Children’s Fasting #
According to ancient pious customs, children in Old Believer families were taught to fast from the age of two or three. Today, the more common practice is to begin fasting labors upon emerging from infancy, around six or seven years of age. It is at about this age that a child begins to understand the idea of giving up tasty food for the sake of higher values. For girls, this awareness tends to come a little earlier.
Clearly, a child at this age cannot observe the fast in the same way as an adult. However, so that the age of six or seven does not become a sudden and incomprehensible threshold for the child — one beyond which a life full of difficulties begins — the child is gradually introduced to fasting. At first, the child refrains from eating meat on fasting days, and later from dairy and egg products as well.
It is important to explain to the child the spiritual meaning of fasting: abstinence from food in order to train the soul in self-restraint. The child senses a change in the family’s way of life during the fast: there is less entertainment, the topics of conversation become more spiritual, and the reading list includes the Gospel and the lives of the saints.
Thus, little by little, the child begins to form an inner need to observe the fasts and an awareness of their benefit for the soul.