# Quiet Toddlers in Family Worship



## ClayPot (Jan 1, 2013)

We are pretty consistently doing family worship now (Praise the Lord). One difficulty we have had is outbursts from our 14-month old. He has a very hard time sitting quietly on my wife's lap and starts crying very loud. Obviously, that is pretty distracting and makes it difficult to have a quality family worship time. Do you have any tips for helping him learn to be quiet during family worship, or does it really just take consistent training (which we are also trying to do)?


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## Christusregnat (Jan 1, 2013)

Brother, I feel your pain; we have five little ones, six and under.

Keep up the good work and consistent training.

One thing we found useful was to have the child repeat back a particular word in any given chapter of Scripture. We also started having them repeat the Lord's Prayer pretty early on, and work on Q. 1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. This keeps them fairly busy.

We would generally choose a fairly simple word as soon as they could repeat words back to us. "Lord" is a fairly easy one, or any other one syllable word that is easily repeated. As they get older, two-syllable words, and more complex one-syllable words can be repeated. This helps them to pay attention and be more active, rather than simply making trouble 

Blessings on your efforts,


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## thbslawson (Jan 1, 2013)

Patience, calm, love and persistence. 

Another thing that helps is a lot of direct engagement with the child during family worship. Ask him lots of questions, get him to repeat words, incorporate some songs if you don't already. This has helped some with our kids.


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## Miss Marple (Jan 1, 2013)

Keep it reasonably short. What would happen to us if we had a 24 hour time of family devotions? Obviously we would not do well. Your child's attention span is not a sin, so, keep it reasonable for his age.

Try walking him around during devotions. I walked in the back of church with my toddlers, carrying them I mean, and it helped with restlessness.


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## Christoffer (Jan 3, 2013)

If it is a 14-month old I wouldn't worry about it. That period will be over very very soon and things will be back to normal.


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## Andres (Jan 3, 2013)

The others have given good suggestions. My 13 month old son doesn't always sit still either. He is our only child so it's not as much of a distraction, but we do want him to learn to sit and pay attention. I second keeping it short - we shoot to keep it between 5-10 minutes. We've also had him focus on repeating/learning one word. Right now my son can say, "amen" and he has even repeated it after our pastor on Sunday mornings. I will also let him hold a small Gideon bible while I read out of my bible. He is still too young to follow along reading, but it's practice and it gives him something to hold on to.


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## SolaScriptura (Jan 3, 2013)

I've written posts on the subject of family worship in the past. I believe it is important and I believe you are to be commended for including your young children in the devotional life of your family. 

That said, I would like to deliver you from a mindset that says you ought to expect toddlers to behave like adults and that there is a problem with either you or your children if they don't. Be freed! If they do, great. If not... have patience, it'll come.
Yes, instill discipline, yes, raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord... but remember that they are in fact mere babes. I assume that you want your children to enjoy and look forward to your time of worship rather than dreading it. 

Here's my recommendation (which, incidentally is what we did, and it worked for us): 

1. Make sure that what you are doing, and how you are doing it, bears their cognitive and physical development in mind. 
2. For the youngest, less is more... and more is less. 
3. When it comes to sitting still... Until they were 12 months I didn't even mess with it. If they were a distraction for the rest of the family I simply put them back in their crib. At 12 months I started talking to them: "It is worship time... if you want to be with us you have to sit still and be quiet. If you want to cry or play, then you have to go to bed." At 24 months it turned into, "You will sit there and participate or you will have to get a swat." Of course, I didn't have to do that very much because we strive to make devotions enjoyable rather than traumatic.


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## Jack K (Jan 3, 2013)

Listen to Ben. What he says is exactly right. Above all, don't make having a model family worship time into an idol that you, the dad, needs to have happen in order for you to feel good about your spiritual leadership (it's SO easy to do that). Trouble sitting still is not unusual in 14-month-olds. Train him, but do it patiently and gently in ways that take into account his age and personality. Be careful you don't make family worship time about the kids living up to dad's too-high standards.


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## irresistible_grace (Jan 3, 2013)

jpfrench81 said:


> We are pretty consistently doing family worship now (Praise the Lord). One difficulty we have had is outbursts from our 14-month old. He has a very hard time sitting quietly on my wife's lap and starts crying very loud. Obviously, that is pretty distracting and makes it difficult to have a quality family worship time. Do you have any tips for helping him learn to be quiet during family worship, or does it really just take consistent training (which we are also trying to do)?



Just keep up the good work! There is no "best" advice & no quick fixes (without compromise). Stay the course. I doubt that the early church, Puritans, etc. were concerned about attention spans or cognitive development. We are training our children for eternity & there its nothing more important we could be doing than worship. Our 13 month old has his moments but the are few and far between because he has been a part of family worship every single day of his life (30 to 40 minutes on average).


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