Keeping Kids Quiet in Church
Lets face it, that hour of Sacrament meeting is challenging on Sunday morning when 
you have young children, possibly when you have older children too, but I don’t know about that yet. I spend a lot of time and energy fretting about how I can keep my children in their seats behaving well and for the most part we don’t do too bad. Having Zach on the stand now has presented some new challenges and I have not completely figured out how to deal with our children without him. So this particular blog post has two purposes:
1) To keep a record of how things are now, including a record of how they used to be and how we came to do things the way we do them and
2) To solicit ideas on how to improve the way I do things.
When Isaac was a baby I would bring a bottle of expressed milk and I would hold him through the whole meeting, anticipating his every need. If he looked at me sideways I was ready with a bottle, pacifier, or gas drops. I was proud of the fact that we never had to take him out of the meeting and some ward members remarked that they had never even heard him cry. As the children multiplied, I learned that I could not continue my high level of vigilance with every child.
Another thing that happened as our family grew and the children got older we is that we started to evaluate what we would and would not allow in sacrament meeting. Now I 
realize that every parent and every child is different, so please don’t feel like I’m going to judge you if you do things differently. To be perfectly honest, if I was entirely in charge of this process, the outcome would be different. The following are the guidelines that Zach and I have tried to follow:
At one point a member of the Stake Presidency in our Orem Ward asked parents not to bring snacks for sacrament meeting. He insisted that any child at any age could go an hour without a snack. I have to admit that in my heart I did not want to follow his council, but somehow I was able to settled my troubled mind and come around to the idea of giving up sacrament meeting snacks for little ones. The exception to this rule for our family is that I will take a nursing baby out to be fed during sacrament meeting. We will give little snacks to a pre-Nursery aged child in Sunday School or Relief Society.
We do not bring crayons, pencils, pens, or paper for children to write/color with. I have to admit to fighting this idea a little. We do bring a few small magna doodles for the children to write on. The reason that the magna doodle is ok is that the children cannot write on hymn books or anything else with them, but I do worry sometimes that they’re not very reverent things.
We are careful about which toys we bring. I don’t know if I could clearly define this rule, but there are certain toys such as cars and trucks that we will not bring and all other possibilities are evaluated on a toy by toy basis. Other than magna doodles and the spiral bound gospel art book, we don’t bring any toys specifically for Isaac and Charlotte, although we will let them look at the quiet book given to us by a couple in our ward or one of the things we bring for Nicole i(f Nicole is not currently interested in the item).
We avoid giving a child the sacrament before he or she is nursery aged (18 months). We mostly just needed to have a guideline about this in our minds, I don’t think I could make the case that there is an important reason why a child shouldn’t take the sacrament before this age.
If a child has to be taken out of a meeting, we make sure it’s less fun to be out than to be in. Zach sits Nicole in a chair in the corner until she is settled and she walks calmly back into the meeting.
My life got much easier when Zach took over complete responsibility for Nicole, which he did when I was pregnant with Ila. Isaac and Charlotte were easy compared to Nicole. She is generally easy to watch when she can be free to run around and play, but trying to keep her contained in church can be very challenging. In church, she requires the full attention of an adult to behave well.
Ila is at a very particular age where she will often cry if someone other than her mother holds her, so I don’t feel as if I can hand her off to someone without her descending into a fit of crying.
The first Sunday that Zach was called to be a councilor in the bishopric, he took Nicole up on the stand with him, but she was far too wiggly and required too much work for him to continue to take her up there each week. The second week I had a young couple sit next to us, but Nicole was reluctant to interact with them and the entire meeting was very stressful for me. At one point I had to take Nicole out of the meeting with Ila in my other arm. I cried repeatedly during the meeting and when Zach approached me after the meeting I burst into tears (for some reason, crying provides a stress release for me and I was filled with stress and anxiety at that moment). The third Sunday we had to miss because of our car accident. The fourth Sunday, all the people I had planned to have sit with me were not there and I asked my visiting teacher to sit with me. Unfortunately she had her own 2-year-old who needed her undivided attention which meant that not long into the meeting, I was on my own again. Luckily, this time Nicole had something (which I will blog about tomorrow) that kept her engaged the whole meeting and she behaved nearly perfectly. Next Sunday will be the fifth Sunday since his call. Will I be as lucky next week?
What do you (or someone you have observed) do/bring to keep kids entertained in church?
we recently closed the sunday buffet that we used to bring to church. now, i just bring a piece of bread per child and one sippy cup (this is just to transition my kids to eventually not have any snacks, i knew my kids would rebel too much if we went cold turkey on the food). i bring lots of paper and pens/crayons and let the kids draw. my kids have always been really good about only drawing on paper provided, so i don’t worry about anything else getting written on and drawing keeps my 6 year old the most occupied and happiest. my 2 year old will draw for awhile, but he’s just pretty good in general, so i don’t worry too much about him. my hope for my 10 month old is that he’ll just grow up without the sunday snacks and not know any different and be happy with a toy or two. thanks for sharing your experiences, i’m always curious how other people do things :). and if anyone can figure out how to wrangle 4 children by herself during sacrament time, it’s you kathleen! but don’t feel guilty either for crying when you need to either! good luck!!
I’m bad. I bring snacks even though the stake presidency told us not to. I started doing this after my mom (who didn’t know about the “rule”) brought snacks and Rebecca sat through all three hours, quietly eating. It’s a much bigger issue than whether or not they need to eat (though this is the first time I heard that part of the reasoning). But frankly, sometimes we don’t have time for breakfast before we leave. Kids might be okay for one hour, but my four year old won’t be okay waiting until noon to eat. (And then when I brought snacks for myself when I was pregnant, the kids almost always found them.)
Two weeks ago, I let the kids pack their own backpacks for church (and I had veto power). I was tired of bringing a bag of books only to have the kids run to the nearest neighbor with cars and action figures. Thus, I did let them bring cars. My basic rule is nothing that makes noise, and if it’s something they’ll fight over, bring two.
I really like the principle that being out of the meeting should be less fun than being in. Of course, I take the kids out because I can’t keep them behaving in sacrament meeting, and it doesn’t magically get easier to get them to behave in the hall. (They like to play with the curtains.)
I have been there—I’ve carried out two screaming, squabbling kids while nine months pregnant. I’ve cried through the second and third hours of church because of sacrament meeting.