Expectations of children in church choirs

There have always been parts of the service which bore the youngsters, but as a young chorister, I learned how to maintain the facade of maintaining an interested expression which can be so useful in later life.
Burial of the Dead at Sea, Table of Kindred and Affinities, racy bits of the Bible, and later on, learning homework secreted up the sleeve until a lull in proceedings, One friend was revising for her exams as a dental nurse, and the diagrams were awesomely gruesome. Two enterprising sorts had a travelling chess set about their person and played a tournament round every week.
When I became a teacher, one of our regular appointments was the PTA Service, where visiting preachers were variable in quality. I promised the boys one housepoint minimum for giving up their Sunday evening, with extra awarded on a scale according to how boring the sermon was.

Came to say the same thing. Fidgeting and talking was absolutely not tolerated. We have very young altar servers and they also sit still and quietly all through mass.

It's not unreasonable for children that age to be restless but it doesn't sound like expectations have been made particularly clear to them. I think there are two things going on simultaneously - attention spans are poorer, which isn't good, but we no longer expect children to be seen and not heard and we accept that they are, in fact, children - which is. So what is wrong with activity sheets?

Read the hymnbook?????? Let em have the activity sheets, why not? Let em argue over them. Children belong in the world and belong in church. How lucky you are to have young children in church. Adds a bit of life, good grief.

@zingally i agree about putting one’s brain in “waiting mode”, it is indeed a useful skill.

The problem with my choir director’s slow waffling is that in one in twenty sentences, he says something important, that we need to know, so we can never switch off. The rest is filigree. “Here are your starting notes.” (Organist plays them). “Tenderly. Move me to tears. Blah blah blah, observe the crescendi and diminuendi, remember to look at my left hand: score in the head, not head in the score. I want a big contrast. Starting notes again. Remember this is a moving occasion. Starting notes again.” Etc.

I’ll be getting out of this choir soon, and I know they’ll beg me to stay, because I have a good voice.

This, think I was 7 or 8 when I joined; we knew what was expected of us behaviour wise.

DS1 doesn't do choir any more but some of the younger children will sit on the floor quietly and colour when it's not time to sing. Sometimes little siblings who can't actually read the words yet will try to join in. I think it's nice. (The children's choir sing at family mass so everyone expects some noise and wriggling).

Both of my DC are ND and both were cathedral choristers at 9 so YANBU. There is no way that during an important televised service they would have been doing anything other than sitting still and behaving!! The rest of the time they had a number of very discreet activities (including practising how to raise one eyebrow and not the other and some totally incomprehensible finger game.)

We had to sit quietly and look interested in the sermon

To be fair, this can be challenging even for adults. We used to have a vicar who never prepared his sermons in advance, and every single one would go on for at least 20 minutes and would contain at least four points at which we thought it was going to end. We wondered at the time if he'd thought the same, but then he thought of something else to say. I can only begin to imagine what it must have been like for the children.

It's shit being a child made to go to church by adults.

Oh yes. And it's even worse if those adults don't go to church themselves. Take this from one who knows.

Dd sang with our local choral society (Handel's Messiah and the like) for 10 years, first in the youth choir and then the adult choir. The youth choir starts from age 7. They are absolutely expected to sit still when not singing, and they are not allowed to wave at parents. This is a skill worth encouraging in children.

My DS' were choristers nearly 30 years ago , from 8 and 9 in a church male choir. They were all able to sit quietly. My friends AuADHD boy was placed on the end and the choir master sat next to him. He was fine, knew he had to behave.

I think so little is expected of kids now, expecting little creates a low bar.

A friend used to teach a sport to kids, he says that 25 years ago kids could concentrate for a lesson and had a certain fitness level. Now teaching nothing can last for than 5 minutes before changing activities or taking a break.

I was in various choirs and music groups from the age of 8, up until adulthood. And the expectation was very much that you sit still and in silence until it is your turn to do something. You're bored? Think about something. You're still bored? Oh well. Honestly, it would have never even occurred to us to even MENTION being bored. We just accepted it.
Yes it was often boring, but it also taught me a valuable skill. The skill of just "turning your brain off" and going into "waiting mode". I remember my first choir teacher telling us to "just sit and think peaceful thoughts" when she was working with other sections.
Kids today seem incapable of being bored. But a lot of that is down to the adults they are with being scared to have them be a bit bored.

Your memory of holding your breath took me right back to the Jennings books.

My brother and I were in the church choir alongside a little gang of our friends (including the vicar's two boys) in the 1970s. All from church going families and well versed in discipline.

