According to the tradition of our Church, confession of children begins at the age of seven. This coincides with the transition from childhood to adolescence. The child reaches the first stage of spiritual maturity. Strengthens his moral will. Unlike an infant, he already has the inner strength to resist temptations.

The first confession is a special event in the life of children. It can for a long time determine not only the attitude to confession, but also the direction of his spiritual life. The child's parents had to prepare for it all previous years, living in the grace-filled experience of the Church. If they were able to instill piety in a child, they will be able to prepare the child for the first confession so that this day will be a holiday for him.

In a child, thinking is predominantly visual-figurative, and not conceptual. His idea of ​​God is gradually formed in the image of his relationship with his parents. Every day he hears a prayer: "Our Father ..." - "Our Father ...". The Lord Himself in the parable of prodigal son uses this comparison. Just as a father embraces a son who has returned to him, so God welcomes a repentant person with great joy. If relationships in a family are built on love, then it can be easy to explain to a son or daughter why you need to love your Heavenly Parent. For children, this is as natural as loving their parents. The child should talk about Divine love as often as possible. The thought of a loving God makes him feel guilty, remorseful, and willing not to repeat bad deeds. Of course, by the age of 7, children already know that there is a paradise, that there will be a judgment someday, but the motives for their behavior are not determined by this. It is absolutely unacceptable to frighten children and say that God will punish them. This can completely distort the child's ideas about God. He will have a painful feeling of fear in his soul. Later, such a person may lose faith.

Children's faith is not only simple and sincere, but also unusually bright and joyful. The children's soul experiences the holidays especially brightly: “You are leaving the church. Everything is different. Snow is holy. And the stars are holy, new, Christmas stars”; “It is dying in my eyes, and it seems to me: in flowers - alive, inexplicably joyful, holy ... - God? .. Indescribable in words” ( Shmelev Ivan. Summer of the Lord).

In preparation for confession, it is important to let the child feel that he is already old enough and can evaluate his own actions. The conversation should not resemble a lesson that he must remember. We must not restrict his freedom. He can sincerely repent only of what he recognizes as a wrong and bad deed. Then the desire and determination to improve is born. After confession, the child should feel a relief similar to what he experiences when parents with trust and love forgive their children's misdeeds.

Why are you crying ... lamenting? - asks. And my lips won't match.

The protodeacon is sitting at a table by the light box, holding a quill pen.

Come to me! .. - and threatened me with a pen. Then I became scared: there was a big book in front of him, and he was writing something on it - sins, perhaps, handwriting. I then remembered one sin, how I saw a goose feather: how in Filippovka the protodeacon and the father ate our goose paws, and I envied that they didn’t give me a paw. And I also remembered how he condemned the protodeacon that he eats soaked apples on the Holy Cross and his stomach is like that. Say? .. After all, they have everything written down. I decided to say, and it is not he who writes down sins, but who is fasting, - such is the order. He wrote me down in a book and buzzed at me from his stomach: “Are you sighing about sins, boy?.. Are you crying? Nothing, you will pray, God will give, you will be cleansed. And ran a feather across my eyes.

We are being pushed ahead. Gorkin has a sacred business - behind the light box, and everyone respects him very much. They whisper: “Come on in advance, Mikhal Pankratych, your business is ecclesiastical.” Zaitsev comes out from behind a screen, all red, and crosses himself.

A fireman goes there, crosses himself quickly, quickly, as if he is going to the terrible. I think: “He is not afraid of fires, but here he is afraid.” I see his huge boot under the screen. Then this boot crawls out from under the shutter, clear carnations are visible: it has probably fallen on its knees. And there is no boot: a fireman comes out to us, his brown face is joyful, pleasant. He falls to his knees, bangs his head on the floor, many times, soon, soon, as if in a hurry, and leaves. Then a beautiful young lady comes out from behind the shutter and wipes her eyes with a handkerchief - mourning sins?

Well, go with the Lord ... - Gorkin whispers and pushes a little, but my legs do not go, and again I forgot all my sins.

He leads me by the hand and whispers: “Go, dove, repent.” I can't see anything, my eyes are cloudy. He wipes my eyes with his finger, and I see behind the screens the lectern and Father Victor. He beckons me and whispers: “Well, dear, open yourself before the cross and the Gospel, as before the Lord, in which you have sinned ... Do not be afraid, do not hide ...” I cry, I don’t know what to say. He leans over and whispers: “Well, I didn’t listen to my daddy-mommy ...” But I only remember about the paw.

Well, what else ... didn’t obey ... you have to obey ... What, what paw? ..

I barely whisper through my tears:

Goose foot ... goose ... blue foot ... envious ... He begins to interrogate what kind of paw, kindly asks so, and I open everything to him.

He strokes my head and sighs:

So, the wise guy ... did not hide ... and the soul is easier. Well, what else? ..

