Got a Screaming Kid at Church? 6 Encouraging Things to Remember

Catholic Pop ^ | September 27, 2014 | Rachel Lu

[NYer]

Bowsk, Flickr / Ben Francis, Flickr / ChurchPOP

With three young boys, Mass can be the scariest part of my whole week. I wonder: will the baby scream right in the middle of the Consecration? Will I end up chasing the toddler down the center aisle? Grim possibilities flit through my mind as I dress the boys for church.

But God loves children, and even harrowing churchgoing memories will probably seem precious a decade or two hence.

Here then are some thoughts to help you keep perspective if you have this problem as well.

1) God notices your kids’ efforts… and yours.

This is my glass-half-full thought when my kids’ behavior is less good than I’d like. Maybe they wouldn’t sit still and quiet for the full service. But for a 2-year-old, even 25 minutes is a challenge. I know God appreciates that he’s trying his best to show reverence… and that I’m trying my hardest to teach him.

2) Sometimes kids have their own ways of praising God.

I’m not saying we should allow them to disrupt the service in any way they choose. But it’s worth remembering that when young kids get noisy, they may not be trying to distract so much as to participate.

When my oldest was a baby, he would spontaneously start yelling in the middle of Mass, often in quite an emphatic tone. It was disquieting to me that Mass apparently made him so angry, until my husband point out that this could be his way of “telling off the devil”. That became our regular way of referring to these outbursts.

3) There’s always next week.

There’s no denying that church behavior can be hard on young kids. But, you have years of happy churchgoing memories to make with them, and if you persist in your efforts to train them, they will come around in time. If this week went badly, put it behind you and try again.

4) Remember that your spiritual needs matter too.

One of the toughest things about naughty kids is the way they prevent you from “recharging your battery” at church. I’ll be honest: sometimes my husband and I take a break from whole-family church and split up, with one of us taking the oldest child to church while the other goes alone to a later service. I think this is a justifiable accommodation for a life phase in which our kids make it hard for us to recover our own spiritual peace.

I also know parents who achieve the same effect by going individually to mid-week services. Once we started doing this, I suddenly found myself more patient with the young ones on the weeks when they were with us. I think perhaps I didn’t realize the extent to which I was just frustrated with them for depriving me of my worship time.

5) Your kids may be absorbing more than you realize.

Having said that, it’s worth remembering that kids often take in elements of worship even when they don’t seem to be paying attention. I’m sometimes surprised by the questions they ask after Mass, demonstrating that, even when they seemed to be most intent on distracting me or their brothers, good things were penetrating their consciousness.

6) Jesus asked the little children to come to him. He’s happy that they’re here.

Sometimes it’s upsetting when you hear high-handed remarks about church behavior from people who don’t seem to understand what children are like. They almost seem to suppose that if your kids misbehave, it’s because you haven’t bothered to tell them that church is a place for being reverent. Reassure yourself that Jesus knows what kids are like, and loves having them close by.

[NYer]

Ping!

[ThanhPhero]

My parish is Vietnamese language and there are only 3 or 4 non Viets on any particular Sunday, mostly wives and husbands. The littlest ones all come into the nave with their families. The Vietnamese are generation by generation more American all the time but one thing seems not to change. The babies don’t disrupt. The toddlers do tend to wander but it is to sit with other adults, relatives mostly and no one chases them. They make no noise . We have a crying room but it is used more by people who didn’t have time to dress up or who are not feeling well. Occasionally I go to the nearby parish that is all English language. Every time I am there there are one or two little ones crying or flat out screaming. Sometimes the parents take them into the crying room. Sometimes not. Sometimes a toddler manages to get away from the parents and run in the aisle and parents or siblings chase him. I am not tempted to go there very often.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Our parish regularly conducts “Children’s worship” where we sing the young ones out of church (”Let the children come to me...”) and they go to the Hall where catechists conduct exercises appropriate for their ages. They return just before Communion, proudly carrying their crayon and construction paper projects.

Ages of the children participating range from about 3-4 up to 7 (if they are accompanying and younger sibling).

Today, Father asked for a cross bearer and the littlest boy stepped forward. He just danced down the aisle, holding the child sized processional cross high. He was SO cute.

[tired&retired]

Those screaming kids are not bad. They are just possessed and the demon can’t stand the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church... sarc

[bgill]

Back in the day, no kid ever ran down the aisle screaming. We were taught to behave. If we even thought about fidgeting, we’d get the look from mama and dad would adjust his belt. We knew what that meant.

