I Found It!

Late last summer, my waffle iron died.  Well, to tell the truth it didn't fully give up the ghost, but when the outside of it got extremely hot, it started humming loudly, and I got a faint whiff of burning electrical, I yanked the plug out of the outlet and decided it was time to get a new waffle iron.

It was old.  How old, exactly, I do not know.  Older than myself, anyway. Being shiny chrome, and given the font of the owners manual, I'm guessing early 1960's at the youngest. It came to me in the early 1990s, when my grandparents sold off their rural acreage and were moved into a condo near my uncle in Ohio.  It was one of those appliances that Grandma had rarely used, and it was still in very good condition despite probably being thirty years old at the time. She didn't have room for it in the condo, so she gave it to me because in all the family, I am the only one who cooks much.

it used to have two handles,

the right one fell off in the last 7-8 years

I have used it well over the years.  So well, my kids never ate an Eggo at home.  In fact, they were astonished to find out, well into their school years, that you could buy frozen premade waffles at the grocery store!

It was with a heavy heart that I retired my beloved waffle iron last year.  We went about a month with no waffles for breakfast.  We missed waffles.  I mourned the death of my old waffle iron.  And since then, I have been searching for its replacement.  I did not want one of those waffle makers that makes one huge Belgian waffle at a time.  No, I don't care for Belgian style waffles.  I like my waffles square, and thin.  Crispy. Just like Grandma used to make.  ;0)

Do you know how hard it is to find a square, thin waffle iron these days?  Pretty dang hard.  Apparently today's chef likes single fat waffles with big dents in them.  Big dents to fill with ten ton of butter and syrup.  But that wasn't what we wanted.  We wanted multiple waffles, with shallow dents, dents that only held enough syrup to give the waffle a faintly sweet maple-y flavor, not totally cover up the lovely flavor of the waffle itself.

I finally found one, in February, that is nearly identical to the one Grandma gave me.  The new one is a different brand, and a little smaller.  It makes four square waffles instead of six rectangular ones. But otherwise, it is the same.  It has removable, reversible plates, and is called a 'grill, griddle and waffle maker'.

My new waffle iron arrived on Thursday.  As you can see, we gave it a test run this morning.  It works great.  Thin, crispy, non-round waffles, just like we're used to!

Challenge #9: Go Somewhere!

The local colleges, both community and state university, are on Spring Break this week.  A lot of the college kids have gone somewhere, either home to see family and old friends, or to warmer sunnier destinations. A break from their classes, a break from the winter doldrums.

Which gave me the idea for this week's challenge.  Go Somewhere!

Now, I don't mean on a week-long vacation that includes hotel stays and lots of money.  Nope, I have more in mind the local and cheap kind of going somewhere.  Check out what is going on within an hour's drive of where you live.  Find something you are interested in going and seeing, or doing, and then make a plan to go there.

For instance, after a brief internet search, here is what I found going on within an hour's drive of this little place here for March 7 (today) through next Friday, March 14th.

• several plays at community and professional theaters
• a talk about raising urban chickens
• a seminar by Temple Grandin
• the annual Michigan Horse Council Horse Expo
• a seminar about the safety of vaccines
• a gardening workshop
• a Home & Garden Expo
• several free or low cost concerts featuring classical, jazz and blues music
• a workshop that teaches you how to juggle (!!)
• several band concerts
• swing dancing
• a performance by a symphony orchestra
• a free class on home decorating
• a class on meditation
• several toastmasters meetings
• an indoor farmers' market
• several art exhibits
• a class that teaches you how to play the ukulele
• a library used book sale
• a ceramic workshop that teaches you how to mold clay
• a free workshop on how to buy a home
• a Women's Expo
• a Mom to Mom sale
• a beer festival
• retirement planning seminar
• workshop on how to research your genealogy
• several computer classes
• a euchre tournament
• a fish fry dinner
• a spaghetti dinner fundraiser
• a wild game dinner
• a panel discussion on fracking
• a blood drive
• a deer & turkey expo
• a boat show
• an rv and camper show

That doesn't even include the places that are open year round, like the hands-on science museum oriented toward children, or the historical museum near the state capitol.

Take a few minutes, do a little searching, and find something interesting nearby to go do.  Then give yourself a little break and go somewhere!

