Children's Church?

Perhaps you also have puzzled with me over the common practice (and therefore unquestioned practice) of so many (probably easily the majority) evangelical churches of sending the children out (even as old as 10 years in my experience!) of the corporate gathering (usually during the sermon). I've often wondered how this can be such a fixed practice when there does not seem to be a shred of biblical precedent for such a practice. There certainly is no injunction for this sort of thing. On the contrary, it seems that without questioning the children are always present in the assemblies' gatherings (see, for example, Deut. 31:12-13 and Josh. 8:35).

So how did we get here? To my knowledge this is an aberration without support in the Christian Church until very recently in the individualistic West. But if you question the practice, you get looked at like you are striking at some fundamental of the faith. I dare say that we often do this to cater to our modern, consumeristic churchgoer. Were we to sideline "children's church," we'd lose half our members to other churches who don't. And we can't have that!