My child is badly behaved at mass :(

[EasterJoy]

There is no requirement that your children must go with you, even when they are baptized. You can have them stay at home until the age of seven, where they will behave much better. I really feel for you, as I feel it is a difficult thing to cope with, but this doesn’t need to be this difficult. Just make them stay at home with a relative while you and your husband go to Mass and actually enjoy it for once.

I would try again when they seem to be settled down for other things, and at the very least try to have a year of regular Mass attendance under the belt before they start preparing for First Holy Communion, but yes, the age at which a particular child is old enough for Eucharist and confession is when his or her obligation begins.

 

[CDB1718]

These articles express my views much better than I can. I believe that young children need to be in church and that we grow in holiness when we attend to their needs in the moment, including at church. I put some excerpts from the articles, but recommend reading the whole thing.

stsophiaukrainian.cc/resources/childrenandchurch/
Regular attendance at divine services, gives the infant and toddler an opportunity to fully experience the sensual beauty of worship and the warmth of community life. By age three, those essential emotional bonds are formed and our self-centred little individual begins to look outward, developing another dimension of the “spiritual unconscious”. Slowly, he becomes aware of the feeling of belonging to a group and actively participating in its activities.

catholicexchange.com/2002/03/18/93110/
“A person with St. Therese’s mindset can pretty much accept anything that is thrown at him during the day — or during the Mass. He does not grow irritated or overly distracted by any surroundings or circumstances, because he doesn’t think much about them. If his kids are unruly, he will attend to them, without thinking about the benefits of the Mass he’s missing, then return to the Mass, without thinking about the benefits he’s going to get. He just accepts his surroundings, allowing grace to work where it will, but with no thought of the grace. It may seem awfully simple or even common-sensical, but it’s an approach that I suspect eludes most young parents. I know it eluded me for the first few years of fatherhood as I sweated through the Mass, trying to get as much out of it as I could and despairing when I was distracted for prolonged periods. I have found it a highly beneficial approach to worship under trying circumstances.”

 

[EasterJoy]

These articles express my views much better than I can. I believe that young children need to be in church and that we grow in holiness when we attend to their needs in the moment, including at church. I put some excerpts from the articles, but recommend reading the whole thing.

stsophiaukrainian.cc/resources/childrenandchurch/
Regular attendance at divine services, gives the infant and toddler an opportunity to fully experience the sensual beauty of worship and the warmth of community life. By age three, those essential emotional bonds are formed and our self-centred little individual begins to look outward, developing another dimension of the “spiritual unconscious”. Slowly, he becomes aware of the feeling of belonging to a group and actively participating in its activities.

catholicexchange.com/2002/03/18/93110/
“A person with St. Therese’s mindset can pretty much accept anything that is thrown at him during the day — or during the Mass. He does not grow irritated or overly distracted by any surroundings or circumstances, because he doesn’t think much about them. If his kids are unruly, he will attend to them, without thinking about the benefits of the Mass he’s missing, then return to the Mass, without thinking about the benefits he’s going to get. He just accepts his surroundings, allowing grace to work where it will, but with no thought of the grace. It may seem awfully simple or even common-sensical, but it’s an approach that I suspect eludes most young parents. I know it eluded me for the first few years of fatherhood as I sweated through the Mass, trying to get as much out of it as I could and despairing when I was distracted for prolonged periods. I have found it a highly beneficial approach to worship under trying circumstances.”

The ideal is that the child be in church, yes. It is only preferable to keep a child at home from Mass when the child just doesn’t have the self-control to keep his or her activity level with the restrictions needed to keep him or her from being an undue distraction. In that case, I think it better to address the self-control issue first, outside of the setting of Mass, then take the child back to church when success is a more realistic possibility.

Sometimes, that will be a matter of letting the child grow up a bit, but when the child isn’t naturally suited to quiet occupations, it will almost always require some remedial training, too. People who are naturally loud or wild don’t concede the center of attention without being taught to do it.

If there must be a battle, though, choose a different field than Sunday Mass on which to wage it. Whatever you do, at any rate, don’t make Sunday Mass the only field of training! Unless the training is little more than letting a willing child know what the expectations are, that is a recipe for disaster.