Waiting with Kids

When DS2 was just a baby, his health challenges began appearing.  Things that necessitated regular doctor visits, and added in specialists by the time he was nine months old.  Which meant I spent a lot of time in waiting rooms with DS1 (a preschooler), and DS2 (an infant), and through the years added in a few more infants (DD1, DD2, and even sometimes an infant nephew who was in my care on that particular day) on through toddlers and preschoolers and elementary age.  In fact, for nine years straight we had regular allergist visits, sometimes twice a week, often once a week, and sometimes every two or three weeks depending on which concentration of allergy serum DS2 was currently on and where in that bottle of serum he was.  At age four, DS2 could clearly pronounce very large words  that most preschoolers have never even heard; words like 'dermatologist' and 'allergist', 'nebulizer', 'prednisone', and 'albuterol'.

DS2's health care regimen gave me lots of opportunity to fine tune my parenting-at-the-doctor's-office skills.  In other words, how to alleviate the fears of a nervous child, how to deal with a child not feeling well while waiting, how to entertain a bored child, and how to keep a whole troupe of little ones in line so as to not get kicked out of the waiting room.

What about just hiring a baby sitter to deal with the extra ones and leave them at home while taking only the patient to the doctor?  I'm sure you are thinking this would have been an easy, logical thing to do.  Easy only when we lived near enough to relatives who didn't work during the day that it was possible to leave the children who didn't have an appointment behind.  Paying for a babysitter on a weekly basis just so that it was easier to go to the doctor for an hour or two, well, that was not in our budget. Especially back in the day when our yearly medical co-pays ran in the thousands. We have just about always had a very tight budget.   Kind of like tourniquet tight.  But that uber tight budget has kept us out of the poorhouse (or from defaulting on loans and other bills) more than once through the years.  It even allowed us to pay off DH's student loans three years early, while buying our first house in our mid-twenties, and adding babies #3 and #4 to the family. . . So hooray for tight budgets that made me haul all my progeny wherever I went.

Back to the subject at hand: how do you deal with taking children to the doctor's office?

Mostly you want to keep the kids busy in the waiting room.  For very little kids, who can't read or do math yet, there are several techniques I employed.  Probably the most popular one was playing I Spy.

No, not on a tablet.  Geez, tablets weren't around back when my kids were little.  I think I had two kids graduated from high school before tablets became mainstream.  We don't even own one now, let alone then.  We played I Spy the old fashioned way: with our eyes and mouths.  You can I spy a lot in a doctor's office waiting room.  Ceiling tiles, carpet, chairs and end tables, magazines and books, plants and planters, artwork on walls, other patients, shoes, coats, purses.  The possibilities are pretty endless.  Just try to spy something that isn't going to be gone before it can possibly be guessed, so fixtures are better than other people and their belongings, unless those other people are with you (as in your kids).

Don't be afraid to bring along a small tote bag with coloring books and crayons, or even blank paper and pencils or markers.  Let small children (and even not so small children) color and draw while waiting.  Better yet, get them interested in making tracings by laying the paper over a surface and rubbing crayons across it.  How does the tracing of a chair seat differ from that of a table?  Of a window blind (gently, please!)?  Of the carpeting (or floor tiles if you can find a waiting room that still is uncarpeted!)?  Of jeans?  Of t-shirts or sweaters?

As the kids get older, you can use the paper to play tic tac toe or connect the dots.  You can do math games.

Even if the waiting room doesn't have magazines at the children's reading level, you can still make use of them.  Give each kid a magazine and instruct them to find a certain something in it. Maybe it's a car, or a cat, or a dog, or a woman with blonde hair, or a house or a cake.  Again, endless possibilities, just tailor your search list to go with the focus of the magazine (as in, don't look for tractors in People magazine!)

Books are great.  Many doctor's offices stock a few books for little kids.  Or bring your own selection of picture books and easy readers along.  Older kids can be instructed to bring whatever they are reading at the time.  Here is where I say don't bring computerized entertainment.  Really.  Kids can read, they don't need to constantly be watching digitized images moving across a screen, or blowing up things in a game.  Besides, usually they don't want to watch or play with the sound off, and trust me, nobody else in the waiting room wants to hear it, no matter how many polite smiles they try to paste on their faces.

