Based on Ellen White's writings, here is her guidance on disciplining children to be quiet during church services: ## Foundation: Home Training is Essential Ellen White emphasizes that proper church behavior begins with home discipline: "Before the child is old enough to reason, he must be taught to obey. By gentle, persistent effort the habit should be established" (CT 110). She stresses that "Parents should not only teach, but command, their children to enter the sanctuary with sobriety and reverence" (5T 496.1). ## Specific Principles for Church Behavior **1. Parental Responsibility During Service** "They are too often found in groups, away from the parents, who should have charge of them" (5T 496.2). Parents should keep their children with them during worship, not allow them to sit separately in groups where they become "light and trifling, they whisper and laugh, are careless, irreverent, and inattentive" (5T 496.2). **2. Teaching Reverence** "Another precious grace that should be carefully cherished is reverence. True reverence for God is inspired by a sense of His infinite greatness and a realization of His presence" (Ed 242.4). Children should be taught that "the hour and place of prayer and the services of public worship the child should be taught to regard as sacred because God is there" (Ed 242.4). **3. Practical Home Preparation** Ellen White connects church behavior to daily home worship: "The father, or, in his absence, the mother, should conduct the worship, selecting a portion of Scripture that is interesting and easily understood. The service should be short" (7T 43.2). She warns against making worship "dry and irksome" or "so tedious, so lacking in interest, that the children dread it" (7T 43.2). ## Methods of Discipline **1. Gentle but Firm Training** "Parents should have perfect control over their own spirits, and with mildness and yet firmness bend the will of the child until it shall expect nothing else but to yield to their wishes" (1T 218.2). The approach should be "gentle, persistent effort" (CT 110). **2. Consistent Example** "Parents, be careful what example and what ideas you give your children. Their minds are plastic, and impressions are easily made" (5T 498.1). Parents must model reverent behavior themselves, as children "are closely imitated by them" (4T 621.1). **3. Positive Instruction** Rather than just restricting behavior, teach children that "the minister is God's ambassador, that the message he brings is one of God's appointed agencies in the salvation of souls" (5T 496.2). Help them understand the sacred nature of worship. ## Key Insights Ellen White emphasizes that "true reverence is shown by obedience" (Ed 244.2) and that "a child's truest graces consist in modesty and obedience—in attentive ears to hear the words of direction" (CT 113.1). The goal is not mere external compliance but developing genuine reverence for God that naturally results in appropriate behavior. The foundation for quiet, reverent church behavior is established through consistent home discipline, daily family worship, and parents who model the reverence they expect from their children.