One of the biggest issues I grapple with as a Christian mother, is how to be focused on worship during services – giving honor to God - and training my children in the pew regarding proper conduct and attending to their many needs.

Like most things in Christianity, there are several schools of thought:

Some feel that children need to “suck it up” and be mini-adults and learn to worship by sitting in the pews ramrod straight and following along – regardless of the child’s age.

Many congregations have a “children’s church” where the kids are completely separate from the adults, so the adults can worship in peace, and the children have an age-appropriate time of worship.

Others “transition” the children in by allowing them to be engaged in a quiet activity in the pew, and expect increasingly more of them as they become older.

From my perspective as an Early Childhood Educator, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect young children to be capable of adult behavior. Otherwise, we’d allow them drive, vote and get married! Clearly, those activities require a certain degree of maturity and discernment, and so it is with worship.

As for the concept of a “children’s church,” (and this is just my own opinion), I certainly understand the niche it fills, and get the concept behind it. However, I also feel it creates an artificial environment, in that the expectation is set that church will always be “entertaining.” Church is about giving God honor, praise and worship, and whereas those things can be exciting, we often miss the point by focusing on how worship makes us feel, rather than how it makes God feel and if He is pleased with our worship. In other words, we can set up a precedent-setting dynamic wherein we base what we “got out of worship” by how we feel – looking inward – rather than looking upward. Additionally, even though the staff gets rotated, we are pulling adults away from the congregational assembly to conduct the children’s church, and adults are commanded to worship (Hebrews 10:24).

Allowing your kids to color quietly in the pews can work as long as the children are not making noise and distracting others. As soon as my oldest was old enough to sight read basic words like “God,” “Love,” and “Jesus,” I would have him make hatch marks in a column each time he heard one of the words. When he could look up the song numbers in the hymnal on his own, he was encouraged and expected to. I made a “worship sheet” for him with pictures of song notes, a preacher in a pulpit, etc., and had him write in who the song leader was, what songs we sang, and had him list a few of the announcements or prayer requests. As his writing improved and he could write well enough, without having to ask his father and I how to spell, he was expected to take notes on the sermon.

Having said all that, we are talking about children! They constantly need to go to the bathroom - and in the case of my oldest son, who has Type 1 diabetes - he needed to go often when his blood sugars were high.

I try using metaphors the kids can understand. I ask them what if they had a birthday party, and during the part where they get to open the gifts (the focus is on them), their friends start talking, or fall asleep, or keep getting up … how would that make them feel?

I try to focus their minds the night before worship, and remind them how important the next day is. At breakfast we talk about it again. On the ride to services, we talk yet again about the issue. But as I have said, we are talking about children.

Though I am certainly not an inspired writer, it is my humble opinion that this is what the apostle Paul was referring to in 1 Timothy 2:15, when he wrote:

But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

God understands the many burdens placed upon godly mothers in the rearing of their offspring, and the many sacrifices that they make to raise their children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” I don’t think we get a “free pass” to yak it up with our children during services, but in consistently guiding our children, we help them to be followers of His – and in doing so, fulfill our duty to Him as parents.