A friend and I were swapping stories about the amazing, crazy, hilarious, rude, embarrassing, you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up bad behavior of some children in church. Also, we tossed in a few stories about the adults who bring them and often make things much worse.
We thought you might have some stories to share. I prefer bad behavior stories that make the entire audience wince, but will take whatever you have.
No cute stories please. I want the dark side. This is oral history. Call the Smithsonian.
You Catholics should win this thread easily. With no nurseries, you already have the table set for excitement.
The Internet Monk Archives 
I was one of those bad kids in a very small town Lutheran church (ELCA). Since my father was a deacon and my mother was in the choir, we had to sit with other folks (adults). We were ADHD to be sure, old hard wooden benches do not make for a quiet child. When we were a little older, we were allowed to sit by ourselves, as long as mom could see us from the choir. The dirty looks from mom slowed us but didn’t stop us. Matchbox car races, a dice (anyone else gamble during the sermon?) game that got so loud the pastor had to stop the sermon and tell us to quit. He could hear the dice hitting the wooden bench, must have been distracting. I brought a beer to my confirmation class (it was a present for the pastor, honest…), and I even threw a rock through a stained glass window. Not sure what that one cost my dad.
30 years later, I came back to attend that church with my own children. I am blessed that they take after their mother. The older folks still like to tell them stories of “when your father was your age…” I am glad that they still accept this sinner as one of their own even if I am a fundamentalist stuck in a liberal church. Peace. Num.6:24-26.
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A couple of weeks ago we had a baptism at our church. I go to an Episcopal Church so we use the Book of Common Prayer. In the Liturgy for baptism, instead of saying the Nicene Creed, the priest asks a question and the congregation responds with the creed. When he started “Do you believe in God the Father?” a four year old girl next to me yells, “No!” Later, when she was coming back from the Eucharist, she walks past our pew. Her mother grabs her arm and girl starts screaming “I want to go home! I want to go home!”
She’d had a piece of chocolate before the service. And she’s usually the sweetest little girl!
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Visited a church for the first time after moving and our three year old daughter waits until the silence before the invocation to say, loud enough for the world to hear, “Daddy! My panties are in my crack!” Lots of folks laughed. I turned red and took her to the bathroom to fix that problem. Strangely enough, didn’t go back to that church.
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There is a highschool in our area that has seniors take care of a electronic crying babies. Well they go off crying at absolutely random times..and they are not very quiet. Well one boy in our church had his start wailing. Instead of putting the “feeder” in it he jumped up (from the front row) and sprinted down the isle holding the doll by its arm as he ran. The pastor, a recent grandfather, stopped the service and said “that young man will not be babysitting my grandson.” The entire church erupted in laughter.
My cousins were raised…umm…with spotty discipline. They would regulary take toys to church..not hotwheels and such. But what ever they wanted…in mass quantaties. The weekly grocery bags of goodies would have cap guns, fire engines that make noise, litterly anything they wanted to take. They would climb under pews like soldiers and shoot people.
Our church services are recorded and broadcast now. One week not long after service started there was a odd noise in the sanctuary. Something like a bird sporadically singging. This went on for a little while before the pastor just stopped preaching and asked “What is making that noise?” Turns out a monkey was in a cage in the second row!
Last week a family was dedicating a new child so the entire family was present. Everything was going well until halfway through the service. The youngest started crying at the top of his lungs. Mom quielty got up and was taking him out. About half way down the isle the older brother began screaming…but was sure he would not be outdone by his brother he let loose and bellowed to the best of his ability as dad took the walk of personal humiliation…from the front row of a 2000 person capicity church.
I cant wait to have my own kids….
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At the church I grew up in, there were Certain Older Ladies who had served their time and were allowed to sing during the “special music” portion of the service, though their voices were long since spent. One in particular had a vibrato about a half step wide and fancied herself a soprano.
My brother is pretty sensitive to sound, and as a young guy on the autistic spectrum, he was slow to pick up on some social cues. So whenever this particular Older Lady sang her solo, while the whole congregation winced and waited for it to be over, he stuck his fingers in his ears with his elbows pointed straight out. (I was the discreet older sibling- I kept my elbows at my sides.)
In general, we have well-behaved kids in my current congregation, but we have some challenging homeless guys who don’t always arrive sober. I vividly remember one Sunday when, in the middle of the pastor’s sermon from Ephesians, we were suddenly treated to an entirely different sermon, apparently out of Revelation, being slurred from the pews. Whatever the man was dreaming about, it certainly sounded exciting.
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Molly, I love what you have written and I love your three year old child’s response to his first communion.
I am Catholic and I like seeing and hearing the little kids in church. It’s reality and if I want to be quiet and alone to “commune with God” I can do that at home. I come to church to celebrate with the community and to receive God in a different way than I do the rest of the week. The babies, the little kids, the teens, the parents, the elderly, the mentally challenged…that’s all life and it’s good to see. We should see us as a large family. Families are sometimes noisy!
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My little brother once acted up during communion and after several stern warnings my dad took him by the hand to lead him out the back to the board of education. My little brother as he walking the isle said for all to hear “help me Jesus, help me Jesus.” All broke in laughter…
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I love what thomas says.
