The problem with cry rooms

Many Sundays I have tried to take my crying baby to my parish cry room only to find it to be, ironically, unwelcoming to a crying baby. It’s a struggle to find an open chair, one time I even resorted to nursing my baby in the bathroom. The room is always full of families who camp out there weekly, claiming it as their regular Sunday mass spot, equipped with toys, coloring books, and full lunch boxes of snacks. The children in the room talk, yell, and run around while their parents mostly ignore their behavior. No one is actually crying in the cry room… except for my baby, who received a surprising number of disapproving looks. The times we’ve taken our toddler into the cry room, instead of being a place to calm him down so we can go back to our pew in the sanctuary, he just wants to join in the circus of playing children. “What is this room for again?” It seems more like a “talk and play” room rather than a cry room. 

Going to mass with young children is difficult. They are going to make noise and occasionally need to be taken out to avoid being too much of a disruption. There can be a lot of judgment and shame upon families of young children. I imagine this is why so many families at my parish have resigned themselves to the cry room from the start, never even trying to join the full congregation, not bothering to help their kids learn how to properly behave at mass. However, this creates a culture in the congregation that is less tolerant of hearing children, while also creating a cry room culture that is unhelpful to calming children.

The goal as a family and as a congregation should be to welcome children to the mass and to help them learn to participate properly. This looks different for different ages. For my toddler, it means he’s learning to stay in the pew and play quietly, while occasionally noticing and pointing out elements of the mass. He currently loves the thurible and the communion bells, and has even started imitating us when we kneel to pray. For my baby, we simply want him to be there and not cry! For the times that they’re unable to do that, we need a place to take them to calm down and get back to mass-appropriate behavior.

The solution to this problem is to shift the culture at the parish by both changing the messaging about children and changing the environment of the cry room.

Change the message:

• Have pulpit announcements sharing with the congregation the vision to be a family-friendly parish and asking people to please be patient with the noises that our youngest parishioners make. 
• Add messaging to the bulletin reiterating that we are a family-friendly parish and that families with children are welcome to be in the main sanctuary for mass. Further, explain the purpose of the cry room as a place for families to go when they need a moment. 
• Adding some signage on the doors and inside the room to explain its purpose as a temporary calming space and inviting families to rejoin the congregation when they are ready.
• Even simply changing the room’s name from the “cry room” to “crying and nursing room” would make it more clear that this is a space for children who are actively crying or nursing/feeding, not a place to camp out for the whole mass. 

Change the environment:

• Removing all of the chairs in the cry room would send the message that this is not a place to pick a seat and stay for the entirety of the mass, but rather a place to come temporarily to calm your children. 
• Leaving a few comfortable, backward-facing chairs for nursing moms would be helpful. It can be difficult to nurse an infant under a cover if the baby is particularly young, fussy, or hot. Having the chairs backward-facing provides privacy for mothers and sends the message that these are not normal mass chairs. An alternative to this could be setting up the confessionals for nursing moms to use during mass (I tried this once on my own, but there wasn’t a chair and it was pitch black with no light switch to be found!)
• Dimming the lights would create a calming environment to help crying children calm down, and it also sends the message that this is not a place to stay for the whole mass. 
• Adding a sound machine would be a nice touch, as it both helps children calm down and provides a sound buffer so the congregation doesn’t hear the crying as much.
• Making sure there’s a changing table in the cry room is great too so parents don’t have to walk back through the sanctuary with a screaming baby to change them. 

The hope is to create parishes that both welcome children and help facilitate their integration into the Church. If we send the message that kids are not welcome until they can be perfectly behaved then we are missing out on some precious formative years in which we could be passing on the faith. Just as we adults are not expected to be sinless before coming to the Lord, our children do not have to be perfect to be invited to the table with Jesus. 

"Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." -Jesus (Mt 19:14)