It’s easy for me, and I talk about everything: about the shovel, and about the testicle, and even how I condemned the father of the protodeacon, about pickled apples and his stomach. Batiushka reads me an instruction that it is a great sin to envy and condemn, especially the elders.

Look at you, how observant... - and praises for "zeal" about the soul.

But I don't understand what "flying" means. Covers me with stole and baptizes my head. And I joyfully hear: "... I forgive and allow."

I come out from behind the screen, everyone is looking at me - I have been for a very long time. Maybe they think what a great sinner I am. And at heart it is so easy, easy ”( Shmelev Ivan. Summer of the Lord).

Children at the age of 7 are often shy. Knowing this, parents should start conversations about confession long before this event. Then the child will gradually get used to it and will wait with some excitement, but without timidity. Each time you need to talk to him about this very calmly, emphasizing that he is already big and already knows how to do a lot on his own.

The first participation of a child in the sacrament of repentance is not a general confession of an adult burdened with many sins over decades. At the age of 7, children make only the first experiments, they go through the first lessons at the school of repentance, in which they will study all their lives. Therefore, it is not so much the completeness of confession that is important, but the correct disposition of the child. Parents should help the child to recognize as a sin, first of all, that which may be dangerous for him. spiritual development, which can take root and gain skill power. “Do not leave children without attention regarding the eradication from their hearts of the weeds of sins, bad, crafty and blasphemous thoughts, sinful habits, inclinations and passions; the enemy and sinful flesh do not spare even children, the seeds of all sins are also in children; present to children all the dangers of sins on the path of life, do not hide sins from them, so that, through ignorance and lack of understanding, they do not become established in sinful habits and addictions, which grow and bear corresponding fruits when children come of age "( John of Kronstadt righteous saint. My life in Christ. M., 2002. S. 216). Such tares are: deceit, lies, conceit, boastfulness, selfishness, disrespect for elders, envy, greed, laziness. In overcoming bad sinful habits, parents should show wisdom, patience and perseverance. They should not suggest sins and not point directly to the bad habits that have formed in the soul of the child, but be able to convincingly show their harm. Only such repentance, which is performed with the participation of conscience, bears fruit. “Conscience, by inner suggestion, teaches everything that must be done” ( John Chrysostom, saint. Five words about Anna). Parents should look for the reasons for the appearance of sinful habits in the soul of a child. Most often, they themselves infect with their passions. As long as they themselves have not overcome them in themselves, the correction will not give noticeable results.

When preparing children for confession, it is important not only to help the child see sins, but also to encourage him to acquire those virtues, without which it is impossible to have a full-blooded spiritual life. Such virtues are: attention to one's inner state, obedience, the skill of prayer. Children can perceive God as their Heavenly Parent. Therefore, it is easy for them to explain that prayer is a living communion with Him. Just as communication with a father and mother is a need for a child, so is a prayerful appeal to God.

After confession, parents should not ask the child about it, but show the fullness of affection and warmth, so that the joy of this great event is imprinted as deeply as possible in the child's soul.

Children's confession begins at the age of seven. It is from the age of adolescence (seven years) that the child must receive communion, having previously confessed. A small Christian (of course, if he wants to) can start the sacrament of confession earlier (for example, at the age of 6).

Highly significant event in the life of a family - the first confession of a child. Therefore, it is necessary to find time and prepare at least a little bit of the child for confession. Parents who go regularly to the temple should ask the priest for a special time for the first conversation with the child.

The work of preparing for confession, even if the child does not yet confess, should be carried out by parents constantly, these are conversations about the child’s bad deeds, about conscience, about how the child should be able to ask for forgiveness in some cases. Parents should instill the skills of confession so that the child feels the moral connection between himself and the event. A child is an event, a child is some kind of sin - all this should be quite obvious in the head of a 7-8-year-old child, as well as the concept of conscience, the concept of sin.

The child must be properly prepared for the first confession. It is necessary to talk calmly and confidentially with the child, to explain to him what sin is, for which we ask God for forgiveness and what is breaking the commandments. It would be useful to say that by committing a sin, a person harms himself first of all: the bad things that we do to people will return to us. The child may be afraid of confession. It must be dispelled by saying that the priest took an oath, a promise, never to tell anyone what he heard in confession, and there is no need to be afraid of him, because we confess to God Himself, and the priest only helps us in this. It is very important to say that, having named sins in confession, you need to make every effort not to repeat them again. It is very good when parents and children confess to the same confessor.

Some mothers and fathers make a big mistake by naming the child his sins themselves or writing them for him on a piece of paper. Parents can only softly and delicately talk about sins, but not confess for him. And it is completely unacceptable after the confession to ask the priest about the content of the child's confession.

There is another serious mistake - parents read a piece of paper where the child writes his sins or stand and listen to what the child confesses to the priest. This cannot be done.

Of course, here it is worth warning parents not to frighten the child with God. Often there is such a mistake from parental helplessness, from unwillingness to work hard. Therefore, to frighten a child: “God will punish you, you will receive from God for this,” is not a method. God is not to be feared in any way. I read in Jean Paul Sartre that he was frightened of God as a child. He kept thinking that whatever he did, he was always under the gaze of an unkind God.

