 Getting a lot of kids to church on Sunday is a major organizational and management feat. Most large families go through a phase where missing socks, the wrong shoes, and interesting hairstyles are an issue on Sunday mornings. We offer some encouragement if you are currently feeling like your job in life is to be the bad example, and tips for getting it back together. In retrospect you can laugh about it if your child showed up to church one Sunday with no underwear (a girl, in a dress, of course!), but when it happens, it just makes you feel incompetent even if the child WAS old enough to dress themselves!
Sundays are pretty easy now, because we have only five in the house, all over the age of nine. If one of them is not responsible for themselves, they bear a natural consequence, and are old enough to do that. When the kids were little, Kevin and I worked together to get them ready. I did not do hair bows for the girls, I was just too busy trying to make sure that the socks matched and the dress or pants did not have holes where they shouldn't. Kevin often put on soft music in the morning - Children's church music was great - which helped the mood in the home and kept us all more cooperative (including the parents!).
We did have a phase though... It seemed like nothing went right on Sunday mornings. My husband had a position in the church at the time that required that he go early. I was left to bring the kids in myself. It was very hard. We generally followed the rule of getting everyone bathed Saturday night, but we had one child with urinary incontinence, so he had to be bathed Sunday morning. And I had two girls that were worse than the boys for dirtying and ripping their clothes. It seemed those two girls would never show up for church dressed neatly and with their hair brushed! What really made the difference was this: If our home was ordered well during the week, we got to church on time, and with everyone at least presentable. If our home was in chaos, we showed up to church late, and with the kids looking thrown together. Thankfully we moved through that phase and came back to order, both in the home, and Sunday mornings (at least enough to where we aren't too embarrassed anymore, but Martha Stewart does NOT live here!). It is more important to BE there every week, even when you feel embarrassed about how your kids look, than it is to only go if you feel like you can look good. And you are more likely to overcome the phases of frantic Sunday mornings if you keep trying.
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