Kinder in the Kirche / Tots in the Tabernacle

My response to a comment on the recent post of pithy pre-pastorate pastoral pointers got so long that I decided to devote a post to it. I'm fearful that the higher visibility will draw more fire to-meward, but... oh well! Now's the time to do this, when no congregation under my care will imagine I'm "sniping" at them.

Here's the comment, and my response:

At what age does your "no noise" rule apply? From birth, age 1, 2, 3?

I have two under two and I have been given the "evil eye" when my 6-month old is making happy noises, even if briefly.

Is there consideration for a toddler who is quiet yet won't sit still?

Where's the grace for us parents who are doing the best we can but feel sometimes it would be better to not come than to show up and get the looks from people which say, "Oh, no! Here's comes that family with the children. I hate when they make ANY noise at all."

J{2} — I appreciate your straight-up question, and I'll do you the respect of a straight-up response.

First, it's you asking, so I'll speak to you about you, on the basis of what you tell me. Were someone else writing to complain about (someone like) you, I'd respond to him about him. Hope that seems fair.

Second, full disclosure: I think happy-baby/toddler sounds are among the most pleasant sounds there are. Hearing them makes me smile.

In their place.

But, at the same time, I must confess that I'm distractable. I wish it weren't so, that I could just tune everything out and focus exclusively on one sound at a moment's notice, but there it is.

So I sit up closer to the front, where I can see and hear. And "up front" is where the likelihood of looking over perpetually-moving, bobbing, dipping, turning-around, chatting heads is lower. If I find that some person or family is inclined to constantly turn around to see who's coming or going or doing what, or chat a lot during sermons or otherwise, I just find another place to sit. No bloodshed, no hard feelings.

So if (as I've had happen) some parent asserts his/her "right" to sit wherever (s)he pleases, and sits right by me, with a gurgly, chatty, constantly-moving child... it's a problem to me. Not (I hope you see) because I'm a bad, loveless, graceless person; certainly not because I'm a child-hater. But because I've gone to attend to the Word and focus on the Lord, and haven't gone to someone's house for an unstructured afternoon of chit-chatty fellowship.

Leading me to....

Third, I wonder (but don't know enough to accuse) — where is your show of grace to the others? You know that your little tot is distracting them. They're not handling it well, granted — but they're not asking my opinion. You are. So I must ask you: how are you handling it? Are you sitting in the back row, as you train your child to attend quietly? Does your church not have a room for noisy kinder? Are you using a pacifier, coloring books, what-have-you? Are you applying Matthew 7:12 to yourself in relation to your bothered brethren, as you clearly expect them to do for you? (I don't read our Lord as saying, "Whatever you want others to do to you, demand that they do, or accuse them of being loveless and graceless, and you don't have to obey Me anymore").

Not being God, I don't know what ALL children's capacity is. I don't imagine they're all the same in every way. But I do know this: to a degree, it depends on parents' expectations and training. If a parent assumes a child is unable to sit quietly, he won't teach the child to do so, and we'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy. And vice-versa.

TO A DEGREE.

Is it genetically-coded? No clue. But I do know I've known families who've had little tiny tots show a perfect ability to sit quietly and color or read or look at pictures or do something, through worship services. It can be done. It is done!

I remember an early experience of ours. We went to an evening service where we thought they had care for kids. They did — but only up to something like age 4, leaving out our daughter, who was around 5. Around five, I say, and very active, lively, loving change and entertainment and stimulation and all that.

We could have assumed she was incapable of sitting still for an hour. (I don't know that I'd ever seen her do so.) We could have expected unruly behavior, and she may have complied.

But instead we gave her things to color and do, and told her she'd need to stay quiet and reasonably still (this is ~20 years ago, I don't remember our exact words).

We were both pleasantly surprised when she did exactly that, bless her heart — beyond what we'd privately dared hope. (So she got a Blizzard or something afterwards, just to say, "Thanks!") We set expectations and, bless her, she more than met them.

I immediately say, though: am I suggesting that's an infallible formula, and kids respond like machines? In no way. But I have learned its truth as a principle.

So, all that to say this. It seems to me that Christian options include:

1. Ask them if your child is bothering them and, if so, what they would like for you to do. This may force them to greater empathy than they have.
2. Go to your pastor for guidance.
3. Alter your behavior or seating if you're not being as considerate as you could be.
4. Ask other parents whose same-age tots are (as you see it) better-behaved.

But as I read Scripture, we don't have the option to insist on our rights at others' expense, judge and condemn them for judging and condemning us, and retreat from submission to God's word into bitter self-pity.