One doctor's office we went to on a regular basis (allergy shots) had a big chalkboard hung on the wall at elementary school age height.  My kids loved to play on that chalkboard.  Sometimes I would whisper a word in their ear and then they would draw that item for their siblings to guess, Pictionary-style.  Sometimes they would divide the chalkboard into sections, one for each child (and redividing if another youngster arrived in the waiting room) so each kid could do their own thing on their own piece of the board.  Sometimes we did math races, with me writing a math problem for each kid, then handing them the chalk and saying "Go!" Sometimes, when they were old enough to have a good grasp on spelling, we played hangman (which can also be done on paper).

To ease the anxiety of a kid seeing a new doctor for the first time, I would often distract them in the waiting room with a sort of guessing game.  We wouldn't know the answer until we went back to the exam room and met the doctor, but while waiting we would make a guess at what that doctor would look like when he or she walked through the door.  I would ask questions like "Is the doctor a boy or a girl?"  "Is the doctor tall or short?"  "Does the doctor  have hair (for a boy)?"  "What color hair do you think the doctor has?"  "What color eyes does the doctor have?"  And the child would get so caught up in the guessing game that they became excited to see the doctor, rather than apprehensive.  They wanted that doctor to come close enough to them to see if they were right.  Was the doctor a tall, thin man with grey hair, glasses and blue eyes?  Or was the doctor a woman with brown hair?

Waiting.  It's all in how you play it.  Interact with your kids.  Engage their minds.  Focus their attention on something other than how slowly the minutes of the wait are going by.  Ease their apprehension.

The Big Picture

This week has been a toughie, and it's not even over with yet!  DH has been out of town on a work trip, the Suburban started making a strange and horrible noise and throwing codes so had to go to the repair shop, both of the cars the daughters drive are acting up, we all have places to be at overlapping times in different towns and coordinating vehicles between drivers is a feat. . . Not to mention the worry of 'what if' one of the cars decides to become incapacitated at some inopportune moment nowhere near home.  What if it does so with a teenaged driver?

Stress, stress, stress!!

But you know what?  It's really all little stuff.  Minor inconveniences.  Truly, it is.

For in the Big Picture, today is Ash Wednesday.  A reminder that my life is not so awful.  After all, my sins are forgiven.  Jesus suffered for them, He took them away, and continues to take them away even as I continue to fall into more sin with my weak human nature.

In the Big Picture, having to deal with single parenting and running the homestead while DH is away is just a minor inconvenience.  Having vehicles crap out on you, well, that's nothing, really, when you compare spending eternity in Hell.  My challenges, they are nothing compared to what Jesus went through for me, and for you, on the cross at Calvary.

Because of what He did for us, all the problems we face here on earth are just the Little Picture.  We get to leave them all behind someday, when we join Him in Heaven.

Focus on the Big Picture, and the Little Picture isn't so miserable after all.

Grocery Shopping With Kids, and Living to Tell About It.

This is possible.  Based on what I've seen at many grocery shopping trips in the last several years, you wouldn't think anyone can shop peacefully with kids in tow, but it is possible.  Someone ought to teach some of these parents how.  Enter the idea for this post.  Because it would be very rude, and probably counterproductive, to launch into instruction right in the middle of the grocery store while a frazzled mother or father is trying to sink into the floor embarrassed by the behavior of their whining, arguing, tantrum throwing offspring.

I confess that once mine hit school age, if I could grocery shop at 8:30 in the morning, after they were all safely at school, I did.  It was so much faster.  And so much less "Mom, will you buy me. . . ?"

Alas, that was only possible nine months of the year and only once child number four hit kindergarten.  Before that, and every summer until they were old enough to stay home alone, grocery shopping meant having a child or two or three or four in tow.  (While I might occasionally take an 'extra' child who wasn't birthed by me to the sports game of one of mine, or even a doctor or dentist appointment of one of mine, I drew the line at hauling other people's kids through the grocery store.)

Here are some tips and techniques for getting out alive, with your groceries and your children.

1.  Feed them first.  Never take a kid into the store hungry.  They are easily enough swayed by the power of suggestion--seeing all the goodies in the aisles. Taking them in hungry is just asking for trouble.

2.  Don't go at nap time, or immediately after school, if you can help it.  A tired child is like a time bomb.  It's going to go off, and you know what happens after that isn't going to be pretty.

3.  Other than samples offered by grocery store staff, do not let your child eat while shopping.  Some people seem to have no problem opening a bag of chips or cookies and letting their kid stuff face (or stuffing their own face) while strolling through the store.  In my book, you don't eat it until after you have paid for it.  It's just not done.  Besides, if you followed the first tip, you aren't hungry and neither are your kids, so there is no reason to open and eat something before it has gone through the check out line.