As a mom of five who’s husband was usually up front leading the service, I have to say that we do the best we can as parents of little ones, but they are still little ones.
I have often found it amazing that the harshest must ungracious things can be said by the people who are demanding absolute quiet so that they can “worship the Lord.” I can promise you, there is nothing worshipful about humiliating a mother of small children for the fact that her children dare to be small children.
She is trying the very best that she can…and God takes little to no pleasure in those who shame her so that they can “commune” with God. What they are communing with is not God, but their own self-righteous concept of what Sunday morning should be.
How grateful I have been for those who glanced at me sympathetically, especially those who offered to be a special “buddy” for one of my kids—so that I wouldn’t have to juggle all five in a pew all by myself, but instead have one sit with this person, one sit with that person…
How grateful I have been for those who patted me and told me how wonderful the children were, choosing to overlook the various baby squeaks and burps and rustling papers and loud volumed attempts at “whispering” from the two year old… I only have so many hands.
I got to where I hated church, and I agree with the mother way up there who said she began to be ashamed of herself, when she placed her “act like an adult” expectations on her child to such a degree that she was overly harsh. Been there, done that, repented. I now expect my children to act like children. That means, I expect them to try hard but not to magically transform into little robots. And I refuse to recieve shame from those who prefer robots.
Jesus doesn’t prefer robots, and anyone who thinks worshiping Him corporately requires children to morph into robots desperately doesn’t understand what Jesus was all about.
All that to share my latest story (there’s always one every week…*sigh*). 😆
We started going to the Episcopal church this last year (and I *love* it) and so on Easter, my youngest was baptised there. His three year old self was SO delighted to get to take Communion afterwards…FINALLY…and as he dipped his wafer in the wine and then ate it, he smacked his lips loudly and exclaimed at the top of his lungs, “MMMM! That was GOOOD!”
I thought the person holding the chalice was going to drop it, she was laughing so loud…
It was sweet and good and so totally totally true from a theological perspective and an experiential one. God is delicious. 🙂
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Allowing young children to disrupt the liturgy is an essential part of the Catholic liturgy.
Not having nurseries is one of the most ecclesiologically significant things about a Catholic parish and deserves an entire book, I think.
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The Dutch Reformed Minister in the congregation my wife grew up in had his family sit in the front pew. One Sunday morning, one of his kids started acting up (details vague). Anyway, he paused in the middle of his sermon, announced to the congregation that he had to attend yo his fatherly duties, then came down, took the boy outside, give him a good hiding (this was in the 80’s), brought him back in, then went on with his sermon.
BTW, IMonk, out Lutheran Church has no nursery either….
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My favorite story was the one Sunday when a 3 year old announced during the Eucharistic prayer. “I have to pee!” After Mass, Father asked the little guy if he had gotten his potty break. I’m Catholic, so we see a lot of children in church, but for the most part, they learn how to behave pretty young.
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My mentor, Tom, told me a story about his family. I forget the exact numbers so I have made the following up.
Tom was imploring his congrgation to give to some worthy cause.
“We have 75 people here this morning,” Tom said, whie doing quick math, “and if each person gives just 5 dollars, we would have $500”
Tom’s bored teenage son then yelled from the back row, “No, that would be 375, moron!”
I asked Tom what he did to his son. He said, “Nothing. After the service, all those old ladies ruthlessly mobbed him.”
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My favorite I heard from a church elder. One time, as a teenager, he was sitting with his buddies in church during a particularly boring sermon. His neighbor was nodding away blissfully in sleep when his “friend” got the impulse to suddenly jab an elbow into his ribs and whisper loudly to him, “Get up, they want you to lead the prayer!” The poor kid jumped to his feet in a daze in the middle of the pastor’s exegesis of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, and loudly started with “Let us pray . . .” At which point, he looked around and sized up that he had been had.
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1) A father was kneeling in the front row and had a cute little daughter between 2 and 3 that was not being too active in the pew and so did not distract the parents. This girl stood up in the pew and most the people on that side of the church could see her. She proceeded to pick her nose and apparently picked a “winner”. She held it up for all to see and then she wiped it on the back of her dad’s shirt with the softest of caresses. He never knew, but 100 other people knew.
2) My personal favorite, when i was almost a teen, was to catch a fly and tie a small string pulled from my sock around it. Then watch it fly up through church with a tiny string attached. I copied this from others so apparently this has been done by many people from all over.
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I mentor a kid, 17, a junior, ADHD, etc. A real pain, we’ll call him S.
One Sunday, I had him at church. He was sitting in the back next to an older gentleman who was nodding off, slowly. (during the sermon) I saw S watching him and smirking a bit, so I tried to get his attention to make him leave the poor guy alone. I failed.
The next thing I knew, S had elbowed the fellow, and he awoke with a start, and started to punch S. He did stop before he hit him, but it was close.
S would have learned a good lesson if he would have gotten laid out.
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My (now) eight-year-old son has had to be taken fromt he sanctuary on several occasions in our almost five years at our current church – for various misbehaviors. My four-year-old son is an angel in church (for now).
