www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization ill mannered children

Go to the parents. Learn who they are and why they struggle. Welcome them to the community. Provide what they need.

They don't need an announcement in the bulletin with everyone wagging their tongues about how awful they are or a forum of people who don't know them weighing in on how they ruin everything. Maybe their kids need to participate more. See if you can start training the 8 year olds on how to be singers or servers. Maybe they need an extra set of hands to separate the warring 3 and 5 year olds. Maybe they need someone to encourage them instead of staring them down. A big guy sitting at the end of the pew acts as a great blocker to keep children contained and provide positive re-enforcement.

Don't look at them as problem munchkins. Look at them as a part of the community who has needs just like yours and then try to figure out how to meet both needs at the same time. That requires getting to know them and a desire to serve them.

Taking an us against them stand where all you care about it is getting your needs met in the way you desire is going to lead to a standoff no one will win. You see their need. Now humble yourself enough to find out how you can best serve them. If the best you're able to do is to devote your prayers to them when the children misbehave, it will help both your salvation and theirs. But I think if you get to know them you'll find plenty of other ways to be of service. And as you form community with them and serve their needs, you'll also find your own needs met both in reciprocation and in grace.

It goes against the grain, but with the particular issues with a couple of children, we started day care (usually my wife) during liturgy.

Most of the small children are in the church, but a couple are with her. (and before people complain: Yes, there *ARE* conditions and afflictions which leave a child unable to simply behave, or wander around, or otherwise be inside during liturgy without seriously disrupting it).

We added a sound system and a wireless microphone on Fr. Marcus, so that the liturgy is played in the rooms she uses.

CDB,

Thanks so much for posting this. It's exactly what I would've wanted to say, except I don't think I could've expressed it as well as you did. You're taking the principles of the Gospel and applying them to real-life problems, just as God intended for us to do. *Many* people will call this a fairy-tale approach that has no relation to "real life." I think they're wrong.


Peace,
Deacon Richard