But the question is that the gaze of God is a conscience that constantly tells you that God tells you, God guides you, God loves you, God leads you, God wants your change, your repentance. It is worth explaining to a child that God uses everything that happens to a person not to punish a person, but to save a person, to bring a person to the Light, so that a person from this moment on can change for the better.

All these important things should be laid down from childhood at least a little by the parents, and then, if the priest is attentive, he will find an opportunity to talk with the child and draw his special attention to some simple things. It is not worth demanding from a child that he begin serious spiritual work in himself. It is enough that the child will be sincere in confession and will honestly recall his own misdeeds, without hiding or hiding behind them. And the priest should receive the child warmly and lovingly and tell him how to pray, who should be asked for forgiveness, what should be paid attention to. This is the way the child grows up and learns to perceive these things.

A child's confession should not be as detailed as that of an adult, although the detail of an adult's confession is also under a big, big question, because such an exhaustive detail often hides some kind of distrust of God. And then God does not know, and then God does not see!

The desire, instead of a sincere confession, to submit a list with sins recorded in detail according to the scheme, is reminiscent of how a completed receipt is submitted to the laundry - dirty linen is handed over, clean linen is received. In no case should this be the case with a child! He should not have papers, even if he writes them with his own hand, and even more so in no case by the hand of the parent. It is enough that the child says one or two events from his life in order to come to God with them.

about. Pavel Gumerov

The Bogoslov.Ru portal continues to publish materials on the topic of children's participation in the Sacraments of the Church. An article by a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and rector of the Church of St. Martyr Tatiana at Moscow State University, Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, touches upon the delicate issue of children's confession.

1. From what age should a child go to confession?

In my opinion, a rather important problematic moment in today's life of the Church is the practice of children's confession. The norm that children should confess before Communion from the age of seven has been established since the synodal era. As Father Vladimir Vorobyov wrote in his book on the sacrament of Repentance, for many and many children today, physiological maturation is so much ahead of spiritual and psychological that most of today's children are not ready to confess at the age of seven. Isn't it time to say that this age is set by the confessor and the parent absolutely individually in relation to the child? At the age of seven, and some even a little earlier, they see the difference between good and bad deeds, but it is too early to say that this is a conscious repentance. Only the chosen, subtle, delicate natures are capable of such early age experience it. There are amazing kids who at the age of five or six have a responsible moral consciousness, but most often these are other things. Or parents' motivations related to the desire to have an additional educational tool in confession (it often happens that when Small child behaves badly, a naive and kind mother asks the priest to confess him, thinking that if he repents, he will obey). Or some kind of ape in relation to adults on the part of the child himself - they like it: they stand, they come up, the priest says something to them. Nothing good comes from this. For the majority, moral consciousness wakes up much later. I don't see anything catastrophic in this. Let them come at nine, ten years old, when they have a greater degree of adulthood and responsibility for their lives. Actually than earlier child confesses, the worse for him - apparently, it is not in vain that children are not charged with sins until they are seven years old. With just enough more late age they perceive confession as a confession, and not as a list of what mom or dad said and wrote down on paper. And this formalization of confession that occurs in a child is a rather dangerous thing in the modern practice of our church life.

2. How often should a child be confessed?

Partly on my own mistakes, partly on the advice of more experienced priests, I came to the conclusion that children should be confessed as rarely as possible. Not as often as possible, but as rarely as possible. The worst thing that can be done is to introduce a weekly confession for children. For them, it leads most of all to formalization. So they went and simply took communion every Sunday, or at least often, which is also a question of whether it is right for a child, and then - from the age of seven - they are also taken almost every Sunday under permissive prayer. Children very quickly learn to say the right thing to the priest - what the priest expects. He did not obey his mother, was rude at school, stole an eraser. This list is easily restored. And they don't even meet with what confession is like repentance. And it happens that whole years come to confession with the same words: I do not obey, I am rude, I am lazy, I forget to read prayers - this is a short set of common childhood sins. The priest, seeing that besides this child there are many other people standing next to him, absolves him of his sins this time as well. But after a few years, such a “churched” child will not understand at all what repentance is. It is not difficult for him to say that he did this and that badly, to “mumble something” from a piece of paper or from memory, for which they will either pat him on the head or say: “Kolya, don’t steal pens ”, and then: “You don’t have to get used to (yes, then get used to) cigarettes, watch these magazines,” and then on the rise. And then Kolya will say; "I don't want to listen to you." Masha can also say, but girls usually mature faster, they have time to gain personal spiritual experience before they can come to such a decision.