But the child in church story that sticks the most in my head is of someone else’s child – this little girl is probably about 18-21 months old. During service, she always sits in a stroller. When everyone is singing and worshipping, she is fine, but once the singing stops and the preaching starts – she screams. Only two things that I have seen will stop her – start singing again, or turn her towards the back of the church. If she is facing backwards, she is fine, for some reason.
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i also meant to say “your kids bother you more than me” i’m too tired to be typing sorry
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i meant to say “our boys”, above
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none of you know me but i want to still say it,
my wife is a saint for taking care of my boys (4 1/2 and 2 1/2) during church for the most part all by herself
i pastor a small rural church where the nursery is basically a room you can take your kids to, no drop off service, my wife didn’t come from that tradition so it took her a while to transition, but she is great
i sit with her a good bit during singing, and stopped caring that folks were wondering why the preacher wasn’t up front, but when i preach she is all by herself, it gets hairy sometimes but she has made it thru great,
on another note, i’d like to hear folks opinions on “nurseries and children church”
my two cents is that a true nursery is great for folks who feel like their kids bother others, trust me your kids bother me more than they do you, but i get the desire for a nursery
but i also have a strong feeling that young children, maybe even as young as four can learn in the service, if nothign else how church is done
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Love the story about using that guy’s butt-crack as an ATM card-swipe!
I was six years old, at an Episcopal church where we went row by row to kneel at the altar rail for communion. One priest would come by and place a wafer in our open mouths–these were taken from some kind of silver dish or tray–and then another would come by with the wine goblet. Anyway, I had the idea of biting down on the wafer-guy’s hand as hard as I could. I don’t remember why–maybe I just didn’t like the guy. No doubt he feels the same way. I vaguely remember profanities being uttered, the sound of metal clanging, and wafers flying everywhere.
Later my father (after spanking me, of course) rehearsed the communion procedure with me at home a few times, using the kitchen table as the altar.
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My 18-month-old peacefully toddled down the aisle after me, slipped into the front pew we use as an ad hoc altar rail, and quietly knelt next to me.
Then she saw Father and the acolyte working their way down the rail and, in a sudden hysterical attack of stranger anxiety, froze like a possum and started shrieking rhythmically at a pitch and volume to shatter glass. I was stuck in the middle of a pew of kneeling people with nowhere to go. Father A. calmly gave me Communion, moved on to the hysterically screaming child, blessed her–I’m surprised he didn’t flick a little holy water onto her–and we escaped down the side aisle.
I keep hearing that children are quieter at the traditional Mass. I keep looking for evidence of that.
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One Sunday we visited a well-established small town church with our 2yr old on what just happened to be “Friendship Sunday.” Kind of ironic because the little church was already full of regular members who didn’t seem anxious to make anyone feel welcome.
After finally finding a row where someone scooted over to make room for our little family, I remember being made to feel very uncomfortable by head turns and reproachful stares as my 2yr old acted mildy like, well, a 2 yr old. For her, she was being great.
But two rows in front of us a young mom was struggling by herself with three little boys under the age of five. She obviously had her hands full but no one around her offered her any help -just glares. We had come on a friend’s recommendation to hear the church’s young vicar preach, but we were too distracted by the drama unfolding in the pews in front of us to get much out of his sermon. This drama included the antics of the active little boys, the mounting indignation of an older lady in front of us and the poor mother’s growing awareness of the older lady’s agitation with her children’s behavior.
As the Amen to the last hymn was sung, the older woman pounced on the young mother and threatened in a not-so-Friendship Sunday-tone “You need to control your children. I have half a mind to tell the preacher how they kept me from hearing his sermon!” Well, for the first time that morning a small smile played around the frazzled mother’s lips and she turned to the old lady and said (with much satisfaction) “Well, ma’am, you go ahead and do that. I believe he already knows…they’re his children.”
Funny… but it still saddens me a bit to think this happened on a day of supposed neighborly outreach (as if the whole concept of needing a special day to be “friendly” in a Christian church isn’t unsettling enough).
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I was newly converted and visiting a church (looking for a church home). This church had 2 aisles. This allowed the kids in the congregation (there were only about 6 present and about 30 adults) to run laps in a circuit. Continuously. And NO-ONE stopped them.
The (very tedious) sermon lasted nearly an hour.
My non-believing husband had come with me (realising that church visiting would be stressful on my own) but I fear that experience put him off for good. Needless to say, I didn’t pay a repeat visit.
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Parents: All of us with kids know that socializing kids to public worship is hard, so don’t feel any condemnation here please. Maybe a bit of wisdom will come along with the stories. I know we’ll eventually have someone tell us that we have no business trying to take our kids to church because it’s stressful, but I respect your choice. I’m glad we did it, if for no other reason that we learned to be better parents through a lot of failure.
ms
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A couple of weeks ago, the preacher mentioned that Jesus said we must love our enemies. Quick as a flash, and clear as a bell, our six-year-old shouted out the obvious correction: “No, not our ENEMIES!”
I wonder how many of the rest of us were silently thinking the same thing …
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Kids, church and I don’t mix very well anymore. When I was a kid we were taught the skill of sitting still for long periods of time without being fidgety and without talking (still useful when attending, say, the symphony or even the movies.)
