The Shepherd, October 2007
Young children need behavioural boundaries as much as they need parental love and nourishment. Parents need, from time to time, to discuss with the child, however young, what is expected of them and why, and then consistently demand that the child remains within the set boundaries. This will help the child to develop sense of responsibility, discipline and will power enabling him / her to resist temptations of smoking, using drugs, playing truant, unhealthy sexual experimentation, and many others in later life. It is so hard to imagine that our adorable babies will one day face those choices and temptations, but it comes to them all and we have only a short time to help them build that resistance.
To avoid antisocial behaviour in their teens, young children should learn to be sensitive to the feelings of others and to respect social order from the time they learn to walk and to talk.
In church this would mean to be quiet during service, walking not running while in the church, being respectful to the Church and everything to do with the Church, leaving noisy toys and clothes at home or in the car, not eating or drinking (even the Holy Water) just before Communion, talking, if you need to talk, quietly and not at all during the particularly important moments of the Liturgy. Even newborn babies do not require feeding every hour; surely children of 2-5 can and should do without food and drink between the sermon and Holy Communion!
Many young children are allowed by their parents to come to Communion on their own. The, not-so-young, priest with joints less flexible then they once were, dressed in bulky vestments, has to bend down to reach the child’s mouth while balancing the Cup. And all because parents give in to child’s demand to go to Communion “like a grown-up.” Parents lift them to kiss the icons, why not be with them, showing them your love and care for them, and lift them to the Cup, - at one of the most important points of their young lives?
After the service, when the communal meal is being prepared, many children take food from the table before it is blessed. Children will not starve to death if they wait for another 10-15 minutes. The respect for blessing, the sense of sharing the meal with the community in a social manner are values far more important for their spiritual and emotional health then a chunk of food in their mouth to keep them ... what? Happy? Satisfied? Quiet? Or just stop them whining at their parents, - something they should not be doing in the first place.
We, parents, are not there to just provide food, clothing, shelter, toys, computer games and driving lessons. We are there first and foremost to teach children to love God and His Church, to be good, responsible people, able to care for themselves, for their families, for their community. This requires a lot of patience and perseverance on parents’ behalf, we all know being a parent is not easy. What we often do not appreciate is that it is not easy for the child either. Skills, attitudes and self-discipline required to become a good person are complex and take many years to develop. It is so much harder, if not impossible, for a child to get there if their parents, be it unintentionally, allow them to be ignorant and selfish to start with.
Woman’s Hour, Radio 4, BBC, 12th September 2007, discussed issues concerning parent abuse, physical abuse of parents at the hands of their children. At times such abuse happens because of mental illness or violent behaviour within the family, - this is not new. There are, however, a growing number of families where parents simply “give in” to uncooperative young children early on. The child (the “darling” unresponsive to parental pleas to “calm down” at the age of two or three) turns into a “tyrant” used to having their way. As the child grows so do their “wants” and when parents attempt to resist, the “darling” resorts to violence. It has been taught, through its parents’ inattention that this works! Children as young as 10 begin to assault their parents, more often than not the mothers; boys do this as well as girls, and in fact 56% of abusive children are boys. What kind of life would these children have when they grow up? What kind of life might their parents, who have been neglectful of their spiritual formation, have too?
The cost of abdicating their responsibility to guide child’s behaviour, to set and enforce the behavioural boundaries from early age will be very high to the parents and to their children.
Elena Holden, 12.09.07
to whom be Many Thanks!
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