4.  Do not buy your kid something every time they walk into a store.  It just teaches them that they are entitled to a new object simply because they walked through the front door.  Also teaches them to start whining for whatever thing they want this time as soon as you pull into the parking lot.  How peaceful do you think that shopping trip is going to be?

5.  Insist on indoor manners.  Low voices.  No running.  Hands to themselves.  In fact, hands in laps for those young enough to ride in the cart, and hands either on the side of the cart, or folded in front of them for those old enough to walk through the store. For those children prone to wandering, insist they have one hand in contact with the cart at all times.

6.  Enlist their help.  Ask them to help you pick out produce and then show them how; shopping can be an educational experience!  Besides, you want your kids to be able to both feed themselves well and get the most for their money when they are grown up, right?  Likewise, you can have older kids run price comparisons between the same item of two different brands.  Or a name brand item on sale versus the store brand at regular prices.  Gives them something to focus on instead of being bored while shopping, and it strengthens their math skills.  You sneaky parent, you!

7.  If you have kids old enough to be out of your sight in the store for five or ten minutes, break them into groups, and give each group a handful of items to go find and retrieve for you.  It's a grocery store scavenger hunt!  Plus, talk about multiplying your time--now you can get two or three times as many items selected checked off your list in the same amount of time it would take you to do it all yourself.

8.  Speaking of list, shop with a list!  This makes it so much easier to turn down requests for impulse items by the kids.  You can say, gently but firmly "Today we are only buying what is on the list, and that isn't on it.  Sorry."  This is also a sneaky learning experience for them: they learn the importance of planning ahead, shopping with a list, and prioritizing need versus impulsive want.  Trust me, if you do this enough, they pick up on it and it becomes ingrained.  You are shaping their future shopping habits.

9.  Last but not least, in fact, it should be number one rule for taking kids shopping: don't be afraid to discipline them in public!  If they are acting up, let them know their behavior is unacceptable, and make sure there is an immediate consequence for it. Two hours later when you get back home is much too late.  You missed the discipline impact zone.  The sooner after the offense the disciplinary action takes place, the more effective a lesson it is.  Ask my sons about what happens when middle school boys mouth off to their mama in the grocery store.  They will tell you that a boy who gets too big for his britches, thinking he's too manly to have to listen his mother, thinking he can talk back, ends up having to hold her hand and 'keep her safe' during the rest of the shopping excursion, since he's such a big tough guy.  This is one of those 'you will only have to do it once' kind of disciplines.  Likewise, if your troupe of children (or even just one child) is just being utterly unbearable and naughty in the store, don't be afraid to leave the store, without your cart of food, without going through the checkout line. 

Yes, leave the groceries there, and take the child straight home to bed.  Total shock value of seeing that cart of food left behind is a pretty good reinforcer for You Must Behave In The Store.  I did feel bad for the store employee that ended up having to empty my cart and return all those items to their proper shelf spaces, but again, this is something I only had to do once.  The kids got the message loud and clear, and were never that bad in the store again.  Did I have to resort to spanking or physical punishment?  Nope.  Just a bit of embarrassment and the kid figured it out.

I'm sure somewhere out in Internet Land someone will read this and just be totally put off by the way I raised my kids.  I mean, embarrassing them in public, that's the same as bullying, right?  Weren't their little psyches smashed?  No.  Shaped, not smashed.  If you look at my adult offspring, you'll find well adjusted, hardworking individuals who know the world does not revolve around them and that there are unwritten rules to life, rules that need to be followed for the world to function smoothly.

More Boys in My Future!

This summer is going to bring two new boys to the family.  My brother and his girlfriend are expecting their second child in late June, and a few weeks ago they found out that it is a boy.  Then, in late February, DS1 and K2 found out that their newest offspring is also a boy.  He is due about two weeks after his cousin.  My mom is so excited:  a new grandson and a new great-grandson, all in a short time!

I'm excited too.  This new baby of DS1 and K2--our second grandchild--will be the first male of his generation from DH's family line.  The one who guarantees the family name will continue on.  That, and, well, grandchildren are just so cool!  As the saying goes, if I had known grandchildren were so enjoyable, I would have had them first. Although I strongly suspect that grandchildren are only so lovable because after surviving raising their parents, we grandparents see them as the payoff of all our hard work (and not strangling our own children during the hateful middle school years).