In the last church I attended, there’s a little area where SMALL children can play quietly or be entertained with some plush toys during church. After awhile, this kid who must have been about 10 or 11 would go to the toddler area every Sunday during the sermon, sprawl out on the floor like it was his family room, and proceed to color in the coloring books (seemed a little old for ALL those activities). Kid was perfectly normal, but I can’t say about his parents–that’s what living in Calif. does to you.
I finally had to start going to another church–honest.
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My boss and I spent about five minutes cracking up laughing about, “Uh-oh he bwoke it,” this afternoon.
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Two stories:
Back in my church of Christ days I helped teach the toddler Sunday school class. My niece was about 3 and was in the class that day. She broke a crayon and used a blasphemous profanity. I managed to hold it together long enough to ask where she learned that word. She told me her mommy said it and I explained that I didn’t care what her mommy said at home but nana and Aunt Sara didn’t like to hear that word. I then excused myself to the ladies room and laughed until I cried.
My cousin’s little boy got kicked out of his Sunday school class on Mother’s day when he was three for throwing a chair at the Sunday school teacher. Apparently he didn’t like to do crafts and they tried to make him.
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Well, we were sitting in our hard wooden pews on Sunday morning, with our eyes squinched tight trying to do justice by the 20-minute silent prayer time the new pastor had instituted during the service. Someone in my row passed exuberant gas, right into that acoustically welcoming pew. This was considered rather vulgar in my family (“fart” was the F word for us), and I was 12, so I especially sought the Lord’s help in controlling my laughter. Okay, I forgot about praying at all. THEN, we all just lost it when my 4-year old sister (always a lady) said: “excuse me.”
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We had one little girl who liked to run up to certain people, me being one of them, and flip their skirts up into the air. She thought this was terrably funny, I was in junior high and thought quite the opposite.
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I remember one Sunday a group of us lads got hold of a remote controlled fart machine, which we slipped under the youth workers chair and kept setting off during the least appropriate moments of the service!
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Some of these stories are funny, but some of them make me sad. Some of the moments I regret most in my short 6 1/2 years of parenting have been on Sunday mornings trying to get my young kids to cooperate with the whole church thing. I remember one time a couple years ago, I went to drop my oldest daughter off at Sunday School so I could get to my class (My husband and I were leading a class at the time. So not going was not an option). She had been to Sunday School plenty of times, but never really warmed up to it. If you met her, you would say she is the sweetest, quietest, little thing you ever met. And, she is. It’s just that she has never liked me dropping her off in group settings (Sunday School, Bible Study, Pre-school etc.). She is very shy. Quite often she would throw an enormous tantrum when I left her…even at 4 and 5 years old. I never could predict when it was going to happen and I waivered back and forth between thinking I should discipline her for this behaviour and wishing I could get in her head to figure out a way to fix it. Anyway this particular Sunday when i went to drop her off at her class, she fell apart (falling on the ground, screaming at the top of her lungs, crying etc). Because my husband had to be at church early to practice on the worship team, I was responsible for getting our three small children ready and off to church myself (all under 5). It’s not an excuse and I’m not whining, but I was often at the end of my rope by the time I got to church. That day, I lost it with my daughter. I drug her off to the bathroom disciplined and spoke to her too harshly. It broke me.
I have since taken a big step back. I want her to find Jesus at home and at church and for me that meant re-evaluating the Sunday morning routine. She is in Kindergarten this year and has grown tremendously in this area but she still doesn’t want to go to Sunday School or Children’s Church. I don’t make her go anymore. We go to “big church” together and she sings with me, then sits quietly and colors or puts her head in my lap. I am really enjoying that time with her.
So, that’s my horrible, terrible child in church story, but it’s really more about her horrible, terrible mom :).
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I didn’t “act up” in church. My parents’ goal in child rearing was to prepare us (my big sis and me) to live in an adult world and behave properly. This doesn’t mean I was an angel. In Jr. Hi. I learned the wonderful during-sermon (my dad’s) leafing thru the hymnal and adding “between the sheets” after each title; i.e. “His Hand is in it All” “Nearer, Still Nearer” etc.
Along this line, my dad was fired from one preaching job after telling an elder’s daughter, a senior in HS, to move away from the rest of we highschoolers and sit beside her mother. She did with very red face, knowing she deserved such.
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As a kid I remember sitting on the front steps of the podium after church chowing down on the communion leftovers with my friends – it was fun to drink lots of little cups of grape juice.
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This one is also not really the child’s fault: When my sister was about 3 (I would have been about 14) we were rushing to get out to church as we often were. We somehow forgot to put panties on my sister, so we’re sitting in church and she’s laying on the pew kicking her legs all around and we’re trying to keep her covered so everyone wouldn’t see she had no panties on. But, then after church when people were being social, she just lifted her skirt and poo’d on the front lawn of the church.
My sister will never ever forgive me if she finds out I told that story on her.
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I grew up in a Mennonite church and we had communion on Sunday evenings. Communion services tended to be a lot more serious than other Sunday-evening services. One member had a habit of wearing very tight, and very bright, polyester pants (you know like the ones that retirees in Florida wear pulled up to their armpits). But this guy didn’t pull them up to his arm pits because his stomach prevented him from doing so.