 

[CDB1718]

Sometimes, that will be a matter of letting the child grow up a bit, but when the child isn’t naturally suited to quiet occupations, it will almost always require some remedial training, too. People who are naturally loud or wild don’t concede the center of attention without being taught to do it.

Concede the center of attention? That sounds like a Protestant view of a child.

People who misbehave to get the center of attention back on them have personality disorders. Children who are naturally loud or fidgety do not have the mental capacity to understand that other people feel differently inside their bodies than the child feels in his or her own body and therefore don’t understand the need to regulate their bodies differently in order to be kind to others. It isn’t manipulation. It’s immaturity. As they age, some people have the mental capacity to understand this but have a disorder which overrides their control of their behavior. I’m thinking of people with autism, tourettes, motor ticks, epilepsy, fainting disorders and the like. Is there no place for them in the church? Are they selfish attention seekers? No, there’s a middle ground.

Adults have the capacity to understand that others have a different internal world and should be expected to use it by showing compassion to a toddler who doesn’t act like an adult. The problem is the distraction to others, which should be minimized, but the child’s activity level doesn’t indicate that the child isn’t paying attention, learning, participating as he or she is able or is trying to distract people.

Parents do need to do what they can to work around the child’s schedule, needs, temperament and ability while training a child on appropriate behavior. Some kids do better to play at the playground before church so they’re worn out and calm. Others get wound up from a trip to the playground and need to save that for after church. There’s a lot a parent can adjust to find the ideal. I agree that church should not be an exception to the norm. The second article addresses the composure of the parent while living it day to day.

Leaving the child at home is the same attitude as letting the child misbehave in church. The parent is ignoring his or her responsibility to train the child in favor of his or her own desire for getting something from the church. The middle ground feeds the child and the parent while accepting them both where they are. That’s what we’re called to.

 

[EasterJoy]

Concede the center of attention? That sounds like a Protestant view of a child.

People who misbehave to get the center of attention back on them have personality disorders. Children who are naturally loud or fidgety do not have the mental capacity to understand that other people feel differently inside their bodies than the child feels in his or her own body and therefore don’t understand the need to regulate their bodies differently in order to be kind to others. It isn’t manipulation. It’s immaturity. As they age, some people have the mental capacity to understand this but have a disorder which overrides their control of their behavior. I’m thinking of people with autism, tourettes, motor ticks, epilepsy, fainting disorders and the like. Is there no place for them in the church? Are they selfish attention seekers? No, there’s a middle ground.

Adults have the capacity to understand that others have a different internal world and should be expected to use it by showing compassion to a toddler who doesn’t act like an adult. The problem is the distraction to others, which should be minimized, but the child’s activity level doesn’t indicate that the child isn’t paying attention, learning, participating as he or she is able or is trying to distract people.

Parents do need to do what they can to work around the child’s schedule, needs, temperament and ability while training a child on appropriate behavior. Some kids do better to play at the playground before church so they’re worn out and calm. Others get wound up from a trip to the playground and need to save that for after church. There’s a lot a parent can adjust to find the ideal. I agree that church should not be an exception to the norm. The second article addresses the composure of the parent while living it day to day.

Leaving the child at home is the same attitude as letting the child misbehave in church. The parent is ignoring his or her responsibility to train the child in favor of his or her own desire for getting something from the church. The middle ground feeds the child and the parent while accepting them both where they are. That’s what we’re called to.

Protestant? Protestant?! What are you talking about? Perhaps you read my concession that mishavior can be willful to mean that I think that it always is? That I think children shouldn’t be in church? Far from it…and even then, I don’t know what that has to do with the Protestants.

No, people are loud or who do physically inappropriate things to get the center of attention back on them DO NOT necessarily have personality disorders! If it doesn’t call for professional intervention or accomodation beyond what is typical, please do not call it a “disorder”. Unless they know better and choose to do worse, they aren’t even necessarily wilfully misbehaving. Some typical people violate social taboos, both typical children and typical adults. It is bad behavior if better behavior is considered and rejected, but even that isn’t an organic mental health problem, per se. The capacity to throw a tantrum or show off is certainly nothing that automatically calls for psychiatric treatment!