Since receiving the news that both bundles of joy will be wearing blue, I've been collecting fabric and pattern ideas for two new baby quilts.  Some of what I wanted I was able to find locally, but some I had to search online for and then order.  My selections finally arrived late last week, so of course this week my thoughts are on quilt designing and getting pieces cut.  I hope to spend a few hours in the sewing room cutting pieces and sewing together an auntie's love for a nephew, and a grandma's love for her first grandson.

I all ready know that I want to do my grandson's quilt similarly to how I did his big sister's quilt in 2012: a bunch of squares arranged in rows.  Still, there is designing to be done because I need to figure out the order of the fabrics for those rows of squares.

These are the fabrics I have chosen for his quilt.

The soccer ball fabric I had actually picked up long before this baby was conceived; you see both my sons played soccer all through middle school and high school, so I bought this fabric (when I saw it on sale) with the intent to include it in a quilt for when either of them had a son of his own.

The truck fabric was one that I had to search for and special order.  Mud trucks (the brown background of the fabric actually has tire tracks printed in it, as you can see in the picture below) for the grandson that will be Southern-born to my redneck son was a no-brainer.

The Jesus fish is Grandma's (me) attempt at getting some religion into a kid who will live 14 hours away that I won't be able to take to church on Sunday if his parents don't.  I also used that fabric in K3's quilt.  I tell you, long distance grandparenting is hard.

Blue because it goes well, and a solid is needed to rest your eyes on in the finished product.  And, well, cuz this quilt will be a boy's quilt.

Tractors, a must.  Green tractors, just like at Grandpa and Grandma's place (ie this little place here).

Camo for our future hunter.  And the solid orange I plan to use as a border on the front and as the backing of the quilt.


For my new nephew, I don't yet have quite as a clear of an idea of what that quilt will look like.  I do know I want a flannel for the backing, as that is warm and cozy for here in Michigan.  For the babies in South Carolina I forego the flannel and just use a cotton backing.  So, all I have to show for the nephew's quilt so far is the flannel print:

If this week (or the next several) my posts tend toward the topic of babies or raising kids, well, now you know why.  Seems like recently I've been getting lots of questions on how I dealt with toddlers, and with going from one child to two.  Giving advice on those sorts of things has once again become part of my life.

Church Training Kids

This is not a topic for everyone.  If you don't believe in organized religion, going to church, etc, you might was well stop reading now, and go read some other blog for the next ten or fifteen minutes.  Likewise if you don't have kids and don't ever plan to have any of the little buggers, this probably won't be a useful read for you.

If, however, you currently have kids, or want to have kids at some time in the future, and believe that taking them to church is something you are going to want to do, then read on.

Let me start by saying that I believe parents need to steer their children to God.  After all, Jesus said "Let the little children come unto me", not "Well, if they find me on their own, that'll be pretty good."

Think about it. The chances of a child finding religion on their own in their teens or twenties or older, are not very likely.  Really.  What teen wants to be told what to do?  And don't we spend our entire childhood eagerly awaiting the day we can finally be our own boss?  So why in the world would we think that suddenly after a decade or two or three of living however society says is okay (such as sleeping in on Sunday morning), our children would decide that they want to be restricted by what God says is okay (like getting out of bed on Sunday and putting on clothes that look presentable rather than being all that comfortable)?

Let me also say that I was not brought up going to church every Sunday.  Up until age eight, I went occasionally with my maternal grandfather.  He would come pick me and sometimes my younger brother up on a Sunday morning and take us to church with him.  Or, if we spent the night at his house on Saturday, Sunday morning automatically meant we were going to church.  He'd take us by himself, not with Grandma (who rarely went), and not with my parents (who at that stage very rarely went).  Brave Grandpa.  Obviously having us grandchildren exposed to religion was important to him.

From age twelve to about sixteen I did go to church just about weekly.  I took the 7th & 8th grade catechism class, and got confirmed into the church.  Mom and Dad made sure that my brother and I were worshiping regularly during our catechism years, but after my brother got confirmed, well, attendance was less important again.  Kind of the "there, we did it, now we can go back to what we'd rather be doing" mentality.