The entire congregation was standing in the pews as they waited to go forward and take the bread. There were some teens in the pew behind this man and as he stood there his pants were so tight that they highlighted a certain part of his posterior.
Well, this reminded one of the young people of something in particular, so wishing to call his friends’ attention to this, he pulled out his wallet and then took out his ATM card. He held the card out towards the man’s rear end and made an up and down swiping motion in the general vicinity of the center of the man’s butt.
A number of people who witnessed this came close to having heart attacks from trying to stifle their laughter.
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I do not have one about kids but my family looks after handicapped people. One day when the pastor was greeting everyone as they left he very kindly took one of our ladies hand and asked “how are you dear?” which she responded to ” Eat Sh*t A**hole.” he then said “thank you have a nice day”.
I just about rolled out of the church with shock and laughter.
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My young cousin Nigel was in a church that used a common cup for communion. Wine, not grape juice. As it was passed down his row, he drained it before his parents could intervene. I am told he was a little tipsy for the rest of the afternoon.
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I recently visited my in-law’s church (PCUSA)where I was treated to the “special” music of their tone deaf choir. I understand that they really were trying and have no doubt their efforts did bring glory to God, but at least one pre-schooler disagreed with me when she cried out in the middle, “Daddy, I can’t take it anymore!”
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When my little brother was about 5 or 6, he had a talking Alf doll. Alf went to church with us on a regular basis. It wasn’t my brother but Dad himself leaned over in the pew one Sunday morning and Alf started talking. He didn’t go to church with us anymore.
(No Michael, not my dad.)
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When i was 7, my Sunday school teacher told us “You too can be a missionary to your friends! You can have church with your friends!” So i invited some kids over for a bible study. I led them in prayer and we read the bible, and then I went and got a bowl and passed it around and had them give me money. My mom happened to pass by at this point and made me give them their money back.
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Sparki,
I still get a grin when I remember your story about your son saying, “He broke it”. That’s one of the stories that stays good.
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Perhaps this violates the no-cuteness rule here, but when my sister was in 1st grade, she was not having a particularly cooperative day in church. Nothing terribly out of line, just the general kicking against the pew in front of us, and standing up and sitting down at the wrong times and talking out loud and bugging mom and dad for kleenex/gum/cereal and playing with her dress and just…everything.
Finally my dad had enough and he stood up, picked her up from the pew, and carried her out of the sanctuary into the narthex. When he set her down on the floor out there and kneeled down to her level to look her in the eye, he couldn’t help but notice that something was missing. “Where are your shoes?” he asked her. “They came off” she answered with tears in her eyes. This was her first time wearing slip-on shoes, and dad had apparently snatched her up from the pew with such force as to actually pull her right out of her shoes.
Well, after that, there was no way Dad could punish her, and instead had a good chuckle in the narthex before returning to the service.
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Hmmmm…didn’t grow up going to church, and when I first became a Christian at 24, I went to a church where all the kids were sent out to “kid’s church”, so if they were unruly, we didn’t see it.
Now we’re Catholic. I think all of my kids had naughty moments from time to time, but they usually weren’t intentionally naughty. Like the time the priest was being rather enthusiastic in making a point and about shouted “Do you understand?” In the dramatic pause that followed, my 2-yr-old shouted back, “NO!”
That was the youngest. When she first learned to walk, it was really hard to keep her contained. Once she slipped out of the pew and was marching down the aisle toward the altar. I scurried after her and grabbed her just before she lifted the hem of Father’s cassock to see what was under there. Thank goodness I got there in time!
The middle one learned to say “Bye-bye” at about 9 months. We would sit in the back row to make quick exits with a crying baby or toddler, of course. There’s this THING about some Catholics leaving Mass right after receiving the Eucharist. They aren’t supposed to unless it’s an emergency — the priest is supposed to be the last one into Mass and the first one out — but people get in bad habits. Anyway, we were sitting back by the door, and as people left right after receiving the Eucharist, my daughter would smile and shout, “Bye-bye!” at each one of them. The early-goers got so embarrassed, some turned around and slipped into a back pew. Father asked us to sit by there every week!
My oldest took the cake. He was maybe 18 months old, and we weren’t Catholic yet, but visiting lots of denominations to figure out where God wanted us. He was restless — Church can feel like an hour of time-out after all, no matter what denomination you’re in. We had some soft toys for him to play with that wouldn’t make a sound if he dropped them, but he picked one up and threw it as hard as he could, whacking a lady in the back of the head. She was a mom herself, so she was very forgiving, but I was absolutely MORTIFIED.
Anyway, the nice part about being Catholic is that children are welcome, even the little ones that have little self-control and might do naughty things…or distracting things…or things that would be fine at home but have comedic effects at Church. I was always met with sympathetic smiles instead of condemnation, which wasn’t the case at the other churches. In one place, all my son did was say “Amen! a little too loud and a little too late, and boy, did we get GLARES. At another, on Easter Sunday, the preacher held up a large loaf and tore it in half, and our tot said, “Uh-oh — he bwoke it!” We were told to take him out and spank him. My goodness, he was still a toddler! At least he was paying attention.
