A university professor ended her week of instruction with reflection questions for her students: What was your significant learning this past week? What did you learn or what was reinforced about yourself?
Reflection didn’t happen.
She asked the students to get in small groups to discuss. “They got in their groups and just looked at one another with baffled looks on their faces while remaining silent. I tried rewording the questions and providing examples and still got blank looks when they returned to their group discussions,” explains Jackie Gerstein.
Without reflection, kids aren’t getting the meaning.
She continues, “I began to get frustrated by their lack of response until a major AHA struck me . . . They are products of a standardized system where they …finished one unit of information and were asked to quickly move on to the next unit. They were not given the time, skills, and opportunities to extract personalized meanings from their studies. Reflection was not part of their curriculum as it cannot be measured nor tested.” *
In Child-Centered Spirituality we observe the same thing happening.
Kids move from one activity to the next. Be one of those adults in their lives who offers them time to consider and express what they are learning or feeling. I was with a preteen girl and her grandmother this week. The girl planned for the three of us to have lunch and go to a movie. At lunch we laughed a lot and I when I looked back on our time together, I realized that we had touched on living in our families, how we’re experiencing God, and making smart choices. One open-ended reflection question can create an AHA moment for everyone at the table.
Try one of these reflection questions:
What are some things you got to do this week that other people might not be able or allowed to do?
What do you think are the most important qualities of a good (grandparent…parent…teacher…etc)?
Tweetable: Kids move from one activity to the next and few adults offer them time to consider and express what they are learning. Examples here of reflection questions. Click to Tweet
A captivating 4-minute animated video sheds light on the mystery of how children find their life purpose.
A friend of Bill’s, one of our blog readers, explains that Bill died in October 2015 in the mountains of Ethiopia while on assignment for his employer, The Field Museum in Chicago, doing what he loved.
Finding what we love is part of the spiritual journey.
We have talents, aptitudes, feelings, intelligence, traits and a human spirit. Everything about us is woven together so that we are able to find and do what we love. Whether we see God’s design and involvement in this or a specific combination of DNA coming together by chance, both perspectives flow together into the same message: Nurture a child’s fascination.
What adults did to cause Bill to flip the switch of purpose:
In-home resources: He had access to a book about butterflies.
Introduction to a person who does what Bill loves: His mother knew about, and took him to, a museum where he got expert advice.
“You can handle this”: His mother sent him in to speak to the Curator of Insects alone.
Genuine praise and respect from the curator: “I have never seen a better-prepared specimen. How did you do it?”
Follow-up loop: The curator gave Bill the proper supplies, with the directive to make another specimen and “Bring it back to me.”
In Bill’s career overseeing all of the 30 million specimens and objects in the Field Museum, he helped to flip the switch in many young minds. Bill said the solutions to the problems that plague our world are dependent on these young people.
Tweetable:
Captivating 4-minute animation sheds light on the mystery of how children find their life purpose. Click to Tweet
Nurture a child’s fascination and prepare their brain to flip The Switch. Click to Tweet
Teens are by nature idealistic thinkers who desire meaning and purpose. They have begun looking around to see what others think and then to evaluate those ideas.
What does TV and popular culture tell us is the main goal of life? What do parents tell us is the main goal of life? What does their church-mosque-temple-etc. tell them is the main goal of life?
Most often, messages about purpose and meaning are not directly stated.
For instance, no TV show or movie I’m aware of says, “The main goal of life is romantic love.” But many make that statement indirectly.
Parents may say all manner of things, and their actions may or may not back up those stated beliefs: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Saying one thing but meaning something else
Likewise, religious organizations may state one thing but indirectly communicate another. For example, the Westminster catechism (a common creed in Protestant circles) says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Yet a church that subscribes to this confession of faith may inadvertently communicate that the main purpose of life is to live a certain lifestyle by a certain set of rules.
Whether mixed messages come from religious institutions, parents, or popular culture, teens are adept at picking up on them quickly.
King Solomon’s great experiment
Try this reading assignment: You and a teen in your life agree to read the book of Ecclesiastes. Taken from ancient sacred writings, it records King Solomon’s great experiment to find meaning in life.