We weren't particularly well behaved, in fact I'd say we got away with anything we could. On one memorable occasion the vicar's eldest son climbed out of the vestry window and went to the villlage shop to buy us sweets during a wedding. I'm sure fidgeting and giggling choir boys and girls aren't a new thing.

I was in the church choir for years (many against my will!) from the age of about 7. We all knew we had to behave and sit quietly. It was dead boring, but yes, I completely agree that if they're choosing to be in the choir it's part of the role. They should be expected to fulfil that. We are doing children no favours at all with this expectation that continuous entertainment be on tap. I'm not religious at all but part of becoming a functioning adult imho is learning to be bored sometimes and still not misbehave!

Private schools can still make you invigilate, bah.

I tried to memorise the whole of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to get me through those end of exams times. I got to about verse 11... (my grandad could do the whole thing as a party trick!)

That takes me back to waiting out the end of 3 hour A-level exams. I used to practice holding my breath. I could get close to a minute; handy for my swimming underwater skills.

Fortunately teacher invigilation ended after my first exam season in teaching so I didn't have to do too many of them.

What I mean is I didn't develop these skills as an adult. I'd had plenty of practice by age 8! And I'd like to think parents wouldn't be silly enough to enrol a child in a church choir if they didn't have that capability.

Not in a million years would I enrol my child.

She does quite well in music theatre though. Loves a crowd scene and can be a very active down and out, peasant, sans culottes...

These are good life tips.

I used to do a lot of invigilating at one school and I used to work out statistics based on what I could see. "30% of sixth form girls taking Maths favour chunky trainers while 2% prefer Doc Martens .."

In tedious Church choir rehearsals I like to invent life stories for the people in the memorials or try to figure out what the stained glass windows are all about.

I read a whole book in a staff meeting once, on a Kindle, popped inside the printout we'd been given.

Hmm, I think most 8 or 9 year olds ought to be able to sit properly during a service, it's not do different from being at school. As for activity sheets, we have them at our church and they are out and available for all services. I've observed that most who need them are younger than 8. The all ages services - where everyone is in for the whole service - have activities, the other services have the childrens group where they go out after the first hymn. The take up of activity sheets is about the same during both types of Sunday service. We don't have a choir with kids though

@scalt I once had to do the whole damn shebang at Easter. All pretty terrible but Maundy Thursday stood out as the worst. No amount of chocolate could make up for that. It's shit being a child made to go to church by adults. As you say, it doesn't even end when the service ends.

I was usually ok sitting through boring church services as a child: it was like school assembly. But the ones I really couldn’t handle were the occasional late evening ones: the worst being the Easter Vigil (I was spared midnight mass), which ran from 8pm until after 10pm, long past my bedtime. And then the adults would stand around nattering over drinks afterwards; no knowing when that would end, while I would seethe about the adults’ double standards about bedtime. Yes, I was that child. And I still didn’t get any Easter eggs until after the Sunday tidying up!

And once my parents had the audacity to natter over coffee (yes, coffee, after 10pm) for so long that we were late back for a guest who was staying that evening. It could have been on Mumsnet. “AIBU about my host not being back in time for me? I had to wait outside in cold and rain!”

Yes sorry I would expect 8 year olds to be able to sit and behave appropriately, I certainly did.

A problem here is the expectations of the adults that their children won’t be able to do this, resulting in handing out activity sheets, which then cause trouble. Obviously much better to remove these.

I’d also ask if the music is challenging enough - do they have sheet music and harmony parts to learn, or are they expected only to sing familiar tunes without music to read? That would have been incredibly dull to me at that age.

Also helpful to have the Bible in the pews so there’s something to read (personally I’d like the Book of Common Prayer too but obviously that’s a bit specific).

The addition of effectively an extra half day of formal learning a week in the way of choir is a great boost to academic progress.

The trouble is at a certain point of kids “being themselves” the whole service ceases to function. Many churches have other opportunities for less formal attendance.

Everyone understands an occasional crying baby or a wriggly toddler, everyone can be patient with neurodivergence but as parent to a neurodivergent child I’m fed up with ridiculous excuses being made for tweens and teens not being able to behave appropriately. They aren’t all neurodivergent and even those that are, lots can be still and quiet for an hour if their parents practice with them.

The problem is a culture in which everyone expects constant entertainment, instant gratification, never to actually think too hard about anything difficult and never to be “bored”.

Activity sheets? Bloody hell! YANBU at all OP, this is ridiculous.