I didn’t say that parents with children who misbehave should leave them at home or that children who are loud or overactive in church must be misbehaving, let alone that people with epilepsy or Tourette’s should be barred from Mass. I said that if the child doesn’t have the capacity to sit still instead of being loud and jumping around, it is a bad idea to wage a pointless war of wills during Mass. Develop the capacity elsewhere, and then bring them back. If this means that behavior is being demanded of a child that he or she cannot reproducibly bring forth, even if he or she wants to, then there is no reason to subject the kid to round after round of failure and censure. Just letting them run wild until they get older isn’t the only course of action open, either.

I will say that even if inappropriate behavior starts as no more than what the child is capable of, the child will have to be taught to change his or her expected boundaries before one can reasonably hope that the child will act in a different way on a regular basis. And yes, even a young child can appreciate the feedback loop between a certain behavior and the attention that the behavior nets him or her. That kind of empirical research doesn’t take a psychology degree. It is as natural as playing with one’s toes.

Neither does a child have to “understand that others have a different internal world” in order to understand that he or she is in a situation that requires him or her to be quiet. All the child needs to appreciate is that the rule of the moment imposes certain boundaries. You can have a child in an empty church (or an empty parking lot, for that matter) and impress it upon her that it is now quiet time. If quiet isn’t even an option, then taking her elsewhere is.

 

[NSFrame]

Why is it then, that for every generation until now (basically until the 80s/90s), parents have kept small children at home while they alternate Mass attendance with their spouse and/or older children? Seems like this produced many generations of faithful Catholics…

 

[jilly4ski]

Why is it then, that for every generation until now (basically until the 80s/90s), parents have kept small children at home while they alternate Mass attendance with their spouse and/or older children? Seems like this produced many generations of faithful Catholics…

I don’t know where you get this idea, but I think my Grandparents did something like this between the mid 40s and early 60s. There are 11 children still living, do you want to know how many of them are faithful Catholics now? At highest count 4. But I would say it is generally because of their spouses, and they all fell away after leaving home, only to return later. (I say at the highest count, because while one Aunt is still a regular Church goer, there are some funny ideas about not having to following Church doctrine).

That is pretty bad odds*

*I do not think taking or not taking your children under the age of 5 has much to do with whether they remain faithful Catholics. It has more to do with the personality of the child, the parenting of that child, and ones general viewpoints, and how those viewpoints are passed on. So please take the above comment as sarcasm and not “proof” that taking kids to church is what makes them be faithful Catholics.

 

[CDB1718]

Protestant? Protestant?! What are you talking about? Perhaps you read my concession that mishavior can be willful to mean that I think that it always is? That I think children shouldn’t be in church? Far from it…and even then, I don’t know what that has to do with the Protestants.

No, people are loud or who do physically inappropriate things to get the center of attention back on them DO NOT necessarily have personality disorders! If it doesn’t call for professional intervention or accomodation beyond what is typical, please do not call it a “disorder”. Unless they know better and choose to do worse, they aren’t even necessarily wilfully misbehaving. Some typical people violate social taboos, both typical children and typical adults. It is bad behavior if better behavior is considered and rejected, but even that isn’t an organic mental health problem, per se. The capacity to throw a tantrum or show off is certainly nothing that automatically calls for psychiatric treatment!

I didn’t say that parents with children who misbehave should leave them at home or that children who are loud or overactive in church must be misbehaving, let alone that people with epilepsy or Tourette’s should be barred from Mass. I said that if the child doesn’t have the capacity to sit still instead of being loud and jumping around, it is a bad idea to wage a pointless war of wills during Mass. Develop the capacity elsewhere, and then bring them back. If this means that behavior is being demanded of a child that he or she cannot reproducibly bring forth, even if he or she wants to, then there is no reason to subject the kid to round after round of failure and censure. Just letting them run wild until they get older isn’t the only course of action open, either.