When a child is brought to the clinic for the first time and forced to undress in front of the doctor, he, of course, is embarrassed, it is unpleasant for him, but if they put him in the hospital and will lift his shirt every day before the injection, he will begin to do this completely automatically without any emotions. In the same way, confession may no longer cause any feelings in him. Therefore, you can bless them for Communion quite often, but children need to confess as rarely as possible. Indeed, for many practical reasons, we cannot spread Communion and the Sacrament of Repentance to adults for a long time, but we could probably apply this norm to children and say that a responsible serious confession of a lad or maiden can be carried out with a fairly large frequency, and in other time to give them the blessing of communion. I think it would be good, after consulting with a confessor, to confess such a small sinner for the first time at seven years old, the second time at eight, the third time at nine years old, somewhat postponing the beginning of frequent, regular confession, so that in no case does it become a habit. Indeed, for many practical reasons, we cannot spread Communion and the Sacrament of Repentance to adults for a long time, but we could probably apply this norm to children and say that a responsible serious confession of a lad or maiden can be carried out with a fairly large frequency, and the rest - to give them blessing on communion, to introduce this not into the initiative of the priest, but into the canonical norm.

3. How often should small children receive communion?

It is good to receive Communion often, because we believe that the reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ is taught to us for the health of soul and body. And the baby is sanctified as having no sins, by his bodily nature uniting with the Lord in the Sacrament of Communion. But when the children begin to grow up and when they already know that this is the Blood and Body of Christ and that this is a Holy thing, it is very important not to turn Communion into a weekly procedure, when they frolic in front of the Chalice and approach it, not really thinking about what they make. And if you see that your child was capricious before the service, brought you when the priest's sermon dragged on a little, fought with one of his peers standing right there in the service, do not allow him to the Chalice. Let him understand that it is not possible to approach Communion in every state. He will only treat him more reverently. And it’s better to let him take communion a little less often than you would like, but understand why he comes to church. It is very important that parents do not begin to treat the communion of the child as some kind of magic, shifting to God what we ourselves must do. However, the Lord expects from us what we can and must do ourselves, including in relation to our children. And only where our strength is not, there the grace of God fills. As they say in another church sacrament - "the weak heals, the impoverished replenishes." But what can you do, do it yourself.

4. Parental involvement in preparation for confession

5. How to teach a child to confess correctly

Rather, it is necessary to encourage your children not to how to confess, but to the very necessity of confession. Through your own example, through the ability to openly confess your sins to your loved ones, to your child, if you are guilty before him. Through our attitude to Confession, because when we go to take communion and realize our non-peacefulness or the insults that we have caused to others, we must first of all reconcile with everyone. And all this taken together cannot but educate children in a reverent attitude towards this Sacrament.

And the main teacher of how a child should repent should be the performer of this Sacrament - the priest. After all, repentance is not only a kind of inner state, but also a sacrament of the Church. It is no coincidence that confession is called the Sacrament of Repentance. Depending on the measure of the child's spiritual maturation, he must be brought to the first confession. The task of parents is to explain what confession is and why it is needed. They must explain to the child that confession has nothing to do with his report to them or to the headmaster. This is that and only that which we ourselves are aware of as bad and unkind in us, as bad and dirty and what we are very unhappy about, which is difficult to say and what needs to be said to God. And then this area of ​​teaching should be transferred into the hands of an attentive, worthy, loving confessor, for he was given grace-filled help in the Sacrament of the Priesthood to talk with a person, including a small one, about his sins. And it is more natural for him to talk to him about repentance than to his parents, for this is exactly the case when it is impossible and unprofitable to appeal to his own examples or to the examples of people known to him. Telling your child how you yourself repented for the first time - there is some kind of falsehood and false edification in this. After all, we did not repent in order to tell anyone about this. It would be no less false to tell him about how our loved ones, through repentance, departed from certain sins, because this would mean at least indirectly judging and evaluating those sins in which they were. Therefore, it is most reasonable to hand the child into the hands of someone who has been appointed by God as a teacher of the Sacrament of Confession.

6. Can a child choose which priest to confess to?

If the heart of a small person feels that he wants to confess to this particular priest, who, perhaps, is younger, more affectionate than the one to whom you yourself go, or, perhaps, attracted him with his sermon, trust your child, let him go there, where no one and nothing will prevent him from repenting of his sins before God. And even if he does not immediately decide on his choice, even if his first decision turns out to be not the most reliable and he soon realizes that he does not want to go to Father John, but wants to go to Father Peter, let him choose and settle in this. Acquisition of spiritual fatherhood is a very delicate process, internally intimate, and there is no need to intrude into it. So you can help your child more.

And if, as a result of his inner spiritual search, the child says that his heart is attached to another parish, where his friend Tanya goes, and what he likes there better - and how they sing, and how the priest talks, and how people treat each other, then the wise Christian parents, of course, will rejoice at this step of their child and will not think with fear or distrust: did he go to the service, and, in fact, why is he not where we are? We need to entrust our children to God, then He Himself will save them.

