First communion confession

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I want to thank everyone who took the time to provide answers. I am very appreciative.

Thanks especially to the people who posted examinations of conscience. I did not know those existed in order to ask about them… Reading through the various ones has given me a good perspective. That was the piece of information I needed both to understand what the Church expects of a second grader and to figure out how to introduce my daughter to it.

We have already been able to address any concerns my daughter had and she is now very excited to go through first Communion. I also feel prepared to deepen her understanding with these recourses in hand. Thanks everyone!
 
Also thanks to the people who gave examples of their child’s first communion and concerns. These were also really helpful. God bless everyone.
 
re: clothing has no impact on the sacrament, that’s totally true.

But it reflects the importance that the people who are receiving it for the first time are giving it.

I can get baptized in a poopy onesie. I can take first communion in a stained and torn sweater. I can get confirmed wearing clothes I normally use to paint a house in. I can get married in jeans and a t-shirt. None of those external things affect the effectiveness of the sacrament, although they’d probably kill my mother. 😛

But they show how casually I’m treating an important spiritual reality.

Several generations of my family have grown up military. I don’t know how things are now, but in their days, if you wanted to go to the Officers’ Club, you would be asked to leave if you weren’t wearing a tie. (Can’t remember if a suit was obligatory if you weren’t in uniform?) The reasoning behind it was that people were better-behaved when they were dressed more formally, and so having a higher dress code standard was one of their ways of cutting down on fights/ensuring good behavior. 😛

My kids complain about having to wear dress clothes to Mass. But it’s a signal to them that we’re doing “important business”, and hopefully, helps ensure better behavior as well, by sending a signal somewhere in the back of their brains that something important is going on. 🙂
 
I’m thinking you would be appalled at how the people at my parish are dressed.
 
I could not disagree with what you said about clothing more than I do. The moment showing seriousness is required by an outside symbol you have already lost the depth and the meaning of it all. Commitment is shown by commitment itself, and is either there or it is not. It is for you to have and God to know.

I intentionally dont dress up because if feel like it cheapens and draws attention away from the sacredness of mass. There are many more options than paint cloths or dress cloths… The time I spend in prayer and the degree of holiness I allow God to bring me too over time is the only proof of whether there was real devotion there or not.

The rest is cultural ideals being set up as idolic proof of inner transformation. Its fine if YOU have been led by the Holy Spirit to show your commitment in this way-- it is not fine if you think that should be or is normative for others.
 
I am so glad you are all feeling good about it. My family has the practice of going together every 1-2 months. We all take our turn, wait for each other to do our penances, and then leave. We go to different churches so that the kids can get used to multiple confessors, confessionals, and they gain a flexibility and comfort level with walking in a strange church to go to confession. My hope is that when they are away from us, they will take the initiative to go on their own. It is a healing thing, a cleansing thing. We would all stink if we didn’t take a shower on a regular basis, same thing for confession.
 
No. The thing I pay attention to is consistency— and I think it’s inconsistent for kids to show up to their First Confession wearing a pink tracksuit, with no family bothering to stick around to celebrate it with them, and then to show up a month later to their First Communion decked out in floor-length gowns with updo’s and little Swarovski tiaras and a dozen family members all eagerly snapping photos. But I also understand it’s not a bunch of 7-year-olds who are making the decisions that leads to this inconsistency.
 
As a mom, it’s my job to educate my kids in the unwritten rules of our culture and our socioeconomic strata, so that they’re able to function smoothly in the situations they’re likely to encounter.

I don’t care if Fred sags his pants around his knees, or that Suzy wears pajama pants to Walmart, or that Harry wears a t-shirt with a double-entendre slogan to a job interview.

I have better things to do than be Ms. Judgy McJudgypants and worry how other people handle how they conduct themselves at Mass. 😛 If you want to wear a mantilla and coordinate it with the day’s liturgical colors, that’s okay. If you want to wear a pink velour tracksuit, that’s okay too. If you want to wear white after Labor Day, I promise I won’t faint. 😉
 
That’s not consistency.
That’s worrying about your neighbor.
You cna only control what goes on in your house.
 
I think that going to confession should be part of your discipline once your child makes her first confession. You should regularly offer her the opportunity to go to confession but if/when she does something wrong then she should be offered the opportunity to go to confession.
 
poche said:
I think that going to confession should be part of your discipline once your child makes her first confession. You should regularly offer her the opportunity to go to confession but if/when she does something wrong then she should be offered the opportunity to go to confession.
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With the caveat that not everything a chid ‘does wrong’ is a sin and certainly not all childish misdeeds rise to the level of a mortal sin and needing to be confessed. For instance, I cut all the hair off an expensive doll’s head when I was a child. Wrong? Yes. A sin warranting confession? Hardly. It wasn’t even disobedience, since I hadn’t been told not to.
 
But you’re forgetting how this part of the conversation came about. We were talking about how different parishes spaced the sacraments schedules, and I mentioned two ways I’ve seen it handled. When someone thought it was dumb to space them a year apart, I mentioned that when they’re on each other’s heels, one runs into the danger of being treated like “let’s get this out of the way so we can get on to the next sacrament." Pink track suits and lack of family presence, in contrast with dressed-to-the-nines and full family presence a month later, were two indicators that I used to illustrate the situation in my parish. That’s not to say that every parish is like that, or that we as human beings are physically incapable of appreciating two First Sacraments in a short period of time. It’s just saying that it’s something that happens.

I think that’s a fair enough observation to make.

It happened almost a year ago. It’s the first time it’s come up in conversation, either in real life or online… and I’m not the one who’s making a big deal about it. 😛 People are somehow taking my anecdote personally, and that’s totally not the point. Perhaps it’s normal nowadays to drop your kids off for First Confession and then run off and do your thing…? But if so, make it about, “Yeah, I didn’t hang around for my kid’s First Confession, either” rather than turning it into a debate on “I dress for church like I’m going to the beach but I’m invisible so no one is going to see me”.
 
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On one side is the our Father and under each line are a couple of related questions e.g. after the first line are the questions do I pray daily and do I pay attention and participate in mass. I found one on line and deleted the questions that were for older children.

On the other side is a guide to the Sacrament of Reconciliation which is a step by step guide including the act of contrition and the prayer afterwards that we all pray together.

It was checked over by our parish priest. The children can keep the paper. In fact, we are happiest when they remember to take it home because their parents can read it.
 
It is all dependent and depending on circumstances. I cut the hair off of the doll’s head that belonged to my little sister would be a sin.
 
An examination of conscience (a list of questions that pertain to certain to sins she might have a committed) might be of use. You can find some online.
 
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poche said:
It is all dependent and depending on circumstances. I cut the hair off of the doll’s head that belonged to my little sister would be a sin.
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Not really. if the child had no intention of being 'bad; but just thought the doll would look better with short hair. and nicer for her sister.

if she had done it with the intention of hurting her little sister, that would be different,
 
That is why the parent should talk to the child. I was thinking more along the lines of when children do really bad things. Willful disobedience isn’t just between the parent and child It also has an effect on the child’s relation to God.
 
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