Changing churches, changing strategies

A few hours ago I read a post discussing cry rooms on a popular religious website (my feelings about cry rooms are pretty well documented - see here, here, here, and here). It got me thinking about how my approach to handling children during services has changed over the years.

When I was early in my marriage I held a certain envy for our Coptic friends who sat separately with the men and older boys on one side and the women, small children, and girls on the other. How peaceful! What bliss! But time and experience have taught me that "separate but equal"is not all it's cracked up to be.

Over the years we have sat together in the front in an attempt to give the children something to look at unobstructed by adult bodies and in the back so no one would see how some of our children acted. We have sat apart with me carrying one child on my back with others milling around me while my wife cares for her gaggle far enough away that my charges don't make a run for her. We have loaned children to older parishioners who loved having young children to sit with. We have had children taken out of our arms by matushki who saw our moments of distress. I have even taken an unruly child to the car to sort himself out for a bit while the more well-behaved siblings stay with their mother. In short, we've made use of every technique short of cry rooms we could conjure up.

This doesn't mean we've forced other parishioners to suffer our little children so we could avoid plexiglass incarceration, but it also doesn't mean we've removed our children after their first screech or attempt to break free and go see what the choir is up to, what Father is doing in the altar, or discover what fun can be had at the playground.

To my mind, the existence of the cry room sets up an unreasonable expectation for parents and children that no family can live up to. The thinking develops that any nuisance should have been detected à la Minority Report and stopped before it ever occurred. You can't retroactively "unblemish" the service by divining when a child is going to shriek, make a run for the door to the play area, or stand on the chairs or pews. There aren't seismic detection devices that will predict youthful eruptions. A parent sets up expectations for behavior, looks for ways to keep the child within certain boundaries, and applies consistent discipline when those expectations aren't met. The answer is not to sit every Sunday amongst the faded books, discarded toys, and smell of a changing table until your child is old enough to "get it."

So this month, as we transition from a parish with no seating to speak of to a cathedral full of pews, I think back to what we've tried to corral our children successfully through services in the past. I harken back to what has worked and what hasn't and I look for something from the lessons learned that will stop my two year old from sliding from one side of the pew to the other, that will keep the four year old from making use of the new freedom of being seated a few siblings away from a parent to make numerous visits to the bathroom, that will assure the older children cross themselves properly and sing audibly, and many other things besides. Eventually we'll find the balance between the ideal, my worst fears, and the reality of our situation, but until then it's heuristics. May the Lord guide my steps and impart patience to my fellow parishioners as I do.