Family Devotions are Miserable

Our 3 and 4 year old will color during Bible time, our 2 yr old is starting to color during this time as well……this is the website we use for coloring sheets http://children.cccm.com/site/curriculum.htm

We also sit at the table to do our study.  If we sat on the couch or something they (our 4 1/2 yr, 3 yr and 2yr) would wiggle too much.  I really think that our older boys pay better attention at the table too.

Laura

Just thought I would add that I didn’t allow my daughter, at three, to be disruptive during Bible time. That would be unacceptable to me. She usually would work puzzles or look through her own books on the floor. What I meant by “not making he sit attentively” was that I didn’t make her sit on the couch with the other children and give me her undivided attention. :0)

~Heather

I have mentioned on other posts that we expect far too little from our children and this is definitely an area this happens.  When my husband and I were first married and looking for a church, we visited one where we enjoyed the doctrine/fellowship, etc, but noticed the kids didn’t get up and go to “children’s church.”  I wasn’t happy about it and expected to be very bothered by them, but after the service I realized I hadn’t even really heard any of them!  Through that church, and our home church now, all the children sit through the service(which is about 2 or 2.5 hours long).  I never thought mine could either, but it’s amazing how much they can do with proper training.  We just include every age(almost 7 and under), each evening and train during that time.  We have also found around the table is better than the couch.  It’s only about 15-20 minutes, but it carries over into Sundays when it’s done consistently. 

We expect ours to sit through well by the age of three.  We take them out for discipline if they are squirming too much or talking, and bring them right back in.  We don’t have a nursery, so if my youngest(18 months) is being too babbly or squirmy, I go to the next room where I can still hear and have him sit on my lap as long as possible.  (Some days just don’t go well at all, if baby is tired and fussy, so I will just go upstairs, or farther away)  We don’t do toys/books/coloring during church because it’s very distracting to them and me, the little ones usually are making animal sounds, or pointing out words they know and it doesn’t help them much in our family.  I’ve seen others do fine with it.  There are several families that do even better than mine, our pastor’s son is 3.5 and has sat well with his hands folded since he was about 2.  I’m still learning how to train them best, but my point is that it absolutely can be done, and isn’t expecting too much. 

As far as being critical, I think if you are positive the rest of the day in discipline, then 10 minutes of lots of “don’t do this, etc” is okay.  You can also just say it differently, like “We sit still, see how mommy isn’t wiggling?”  We also find folding the hands helps tremendously. 

If you were to go to church years ago, it was normal for entire families to sit together for the whole service, the pastor’s family usually was required to sit in the front row!  So it’s only the recent trend of children’s church/sunday school, etc. that has us even thinking it’s not normal for children to sit well behaved during a service.  Those are just my thoughts from my experiences where I was proved very wrong about children’s abilities.  I’m amazed how often my children are really listening even though it appears they aren’t:)

Best wishes in your training, be diligent and you will see fruit!  Adrienne

Hi Dana,

Sorry that your Bible time isn’t going so well. =(  You’ve gotten some good ideas here already, but I thought I’d chime in as well.

Yes, I think that it is good goal to expect a 3 year old to sit still for a family Bible story time, and it is possible!  It might be kind of miserable to begin with, but it is a good and reasonable goal to work towards.

However, it is possible that 10 minutes may be too long to begin with.  Maybe try splitting your Scripture memory and Bible Story time into two different times of the day rather than all in one chunk.  We do our Scripture memory and hymns at the breakfast table in the morning, and then our Bible story time at bedtime.  This breaks it into smaller chunks, but still allows Papa to be involved during the times of day that he is at home.  

I don’t know what kind of book that you are using for your Bible Stories, but it may be helpful to use a Bible Story book that has pictures if you aren’t already – given that this is your oldest who is 3 and not a younger child tagging along with olders.  We first started a Bible story time when our oldest was around 2, and used The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes (I think that was the title) – anyhow it had a realistic looking (not cartoony) picture on one side of the page, and a 1-2 paragraph story on the other side.   The stories were short and sweet (under 5 minutes to read) and there was something for her to look at while we read.   I didn’t LOVE it, but it served our purposes well as we were establishing the habit.  From there we graduated to a different Bible story picture book with longer stories, and now to the Child’s Story Bible by Catherine Vos (no pictures), and probably closer to 10 minutes to read the story, followed by a chapter from a literature selection. (We do expect ds 2-1/2 to sit quietly for the Bible story time, he is allowed to get up and play quietly on the floor or else goes to bed while we read the chapter book to our oldest who is 5-1/2.)  So that may be helpful for you to consider.  Start with really small chunks, and work up to something longer.

As mentioned, changing the location may be helpful too – the kitchen table right at the end of meal time or the couch may work better than the bed if he finds it too easy to wiggle and play around there.

I know what you mean about not wanting to be constantly nagging about his behavior either.  What we did when we started training our ds (now 2-1/2, and the middle child in our family) to sit quietly with us for Bible story time when he was around 18m was that one of us (whoever wasn’t reading) would hold him firmly in our lap and not let him down even if he got wiggly and whiny before we were done (again, we are talking for about 5 minutes here).  If his whining and fussing got too loud, we might stop the reading and ask him once to settle down, wait a minute, and then keep going.  (Sometimes he just wouldn’t, in which case he was just put directly to bed without anymore play or fun.)    It took awhile…months…but now you would be amazed how long he can sit quietly and listen – simply by holding him to the expectation that he would do so  – and that WE were in control of when we were done, not him.  (Incidentally, they both do well in a full church service now also.)

Anyhow, I’m rambling a bit – just a few of the things that we’ve found helpful as we’ve working on this with our little ones. =)

Jen

I totally understand your predicament, because we have been going through somewhat the same issue with our son, who just turned four but is a bit young for his age.  We only started a regular “Bible” time about six months ago, and it has been a learn-as-you-go experience.  At first we would just stop reading and put him to bed if he couldn’t concentrate and got too active, because we didn’t want to turn it into a negative or obligatory-feeling experience.  But we realized that that was not the way to go about it; so now, we make sure that he’s cuddled into the couch with me, after reading his own books, with a blanket over our laps and a quiet picture book of his own to look at.  We try not to read for *too* long…I’d say though our time is about the length of yours.  He usually does fine, and I’ve noticed him perking up his ears a little bit more than before.  At least he sits still now though, and is building good patterns.  Good luck!