When Your Kid Says Church Is Boring, Believe Them

A child who says church is boring is almost always telling the truth, and I think the worst thing we can do is argue with the word. Sacrament meeting is an hour. For a seven-year-old that is a long stretch of grown-ups talking to other grown-ups, with a hymn thrown in as a mercy.

So I don't say "it is not boring" and I don't say "you're going anyway," though some Sundays the second one does come out of my mouth. What I try to do is get curious, which is a habit I carried out of the classroom and never put down.

What exactly is boring?

When I taught third grade I had a rule that "boring" was never an answer, only a beginning. I'd ask which part, and I meant that narrowly: the first minute or the last ten, the worksheet itself or the long wait for everybody else to finish theirs.

What surprised me was how rarely the answer was the material. A child who says a lesson is boring is very often saying it's too hard and he stopped following around the second paragraph, or it's too easy and he finished in his head ten minutes ago. Sometimes nobody had told him what he was supposed to be doing with his hands. Sometimes he was hungry. One year a girl told me the room was boring because she had nobody to sit by at lunch, and the word had been carrying all of that for a week.

Church works the same way, and if you ask at a calm time, not in the car with the engine running and not at 8:40 on Sunday morning, you'll get something you can use. Maybe the talks go over his head. Maybe it's the sitting still, or his friend moved to another ward in the spring and the bench feels empty. Or it's the Primary class, where the lesson is a coloring page again.

Ask once. Then take the answer seriously even when it's small, because "the pew is itchy" is something you can fix by next Sunday.

Don't pretend it's thrilling

I have heard parents (and I have been the parent) answer a child's "this is boring" with a bright "But it's so important!" Kids hear the sales pitch right away. They can see that a talk is long and the speaker never looked up from the page, and when we insist it was wonderful they learn that their own eyes can't be trusted. That's worse to teach than anything in the talk.

Some meetings are long and some speakers are hard to follow. I've introduced a hymn badly enough, as ward music chair, to lose the whole room, so I'm not above saying "yeah, that one dragged for me too" and still holding the line that we go. A child will believe you that the other parts matter a good deal more readily after you've granted him the dull ones.

I also stay away from the comparison. "Your brother never complains" has never once produced a happy child, only two children who dislike each other a little.

Give them a job

A lot of what we call boredom is passivity. The child is sitting there while other people do the whole thing, and a job changes that faster than any lecture.

Ask the Primary president or the child's teacher whether he can ring the bell or lead the song or carry the picture. Hand a reader a hymnbook open to the right page so she can follow along and sing the part she knows. Sit on the aisle with a child who wants to see what's going on up front. Tell him ahead of time to listen for a single thing and report it on the way home. A word he'd never heard counts, and it starts a better conversation than "what did you learn?" ever has.

Jobs don't have to wait for baptism. Primary children pray in class and at home and give short talks and sing in the Primary program in sacrament meeting every year. Baptism adds more, like the sacrament table and the bishopric's invitations, but a child of five can already be someone the room is waiting on. The Church's newsroom writes that when children are invited to speak and pray, their testimonies of the Savior grow, and they begin to see the meeting as theirs and not only their parents'.

If the job itself is what scares him, make it smaller. We did that with a closing prayer once, and I wrote about it in Lily couldn't say the closing prayer, so we started smaller. A bored child and a frightened one can look the same from the pew.

What I'd check before calling it boredom

Sometimes the word is covering something bigger: a child who has been teased in Primary, a child with a sensory problem who can't bear the noise in the chapel, a child with attention trouble who is working twice as hard as everyone around him just to sit still. If the complaint comes back every week and gets louder instead of softer, I'd stop treating it as an attitude and start treating it as a symptom. Talk to the teacher. Talk to the bishopric if you have to.

And a hard Sunday is sometimes only a hard Sunday. Heat, a broken routine, a long drive the day before, and nobody has a good reason to be cheerful.

One hour isn't the whole job

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

The verse puts the teaching in the house, on the road, at bedtime and in the morning. Sunday isn't on the list, and I don't read that as permission to skip church. I read it as relief for the hour in the chapel, which was never meant to carry everything alone. What a child sees at the table and in the car does a lot of the work, and I wrote a little about that in what I've actually tried with kids home all summer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it normal for kids to find church boring?

Yes, and it tends to peak somewhere around eight to twelve, when they get restless and start noticing what everyone else is doing. I'd worry more about the child who never says anything, because the one complaining is at least talking to you.

Should I bribe my child to go?

I'm not above a donut. I just wouldn't make it the reason.

Can a child who isn't baptized yet take part in sacrament meeting?

More than people think. Primary children give talks, sing in the annual Primary program and pray in Primary and at home, so ask your Primary president what's coming up and say yes early so there's time to practice. Some things, like passing the sacrament, wait for the age and ordination that go with it, and your bishopric can tell you how your ward handles the rest.

What if the Primary class is the boring part?

Talk to the teacher before you talk to the child. Teachers almost always want to know, and they often have no idea the class is falling flat. Offer to bring a song or an object, and see what happens.

My child doesn't want to go at all. Now what?

Go back to "which part" and mean it. If you can fix the part, fix it, and if you can't then say so and keep going while you keep listening.

The wind came up this afternoon and took a dish towel off the cabin porch rail, and it's still out there in the sagebrush because nobody has felt like going to get it.

with love, Melissa