Teaching children how to behave properly in Mass is not something that is done in Mass, or during Mass. Teaching children how to behave properly at Mass is something that is done in the home. And not through teaching them "content" - but rather by teaching them "process". It's a matter of teaching them a way of being.

Like being quiet at the dinner table.

Children who live in homes filled with constant noise, constant activity, TVs that are always on providing background sound, toys that fill up every room - such children are accustomed to being constantly stimulated in one form or another. Putting them in Mass, with long periods of inactivity and silence, is much like taking the child who learned how to learn from Sesame Street and putting him in a classroom. It's a form of culture shock. Of course such children are going to get fidgety and want to move, want to be stimulated. Their entire equilibrium has been thrown off. It doesn't "feel right" to them.

Children who live in homes that are often quiet, homes in which children are not offered constant external stimulation but who must learn to entertain themselves, with their own thoughts and imaginations, homes in which family prayer time is a time for sitting quietly and listening to Daddy or Mommy read Scriptures, homes in which they are expected to participate in prayer - Mass is not culture shock to those children.

Barbara