In general, it seems to me that sometimes it is important and useful for parents themselves to send their children, starting at a certain age, to another parish so that they are not with us, not in front of our eyes, so that this typical parental temptation does not arise - with peripheral vision to check how our child is doing, is he praying, is he not chatting, why was he not allowed to take Communion, for what kind of sins? Maybe we will understand this, indirectly, by talking with the priest? It is almost impossible to get rid of such sensations if your child is next to you in the temple. When children are small, then parental inspection is reasonably understandable and necessary, but when they become youths, then it may be better to courageously cut off this kind of intimacy with them, moving away from their life, to belittle yourself in order to have more of Christ, but less than you.

7. How to instill in children a reverent attitude towards Communion and worship services

First of all, parents themselves need to love the Church, church life, and love every person in it, including the little one. And the one who loves the Church will be able to pass this on to his child. This is the main thing, and everything else is just specific techniques.

I recall the story of Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, who as a child was taken to Communion only a few times a year, but he remembers each time, and when it was, and what a spiritual experience it was. Then, in Stalin's time, it was often impossible to go to church. Since if even your comrades saw you, then this could threaten not only the loss of education, but also a prison. And Father Vladimir remembers each of his visits to the church, which was a great event for him. There could be no question of being naughty in the service, talking, chatting with peers. It was necessary to come to the liturgy, pray, partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ and live in anticipation of the next such meeting. It seems that we should also understand Communion, including small children who have entered the time of relative consciousness, not only as a medicine for the health of the soul and body, but as something immeasurably more important. Even a child should perceive it first of all as a union with Christ.

The main thing to think about is that attendance at the service and communion become for the child not what we force him to, but what he must deserve. We must try to restructure our intra-family attitude to worship in such a way that we do not drag our youth to take communion, and he himself, after passing a certain path, preparing him for the reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, would receive the right to come to the liturgy and commune. And maybe it's better to Sunday morning we would not disturb our child, who was having fun on Saturday evening: “Get up, we are late for the liturgy!”, and he would wake up without us and see that the house is empty. And he ended up without parents, and without a church, and without the feast of God. Even though he had only come to the service for half an hour before, to the actual communion, he still cannot help but feel some discrepancy between lying in bed on Sunday and what every Orthodox Christian should do at this time. When you yourself return from the church, do not reproach your child with words. Perhaps your inner grief over his absence from the liturgy will even more effectively resonate in him than ten parental proddings “well, go,” “well, get ready,” “well, read the prayers.”

Therefore, the parents of their child, already at his conscious age, should never encourage him to confession or communion. And if they can restrain themselves in this, then the grace of God will surely touch his soul and help him not to get lost in the sacraments of the Church.

These are just some of the points related to the modern practice of child confession, which I have presented simply as an invitation for us to continue discussing this, and probably in a very weak discussion form. But I would like people who are to a large extent more spiritually experienced and have had spiritual practice for decades to comment on this.

An article by a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and rector of the Church of St. Martyr Tatiana at Moscow State University, Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, touches upon the delicate issue of children's confession.

1. From what age should a child go to confession?

In my opinion, a rather important problematic moment in today's life of the Church is the practice of children's confession. The norm that children should confess before Communion from the age of seven has been established since the synodal era. As Father Vladimir Vorobyov wrote in his book on the sacrament of Repentance, for many and many children today, physiological maturation is so much ahead of spiritual and psychological that most of today's children are not ready to confess at the age of seven. Isn't it time to say that this age is set by the confessor and the parent absolutely individually in relation to the child? At the age of seven, and some even a little earlier, they see the difference between good and bad deeds, but it is too early to say that this is a conscious repentance. Only the chosen, subtle, delicate natures are able to experience this at such an early age. There are amazing kids who at the age of five or six have a responsible moral consciousness, but most often these are other things. Or parents' motivations related to the desire to have an additional educational tool in confession (it often happens that when a small child misbehaves, a naive and kind mother asks the priest to confess him, thinking that if he repents, he will obey). Or some kind of ape in relation to adults on the part of the child himself - they like it: they stand, they come up, the priest says something to them. Nothing good comes from this. For the majority, moral consciousness wakes up much later. I don't see anything catastrophic in this. Let them come at nine, ten years old, when they have a greater degree of adulthood and responsibility for their lives. In fact, the earlier a child confesses, the worse it is for him - apparently, it is not in vain that children are not charged with sins until they are seven years old. Only from a rather later age do they perceive confession as a confession, and not as a list of what was said by mom or dad and written down on paper. And this formalization of confession that occurs in a child is a rather dangerous thing in the modern practice of our church life.