He tried riches, sexual gratification, great projects, education, and other routes to see what activities bring meaning and purpose in this life and what is meaningless—what Solomon calls “a chasing after the wind.”
It’s not a long reading assignment and can lead to some great discussions.
Tweetable: King Solomon’s great experiment to find meaning in life can lead to some great discussions with teens. Click to Tweet
I could be in this video. One of my grandfathers had Tourette’s Syndrome, the other grandfather had an undiagnosed movement disorder manifesting in physical and vocal tics. The onset of my tics was somewhere around age 5 or 6.
Other children would pull away from me, stare at me, laugh at me.
My lonely heart provoked me to try suppressing “the jerks,” as I called the jerky, persistent tics. Each new elementary school I entered (and there were 5 of them) brought new resolve to ignore the urges, quiet the sounds and hide the tics, to no avail. Finally, when I was ten years old, something happened and I don’t know what it was, but I was able to resist the urges. At first, I resisted only at school but gave in to them at home. Then, even the urges quieted and the struggle faded into the background of my life.
Partly as a result of this experience, I am mindful of how adversity has a profound impact on our life purpose.
I experienced adversity through ridicule and shunning for five of my early years. Therefore, I (unconsciously) made it my mission to find as many ways to connect as a little girl ever could. And I succeeded. Years ago, I did a Strengthsfinder assessment and my Number One strength is Connectedness.
I find meaning in life by building bridges.
In Child-Centered Spirituality, Connectedness appears in my desire to guide adults as they assist children in integrating all the “parts” of themselves–spirit, body, mind, emotions. In order to do that I draw upon the wisdom of many because I need other people. There’s a lot I don’t know.
Connectedness shows up in Spiritual Direction appointments when people ask me to facilitate their connection with the divine. It’s there when I lead support groups that provide an environment for people to connect with each other for strength, hope and experience. And so on.
From this painful chapter of my young life flows a perspective that I can share with you for the children in your life.
Children have a limited vocabulary, but they feel and suffer just as adults do.
A child’s adversity possesses glorious purpose.
Difficulties in our earlier years often propel us to ultimately accomplish much good.
After a time of processing childhood adversity with a trusted person (counselor, mentor, relative), some adolescents experience a mid-course attitude correction that redirects them away from negative consequences and points them in positive directions.
Tweetable: Look here for a perspective of childhood adversity to share with the children in your life. Click to Tweet
The more they act out of their motivated abilities pattern*, the greater is a teenager’s satisfaction that they are using their life for its intended purpose –the purpose that they define, based upon the abilities, talents, skills, and temperament they see in themselves.
This exercise from the previous post gives teens in your life some concrete data about who they are: see this link: Guided questions motivational patterns.
They choose eight achievements from the data gathered from the questions.
These should be achievements that are the most important to them. For each item, they write:
how you got involved in it
the details of what you actually did
what was specifically enjoyable or satisfying to you
Look for the pattern
See the clear, strong connection between who you are and what you have done.
According to Miller and Mattson, the motivational pattern might be something like
improve/make better
meet needs/fulfill expectations
develop/build
be in charge/command
combat/prevail
acquire/possess
Knowing this, teens can now ask themselves: In what careers or environments will I be free to move in my motivated pattern? What educational path will best take me there?
“Isn’t that just like you?”
And so it is that we find the child acquiring his first scooter car when he is 4, his first bicycle at 8, his first car at 16, and his first house at age 30 is still acquiring money or material things at age 60.
The child defending her sister against a bully at age 9 is preoccupied at age 28 with her ministry to people facing personal tragedy or death and is making friends with former gang members at age 45.
Maybe what teens should do with their lives can be found, in large part, within what they have been doing all along.
She asked the students to get in small groups to discuss. “They got in their groups and just looked at one another with baffled looks on their faces while remaining silent. I tried rewording the questions and providing examples and still got blank looks when they returned to their group discussions,” explains Jackie Gerstein.
A captivating 4-minute animated video sheds light on the mystery of how children find their life purpose.
Teens are by nature idealistic thinkers who desire meaning and purpose. They have begun looking around to see what others think and then to evaluate those ideas.
Try this reading assignment: You and a teen in your life agree to read the book of 
I find meaning in life by building bridges.
They choose eight achievements from the data gathered from the questions.