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Please tell me everything I should know about helping a 1 year old (to be weened) get through a first divine liturgy at a place she has never been.

Thank you,

Children are visual learns so fortunately for them the Divine Liturgy is highly visual...provided that they are positioned where they are actually able to see what is taking place.

Parents often want to be very close to the exit doors in case fussiness erupts, but our little visual learners can't absorb much if all that they can see is the backs of other peoples' heads.

"A place she has never been"--if possible, visit the church with her some time prior to the liturgy so that she can see the space, the Icons, etc. That will make the first liturgy slightly less overwhelming.

I agree with Fr. Deacon Thomas. I remember a priest encouraging parents to bring their children to Mass, and he mentioned that the crying didn't bother him. Now, of course, when I had a niece that was two, a grumpy old guy told me, not asked me, told me, to take her outside. I stepped out for a minute, and a very sweet lady with a visibly disabled child (I am autistic, but that's not visible, and you wouldn't know it if I hadn't told you), and she told me that Jesus wants me at Mass. And I thought she's right. Jesus wants your child at Divine Liturgy.
I am not trying to add to what Fr. Deacon Thomas said; I am just saying "I concur".

Thank you for the affirmation....very timely.

There was pushback today from an older lady whose barrage at one of young, serious inquirers reduced the mother to tears.

"Where the Lord builds His Church there the devil sets up his chapel" and Old Scratch was working overtime on his "building" project.

Christ is in our midst!!

We used to belong to a parish that didn't encourage young children or infants. The people would give my wife and me dirty looks when we took our--then--young son along with us. Since we had no family to leave him with in the area, it was difficult. When our daughter was born, we moved to our current parish where everyone was glad to have the little ones attend. People would offer to hold a child if we seemed overwhelmed--though that was before COVID and the rash of people who today can't be trusted with one's children. We are still a welcoming parish, however.

The happier ending is that many, many people comforted the young mother, including an older couple who sits across the aisle and often plays with the young'un.

I believe that through this we shall all be stronger and more united in faith active in love.

Thank you everyone. Can toddlers eat quiet snacks during liturgy? Is that an ask your priest question? (We no longer live near my old parish, so I guess it’s the local priest?)

That is most definitely an "ask your Priest" question; however, my observation is that many families do not teach/require their children to Fast before Communion until they are around kindergarten age.

For further consideration and reflection, a recent FB post by Kh. Fredericka Matthew-Green:

A hot topic in some Orthodox churches has to do with children. Some people think children should always behave with discipline and reverence, and be taken out of the church when they cross the line. Others think there is room for some movement and vocalizing, because the priority is to keep the kids immersed in worship from the start. Someone wrote to me asking about this, and whether I'm the author of the line, "God gave kids their wiggle." I replied:
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In my church there used to be a mix of older church members who were very strict with the children, but as time passed the makeup of the congregation changed. The demographics shifted, as many of the older members retired, moved away, got assigned to a different position, and some of the oldest passed on. Meanwhile we were gaining many more converts, mostly young men and young families, some with many children. The atmosphere in worship is very different than it was back then.

Something I learned, that helped me, is that it wasn't that the older folks were unrealistically touchy about child noises. It was that they had a very high view of the church *itself.* Everything in the church is understood to be holy. One older man even objected to little children sitting on the rugs. You shouldn't put your bottom on a church rug! It's disrespectful!

And I chuckle about something I saw at another church. There was a boy who sat beside his mother, with his grandmother and great-grandmother behind him. That boy received a constant stream of whispers from all three: "Stand up straight, face the priest, make your cross, don't fidget, keep your toes pointed toward the altar..."

And yet--they did this because they esteemed the interior of the church itself to be so holy, that all things should be treated with awe.

That helps me to not think the older church members are just being fussy. It's how they grew up, just like that boy, learning a deep lesson that everything in the church as holy and worthy of awe.

But here we are, Americans. We are less formal than European cultures have been, historically. We put our emphasis instead on having our children in the midst of worship from the start. We want them to be absorbing Orthodoxy through their environment from their earliest days--to not be able to remember any time when they didn't experience prayer, hymns, incense, processions, everything Orthodox worship has to offer. In this process parents model the seriousness and attentiveness that they want their kids to learn. As a trade-off, we can put up with some of the natural noises of young children.

People do have different levels of tolerance for this, and the pastor will regularly get complaints about this or that parent who lets their kid go too far. So we all bump along together, and each child gradually acquires the attentiveness that the parents hoped to teach. Each child naturally reaches a point of quieting down--but new kids are always arriving, and stirring things up again.

I hope this way of looking at things is helpful to you. The older view was that demeanor inside the church must be strictly reverent, and there is a good argument for that. However, these young parents are putting their priority instead on keeping their kids saturated with Orthodox worship from the start, and they will accept some natural noisiness as the price to pay.

The thing to notice is that the future belongs to young families. In a very literal sense, young people with children are going to carry this congregation into the future. Time just does this. Hopefully those who find these childish sounds and behavior unacceptable can recognize that things are ultimately going to go the way that comes naturally to the young parents.

It is good for those young people to recognize what is motivating the older folks--that they're not just being fussy, but have a deeply-learned, earliest-days way of seeing that church interior as a very holy place. Their view is not inappropriate or extreme.

But it's not the one that comes naturally to Americans, because for them the priority is to immerse their kids in worship. Time is going to deliver the church into the hands of young people, younger and younger, even, eventually, to those presently-noisy children.

Glory to God for all things!

The young man referenced in the post upthread will be Baptized tomorrow immediately following his parents' Chrismation.