I will say that even if inappropriate behavior starts as no more than what the child is capable of, the child will have to be taught to change his or her expected boundaries before one can reasonably hope that the child will act in a different way on a regular basis. And yes, even a young child can appreciate the feedback loop between a certain behavior and the attention that the behavior nets him or her. That kind of empirical research doesn’t take a psychology degree. It is as natural as playing with one’s toes.

Neither does a child have to “understand that others have a different internal world” in order to understand that he or she is in a situation that requires him or her to be quiet. All the child needs to appreciate is that the rule of the moment imposes certain boundaries. You can have a child in an empty church (or an empty parking lot, for that matter) and impress it upon her that it is now quiet time. If quiet isn’t even an option, then taking her elsewhere is.

I think we misunderstood each other.

This is the line where I think we got off track. “People who are naturally loud or wild don’t concede the center of attention without being taught to do it.” While I recognize that some people are louder than others, the idea that they’re doing it to be the center of attention struck me as a Protestant view of children that they are naturally sinful and need to be taught goodness. We believe people are naturally good and need to be protected from corruption and trained in the ways of God.

To contrast these views, I pointed out that people who are causing disruptions in order to be in the center of attention have personality disorders. This was to compare to a toddler who clearly does not. I wasn’t advocating for medicating a toddler. I was normalizing the toddler’s behavior.

I think we had a big miscommunication. I am sorry.

 

[CDB1718]

Why is it then, that for every generation until now (basically until the 80s/90s), parents have kept small children at home while they alternate Mass attendance with their spouse and/or older children? Seems like this produced many generations of faithful Catholics…

Every generation until now? I’ve read a lot of history and the first time I’ve encountered that was the mid 1900s. Will you please tell me where I can read earlier references to it?

Like jilly4ski, the anecdotal examples I’m aware of don’t give very good odds for this method.

 

[rhiannonh]

you are all so concerned on rules and obligations. Not one of you anywhere say you go because you Love GOD. how sad

 

[CDB1718]

you are all so concerned on rules and obligations. Not one of you anywhere say you go because you Love GOD. how sad

I disagree, but I think you succinctly sum up why many of us say it is better to take the child to church.

 

[jilly4ski]

you are all so concerned on rules and obligations. Not one of you anywhere say you go because you Love GOD. how sad

???
Didn’t you read EasterJoy’s post? You have an obligation to be faithful to your husband, and to stay with him, does that mean that you love him any less? We also have an obligation to go to Mass on the LORD’s day and to keep the commandments, does that mean that we love God any less?

Obligation is not the exclusive to love. However, what it does do, is that if forces us to make the choice to love (or not love) even when we don’t emotionally feel like it. There are days when I can’t “feel” God’s love in my life. But I choose to love him by keeping his commandments, even when I don’t feel like it. Which also includes going to Mass. We however, are our children’s primary teachers, and must teach our children to keep our obligations even when we don’t feel all the love in the world. Just like we can’t pick up our stuff and leave our spouses because we just don’t feel like we love them today, we can’t just drop God and go do our own thing just because we don’t want to today, or we don’t feel like we love God today. Love is a choice, every time I choose to go to Mass, even though I don’t feel like it I am choosing to love God more than whatever it is I wanted to stay home and do. I would like to teach my children the correct understanding of love and how to love God (by keeping his commandments).

 

[EasterJoy]

I think we misunderstood each other.

This is the line where I think we got off track. “People who are naturally loud or wild don’t concede the center of attention without being taught to do it.” While I recognize that some people are louder than others, the idea that they’re doing it to be the center of attention struck me as a Protestant view of children that they are naturally sinful and need to be taught goodness. We believe people are naturally good and need to be protected from corruption and trained in the ways of God.

To contrast these views, I pointed out that people who are causing disruptions in order to be in the center of attention have personality disorders. This was to compare to a toddler who clearly does not. I wasn’t advocating for medicating a toddler. I was normalizing the toddler’s behavior.

I think we had a big miscommunication. I am sorry.

OK, we’re on the same page, because I wasn’t talking about toddlers being sinful. I was trying to say that acting in a certain way and expecting certain feedback, whether according to social norms or not, will become a habit that won’t just automatically go away as we age.