Shortly after I turned twenty, I looked at DH (who was my live-in boyfriend back then) and said "I'm going back to church, and I want you to come too."  Like me, he'd had a pretty hit and miss church attendance record in childhood.  But the foundation was there, and we both recognized a need in our lives to hear the Word of God.  We've gone to Sunday worship pretty much since then.

DS1 was two years old then.  Teaching a two year old to sit still for an entire hour, out of the blue, takes some work.  That was when I started accumulating tricks for training kids to go to church and not be a disruption.  All his siblings went pretty much from birth onward, especially DD1 who made her first church appearance at the tender age of 49 hours old.

Trick #1:  practice at home.  Practice with your child, sitting still and quiet on the couch (or, if you have them on unpadded chairs or a wooden bench--much more like a church pew) for ten to fifteen minutes at a time.  Whispers are okay, but not constant whispering.

Trick #2: bring a snack.  Finger food, non-melting, non-sticky and preferably not crumbly.  Most likely you should remove it from it's store packaging and put it into a container that does not make noise when little hands go in and out of it.  From personal experience, I advise you to stay away from anything sugary.  Bored toddlers and preschoolers amped up on sugar in a confined space (like a church pew) in a setting where they are supposed to be quiet is not a good situation.  We did Cheerios for a while, but they tend to crumble into the carpeting when dropped (and they will get dropped) and stepped on (and they will get stepped on when they get dropped). What I finally settled with was Teddy Grahams, which were bite sized (so hard to choke on), didn't melt, weren't stick or crumbly, and I could measure a desired amount into a plastic container with a lid.  I only let the kids eat Teddy Grahams at church, during the sermon (full mouths are quiet mouths).  To this day, my teen and twenty-something offspring refer to Teddy Grahams as "Church Bears".

Trick #3: bring quiet activities.  To expect a kid that is too young to go to school to sit and listen to the preacher for an entire hour is expecting too much.  Really, what you are doing at this tender age by taking them to church is exposing them to God's Word, and training them how to be in church so that as they get older they will be able to retain more and more of what is being said there.  So it is perfectly fine to have them playing quietly in the pew for part of the time.  Quiet play means bringing soft, quiet toys.  We had a collection of small stuffed animals that were kept in the "Church Bag" and, like the Church Bears, only accessible to the kids on Sunday in church.  That way they don't get tired of those toys quite so quickly. I also rotated the toys in groups, each group only spending a couple of weeks in the Church Bag before it was the turn of another group to go to church and be played with.  Other things that were kept in the Church Bag were religious themed board books (Jonah and the Whale, the Christmas story, the Easter story, Noah's Ark, etc), small pads of paper, and crayons or pencils (I really advise against markers in church, they seem to 'escape' onto things they shouldn't much easier than crayons of pencils do).

Trick #4: take the child to the bathroom when you get to church, and before sitting down in the pew.  This aids in teaching them to sit still during the service.  Because if you let them get up to use the bathroom a couple Sundays in a row, pretty soon they are using "I gotta go potty" as an excuse to get up and wander around.  Which is totally the opposite of what you are trying to teach them.  I'm not saying don't ever let them get up and use the bathroom once the service has started, sometimes that can't be avoided, but don't let it become a habit.

As a rule of thumb, I figured any kid old enough to go to school all day (so, first grade on; although 3 out of 4 of my kids did attend all-day Kindergarten three days a week) was old enough to be expected to stay in that pew the entire hour of the church service.  Our denomination has a very participation-required kind of service in that, with the exception of the sermon, which usually is 20 minutes long, the congregation does a lot of stand up then sit down during the service (probably only sitting 5 min at a time before standing up again), and also a lot of hymn singing and responsive reading.  So kids have opportunities to get some wiggles out with all that standing up and sitting down stuff, and make a little noise during the hymns.  Really, the hard part is the sitting quietly for the twenty minutes of the sermon.  And by kindergarten age, 20 minutes should not be too much to expect of a child.

