For my 3,000th post I was hoping to put up some pictures from recent services I've attended. Instead, I find myself being the on-call this week with a very good chance of being forced to miss Pascha itself. My mental choices were to write off the week or double-down on prayer and after-dinner discussions with the children. I chose the latter as my work situation is no excuse for depriving them of a better understanding of Holy Week.
Here's a post entitled "Tips for Surviving Evening Services with Little Ones..." from the blog Charming the Birds from the Trees with some added commentary.
1. Feed your little ones well and with good, healthy food before church. If a child's tummy is full and they aren't thirsty, their behavior will be a lot better. I know some parents take the ascetic instruction to pray while hungry with some seriousness. I have yet to experience a tranquil service with hungry children. More often I have to keep leaning down to listen to little ketotic voices asking me when the service will be over or where we're going afterward.
2. Limit (or eliminate) television and sweets for several hours before church. I have found that my children tend to act much more calmly if they aren't hopped up on sugar and have been playing rather than vegging out before church. Similarly, "No! It's the Fast!" projects this discipline of the Church in a negative light so that instead of forming your child to grow in the Church he will find ways to grow away from the church.
3. Be positive about going to church. It is hard to go to church at night with little ones after a long day, but children pick up on their parent's attitude. If you are feeling resentful about going to church, then everyone in your family will too!
4. Keep your children close to you. Our church has 21 children and 35 adults. The parents in our church have found that if we insist that our children stay with us and don't play or talk with their friends during services, their behavior is a lot better. We also try to allow them to play together a bit after church so that they do have some time to cultivate friendships. This is very parish dependent. At our current parish our girls sit with the matushka's girls and it works quite well, but in our last parish this would have been disastrous.
5. Bring your children to church in their pajamas or bring a bag of pajamas and toothbrushes with you to change them in the bathroom or car. Having them all ready for bed once they get home makes things a lot simpler. Think twice about things like pillows and blankets. What is helpful for one child is a lasso and grenade for another.
6. If you have a bedtime routine that is important to you and your little ones, try to still do it. When we have church at night, we have bathtime before dinner and stories after we eat... then we head out to church. Generally for us bedtime starts at 7. Evening services at our parish usually start or end at 7. As a result, it is not abnormal for me to carry in or out 4 or 5 children from the car. See what works for you.
7. Don't be afraid to leave church for a little while for a break (though you should check with your priest about the best times to do so). Sometimes a little walk around the building helps to relax children... try to remain in a prayerful mindset though (i.e. no running, screaming, jumping, etc.). It will distract the people praying in the church and it will make it difficult to calm your child down when it is time to return to the sanctuary. Some children see that if they act up they get "rewarded" with mommy or daddy time. Being patient is important, but so is being stern. If they make a lot of noise and then get a book and cookies when they do, the Pavlovian connection between being ill-behaved and fun-time is being reinforced.
8. Point things out to a wiggly child. There are often many things happening in church that will capture a child's attention: the priest censing, icons on the wall, singing Lord Have Mercy, lighting a candle, etc.
9. Consider a very small toy, book, or coloring page to keep your little one occupied for a few minutes. Icon coloring pages are widely available on the Internet, the Orthodox publishing world has been doing a great job of getting new Orthodox children's books printed, and Anna has been sharing a lot of information on Felt Saints and Holy Week Learning Boxes. You can also purchase learning boxes for church through Orthodox Christian Craft Supply. Please just remember that you want these items to be as quiet as possible. The minute a child throws one of these items, the item has to go away. Be prepared for the noisy response before you do so.
What are your suggestions for surviving evening services with little ones?
2. Limit (or eliminate) television and sweets for several hours before church. I have found that my children tend to act much more calmly if they aren't hopped up on sugar and have been playing rather than vegging out before church. Similarly, "No! It's the Fast!" projects this discipline of the Church in a negative light so that instead of forming your child to grow in the Church he will find ways to grow away from the church.
3. Be positive about going to church. It is hard to go to church at night with little ones after a long day, but children pick up on their parent's attitude. If you are feeling resentful about going to church, then everyone in your family will too!
4. Keep your children close to you. Our church has 21 children and 35 adults. The parents in our church have found that if we insist that our children stay with us and don't play or talk with their friends during services, their behavior is a lot better. We also try to allow them to play together a bit after church so that they do have some time to cultivate friendships. This is very parish dependent. At our current parish our girls sit with the matushka's girls and it works quite well, but in our last parish this would have been disastrous.