From the time they are very young, people notice what they think are the consequences of their actions. They may not get the connections right, but they notice. If anyone of any age is in the habit of behaving a certain way, whether that is quiet or loud or whatever, they will tend to keep acting in that way, provided that they like the level of attention that nets them. If the feedback they get seems to change, they will, as often as not, ramp up their former behavior in the hope of regaining the old familiar status quo. People do not tend to like change!

My main feeling is that it is a mistake to let a child not capable of better make inappropriate behavior at Mass into a habit. If you want to take your child to Mass with you every weekend and the child is very loud, some parents will simply spend Mass in the “cry room” every week. OK, that’s fine if you want to do that, except that then you have a child who is in the habit of running around and being loud at Mass. If you try to take that child into the main sanctuary and change the rules of conduct, you could have a battle on your hands. The child will often resist changing his or her habitual way of acting at Mass, and that is only natural. Not always, but it is a real possibilty.

We saw our kids moving in that direction and decided that it would be better to leave them at home than to essentially teach them that churches were places where some people got to run around and be loud. Rather, we left them at home until they settled down a bit and could be quiet for the length of time required, and then we introduced them directly into the main sanctuary. It worked very well. As I said before, they now like going to Mass, and even join me by choice for daily Mass during the summer. Leaving kids at home when they are very young will not automatically make them resist attending when they are older! I think that a long string of battles and behavioral “failures” could.

 

[NSFrame]

Every generation until now? I’ve read a lot of history and the first time I’ve encountered that was the mid 1900s. Will you please tell me where I can read earlier references to it?

Like jilly4ski, the anecdotal examples I’m aware of don’t give very good odds for this method.

I don’t think there are earlier references one way or the other.

However, I’m going to assume that leaving small children at home wasn’t something that simply sprang up in the middle of the 20th century, since most people tend to do as their parents did, and so on. But, what we have experienced, starting in the 80s, is this incredibly child-focused culture that treats children like little kings and queens whose precious desires and needs everyone must bow to, not just the parents. Before this, children were treated much more matter-of-factly. It’s this cultural shift, I believe, that has led to this movement of bringing babies and toddlers to Mass.

 

[EasterJoy]

you are all so concerned on rules and obligations. Not one of you anywhere say you go because you Love GOD. how sad

You judge rashly. No one said they would not go to Mass if they weren’t obliged. I would be very surprised if there weren’t a number of daily communicants posting here. Some of us are sacristans and some of us habitually go to eucharistic adoration, too, none of which is required by canon law. Does that satisfy your fear that we are driven by rules and obligations?

Rather, we are saying that we would observe the 3rd commandment even if we didn’t feel like it, just as surely as we would honor our marriage vows on the days when we weren’t “feeling the love”. If I say I would not leave my husband if I quit feeling the love for him, should he take that to mean I don’t love him? Far from it! It only means that there is more than mere emotional affection behind my fidelity. It means that even though he knows my human frailty and the fickle nature of human emotion, he can trust me and feel secure in our relationship. Likewise, if my son were married and wanted to leave his wife and children because he didn’t feel love for her any more, I would tell him that his wife deserves his fidelity. He has that obligation. If he falls out of love for her, it is time to work on the relationship, not a sign that he ought to abandon it.

You are saying that people should not be asked to honor their obligations when they lack the feelings that make their obligations enjoyable, going so far as to depict fidelity as a sad concept. You are arguing against fidelity and romanticizing whim! Which of us is sad? Which of us can expect broken relationships to follow from our philosophy? Which of us has a more secure relationship with God? Are you really so sure that it is you, so much so that you can continue to look down on the rest of us? Think about that.

 

[CDB1718]

I don’t think there are earlier references one way or the other.

However, I’m going to assume that leaving small children at home wasn’t something that simply sprang up in the middle of the 20th century, since most people tend to do as their parents did, and so on. But, what we have experienced, starting in the 80s, is this incredibly child-focused culture that treats children like little kings and queens whose precious desires and needs everyone must bow to, not just the parents. Before this, children were treated much more matter-of-factly. It’s this cultural shift, I believe, that has led to this movement of bringing babies and toddlers to Mass.

