I saw several threads regarding the difficulties of attending church with little ones but just curious if anyone found it challenging to attend church events as well. I find that most of our home group meetings, events that happen during the weeknights are often in the middle of my kids bedtime, which means I can never make it out. And if i do go, with kids in tow, i cant listen or participate bc of the kids melting down. Also, if I wanted to volunteer for a ministry/outing, it's close to impossible without me juggling childcare. Anyone else encounter this? Any helpful tips on how to be involved without short changing the kids?
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Our congregation is very small so when events are planned they are usually planned with those with young children in mind. If something comes up that conflict with my or LO's schedule, we just work around it (ie. once LO is in bed, DH will stay home so that I can go out albeit late).
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I have the same trouble. Our morning services bookend when the kids usually sleep so we aim to get there once a month. I used to be involved in evening music rehearsals, but while the twins are small, bedtime trumps it...I know it will be waiting for me when they get a little older. I did try to go to rehearsals in the fall for a few months, but it was just too hard on dh and the kids.
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We just deal with a messed up schedule on Sundays the best we can. As far as other events, we attend based on how important/involved it is. Our community group is every other week, so we just have LO ready for bed beforehand so we can put her straight to bed (very late) when we get home. It's worth it for us to mess up the schedules for community group and Sundays. So far, just one of us has gone to not regularly scheduled events. It tends to be DH because he is a deacon and is usually serving for most of them.
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we have loads of kids/babies at our church so people generally understand :). that said, most of the familes are really involved and we tend to take our kids to most events/meetings, including nighttime ones.
up to 6 months we would just bring him everywhere and put him to sleep (nap or nighttime) in the carseat. after that, he needed a quiet and dark place to sleep at night, so if a meeting is at someone's home we bring a pack and play and he sleeps in a room there and we transfer him to his carset then crib when the meeting's over.
if an evening meeting is in a public place then we find babysitting or one of us stays home.
for daytime events we just bring him and hope for the best!
he's a good sleeper and consents to all that, so it's been fine, but i can imagine that if he struggled more with falling asleep etc that we would have to find other ways around it!
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Yup. We ended up having to quit our small group which makes me very sad. We're now very unconnected at our church. There are some small groups that hire a babysitter and that would be great - if they weren't meeting at 7pm
Add that to my husbands schedule of working a couple nights each quarter (and that changing every quarter)... it's pretty much impossible for us. I think eventually we'd like to host a small group in our area (most are 20 mins away) and offer child care and perhaps have it on a Sat. morning instead!
Add that to my husbands schedule of working a couple nights each quarter (and that changing every quarter)... it's pretty much impossible for us. Reply
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