Now all my kids — ages 9, 6 and 5 — are not only well-behaved but actively involved in Mass. They sing, pray, watch everything very closely. I sometimes get compliments on their behavior, and I always remember how difficult they were when they were tiny. But I’m glad we didn’t shuttle them out, because as young as they are, they can and do participate in the liturgy (which means “work of the people”). If we kept them out of church until they were “old enough” — jr. high at my former church — they wouldn’t know how to participate, and that’s a lousy age to make them go through all the awkwardness of not knowing their place or what to do.
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When I was about 15, we had a guest preacher who was particularly animated in his sermon. Being on the stoic end of the spectrum, our CoC congregation was not particularly used to that. We teenagers were sitting, as was customary, in our back-row pew when this preacher began with the arms-flailing “THUN-DAAH, AND-UH LIGHT-NIN’-UH!” in describing Noah’s flood and the perishing of the sinners.
All of us bums could hold it in no longer as we giggled cracked at each crescendo-ing grunt and scream. At one point it was full-out laughter. At that time the preacher called us out from the pulpit, “Knock it off–you’re distracting me!”; which of course got the rest of the congregation to start snickering.
Distraction, indeed. Not a single one of us was reprimanded in any way, that I know of.
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I go to a PCA Church. Sunday, a week ago, at the second service, I was sitting behind a row of three boys (two brothers and a friend) about 8-10 years old, a couple of 30-something Moms and some other assorted children. Our church uses movable upholstered chairs.
The Elder Boy of the brothers proceeded to tear his bulletin into tiny, little pieces and launch them around. Flip his flip-flops off his feet to see how far they would go. Crawl in, around, and under the chairs. Push his chair back, inch-by-inch, until it rested against the empty chair next to mine. The other Boy, next to him, was trying to behave better. At one point, he told him, soto voce, to knock it off, so he pulled his chair back, and flopped his head against the back and started kicking the seat in front of him.
Well, this got the attention of Mom, several seats down, who tried to get *his* attention. This went on for 5 minutes. Finally, gently explained to him that what he was doing wasn’t very nice; could he please stop? Thank you. Smile.
A few minutes pass, and it all begins to escalate again…this time with Little Brother in tow. Now there are two Boys climbing in, around, and through; shooting flip-flops and paper wads into the aisle, the seats, the folk around them. Mom gets up. Walks over to her Boys, and walks past them, oblivious. She’s going to the Ladies Room! By now, I am trying to decide: take the Boys in hand myself, get the Mom, leave, ask for God to intervene, WHAT?!?
Soon, Little Brother is stretched out on the floor, under the seats, ready to take a nap. There are torn up bits of paper everywhere. Shoes are scattered about. And the elder Brother is on the move again, as is his chair. Mom returns, steps over her Boys, their shoes, and the paper detritus, and returns to her seat.
Huh. The amazing “Spirit-filled” chair is next to me again, the Kid underneath, barefoot, and chewing on the paper bits. The Friend is sitting quietly, looking around, looking at his Mom, like, “Help?!?”. Elder Boy’s Mom is listening intently to the sermon. Finally, Friend’s Mom, who is sitting next to these boys’ Mom, calls the kid over, and puts her arm around his shoulder, and calms him down. The place is a mess. But quiet descends upon all.
The 90 minute worship service is now about over. And all people say “AMEN!!!”
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My wife’s parents were missionaries, then pastors, on the Navajo rez. Her little brother was something of a terror. One Sunday he did some kind of loud misbehavior during the service, so Mom goes back to deal with it. As she is hauling him out the back of the church to administer justice, li’l bro (who couldn’t pronounce his S’s at the time) shouted out “Hock it to me, momma! Hock it to me!” I think it effectively ended the service.
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I recall visiting a church in our college town during my freshman year. When the pastor called the children up for the children’s sermon, a handful of kids went up and sat around his feet. As the pastor got underway, one little fellow looked back, and realizing that all eyes in the sanctuary were on him and the other children, his embarrassment level began to soar. With his hands in his jacket pockets, he had soon pulled his jacket up over his head, trying to hide from all the observers. But that wasn’t enough! Apparently still feeling exposed to be up front, he began to crawl backward back down the aisle, with his jacket still over his head, until he reached his parents’ row, and they were able to snatch him up out of the aisle. I’m not sure that a single adult in the service heard a word the pastor shared with the other children! And no doubt that little fellow is carry a wound that he’ll need some inner healing to dispel, now that he’s an adult!
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I was fairly good in church but my brother was different story. When he was a teenager he was sitting on the second aisle right in front of the preacher. I don’t know what he was doing but my dad could tell it was disturbing the preacher at the time. My dad during the middle of the sermon got up walked down the center aisle pulled my brother by the scruff of the shirt took him back to where my parents were sitting and made him sit in the floor in the aisle. To this day our whole family remembers that story and none of us ever acted up in church again.
The preacher commended my dad for what he did.
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So I guess you’ve met my kids then?