[bboop]

The Lord is happy the kids are there. That was the first thing we noticed when we joined the Catholic Church — there is an abundance of children. The 11 am mass has an “Angel’s Choir’ in the back of the church, and sometimes the priest has to stop just for a second. We LOVE it. We love having the kids there. Didn’t notice it when we did not have it, in the Protestant churches we loved, but once we became Catholic, it was hard to miss.

[Salvation]

**2) Sometimes kids have their own ways of praising God.**

One of my daughter’s at the ringing of the bells at the Consecration blurted out “Answer the doorbell, Mommy.”

Everyone around us laughed, but we were in the transept so I don’t think the whole church heard it.

[JOHN ADAMS]

I’m a member of an (orthodox) synagogue and i chose this one long ago, when my kids were small, because the Rabbi was so very happy to have children there. He gave (and thank God still gives) them candy when they come up on the pulpit to greet him. Parents are expected to take kids out if they get rambunctious (though if you’ve ever been to an orthodox synagogue on a Sabbath morning, you may know that there’s a fair amount of movement and background noise anyway). But it is so very important for your kids to be there with you, learning the prayers just by hearing them, and seeing you praying. We also have more than one service on a Sabbath morning and I do know couples with young kids who do as you do and split up, so at least one of them can go and pay attention and pray, and the next one struggles with the fidgety littler ones. But keep it up. You’re doing the right thing.

[tiki]

The only thing that bothers me is when a child starts screaming bloody mercy and obviously is not going to be appeased and they don’t take them out.

I call the rest “kid sounds” sometimes you hear a giggle or a question or just babbling or you hear out of nowhere “uh oh”. I think those are cute.

There is a kid who sits in the pew in front of us, he practically throws himself on his knees and does a dramatic, emphatic sign of the cross three times and then he gets up and throws himself into the pew. All his responses are so dramatic, my husband and I usually grin at each other when we are watching him.

[GreyFriar]

I guess I’m just old and set in my ways, but I do think that the parent of an infant that is continually crying should leave the service, perhaps stand in the narthex or in the parlor, where we have a speaker for anyone in there to hear the service. An occasional squeal is not a problem for me, it is just the occassional constant one that drowns out the service.

[Popman]

Gee, I expected my children to behave in church just like they do at home....well behaved...

No screaming or being loud, no temper tantrums, say please and thank you, etc....

I didn’t need a article to tell me how to....

[Secret Agent Man]

for others that say that it is impossible for kids to behave in church like their parent made them, and before that, is ridiculous.

it could be done. parents just do not want to do that anymore. i know they may face potential child abuse threats from pc idiots, but they’re your kids. if you do it early and set the precedent, and they learn very early you carry out a punishment, then the mere mention of the punishment will stop most problems without ever having to administer one. the threat becomes the deterrent b/c they know you’ll do it if you have to. it becomes a win for you because they’ll listen to you and you won’t have to physically dicipline them or get frustrated they’re not listening.

[mdmathis6]

So what is the point you are making? That White American Catholics are bad parents?

[annalex]

Children and their cries are a witness to God. I’d rather have a church full of screaming babies that without any children.

[annalex]

When we lived in California we loved to go to St. Rose in Sacramento. The parish was old Irish, but now it is in equal parts Hispanic, Vietnamese and Anglo. I can attest to that: Vietnamese kids are very well behaved, and the Anglos are the worst.

One thing that is painful to watch is when a mother is alone with the kids, and that, too, would typically be a white woman. Woman, where is your husband? What did your society do to you?

[vladimir998]

“So what is the point you are making? That White American Catholics are bad parents?”

I seriously doubt that is what ThanhPhero was saying, but Asian children usually seem to be better behaved than other children. And I think that many “White American Catholics are [average] parents”. They tend to spoil their children and do an overall lousy job of handing on the faith. That’s one of the reasons why the Church in America is so messed up. It certainly isn’t messed up because of recent Vietnamese immigrants or their children or grandchildren. The Church in America is a largely white Church - always has been. And what has it got to show for it? Some nice buildings, some nice nearly secularized charitable organizations, and a Church that lacks heart and has no guts.

[potlatch]

This is a more recent thing. Parents used to discipline their children and children learned right from wrong. People used to get up and take a misbehaving child out or stay in the cry room.

Children don’t throw fits in church or other places unless they’ve been allowed to do it at home. Truly, most of the statements in the article are just ‘making excuses’. “A noisy child may just trying to participate”!! That’s hilarious, especially since it’s annoying to others and disrupts the service!

I raised 4 children and they learned what ‘no’ meant.

[Tax-chick]

Woman, where is your husband?

Maybe he's on a business trip or in City X running a marathon or on a campout with your teenagers.

[Biggirl]

My parish has a kids mass each month.