In this video, apologist Joe Heschmeyer and guest host Chris Check respond to a caller asking for advice with keeping toddlers under control in Mass.
Transcript:
Caller: Thanks for taking my question. I have a two-parter. So I have a toddler daughter, and I’ve been trying to bring her to Mass regularly. I brought snacks and books to help. She can sometimes last until about the homily, which is great, but then the wiggles, inevitably.
Chris: I have the same problem, Taylor.
Caller: Chris, your children are older, though.
Chris: No, I can last until about the homily. That’s what I’m saying. I’m sorry. Yeah, Joe didn’t think it was funny either.
Joe: I thought it was mildly funny, not like laugh-out-loud funny, but I got a smirk.
Caller: So I was just wondering what your advice for helping little ones stay engaged during Mass is.
Joe: First of all, I think you might be sent by God to punish me for being too strict with my kids yesterday because I realized about two-thirds of the way through Mass I had too high of expectations for them. So divine retribution, I receive you.
Second, yeah, it is something to be aware of. So I’d say these things. Number one, lower your expectations. And number two, your ultimate goal is not to have a good Mass this Sunday or today or whatever. Your ultimate goal is to create an environment in which your kids love going to Mass and take it seriously.
If you lean heavily on being really strict, you can win the battle and lose the war because you can make them dread going to Mass because they get in a lot of trouble. So I think if you start with those premises and then focus on how to help create good behavior during Mass.
The third thing I would say is if you’ve ever watched any other family with their toddler, you know that they freak out about it a lot more than anybody else does. I find that hard to believe when my kids are expressing themselves. But I have to, in the back of my mind, think this is worse for me than it probably is for most people around us.
So I can have a little more grace in this moment because I’m often worried about, like, am I distracting somebody else from prayer? And that sometimes happens. There are times you have to go to the back, etc. But I think it’s okay to allow more noise than you might naturally feel comfortable with because you trying to correct them is probably more disruptive.
You taking them to the back of the church every time they act like toddlers is only hurting you more than it’s helping anybody else because you need to be able to receive at Mass as well. It’s great if other people can have a really beautiful, peaceful, serene experience, but it shouldn’t come at your ability to ever receive what Father might have to say in the homily.
Fourth, I don’t actually think you should bring snacks and toys. Now, that’s a controversial opinion, and some of that is kid-dependent. But I find that at least for our family, there’s no measurable improvement when we have snacks and toys. Half the time those become a new thing. Now we’ve got three, so it’s also a thing they can fight over. One of them is a thrower, so there are a couple of other reasons why you might not want to bring snacks and toys in those cases.
But I would at least be very selective. If it’s something like a soft stuffed animal where they’re going to hold onto it, that might be fine. But if it’s a hard plastic toy, that’s probably more annoying than them just being little kids.
Fifth, I think I’m on fifth. If you get to church early or stay after or have some time where the liturgy isn’t directly going on, let them explore the space. A lot of times kids, especially 1 and 2, they want to listen to the acoustics; they want to vocalize and hear the echo because it’s part of the way they experience space.
Having time in church where there isn’t the Mass going on and they can just explore it is really good. If there are statues or any beautiful art in the church, when you get up, maybe instead of going completely out of the church, you can go over to the statue and then stand there. They can look at the statue, and you’re half distracted but half able to listen, etc.
Finally, I would just say in terms of kind of concretely setting low but realistic expectations, you can point out, especially once they hit maybe about three, you can take sort of a Montessori approach of explaining the vestments, explaining the altar, explaining what the different statues mean, and what everything in the church means.
You can quietly point those things out to them, and then they can engage at that level and can sort of grow in a little bit of an appreciation for it. The final thing I would say is blatantly bribe them after Mass if they have the kind of vision that they can be bribed with a far-off promise of things.
With my five-year-old, I can say, if you’re really good in Mass, we’ll get a treat afterwards. My three-year-old, if I tell him, if you’re really good in Mass, we can get a treat afterwards, he will immediately want to know if Mass is over and he can have the treat right now.
You know your children better than I do, so be prudent as to whether it makes sense to try the carrot and stick. But I think the carrot is probably your friend for getting them to behave just a little bit quietly during Mass.
I don’t know if any of that’s helpful, Taylor, but join the crowd of every generation of parents, probably throughout history.
Chris: Taylor, Jackie and I had four sons. The youngest is 21. Everything Joe said, I completely agree with, especially a lot of it, including the sort of Montessori approach, even sort of whispering as things are going along, sort of a blow-by-blow, “Jesus is coming, listen for the bells,” that kind of thing.
This is something that we found very effective. We sat in the front, in the first couple of pews. I’m not saying we never had to do the walk of shame, right? But actually being up front where the kids are visually engaged and not distracted way in the back. Parents with little kids sit in the back, and the kids can’t see anything; sit down front.
Then I would just make a general appeal to anybody listening. I find it so inspiring. It gives me so much joy when I hear kids making noise at Mass. Obviously, if somebody’s screaming, then you got to take them out. But if you’re bothered by kids at Mass, then, Taylor, that’s the problem of the people around you, not your problem.
Did you have a second question, Taylor?
Caller: No, that was all very, very helpful. And she is. She’s turning three, so I think the story approach is going to work well. Our church is very large and beautiful and has lots of statues, so I will have her kind of walk around and…
Yeah, thank you. You know, I forgot to mention this earlier. One last thing you can do is practice sitting still at home. We have a little nook by the window that looks a little bit like a pew. I will actually, particularly if they have a really bad Mass, practice after we get home sitting relatively still on the pew for three minutes. That kind of helps them a little bit, maybe.
It’s one of those things where, again, you’re going to lose a lot of battles in the ultimately successful war.
Chris: If you have a school in the Denver area that’s doing that catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which came out of Maria Montessori, it’s that sort of poetic or pre-rational knowledge that children gain of the faith. It is a magnificent pedagogy, and I encourage you to look that up as well. That’ll definitely help with…
Joe: Yeah, my kids go to a Catholic Montessori, and they started talking about why the priest wears different color vestments—stuff I never even thought to point out to them. But my daughter was annoyed the day after Pentecost that we only had one day of Pentecost, whereas Easter had eight.
So she just became radicalized. I want a Pentecost octave! You know, five-year-old, you’ve got to… and it is because she just watches for the different colors now, and she knows red means either martyrs or the Holy Spirit. Either way, she thinks it’s really cool.
Chris: All right, Taylor, thanks. Call back anytime.
Manny in Sacramento, California, watching on YouTube…