to its “expectations” of where a vicar’s wife should be. My primary role is wife, then mummy, then member of congregation. Clearly I want to support Elisheba’s daddy as much as I can, so I am there for him, and I go, even when i’d rather stay at home, to seek out, hopefully, those who might need a listening ear etc.
On compulsory attendance, I had to go when i was young, but I’m so grateful that my dad instilled the twice a sunday discipline into me. I guess, again, it depends on what God is doing with our hearts as to how we turn out!
May the gracious Lord give me children who want to minister to the congregation, and grace and wisdom to deal with them if they don’t. All the above is meant humbly, sorry if it doesn’t sound it. Good discussions to have.
I think I agree with Elisheba’s Mummy – I don’t think that it should be just about not distracting others (though that is important, too) but also, and more importantly, about the children being engaged and focussed on what is happening. So maybe pre-service briefing about what’s going to happen and why that’s important and what behaviour is appropriate for that. With rewards for doing well at listening and remembering and so on.
I have polled from my perspective of a childless churchwarden in a small village trying to attact the few young families we have AND keep our ‘oldies’ relaxed… We love seeing kids in church: we have a well-stocked soft toy box and the Rev Fred does brilliant talks aimed at kids for our Family Services. But we’ve got one family with the noisiest three year old in the UK whose parents prefer to come to our more traditional ‘non-family’ service of HC. They bring his favourite, wheeled, rattling toy trains for him to play with on our tiled aisle…
They appear blissfully unaware of the bedlam and I spend the entire service wincing and braced for the comments from our oldies. The boy is often brought into church during his regular walks round the village, as the church is open all day, but I suspect this means he doesnt see church as anything other than a jolly good playground with a nice smooth floor for his trains…
I would be SO grateful for any suggestions as to how to tackle this, as our oldies are starting to mutiny….
Oh churchwarden, I sympathise! Would it be feasible to get a carpet off-cut or rug, and point it out to the parents, saying the child cam still play with trains, but quietly, explaining that it can be hard for older people to hear when there is rattling? That way they are made aware of the situation, but hopefiully feel even more welcomed. They may even leave the train at home. The boy probably views it as a playground because his mum and dad let this view happen, so it’s up to you and the church to graciously teach the parents, so they pass it on! Lovely to have children at HC though – my 6 month old LOVES the Peace!!
And Ros – rewards for good behaviour is opening a can of worms 🙂 !!
As a childless auntie myself I cannot say what I would do as a parent. But as a churchgoer I find that where our church meets, in a big school hall, the back of church is really busy – with autistic kids taking time out, the youths listening but standing at the back, small kids running about. At the front of church, there are small kids with ribbons twirling them about during the worship – they get these from a place at the front. They skip about down the aisles, occasionally needing bringing back if they stray too far. But everyone is in a state of worship and accepting of how everyone else is able to worship. Adults either sit or stand or raise their arms or quietly pray, eyes open, eyes shut, clapping and jumping, or kneeling down. It is not perfect and never will be, but there is a tolerance of the fact that a small child will be different to an adult in how they respond, just as all adults also worship differently.
Just the other week one little kid was scribbling on his newsheet – there is a picture on the back of the newsheet every week for children to colour in and colouring pencils on the information desk for them to borrow – he kept asking his mummy to spell words and he was really intent on what he was doing. There was a really grey picture and then a really colourful one. His mum asked him about it and in the end she gave a word of knowledge about his picture because she felt it was God speaking to him and thought it might help someone there.
Yes it might distract people a little bit to have a small child being a small child in front of them, but equally distracting is an out of tune person singing enthusiastically right next to me – do I give her a gob-stopper and hope that she sucks on that during worship so I am not distracted?!!
Hello everyone *waves* and welcome to the Vicarage to the Churchwarden, lovely to have you here.
I love the idea of a colourable news bulletin Icklesis. The back of ours is currently blank so this is a great possibility! I do think congregations have to learn to be welcoming to young people and newcomers.
At one church we used to attend they often used to mention that it was fine for childen to make a noise, but if parents would like to remove them there was creche room available… But it made the congregation aware that children were welcome and noise was expected. But also made parents aware that there was space available if it was getting difficult. Obviously it depends on the ‘plant’ that your church has, but I think a special welcome to children from the front is a good idea.
This is a really interesting thread – and one I’ve been thinking about a lot, having just led and preached at a family service on Sunday.
What I did was split the sermon into three parts, with songs between the sections. The first part was interactive, but teaching the main point. The second part had a race between the Tortoise and the Hare (you know that bit in Phil 3, right?) – reinforcing the main point. Then I gave out pics for little ones to colour in while I gave a 6 minute talk for the adults which linked in but was a new/developed point.
I’m not saying it was a runaway success, necessarily. The church was noisy with kids (including one of my own who fell off a pew at one point while my wife was feeding our baby) – as there was no creche or anything that week. But it did seem to work quite well overall and I would happily repeat it.
There are a few of wider issues to think about here, though. The first is the expectation of behaviour of children of various ages, which varies so widely in the church and outside that it’s impossible to find any kind of consensus.
The other issues are wider still and we have to ask the question – what is church on Sunday for? For who’s benefit is it? God’s? Ours? Our children’s? And in what respect to we gather together as a church family to meet? If the church is regularly welcoming newcomers, visitors and locals who bring their children, they may have different views on the purpose of the service, and therefore these things need to be clarified. And is it better for a service to be orderly rather than inclusive?
I’m not sure most of us have decent answers for these questions (myself included) and so the place of potentially noisy children in this situation seems to be one to ask further down the line.
I probably haven’t helped. Sorry.
Hello, been offline away for a few days.. Some inspiring, as well as practical, comments: many thanks indeed. I think the carpet a great idea for my tiny train buff, and colouring seems a no-brainer… take care all.