2. How often should a child be confessed?

Partly on my own mistakes, partly on the advice of more experienced priests, I came to the conclusion that children should be confessed as rarely as possible. Not as often as possible, but as rarely as possible. The worst thing that can be done is to introduce a weekly confession for children. For them, it leads most of all to formalization. So they went and simply took communion every Sunday, or at least often, which is also a question of whether it’s right for a child, and then - from the age of seven - they are also taken almost every Sunday for permissive prayer. Children very quickly learn to say the right thing to the priest - what the priest expects. He did not obey his mother, was rude at school, stole an eraser. This list is easily restored. And they don't even meet with what confession is like repentance. And it happens that whole years come to confession with the same words: I do not obey, I am rude, I am lazy, I forget to read prayers - this is a short set of common childhood sins. The priest, seeing that besides this child there are many other people standing next to him, absolves him of his sins this time as well. But after a few years, such a “churched” child will not understand at all what repentance is. It is not difficult for him to say that he did this and that badly, to “mumble something” from a piece of paper or from memory, for which they will either pat him on the head or say: “Kolya, don’t steal pens ”, and then: “You don’t have to get used to (yes, then get used to) cigarettes, watch these magazines,” and then on the rise. And then Kolya will say; "I don't want to listen to you." Masha can also say, but girls usually mature faster, they have time to gain personal spiritual experience before they can come to such a decision.

When a child is brought to the clinic for the first time and forced to undress in front of the doctor, he, of course, is embarrassed, it is unpleasant for him, but if they put him in the hospital and will lift his shirt every day before the injection, he will begin to do this completely automatically without any emotions. In the same way, confession may no longer cause any feelings in him. Therefore, you can bless them for Communion quite often, but children need to confess as rarely as possible. Indeed, for many practical reasons, we cannot spread Communion and the Sacrament of Repentance to adults for a long time, but we could probably apply this norm to children and say that a responsible serious confession of a lad or maiden can be carried out with a fairly large frequency, and in other time to give them the blessing of the sacrament. I think it would be good, after consulting with a confessor, to confess such a small sinner for the first time at the age of seven, the second time at eight, the third time at nine, somewhat postponing the beginning of frequent, regular confession, so that in no case does it become a habit. Indeed, for many practical reasons, we cannot spread Communion and the sacrament of Repentance to adults for a long time, but we could probably apply this norm to children and say that a responsible serious confession of a lad or maiden can be carried out with a sufficiently large frequency, and the rest - to give them blessing on communion, to introduce this not into the initiative of the priest, but into the canonical norm.

3. How often should small children receive communion?

It is good to receive Communion often, because we believe that the reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ is taught to us for the health of soul and body. And the baby is sanctified as having no sins, by his bodily nature uniting with the Lord in the Sacrament of Communion. But when the children begin to grow up and when they already know that this is the Blood and Body of Christ and that this is a Holy thing, it is very important not to turn Communion into a weekly procedure, when they frolic in front of the Chalice and approach it, not really thinking about what they make. And if you see that your child was capricious before the service, brought you when the priest's sermon dragged on a little, fought with one of his peers standing right there in the service, do not allow him to the Chalice. Let him understand that it is not possible to approach Communion in every state. He will only treat him more reverently. And it’s better to let him take communion a little less often than you would like, but understand why he comes to church. It is very important that parents do not begin to treat the communion of the child as some kind of magic, shifting to God what we ourselves must do. However, the Lord expects from us what we can and must do ourselves, including in relation to our children. And only where our strength is not, there the grace of God fills. As they say in another church sacrament - "the weak heals, the impoverished replenishes." But what can you do, do it yourself.

4. Parental involvement in preparation for confession

5. How to teach a child to confess correctly

Rather, it is necessary to encourage your children not to how to confess, but to the very necessity of confession. Through your own example, through the ability to openly confess your sins to your loved ones, to your child, if you are guilty before him. Through our attitude to Confession, because when we go to take communion and realize our non-peacefulness or the insults that we have caused to others, we must first of all reconcile with everyone. And all this taken together cannot but educate children in a reverent attitude towards this Sacrament.

And the main teacher of how a child should repent should be the performer of this Sacrament - the priest. After all, repentance is not only a kind of inner state, but also a sacrament of the Church. It is no coincidence that confession is called the Sacrament of Repentance. Depending on the measure of the child's spiritual maturation, he must be brought to the first confession. The task of parents is to explain what confession is and why it is needed. They must explain to the child that confession has nothing to do with his report to them or to the headmaster. This is that and only that which we ourselves are aware of as bad and unkind in us, as bad and dirty and what we are very unhappy about, which is difficult to say, and which needs to be said to God. And then this area of ​​teaching should be transferred into the hands of an attentive, worthy, loving confessor, for he was given grace-filled help in the Sacrament of the Priesthood to talk with a person, including a small one, about his sins. And it is more natural for him to talk to him about repentance than to his parents, for this is exactly the case when it is impossible and unprofitable to appeal to his own examples or to the examples of people known to him. Telling your child how you yourself repented for the first time - there is some kind of falsehood and false edification in this. After all, we did not repent in order to tell anyone about this. It would be no less false to tell him about how our loved ones, through repentance, departed from certain sins, because this would mean at least indirectly judging and evaluating those sins in which they were. Therefore, it is most reasonable to hand the child into the hands of someone who has been appointed by God as a teacher of the Sacrament of Confession.

