Discipline in Church, HELP?

[Mandi]

condan:

. Reading your post brought back the memory of my husband carrying our then 4 year old out of Mass, walking down the aisle, across the back and up to the exit door, to take him out for a “visit to the woodshed”.

Reading your post brought back the memory of my father grabbing my brother by the arm and somewhat dragging him from Church and all down the aisle my brother cried “Dad your hurting my arm”. I do believe by the time he was finished something else hurt besides his arm. - We all still laugh about this.

But with all due respect your son is 6 years old, he is quite possibly 1 year away from receiving his 1st Holy Communion, that is 1 year away from what the church considers the age of reason. For him to be sitting in a crying room is not reasonable, he is not a baby and therefore able to control himself and his behaviour. As a parent you are responsible for his teaching (& behaviour) Your son is making you look bad and it is your fault. I don’t say this to be mean I am saying it so you can do something about it. There was a Holy Monk (name forgotten at the moment) who said “give me a boy till he’s seven and I’ll give you the man”.

To change this behaviour some serious teaching is in order. God is present in that Church - he must be made to understand that - out of love and reverence he must behave. He should be taught what he is suppose to be doing while at Mass. Mass is not play time and if love and devotion to God is not enough of a reason to behave then strict disipline should follow bad behaviour. Rules should be laid out and if not followed he should understand what consequences will be brought about because of his behaviour.

Remember The Church considers the age of 7 to be the age of reason. I would start a home catechism with him in early preparation for his 1st Holy Communion. You can turn this around.

God Bless

 

[Mandi]

Just on more thought I’d like to add, my children are grown now but all 4 of them before they reached the age of 7 were able to sit through a 3 hour Good Friday Service without a problem…so it can be done!

 

[Tom]

bluerose:

If he got disruptive to the point that it was interfering with other people’s Mass experience, I (not daddy, my son’s choice) would take him outside. No spanking, but he wasn’t allowed to run around or play. I’d sit with him on a bench outside and hold him on my lap and tell him we’d go back in if he’d behave and be quiet. It wasn’t fun to get out of Mass if he had to sit still anyway. Outside he could whine and cry all he wanted without bothering anyone. I only did it a few… well, maybe a dozen times, but it did the trick!

I used a similar method, with a slight modification, I explained to the two children ( I always took both out ) that I really needed to attend the whole mass, that it was very important to me, so when they were taken out, we’d sit till the next mass and try again. It took two Sundays of sitting all day at Church ( we started at the earliest mass and left after the last mass), they never misbehaved again. If you do something like this emphasize that it isn’t a punishment for them, it’s your need to attend mass without distraction.