I have two stories, probably not competitive though. The first a couple of years ago my oldest son was jumping around in the pew and ignoring my warnings so I dragged him out to discipline him and bellow at him but I didn’t drag him out far enough. I took him only into the vestibule and because it was the 7:15 am quiet no choir mass everyone got a good earful, although they’re way too polite to say anything. My wife was mortified of course. Second story is very recent, this time it involved our second son who is 18 months and displaying the terrible two temper tantrums and hating to be restrained when he’d rather walk. I’m ushing this time so I’m no help, halfway across the Church, when she has to scoop him up to get in the communion line. This time it’s a Saturday evening mass and it’s very full. The choir sings one song during communion and the congregation is quiet in thankful prayer when the second half, those in the back, go up to receive. Naturally number two son starts to wail and squirm in Mom’s arms and resists every soothing attempt. You might’ve have thought it was an abduction if you didn’t know better. All the way up to communion and back.
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I did pulpit supply at a Baptist church yesterday–mostly older people, but with a middle-school aged boy there as well. The boy sat through the sermon respectfully (or at least quietly). Afterward, some members of the congregation were telling me that it was not always that way with this boy. One time, when he was about six years old, he apparently threw such a maniacal fit (throwing himself onto the ground and screaming and whatnot) that it took four grown men to haul him out of the sanctuary (one per limb) as he continue to throw his fit . I’d never heard anything quite like that before.
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Not sure if there’s a difference between a nursery and a “cry room,” but more and more Catholic churches have the latter these days. Mine does not. My kids have been bad from time to time, but I have a tendency to just tuck them under my arm like a football and barrel and plow into the back of the building.
The all time worse story I’ve ever heard was about a kid…and I wouldn’t have believed this if my wife, who never lies, hadn’t told me…this kid was actually masturbating in the pew.
I’ve experienced kids who were louder and more disruptive, but that takes the cake.
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A local Christian celeb was performing at a very large AoG my parents were attending (I was about 1 at the time). Right at the climax of her rendition of “O For a Thousand Tongues”, I let out a rafters-shaking belch. The singer was completely thrown off her game as the congregation erupted into laughter.
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I was known for being a handfull in church in my younger days. The famly story is that I did not understand retorical questions. Our minister loved using them in his sermons. So he would ask a question and after no one answered for a second I would yell the answer to him after jumping up and down waving my hand in the air(like at school). I do remember thinking that no in church was paying attention because they could not answer these simple questions. I guess it was a lot of fun for the congragation.
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The one that sticks in my mind was when my youngest daughter threw her post-Sunday school Dixie cup of lemonade into another girl’s face. She never did apologize. Being a good Christian mom I’m waiting for the day she’s complaining about her own children’s behavior to bring that one up. Only kidding.
And there was the time that the autistic kid I was buddying bit right through my favorite sweater; he was aiming for my stomach, but fortunately missed. But I didn’t blame him for it, as they were giving the other kids sugar cookies that he wasn’t allowed due to a gluten allergy. Wouldn’t that send any six-year-old into a biting rage?
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May as well provide a theme song for the thread…
From Doctor Demento of old —
“Two Dreadful Children” by Cruella DeVille!
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We were heathens at church as teenagers. We would sit behind our friends and when everyone stood up, we’d stand up hymnals in their seats so when they sat down they’d be goosed by the hymnals. It turned into war and got out of hand. Poor hymnals…
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Blaine: you get to use those words? You’re very fortunate — us evangelicals don’t, at least not publicly. Ah, the glorious freedom of the children of God.
My story has a happy ending … somehow as a tyke I had gotten into a paper-eating habit (edges of newspapers were my favorite). But that was broken one day in a low-church Episcopal service when I began to tear the corner off a page in my mother’s Book of Common Prayer. My usually calm mom went quietly apoplectic, and I got scared straight in a hurry …
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Oldest child, then 5, in overcrowded suburban Catholic church. We’re in chairs against the back wall, so to kneel for the canon we have to go forward several feet to the kneeler behind the last pew.
The moment of the elevation; all are kneeling, all are utterly silent, all are worshipping Christ present in our midst … and my child, still sitting in her chair several feet behind me, yells out clear as a bell: “I won’t kneel! I won’t! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME KNEEL!!”
All heads turn (or so it felt) to see what insensitive mother was forcing her small child to her knees. I wanted to die.
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About a year and a half ago as I was preaching a cell phone rang. The woman answered it, said “hello”, the a pause, and “How are you!” and proceeded to carry on a conversation while I continued the delivery of the Word.
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We currently have a fairly new facility, but in the old one, before it was torn down, there was a furnace room. Worship in the old building predates my time at this church, but the furnace room remains an integral memory for many of the youth in our church who remember it vividly as the place of spankings. Ill-behaved children were taken, mid-scream-and-tantrum down the stairs and into the furnace room…. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH{door closes} [silence].
ahh the false memories I’ve created imagining what it must have been like mid-sermon….
Grace and Peace,
`tim
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This one was not the child’s fault, but I do remember a new mother who sat in the 3rd row and nursed her baby (obviously) each week. Not a good idea.
Then we also had a father who brought his 5 year old daughter to church but allowed her to terrorize the unoccupied SS rooms during the service because he said it “didn’t pleasure her to sit during the service.”
