How can we get our daughter to go to confession?

[aac511]

My husband and I are beside ourselves with our 9-year-old daughter. She was very insistent about going to confession regularly. We thought it was great. She was setting a great example for our two younger boys. Everything changed right after Easter this year when she decided that she didn’t want to go anymore. We thought this was a phase or a test of our authority. It has been many months now, and we have tried many ways to get her to open up about the “why” behind her refusal to take part in the sacrament so she can receive our Lord again. We don’t get angry in our conversations with her and reassure her that there is nothing she can’t confide in us about. She insists no priest has ever touched her. No one has instructed her not to go to confession. But she has a reason. She does not want talk to our parish priest either. She does not like to miss Mass. We are at a loss for ideas for this most difficult problem. We mentioned this to our priest already.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

If you think there might be a reason behind your daughter’s refusal to go to confession, you might want to consider taking her to a children’s counselor who is Catholic or at least sensitive to the Catholic faith and Catholic concerns. The Pastoral Solutions Institute may either be able to help or direct you to a counselor in your area. (And don’t give your daughter a choice about going to a counselor, anymore than you should give her a choice about going to a doctor if you believed she was physically ill.)

If this proves fruitless – you can lead a child to a counselor, but you can’t make her talk – then all you can do is to insist that she at least join the family when the family goes to confession. You can’t make her confess, but you can require her to go with you, listen respectfully to any directed examinations of conscience in which you lead your children, and refrain from speaking negatively about the sacrament to her younger brothers. In time, she may decide to either go back to confession or to confide in you her reason for not wanting to do so. In the meantime though, she should at least be expected to treat the sacrament respectfully.

And, as a side note, unless your daughter has committed a mortal sin, she can still receive Communion. Only she can determine, with assistance from a priest or from you, whether or not she has committed a mortal sin. If she is able to receive Communion, the grace she receives from the Eucharist may soften her heart to the prospect of returning to confession.