p. 10 | CHILDREN IN CHURCH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 25, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 52.

CHILDREN IN CHURCH.

How do you keep the little ones so quiet during church service?” asked some one of the nursery mother a few years ago. She was in the habit of taking the little ones of three and four years old to church, and they sat quietly through the service, often without going to sleep, altho at an age when children usually find it most difficult to keep quiet.

“I train them for it at home,” was the response. “I have times each day when they are asked to sit quietly a few minutes, with folded hands.” They were not forced to do it by punishments, but for one reason or another were prevailed on to keep quiet for a given time. Being done as they supposed voluntarily, it never occurred to them that it was a hardship.

For instance, mama was very tired and wanted to lie down and shut her eyes for one, three, or five minutes, and a dozen little people would keep very still with eyes on the clock while the hand crept around to the point indicated. The time is easily lengthened a few minutes now and then.

At family worship or in the other services at the Home, the row of little chairs in front contained as orderly a part of the audience as any other. Of course there were some more restless and mischief-loving than others, and these, without knowing why,

had a place next to mama’s chair or in her lap, where at the first indication of an outbreak some tactful little turn would hold their attention. Sometimes this was only nestling the little hand in mama’s, a reassuring look, a little caress, or a slight readjustment of position such as could be made without disturbance.

The resort to pencil and paper is sometimes good, if the little one does not insist on displaying his efforts for mama’s approval; but the less the child depends on such entertainment to keep him quiet the better.

We once noted a young mother who came into church with a little child. She seated herself and the little one with quite a flourish. Then the little hat had to come off, the curls be brushed back, the ribbon readjusted, the child lifted again and set back a little farther on the seat. Then a book was thrust into its hands, and one attention after another was given till the child, who was so interested in the place and people that she would have sat almost motionless for a number of minutes without further attention, was wrought up to such a degree of nervousness by the unremitting attention of the mother that she began to fidget of herself. This drew fresh efforts from the mother, responded to by increased nervousness on the child’s part, till, losing control of herself, she had to be taken from the room, to the disturbance of the congregation and the chagrin of the mother, who had done her best, as she thought, to keep her still.

Self-control, taught in various ways at home, is the first lesson in preparation for suitable behavior in the house of God. Reverence for the place is more easily inculcated, and the attention of the child directed to the services, if the mother does not occupy herself with little needless attentions to the child after entering the church. If the little one has heard Bible truths or Bible stories at home, he will catch from time to time something that is familiar,—a name, a text, a hymn,—and going on from one thing to another, will learn to listen. Of course if the child has never learned to be quiet under any circumstances, the church service is no place to begin the instruction; but if he knows what it is to sit still cheerfully for a number of minutes, “to rest mama,” or to watch the hands move on the clock, or to let baby sleep, or for any other purpose in which his will is engaged, he will not find it impossible, with occasional slight attention from mama, and the slighter and less frequent the better, to sit through a church service of reasonable length. At least we have seen it done, and done by children of such varied disposition and temperament that it was evidently the result of careful training.—Haskell Home Appeal.