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When I was a teen (still counts as a child, right?), a buddy and I liked to sit in the back pew. We would roll up attendance cards and bend them in half to make darts. Then we would launch them in a high arc across the sanctuary using a rubber band slingshot (a rubber band pulled between the middle finger and thumb). We were never caught; I have no idea why. If I ever catch my kids doing that… I’ll laugh my butt off, and then punish them.
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This is a story from a past coworker of my wife, but I think it’s worth sharing…
He was about 8 at the time, fidgeting, moving around a lot, and being a general nuissance during the pastor’s sermon. After his mom warned him several times, she took him by the arm and dragged him out of the service. As they were on their way out, he yelled so everyone could hear, “No Mom! Please don’t beat me!” (And she had never spanked him in his life).
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i grew up catholic.. and apparently, my parents claim, i was a “little shit” at church… once running right up to the altar and often starting sneaky fights with my little bro. for the years i spent as an evangelical, apart from going to a church where some guy brought his dog and sat right by my daughter who was scared of dogs, i only remember one child who was let to run through the church, and that was because even though he wasn’t the only one, this kids mother just let him. don’t know if she was just careless or too afraid to discipline or what but it happened several times and really pissed a lot of people off. kids are kids but for cryin out loud parents are supposed to be parents. i never really cared that a child got a little out of control as long as the parent was making an attempt to regain it. after returning to the catholic church it seemed i can’t say that i’ve really seen too much different for the lack of a nursury, though there is a room for nursing women in every catholic church i’ve been to where they can take infants. about the worse i can think of is when the parents won’t take a loud crying baby to that room, (hint:dads give the wife a break and take the kid once in a while). it can be distracting.
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Here is a recipe for nerve shattering behaviour: 1). 2 Year old girl who has never heard the word “no”, 2). Metal folding chairs, 3). A set of car keys. To this day, which this happened over 15 years ago, I have no idea what was going through her parent’s minds. Throughout entire morning service, she happily banged those keys on every metal folding chair around her. For 45 minutes this went on – including during the preaching. Nobody ever said anything to her, to her parents, or as far as I know, to each other! Strange stuff.
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Well, I had a male cousin who we called Uncle George because he was much older than us. At my grandma’s funeral (she was Catholic…he was not) when they rang the little bell that some Catholic churches do when the priest raises the host and says, “This is my body…” George said loudly(he was probably drunk at the time too), “It’s the ice cream man!”
He was not a child, but acted like a child and that’s my best story, so there you have it.
(Michael, one thing I like about the Catholic church is being able to watch the kids. Parents try to keep them occupied by letting them play with some small toys, but it is kind of funny when a little boy will stand up and run his little cars along the back of the pew. I haven’t seen any little kids at the daily masses I attend since I can’t attend weekend masses.)
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I used to throw spitballs at the pastor at that Church of God I often refer to – and so did his kids!
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“I’d get into the kitchen and eat all the extra communion bread”
K.W., for Catholics, the equivalent is the altar boys getting into the Communion wine. I have no knowledge of such happenings myself, I’ll have to ask my brother who was an altar boy 🙂
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Weeelll… the usual crying babies, toddlers running around the place, and such, but no real horror stories. Embarrassing for the parents when little Johnny is crawling through the altar rails and dancing in the sanctuary, but amusing for the rest of the congregation.
Of course, when me and my siblings were small, we pestered the life out of our mother. My brothers climbed on, through, under and over the pews; we used to pinch one another so that she’d have to sit in the middle and keep us apart, and one time my sister and I were reading the missalette and it said “Kneel or stand” so we thought it was optional which you did, we stood up, looked around and everyone else was kneeling so we (loudly) asked her why weren’t they standing?
We were about the worst behaved that I can remember 🙂
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As I was edging out of the pew to walk the aisle my younger brother grabbed the back of my pants and yelled so that the whole church heard,”Where’s he going, to pee?”
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I was the problem child at my church. I’d fidget during the service (pastors, never force a six-year-old to sit through your sermons if they can’t follow along), I’d run up and down the church stairs and round the building afterward, I’d make paper airplanes of the bulletins, I’d get into the kitchen and eat all the extra communion bread… People would regularly ask my mom, “Don’t you spank him?” and she’d sigh and say, “All the time.”
The source of all this extra energy? On Sunday mornings, because Sundays were special, breakfast would more often than not consist of the usual sugary stuff, topped off with jelly donuts. We could only have two per child, but sometimes I could cajole Mom into letting me have an extra donut. Being fortified with all that sugar was bad enough, but I had a certain behavioral response to certain red food dyes, which my parents had no clue about. So I’d run amok.
Most parents, particularly new parents, have no clue either. So whenever I catch the kids running crazy at my church, I usually tell the parents my story, and next week the kids are a lot calmer… ’cause this week they had eggs for breakfast, instead of pancakes with extra syrup.
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Well, I was quite a prankster, which is a horrible thing to be when your father is the senior pastor. I once escaped out of the sanctuary on a Sunday morning and pulled the fire alarm. I got paddled with a wooden spoon pretty harshly for that.
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I had switched churches for a while, but I went back to my old church for a visit. A redheaded lad took my superior height and girth as an indication that I wanted my manhood challenged by his alleged martial arts skills. So I slapped him around some.
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