Younger than kindergarten age, sometimes I did have to take my kids out of the sanctuary and to the smaller attached room known as the "Cry Room", because it was intended as a place for parents to take crying infants and noisy small children so they would not disrupt the worship of the rest of the congregation.  As soon as the infant or child settled down, back into the sanctuary and our pew we would go.  No staying in the Cry Room playing for the remainder of the service.  No sir; because that would have taught them that they were in church to play, rather than to worship and learn God's Word.  In fact, a few of mine, along about age three or so, got the bright idea that if they were bored and wanted to go to the Cry Room (where some toys and cushy furniture were kept) all they had to do was act up.  Once I caught on to that, we skipped the cry room and went to the church basement (aka the fellowship hall where potlucks and other group events were held) instead.  In the church basement there were no toys, and they had to sit on folding chairs.  There was a speaker in the basement (and also in the Cry Room), which was always on during the service so that anyone down there could hear what the preacher was saying.  Needless to say, my kids didn't like sitting in a folding chair in the usually darkened basement listening to the sermon via a speaker on the wall.  No, sitting in the pew where they could see other people and the preacher was much more interesting.  So that pretty much nipped the "I want to go play in the Cry Room so I'll just misbehave here in the pew" thing right in the bud.

What about older kids, you ask. What if your kids are all ready school age, but aren't used to going to church?  How do you handle them?

Well, if they are all ready in school, they should have the concept of sitting down and being quiet while someone else is talking pretty much mastered.  There should be no need to get up to use the bathroom (remember, do this before sitting in the pew in the first place).  There should be no need for a snack to keep quiet.  Although my kids did graduate from the Church Bears to Life Savers when they hit full-time school age.  The Life Saver was a treat saved for during the sermon, and yes, it did keep them quiet.  (My Grandpa used to give me a Certs during the sermon when I went to church with him, so this sermon treat thing wasn't totally my brainchild.)  Toys should not be necessary, and no books either.  Keep the little notepads and the writing or drawing tools, though.  School age kids can doodle while they listen.  Or they can be given an assignment to help insure they focus on what the preacher is saying during the sermon.  I used to give my kids a word to listen for, a word like Jesus, or Savior, or sin, or love.  They would make tally marks on their notepad for each time they heard that word during the sermon.   For kids who are still learning their letters, give them the bulletin and have them do things like circle every letter 'A', or fill in every letter 'O', or underline every letter 'S' or some such activity.

Now, how about dealing with discipline problems in older kids who decide to be noisy?  As I did with my smarty-pants three year olds who thought they'd figured out how to get play time, skip the Cry Room and go straight to the basement.  As soon as they can sit quiet in the folding chair for as many minutes as they are old, take them back upstairs and sit in the pew again.  If you have to repeat this more than twice in one service, or if you have multiple children who try to mutiny on you, as mine did one Sunday when DH was out of state for work and I had all four of them in church by myself (ie single parenting it that Sunday), you may have to execute a little tough love.

If you ask any one of my kids about the Sunday they all decided to be rotten little shits things when DH was gone, they will tell you I traumatized them.  After about fifteen minutes straight of in and out of the basement with each and every one of them, sometimes two at a time, I looked them in the eye and very quietly said "Go put on your coats, we're leaving."

Now, you might say "But wasn't that what they wanted?  To leave church?"

No, it wasn't.  They wanted to entertain themselves by misbehaving and give Mom a hard time in church.  They didn't want to leave.  That was quite evident by their dropped jaws and whispers of "But Mom, it's church, we're supposed to listen to God."

I quietly replied "But you aren't listening to God, because God tells you to obey your mother.  And nobody else here can listen to God because you are being so disruptive."

I took them all straight home, where they had to go lie in their beds, no books, no toys, no talking, until it was the time we would normally return home from church.  It was only when the clock had reached that exact moment were they allowed to do anything other than lie on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and think about their behavior.

I never had to do that again.  It was effective.  Not to say I didn't have times where I had to take one or another of them down to the basement for a few minutes during the service.  But I never had them attempt a mutiny in church again.  Honestly, I think that was about the time that "The Look" came into being.  Meaning, a child would start to purposely act up, I would give that child the hairy eyeball, and they would immediately straighten up.

There is a reason that God says to train up a child in the way he should go.  Because children don't train themselves.  That is the responsibility of the parent.  If you do your job right, they fit nicely into place in church.  If you don't do your job, because let's face it, training a child is W-O-R-K, they are not going to know how to listen to God, or respect His Word, let alone the words of others.  And if you don't think God's Word in important, but somehow you have kept reading this post thus far, let me say that all the things taught a child by church training (sitting still, being quiet, being respectful of others), are beneficial in all areas of his or her life.  A kid who can sit still in church can also sit still in school.  A kid who never has been taught to sit and listen in church isn't likely to do so in school.  Think about it.