5. Bring your children to church in their pajamas or bring a bag of pajamas and toothbrushes with you to change them in the bathroom or car. Having them all ready for bed once they get home makes things a lot simpler. Think twice about things like pillows and blankets. What is helpful for one child is a lasso and grenade for another.
6. If you have a bedtime routine that is important to you and your little ones, try to still do it. When we have church at night, we have bathtime before dinner and stories after we eat... then we head out to church. Generally for us bedtime starts at 7. Evening services at our parish usually start or end at 7. As a result, it is not abnormal for me to carry in or out 4 or 5 children from the car. See what works for you.
7. Don't be afraid to leave church for a little while for a break (though you should check with your priest about the best times to do so). Sometimes a little walk around the building helps to relax children... try to remain in a prayerful mindset though (i.e. no running, screaming, jumping, etc.). It will distract the people praying in the church and it will make it difficult to calm your child down when it is time to return to the sanctuary. Some children see that if they act up they get "rewarded" with mommy or daddy time. Being patient is important, but so is being stern. If they make a lot of noise and then get a book and cookies when they do, the Pavlovian connection between being ill-behaved and fun-time is being reinforced.
8. Point things out to a wiggly child. There are often many things happening in church that will capture a child's attention: the priest censing, icons on the wall, singing Lord Have Mercy, lighting a candle, etc.
9. Consider a very small toy, book, or coloring page to keep your little one occupied for a few minutes. Icon coloring pages are widely available on the Internet, the Orthodox publishing world has been doing a great job of getting new Orthodox children's books printed, and Anna has been sharing a lot of information on Felt Saints and Holy Week Learning Boxes. You can also purchase learning boxes for church through Orthodox Christian Craft Supply. Please just remember that you want these items to be as quiet as possible. The minute a child throws one of these items, the item has to go away. Be prepared for the noisy response before you do so.
What are your suggestions for surviving evening services with little ones?
Posts
We have an old iPod touch with flash cards on it. When we're losing our girl, we switch to that for awhile, picking her up during especially important parts of the service. Then eventually she's cool again and read to roll.
ReplyDeleteWe have found that setting expectations prior to entering the service is very important - gently reminding the children how we expect them to behave and the consequences if they don't. Then its our responsibility to follow through and be consistent.
ReplyDeleteThe only one I have any problems with is the youngest who is four right now, and he's not too bad. The older boy serves in the altar and the girls (who are the oldest) are well-behaved and tend to sing. These are some of the things I try to do with him and have done for all of the others when they were younger.
ReplyDelete1. Have high expectations. They can do it. If you assume bad behaviour, you'll probably get it.
2. Don't bring food into church. Nursing babies excepted. (: I haven't had a child yet faint from not eating for 2 hours. The older ones keep the communion fast.
3. Pick up the younger ones and slowly (and unobtrusively) walk around the periphery of the church or the narthex pointing out the figures in the icons, moving to the next when the novelty of the current one has worn out. Point out the various features in the church and the action.
4. Don't stand in the very back. Wouldn't you be bored if all you could see were people's legs or backsides? (This assumes a church with no pews.)
5. If a child fusses, take them out. No one else can hear what is going on. But don't make going out fun. Settle them down in a way appropriate to age and then bring them right back in. Stress "it's important for us to be in church right now." You might go out thirty times when you first try this, but it decreases markedly over a short period of time.
6. Go to church. If you limit your time in church to a Liturgy every few weeks, your children forget how to behave from one time to the next. This is obviously a generalization, but in my experience children who are in church very seldom tend to have the worst behavior. The parents' excuse is usually, "I don't come to church very often because they act out." This is reversing cause and effect.
7. I have allowed small "church books" (about icons, saints, the church building, the services) in church and allow the child to look at them quietly, sometimes pointing out the parallels between the pictures and what we're actually doing. Once the books become projectiles, they disappear. No returns. I have had no success with anything else because when they have "toys" they play.
Each family has to tailor things like this to their own situation. And no matter what, I'm going to be in a wrestling match getting my four-year-old to church on Saturday morning after having been to 10 services in the previous week!
I thought of you during Liturgy on Pascha. I hoped that whether or not you had to work you were able to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord in your heart.
ReplyDeleteChrist is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
ReplyDeleteHow very kind of you to have been thinking of my family and me. In my heart and with family later in the day I was indeed able to celebrate. Thank you for your kind words.