One of the traps I found in the reformed world, is that parents put a great burden on themselves to try to make their children submissive and orderly, especially at the church and in public. If children act like children often do, they think people are going to judge them for not having their family under control. Don't fall into this trap. Yes, teach, direct, and lead your children in ways that are godly, structured, and orderly, but expect them to be children. Your kids will very often, everyday do things the complete opposite of what you would hope they would do. And I don't mean to sound flippant about this, but that is literally just part of the stages of life during childhood. Don't expect immature people to act mature. Just keep teaching and instructing, loving them, and demonstrating for them how to live. Trust me, they will naturally outgrow every stage and behavior that you are concerned about when you are going through it.
Spot on.
Yeah, I get it about the older generation, meaning me and my parents, that said children are to be seen and not heard. That led to children's church, and Sunday school during the worship service, and then parents were wondering why their children wanted a totally different type of church service than what their own church had in "adult church."
I would far rather see children behaving like children, so long as they are (mostly) quiet during worship, than see no children in church.
What is today called "family integrated worship" has been the norm among the Dutch essentially forever, but I had never seen it before my conversion, and was amazed to see that children CAN be trained to behave appropriately in church. Why not? They know how to behave in school. Should we assume they can't learn to behave in church?
Of course there are always exceptions.
I have had children who truly were badly behaved hit me in the back of the head with a hymnal when visiting a church, bowing my head during prayer, and the child in the pew behind me decided "Mom and Dad can't see me, let's try this." In other churches, I have seen children screaming at the top of their lungs, running around the church building, and coming close to breaking things. I have had to deal with the problems when churches I was attending were renting from another church and things got broken. In my own church, I have had a case in which a child nearly broke his finger because a sibling closed the door on his finger, which was between the hinge and the door. After that incident, we had a careful check of the building for "childproofing" and removed several potential hazards.
Apart from REAL problems that can lead to damage or injury or actual disruptions of worship, stop worrying.
@Ur_fellow_pilgrim, raise your children to respect adults and they will USUALLY do so in public.
When (not if) they don't?
This is 2026, not 1956 or 1856. If your church has a lot of young families, they will understand.
