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A clear challenge to bless
Popular culture is full of tunes about blessing. From rapper Big Sean to Rascal Flatts, Celine Dion, Martha and the Vandellas, Irving Berlin and back again, we’ve got the topic covered. Basically, blessing means to wish well. Sometimes a young person will approach the...
Framework for answering kids’ tough spiritual questions
Older children seem to be aware of unexplainable events in their life, events having spiritual or metaphysical overtones. They speak freely to an interested listener, with the attitude that it's obvious there’s something out there. And they have ideas and questions...
Routines build security in the human spirit
Young children are creatures of routine. As much as they may love the occasional adventure, they feel safer knowing they can fall back into their familiar patterns. See how this father creates a sense of security by making predictable routines for his son's life: “I...
Teach kids a spiritual vocabulary
After five years of interviewing adults about their childhood spiritual experiences, I've seen common threads. Here's one: As children, they didn't have the vocabulary to express how they were processing spirituality and God. Can't you see it in what this man told me?...
3 years of making childhood spirituality fun
Making room for persons of all faiths and even persons of no faith.
Children and their thrill in holiday giving
Rohatsu, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule. Most of us have some big plans brewing to make happy December holidays for the kids we love. What makes a holiday experience thrilling? Its impact on the human spirit or soul. Because the memories of "giving...
Show children our common ground at Christmas
Affan Abdullah is a Muslim American. He doesn’t celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah. He feels, however, that we can find basic common ground and beliefs, no matter our faith or non-faith.* What is this common ground? We offer each other holiday wishes, often along these...
Thanksgiving grace for a diverse group of guests
If you’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner and your table will include non-religious and religious people of different faiths, you may want to take a look at the Quaker tradition of "silent grace." It doesn’t exclude anyone. It allows space during the holiday festivities...
“Do I have to go to church?”
This question presents an interesting dilemma from the parent-teen perspective. Someone in our blog community shared this story with me. As you read it, consider how you might handle the situation. Yesterday my daughter asked if she had to go to church. She said she...
Harvest time: of kids and carrots and character
In early Spring, when we tore open seed packets of carrots and pumpkins, the golden days of harvest were far away. I like what Ann Voskamp says, “The seeds, they fall into my hand small, jewels. But to look at seeds and believe they will feed us? When…it doesn’t look...
Addiction: breaking up with my best friend
I met Tessa, 21, in a class I taught as part of her drug rehab. What she taught me confirms the benefit of spiritual roots beginning in childhood. Tessa's story Tessa (not her real name) gave me permission to use this letter she wrote as part of her recovery. Notice...
Surprising source of hope for children of addicts/alcoholics
I teach Life Skills courses at drug treatment centers across L.A. County. Last night I sat across from a woman who asked, “What hope do my children have of avoiding addiction when both their father and I are addicts?” In the first of a two-part blog, I offer my...
This lifts kids’ human spirit more than “good job”
Comedians Amy Poehler and Bill Hader met when they worked at Saturday Night Live. They talked to journalist Neil Pond about how their parents' specific words of praise made an impact on their future. Hader: “I grew up in Tulsa, Okla. I was maybe 5 or 6, and we...
Serve-and-return dynamics in childhood spirituality
With two nieces on top-ranked college volleyball teams (Hawaii and UCLA) I sat in a lot of gyms watching serves and returns. Serve-and-return parenting Psychologists sometimes use the term “serve and return parenting” to refer to face-to-face, back-and-forth...
Tired of the small stuff?
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee." --Marian Wright Edelman At times, I fight to believe these words. Small...
The right kind of trouble for kids
Recently I was with a friend and her grandchildren for lunch at an open-air market, followed by a visit to a museum. The girls knew they were going to get a souvenir of our adventure together. At the market, 8-year-old Sasha wanted a package of stars that glow in the...
Spirituality for highly creative kids
All kids are by nature creative. But if you have highly creative kids in your life, you might recognize these common traits identified by Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Kaufman, authors of Wired to Create: an openness to one’s inner life a preference for complexity and...
Spirituality for young athletes: What good is “almost winning?”
I have 4 nieces on my husband’s side of the family. All are high level competitors—two are professional cyclists and two played volleyball on athletic scholarships at UCLA and Hawaii. One of my nieces, Alison Tetrick,recently reflected about “almost winning.” It spoke...