You have no evidence, but you assume that everyone did the same thing from the time of Christ until the 1980s when it was all tossed out on its ear?

The Sermon on the Mount was to families. Whole households were baptized. Infants were communing members of the church. Jesus said to let the little children come to him. How was this possible if the children were left at home? Do you think the mega-churches of today with a plethora of Mass times was the norm throughout all of history? Applying a little logic shows that this assumption doesn’t hold up to modest scrutiny.

What the church had as a long custom was separation in the church between the men on one side and and the women on the other. There were no pews, so everyone stood except those who needed the benches along the wall. The women helped each other and came and went as they needed. Movement was more common, so a child’s movement didn’t make as big of a disruption. That model isn’t practical in the modern American churches. That’s why modern Americans are struggling with how to balance these needs.

 

[NSFrame]

No, what I am saying is that within the context of reasonably modern times, small children were generally not taken to Mass until recently, when people began thinking it was also appropriate to take children to places such as nice restaurants. And what I am also saying is that there is good reason for that - the Mass is not designed for small children and their presence often significantly detracts from others’ worship, which is no small matter. Others have the right to be able to pray and maintain reverence to the Eucharist in Mass even more than a baby has the right to hear hymns and responses when he is too young to be reasonably expected to behave peacefully and understand what is going on. A child’s religious education begins at home and is much more effectively taught at home where individual attention can be given and the child’s questions answered on the spot.

 

[rhiannonh]

QUOTE=CDB1718;8845059]Concede the center of attention? That sounds like a Protestant view of a child.People who misbehave to get the center of attention back on them have personality disorders. Children who are naturally loud or fidgety do not have the mental capacity to understand that other people feel differently inside their bodies than the child feels in his or her own body and therefore don’t understand the need to regulate their bodies differently in order to be kind to others. It isn’t manipulation. It’s immaturity. As they age, some people have the mental capacity to understand this but have a disorder which overrides their control of their behavior. I’m thinking of people with autism, tourettes, motor ticks, epilepsy, fainting disorders and the like. Is there no place for them in the church? Are they selfish attention seekers? No, there’s a middle ground.

Adults have the capacity to understand that others have a different internal world and should be expected to use it by showing compassion to a toddler who doesn’t act like an adult. The problem is the distraction to others, which should be minimized, but the child’s activity level doesn’t indicate that the child isn’t paying attention, learning, participating as he or she is able or is trying to distract people.

Parents do need to do what they can to work around the child’s schedule, needs, temperament and ability while training a child on appropriate behavior. Some kids do better to play at the playground before church so they’re worn out and calm. Others get wound up from a trip to the playground and need to save that for after church. There’s a lot a parent can adjust to find the ideal. I agree that church should not be an exception to the norm. The second article addresses the composure of the parent while living it day to day.

Leaving the child at home is the same attitude as letting the child misbehave in church. The parent is ignoring his or her responsibility to train the child in favor of his or her own desire for getting something from the church. The middle ground feeds the child and the parent while accepting them both where they are. That’s what we’re called to.

If you are worn out then you are not calm. have you ever been worn out. worn out means tears and fidgets. if they are worn out enough to be asleep then why there in the first place. No I don’t like this approach because a child needs to be as fully engaged as they can as an adult at Mass. Wearing them out is not the answer

and
protestant view of a child. now i’ve heard it all…

 

[themeginthemoon]

oh good grief, people! This thread had tons of useful information at the beginning, and has just evolved into finger pointing and fairly useless debate. I think we can succinctly say that families have to discern what works best for them with regards to children and mass attendance. There are too many differences family to family to come up with a formulaic, correct answer…

Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut! We will figure out something soon, I’m sure. Since the newborn is fairly easy, I don’t think having her at mass will be much of an issue. I will start taking her at 6 weeks old, once she has had her vaccinations. We will have to wiggle around with the older child until we figure out what works best, something is bound to work for us eventually!

Peace and Good will, I’m bowing out of this one now.