6. Can a child choose which priest to confess to?

If the heart of a small person feels that he wants to confess to this particular priest, who, perhaps, is younger, more affectionate than the one to whom you yourself go, or, perhaps, attracted him with his sermon, trust your child, let him go there, where no one and nothing will prevent him from repenting of his sins before God. And even if he does not immediately decide on his choice, even if his first decision turns out to be not the most reliable, and he soon realizes that he does not want to go to Father John, but wants to go to Father Peter, let him choose and settle in this. Acquiring spiritual fatherhood is a very delicate process, internally intimate, and there is no need to intrude into it. So you can help your child more.

And if, as a result of his inner spiritual search, the child says that his heart is attached to another parish, where his friend Tanya goes, and what he likes there better - and how they sing, and how the priest speaks, and how people treat each other, then the wise Christian parents, of course, will rejoice at this step of their child and will not think with fear or distrust: did he go to the service, and, in fact, why is he not where we are? We need to entrust our children to God, then He Himself will save them.

In general, it seems to me that sometimes it is important and useful for parents themselves to send their children, starting at a certain age, to another parish so that they are not with us, not in front of our eyes, so that this typical parental temptation does not arise - with peripheral vision to check how our child is doing, is he praying, is he not chatting, why was he not allowed to take Communion, for what kind of sins? Maybe we will understand this, indirectly, by talking with the priest? It is almost impossible to get rid of such sensations if your child is next to you in the temple. When children are small, then parental inspection is reasonably understandable and necessary, but when they become youths, then it may be better to courageously cut off this kind of intimacy with them, moving away from their life, to belittle yourself in order to have more of Christ, but less than you.

7. How to instill in children a reverent attitude towards Communion and worship services

First of all, parents themselves need to love the Church, church life, and love every person in it, including the little one. And the one who loves the Church will be able to pass this on to his child. This is the main thing, and everything else is just specific methods.

I recall the story of Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, who as a child was taken to Communion only a few times a year, but he remembers each time, and when it was, and what a spiritual experience it was. Then, in Stalin's time, it was often impossible to go to church. Since if even your comrades saw you, then this could threaten not only the loss of education, but also a prison. And Father Vladimir remembers each of his visits to the church, which was a great event for him. There could be no question of being naughty in the service, talking, chatting with peers. It was necessary to come to the liturgy, pray, partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ and live in anticipation of the next such meeting. It seems that we should also understand Communion, including small children who have entered the time of relative consciousness, not only as a medicine for the health of the soul and body, but as something immeasurably more important. Even a child should perceive it first of all as a union with Christ.

The main thing to think about is that attendance at the service and communion become for the child not what we force him to, but what he must deserve. We must try to restructure our intra-family attitude to worship in such a way that we do not drag our youth to take communion, and he himself, after passing a certain path, preparing him for the reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, would receive the right to come to the liturgy and commune. And, perhaps, it would be better that on Sunday morning we would not disturb our child, who was having fun on Saturday evening: “Get up, we are late for the liturgy!”, And he would wake up without us and see that the house is empty. And he ended up without parents, and without a church, and without the feast of God. Even though he had only come to the service for half an hour before, to the actual communion, he still cannot help but feel some discrepancy between lying in bed on Sunday and what every Orthodox Christian should do at this time. When you yourself return from the church, do not reproach your child with words. Perhaps your inner grief over his absence from the liturgy will even more effectively resonate in him than ten parental proddings “well, go,” “well, get ready,” “well, read the prayers.”

Therefore, the parents of their child, already at his conscious age, should never encourage him to confession or communion. And if they can restrain themselves in this, then the grace of God will surely touch his soul and help him not to get lost in the sacraments of the Church.

These are just some of the points related to the modern practice of child confession, which I have presented simply as an invitation for us to continue discussing this, and probably in a very weak discussion form. But I would like people who are to a large extent more spiritually experienced and have had spiritual practice for decades to comment on this.

Features of children's confession

I'll start with a case that happened at confession with a girl of seven or eight years old. She went to confession and, like many children, fell silent. “What are your sins, Mashenka (name changed)?” I asked her. Looking honestly at my face, she answered without a shadow of a doubt: “But I don’t have them.” “Well, maybe there are at least some, Marusya?” I asked. “No,” came the more confident answer than the first time. “Well, at least, Marusenka, do you repent?” “No, I don’t repent,” the girl calmly answered me.

What a joy it is to hear, see, feel the pure, true from the depths of the heart confession of this little man. "Why?" - you ask. Yes, because she told the real truth. She has no sins either in her right pocket, or in her left, or even on the table, and she does not repent of them, because there is nothing. And she does not even understand what it is “must repent”, what is “sin”.

"And what is it?" she then asked about sin. With the permission of the mother and the girl herself, and bearing in mind that someone may be interested in this case, I decided to write about it in this article. The true soul of Mashenka. The little girl said something that many, many adults (including myself, of course, in the first place) do not say because of their pseudo-shyness, forgetfulness, or even ignorance of sins.

