According to ancient pious customs, children in Old Believer families were taught to fast from the age of two or three. Today, more common practice is to begin the labours of fasting at six or seven years old, when a child ceases to be an ‘infant’. Around this age, the child can realize that tasty food is rejected for the sake of certain higher values. For girls, this realization comes a little earlier.
Obviously, a child cannot fast like an adult. However, so that the age of six or seven does not become a sudden, incomprehensible milestone for the child, beyond which a life full of difficulties begins, the child is accustomed to fasting gradually. First, on fasting days the child abstains from meat, then dairy and egg products. It is important to explain to your child the spiritual meaning of fasting: abstinence in food in order to accustom your soul to abstinence. The child senses a change in the family’s lifestyle during fasting periods: there is less entertainment, topics of conversation are more often spiritual, the list of books to read includes the Gospel and the lives of saints.
In this way, little by little, the child develops an internal need to observe fasts and an awareness of their usefulness for the soul.
