Okay, I know not all our readers are religious, but I’m sure all of us have had to figure out how to keep all of our children quiet, reasonably still and respectful during some kind of somber ceremony, whether it’s a graduation, concert recital or a church service.
Today was one of those days where my patience was tried a bit in such a situation. Our boys are attending a Lutheran school attached to a teeny-tiny parish where it appears that the congregation is literally dying off day by day. Thus, not a lot of children or young families attend the services with any kind of consistency and the “regulars” are a pretty sedate older crowd.
This is in pretty stark contrast to the Catholic church we attended in Michigan, where families–if not big families–were everywhere and the sounds of babies cooing and crying and toddlers rustling around were common. The lobby area had speakers where you could hear the service–and see what was going on through the huge glass doors at the back of the sanctuary–and there were always at least a couple of parents sitting out their with upset or overly loud kids.
At this church there is nowhere to take loud kids, and no “out of the way” pew to hide in if you know you might have to make a quick escape . It’s a teeny building, and the acoustics don’t do such a great job of absorbing sounds. Even Jacob and Isaac, who have years of practice sitting through a Mass quietly and reverently, made too much noise for my comfort level as they rustled around, trying to keep up with an unfamiliar service and whispering questions to me a bit too loudly, questions like “WHY DON’T KIDS TAKE COMMUNION HERE?” (this particular parish doesn’t do first communion until 8th grade) and “MOM WHEN IS IT GOING TO BE OVER? FIVE MINUTES? TEN?” (they also weren’t quite as, um, religious about keeping the service to exactly one hour as what my kids are used to).
Nobody seemed to care. Quite the opposite–we were received warmly (As Jon later put it, we practically had a bullseye on our foreheads saying BE NICE TO US! A big, young family seems to be a hot commodity to an aging congregation that’s worried about the future of its church). Yet I kept thinking of this mother I used to admire in our old school/church. She had five kids, three of them very small (it looked like she’d had a baby every year and a half or so) and brought them to at least two services a week (I saw her almost every Wednesday and then again when we did attend on Saturdays or Sundays, which I admit was not too often). They would come in and sit down quietly all around her, and then…just sit there. Through the entire service. Sure, they wiggled as kids do, and drank their sippy cups and sometimes drew quietly with crayons but this mother didn’t look the least harried–she actually looked as though she was, yaknow, getting something out of the service. Whereas today I felt like all I did was run interference: helping the kids find their places in the hymnal, reminding them to be quiet, keeping Owen from shrieking/screaming, keeping Will from TALKING SO LOUD, etc. I admit that last year the reason I liked to come to Wednesday services rather than on the weekend was because I knew that three of my kids would be under the rule of their teachers–so I only had to keep Owen occupied. And frankly, that was enough.
Now, I’m sure it doesn’t look as bad from the outside as bad as it feels from the inside, because we often get compliments on our kids’ public behavior. In fact, we get those compliments so often that we are always surprised by them, because I am usually worrying that we look slightly out of control. And there was no willful disruption this morning….it was just normal kid stuff, magnified by a small space, new environment and a touch of public parenting defensiveness on my part. But it’s just so much inner WORK that an hour-long service, (or a concert, or a movie, or any restaurant without a play place), can sometimes leave me exhausted. My inner dialogue is like this: “hmm, Owen’s getting bored. Maybe he’s thirsty. I’ll give him his sippy cup. But what if he hits it on the pew, or worse, throws it and it hits that old lady’s head in front of us? Oh-oh, hymn time. I hope the kids kept the ribbons in the right spots. Crud, they didn’t. Okay, I’ll just open my book and help them follow along. But what if Will wants to share too? He can’t read yet; maybe I”ll just open another book to any old page and trick him…” All the over-appeasing kind of stuff I simply wouldn’t do in my own home, I find myself doing in a public situation because it seems like a better option than dealing with stubborn meltdowns or arguments. Maybe more preparation is the key? Or higher expectations from the kids.
Or maybe not. Maybe underneath her serene smile, the woman with the five quiet kids was sweating and making her contingency plans–including a hasty emergency exit if necessary–just like me. Maybe I just need to realize that we are really fine as we are, and if anything, relax a little. What do you think? And if you have any tips for tending to several kids’ needs during a religious service or other decorus event–while also getting something from the event yourself!–I’d love to hear them.
Meagan also blogs at Equilibrium.