Another example. A ten-year-old boy comes to confession, pulls out a neatly folded note from his pocket and begins to read his sins: “Pride, vanity, no love for God… I don’t sit still, I watch TV from morning till night…” Do you feel who is behind this confession? Of course, mom. This mother wrote for her son his sins. By the way, if you look around, you can see the mother herself. She stands nearby, behind his back and enjoys how the child accurately and well proofreads the sins written by her. Of course, the handwriting is childish, but everything is written from her words. After the child finished reading, I asked him for a note and, tearing it up, said: “Your mother wrote all this.” “No, father, I wrote it myself,” the child objected to me. “Of course, you wrote it yourself, but your mother dictated to you.” “Yes, it is true,” he replied. “Now tell me, Sasha (name changed), did you have any bad things? (He understands the meaning of the word “bad”.) What does your little heart tell you? Say what you can say, and if you are shy, say so: “I am embarrassed to say words, but I regret what I did.” And the boy began to list very simple sins: dropped, broke. Pride, vanity, and lack of love for God all at once disappeared somewhere. The boy repented that he did not help his mother, snapped back ... That is why I would like to appeal to the parents of young children: “Dear daddies and mommies, when you are trying to help a child prepare for confession, do not forget that he is simply due to the age of many does not understand".

And after reading a permissive prayer over the child, his mother came up to me and began to complain about her son: “You know, father, he confesses to me every month and still continues to sin. That's what a bad son I have. He cannot refuse one or the other... And he takes communion, and confesses, and still continues to sin. How many times have I told him to get better, but he didn’t.” She also told me that her son confesses insincerely. As if she had a device for measuring the sincerity of confession.

But the peculiarity of a child's confession (if the confession is really childish, and not maternal) lies precisely in the fact that it is direct, sincere and truthful, and if we support this, then the child, confessing, will change. If the truth and spontaneity with which the children speak remain in their souls, then they will correct themselves, but if they repeat, like parrots, what others tell them, the correction will be delayed.

Children are often silent in confession. The priest asks: “Well, do you at least repent?” "I don't know," the child replies. But, I think, even a silent child can be put on an epitrachelion and forgive his sins. And their silence is considered repentance.

It is very important to give the child a sense of freedom. You are free and therefore have the right to choose for yourself whether to do evil or good, and you have the right to confess as you see fit. If the feeling of freedom is suppressed in childhood by instilling in the child what and how he should say in confession, then he will become not better, but more cunning. This in itself is violence against the human spirit. When a mother or a priest, because of pseudo-love, forces children to say “as it should” in confession, not taking into account their age-related psychological and psychiatric characteristics, then at first the child does what is required of him, but then, as a rule, leaves the temple, because that it is not his will.

In my practice, there were a lot of examples of how, growing up, the child moved away from the church, and the mother was surprised: “From the very beginning, we early childhood we went to monasteries, springs, prayed, and now the child doesn’t even want to hear about the temple.” And why? Because joy was not brought into church life through my mother. The feeling of freedom, especially necessary for a boy, was not introduced. The main canons of the Orthodox Church - love and freedom - were violated. I would even put freedom in the first place today. That is why the child departs from faith, because the spirit is killed by the letter. Then, perhaps, he will return to the Church with the prayers of his mother, his own suffering, temptations. But we must already now work to ensure that the child's soul is filled with the joy of visiting churches, services, to form in the child a sense of freedom and love.

And now the most important thing. Confession is a mystery and secret, my dear parents, this one is great(Eph. 5:32). At confession, the confessor, the priest, and the Lord are present. What exactly the Lord puts into the soul of the confessor, into the heart of the priest, is unknown to anyone. Only one God. Whether the confession went well or badly, whether the confessor repented correctly or incorrectly, no one has the right to judge, because this is a Sacrament, and how it happened and whether it happened, no one knows: neither the priest, nor the one who confesses, but only God. And if we approach the confession of a person, especially a child, remembering that this is a mystery, then we also know that the Sacrament cannot be approached with human standards.

We can prepare a child for confession, tell him what is bad, what is good, what torments the conscience, what does not torment the conscience, why the heart hurts, what does not hurt, but we have no right to teach a child how to repent. Why? Yes, because our own confession is weak. If we had great faith and a strong confession, we could move mountains and not sin after repentance. But we are weak, and it is rather our weakness that speaks to the child about repentance, and therefore we are often like those who, not being a bricklayer, undertake to build a house, not being a sailor, are trying to swim across the raging ocean.

Everything begins with a simple and reverent attitude towards the child: it is a creation of God, and it is necessary to approach it for edification in peace. Answering the child's question: "Why do we confess?" - you can say: "To be closer to God, so that the Lord can help us." Confession is fellowship with God and one should talk about God with a child simply, sincerely, with love and without a sense of superiority.