Dear Kid Whisperer,

I am a member of a very large church. I love it aside from one thing: It is very common for children to be on tablets throughout the service. There are so many children doing this! It really takes away from my enjoyment of the service, especially since these children could be upstairs taking Sunday school classes. What should I do about this? Can I do anything about this?

Answer: For the sake of this column, I’m going to assume that by “tablets,” you mean the ones made and popularized by Apple and Microsoft, not the ones presented to the world by Moses. If they were the kind Moses had, I suppose that would be OK, in fact perhaps encouraged, in a house of worship.

What you should not do is approach kids who you don’t know, grab their tablets out of their hands and yell at their parents in the middle of the sermon … at least that’s what my pastor keeps having to tell me.

I’m kidding.

But seriously, folks, this is awful, and it is the first time I’m hearing about this. Tablets in your church? Yikes.

Yep, this really is as ridiculous as you think it is.

You and your kids go to your place of worship to learn a way of life that is important to you and your family, according to your own value structure. Allowing kids to just opt out of learning these lessons so that they can play games that will have negative effects on their attention spans and mental health is a terrible idea.

Studies show that being a part of a religion and attending a house of worship has positive effects on mental health and having a feeling of purpose and meaning. Parents allowing kids to play on tablets during a religious service is allowing them to trade something very healthy for something very destructive.

These parents need to put on their big boy and big girl parenting pants and take away the tablets.

Here’s what I would say if I were the person giving the sermon at your church.

Kid Whisperer: Hi there. I’m sure that you all have noticed that over the years many of the kids in the congregation have begun using their tablets while here in the congregation hall instead being a part of the service or instead of going to Sunday school. Many are on their tablets right now.

Your kids owning and using these tablets is a bad thing. The games and apps on the devices are highly addictive. Using these tablets makes your kids’ attention spans shorter, hurts the quality of their sleep, stunts them socially and negatively affects their motivation.

Since tablets hurt your kids, you should not let them use tablets.

Learning the lessons of our faith is important. I know that you all feel this way because you have all come to this house of worship and are listening to me right now. So, by allowing your kids to be on their tablet instead of being part of these services or instead of them going to Sunday school, you are allowing your kids to replace something that is very valuable and healthy with something that is not valuable, is hurtful and is not healthy. You should stop doing that.

So, starting next week, no tablets will be allowed during the service. I do hope that your kids will start attending Sunday school or come to the service. I would be very sad to know that your kids were at home with their tablets instead of coming to church.

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Will this upset people at the place of worship? I don’t really know, but that’s not the point. We all have a responsibility to help our kids and not allow them to hurt themselves. Parents and the leaders of organizations that serve families need to demand that the tablets be put away, and kids need to start having childhoods that are not centered around these hurtful screens.

So, what should you do to get those tablets out of your church? Hand your pastor this column.

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