Fasting with Children

During Lent as Catholics we focus on Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.  I discussed how we have been teaching our Children how to Pray and what we have added to our prayer life during Lent like praying the Stations of the Cross.  We also have been focusing on how to teach our children to learn about fasting! 

Although we are not required by the Catholic Church to fast until the age of 14 years old, we still think it is important for our children to participate on some level at a young age.  First we thought about what we want fasting to mean, even for our children.  We want fasting to be an act of repentance, a way to unite us with the suffering of Jesus, and also to help us learn more about ourselves.  Keeping these desires in mind we decided that there were a few areas that even our small children could participate in Fasting in including:

• Solemn/Quiet Fridays (Fasting from Electronics)
• Fasting from Meat on Fridays
• Fasting from TOYS

Solemn/Quiet Fridays (Fasting from Electronics)
On Quiet/Solemn Fridays we not only come together to pray the Stations of the Cross but we also shut off the television, computers, phones, I pads, etc for the entire day.  The first Friday was a bit of a wake up call for all of us!  We have always been mindful of what our children are watching on television or what games they are playing on an Ipad but we have not always been the best at monitoring the amount of time.  At first our children were WHINY and a little while later the best thing happened, they got BORED and had to find better ways to spend their time!  We have spent time reading, playing games, playing trains and baking!  Our oldest son is now calling Fridays "Sacrifice day"!  After only a few weeks we realized how much nicer our home runs without the television and electronics and have made a new family rule that we do not watch television before 3pm (or after naps).  It has been creating a much more peaceful environment for all of us.

With this I also learned that I need to be very mindful of the time that I am on the computer, my phone, on social media, etc.  On those Fridays when I am not checking my e-mail, blogging, checking Facebook I am so much more present and available to my family and everyone is happier (including myself).  I have learned that I need to be more aware of my behaviors and the need to find a happy balance. 

Fasting from Meat on Fridays
We are big fans of meat at our home, and a great example of that is that at only 5 years old our oldest son's favorite food is steak!  We introduced our young children to fish and they now are calling Fridays "Fish Day"!  Although they are now really liking fish so eating fish by itself is not too much of a sacrifice, I do know that they acknowledge that it is something different on Fridays and gives us a time to talk about the sacrifice that Jesus gave to us by dying on the cross.

Fasting from Toys
We have a LOT of toys in our house!  As I am sure any parent with multiple children knows toys and things accumulate quickly.  At the beginning of this year I felt like by the end of the morning we were drowning in toys, that clean ups (although the children help) were becoming a big ordeal and there was a lot of fighting occurring.  A few weeks before Lent I went through and packed up 12 huge garbage bags of toys!  TWELEVE!  The craziest thing about it was that when cleaned up our house doesn't seem to be overtaken by toys (maybe that means I just really like organizing things!) 

Anyway, I put all of these bags in a locked storage room in our basement and left them for a few weeks.  Guess what, NO ONE NOTICED THEY WERE GONE!!  I had taken away 90% of toys that made any kind of noise, toys with little plastic pieces, baby toys, etc.  We left puzzles, books, art supplies, religious toys, dress up clothes, Legos, Wooden Toys, a few cars (we had over 80 matchbox cars!!), trains, sports equipment, musical toys, and games.  The boys started playing with toys that they have had but haven't touched in months, they started playing with old toys in different ways and they started playing better together!  It was like magic!

 

After a few weeks I went back through all of the bags that I stored away and made a few piles:

• Toys to Donate (this was most of them)
• Baby Toys or Toys to Rotate out to Keep (I sorted and labeled these into 2 plastic bins)
• Toys to bring back out (this was maybe only 3-5 toys that after a few weeks our kids were asking about by the end of the few weeks).

Also, people have asked if our children have toys in their rooms.  Our oldest two sons (ages 5 & 3) who share a room have a big wooden firehouse in their room with a few wooden people and a wooden fire truck, ambulance and police car.  We like that they can play with this quietly in their room.  Then they have lots of books!  We trust even our little kids with paper back books and they do well with them.  We teach from an early age how to respect books and read them together often so it is modeled to them.  Sometimes our children like to take a wooden train or matchbox car to bed as well and if they pick 2-3 of those we also allow those.  I feel like this helps distinguish their rooms as a place to sleep and also helps avoid any added clutter. 

Reflecting on Fasting with Children:
Overall we are realizing that it is good to find ways to FAST, to slow down, dial into personal time with our family and even to sacrifice with change of behaviors.  We have been using our Sacrifice beans to praise moments of sacrificing for each other and are finding many more opportunities to do so when we have our Quiet Fridays and Limit Toys.  Because that is what fasting is really about, right?  Sacrificing.  Sacrificing our "regular" meals, or our "regular" behaviors to unify our suffering and thoughts with Jesus.

What do you do with your children and family to Fast?  What goals and activities have you applied to your lives this Lent that might help you to make more of a lifestyle change as the liturgical year continues?  What can we do to help bring our children to understanding the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross?