Children believe in what they cannot see. They seek God. “It’s like there’s a homing device in each of my children,” a mother told me, “God looking to connect with my child as my child looks for God.” When we talk to a child early about God there is an automatic responsiveness.
By contrast, some adults have had negative experiences with religion being drilled into us and want to avoid doing that to others. Some of us feel that spirituality is deeply personal, so children should find their own way. Some of us have no firsthand experience with God and don’t really know what to say.
Our vantage point is different, like in photography.
A mother describes the morning her daughter held the camera, moving through the house clicking at everything she saw.
“Can you show them back to me now?” She holds the camera out to me. Her arm around my neck, we scroll through her photos on the glowing screen.
Frame of a table. A doorknob. A bookshelf skewed on a tilt. Yet her photos surprise, every single one. Why? It takes me a moment to make sense of it.
It’s the vantage point. At 36 inches, her angle is unfamiliar to me and utterly captivating–the study ceiling arches like a dome, her bed a floating barge. The stairs plunge like a gorge. She’s Alice in Wonderland, all the world grown Everest-like around and above her.” (Ann Voskamp)
It is far better to tell children about God, even if you have doubts of your own.
Something simple, like: You can’t see God but he can see you, and he loves you. He is very good and he wants you to have a good life. He hears you when you talk to him. That is called prayer.
Emphasize what God thinks of the child.
C.S. Lewis argued that the most fundamental thing is not how we think of God but rather what God thinks of us–this relentlessly pursuing love, so bold.
Describe God’s nature. This blog’s Resource page has an video description of what I tell children about God. What can you say about God?
Tweetable: It’s more important to tell children what God thinks of them than how they should think of God. 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
We’re all raised in families, communities and even entire cultures that barrage us with messages about what they want from us. “Get married,” “Make money,” “Buy your own home.” We usually forget when and how we first received these messages about what we’re supposed to do with our lives, just as we forget when and how we learned to eat with a fork. —Barbara Sher
Think about the messages the children in your life are receiving.
Some kids are groomed from pre-Kindergarten to get into an Ivy League college. Their parents have decided that’s what success is– plus it gives them significant bragging rights to be used against other parents.
But Stanford last year accepted only 4% of its applicants. Most of those who applied met enough of the qualifications to think they had a chance at getting in, but the vast majority didn’t. What’s the result?
A setup for failure
96% of the kids who applied– primarily kids who are not used to failure– failed. What do they do then? We may have prepared them for the Ivy League, but we haven’t prepared them for failure. And failure is actually an important part of life.
Maybe this particular example doesn’t apply to you. You’ve never put such unrealistically high expectations on your daughter. You just want her to grow up, get married, have kids, and be happy.
But again– what if that’s your dream, not your daughter’s dream?
What if she would rather move to New York to be an actress than move to the suburbs to be a mom? How will you handle that?
Barbara Sher says, “Parents have their own dreams and it’s those dreams they’re pushing, not the child’s. In their heads, they have images of successful sons and daughters…children who are impressive—and secure.
“Very few parents have… the calmness of spirit to realize that the most practical thing any child can do is to find their own vision—and follow it.”
We need to disentangle our own goals– and our own identities– from those of the children in our lives. They are different people than we are and they are on a different journey than we have been on.
How okay is that with you?
Next week: Parents’ unfulfilled goals and a child’s future
Tweetable: A discussion here about the need to disentangle a child’s goals from our goals and identity for them. Click to Tweet
Skill #1: Attentiveness: Notice spiritual activity in children.
It occurs most often in the context of everyday life, but don’t overlook its presence here:
Dreams
Awe-inspiring activities
Peace in hard times
Out-of-control events
Coincidences and unexplainable events
Skill #2: Active listening: Engage the child in conversation about it.
Situation 1 Dreams – “As my son was going to sleep he said he was afraid to go to heaven because he didn’t know what it would look like. I told him to ask God to show him while he was asleep. When I followed up two days later he gave me a detailed description. I asked him if it took away his fears, now that he saw it, and he said yes.”
Situation 2 Awe-inspiring activities: “For me, surfing helps. Just being in nature and contextualizing myself with the ocean as this immortal force, this elemental force. And then doing some sort of mindfulness meditation, I think yoga is a good starting point.”
Situation 3 Peace in hard times: “I was 6, maybe 7, when my pet cat died. I wanted to know where my cat went, why she couldn’t come back, etc. I was completely satisfied with my parents’ answers of “She went to Heaven.” God is watching over her now.” That’s when I realized there was some other higher being out there. I felt peace. I remember it distinctly. It was peace knowing that there was someone watching and caring for us that we couldn’t see or touch, but they were out there.”
Situation 4 Out-of-control events: One woman says, “When I was a child in Uganda I remember times when things were out of control and I didn’t expect anything positive to come out of it. My mother helped me recognize God when something good did come out of it.”
Situation 5 Coincidences and unexplainable events: “My teenage daughter called me to tell me that she had pulled a 10-year-old up from the bottom of the pool where she lifeguards. The next morning she said, ‘I couldn’t sleep last night, Ma. I kept thinking about that girl and what might have happened if I hadn’t rescued her. Nobody noticed she was lying at the bottom of the pool. Not even her own sister who was with her. I just can’t believe what happened.’ And I responded, ‘You did something extraordinary. You should feel incredibly good about yourself.'”
Skill #3: Acceptance: Discern if the child wants information or empathy.
Pay attention to this distinction. Accept it either way and respond accordingly. The child in Situation 3 needs information about her cat. The child in Situation 5 wants understanding.
Tweetable: Good news. We use these same 3 skills with kids to develop either spiritual or emotional intelligence.Click to Tweet
Children want and need adults to take the lead in developing their their conscience, character, morals, values. But many of us are uncomfortable talking about it. Some believe that we need never bring up spiritual matters at all, others feel that we must instill our own beliefs into children. What if the uncomfortable feelings about spiritual conversations are coming from the adults, not from the children? What if we work on the assumption that spiritual awareness already exists in the heart of every child?
How would that lower our personal discomfort? What small changes could we make to increase our confidence in dealing with our child’s spiritual curiosity?
1. Establish a family ritual or routine.
Some parents put it into the bedtime routine for consistency’s sake: bath time, reading a book, saying a prayer or answering a question. It becomes a normal part of everyday life, eliminating the awkwardness
Exif JPEG
A friend of mine asks four daily questions of her 12-year-old twin grandsons whom she is raising:
Best thing that happened to you today
Worst thing
Thing you need God’s help with tomorrow
Thing you are most grateful for today. “I like ending with the gratitude reminder,” she explains.
2. Use normal life experiences to weave values into everyday conversations.
Make an observation or ask a question when you see the opportunity. This tells children that it’s okay for them to ask questions or talk about qualities of spirit. One adoptive mother compares talking about spirituality to talking about adoption:
In all of the adoption literature, parents are told again and again to initiate talking about adoption with their children. When the parents never mention it, they are communicating to their child a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy: Let’s act like adoption isn’t part of the equation to help the child feel more “normal.”
Yet the reality is that the child needs to engage with and process that part of their history. Counter-intuitively, talking about it is what actually normalizes it. Many adoptive children who are now adults say that they were afraid to ask their adoptive parents questions for fear of hurting their feelings or upsetting them. They assumed that silence on the subject of their adoption was caused by the parents’ discomfort with the subject.
In the same way, we normalize spiritual awareness by noticing it in everyday life. Nine times out of ten, children let it pass without comment. But once in a while they use the opportunity to ask a question or launch a discussion.
Tweetable:
Changes in your lifestyle that show respect for your child’s spiritual curiosity. Click to Tweet
Two ideas that can lower our discomfort with our child’s spiritual development. Click to Tweet
Children are drawn to video games. Kids get wiped out here and crushed over there, but they learn how to navigate even when they are too young to read. They recognize that a certain character has special powers. The holistic experience of surround sound with all the different visual game elements engages their mind, senses and spirit.
The same is true of imagination games, immersing children into an environment they create. It’s how they like to learn and play at a certain age.
But what happens when we introduce them to religion?
When adults tune in to religion, we are most likely tuned in to what others did or experienced. When we read sacred writings, discussion is on the interactions of someone else. When we hear a sermon, we are spectators to someone else’s thoughts and observations.
Outsiders looking in
Like a Sci Fi movie in which aliens observe human beings on Earth but do not enter into the human experience, this approach to the spiritual world has somehow become objectified as the outsider looking in.
As a teenager, Robert enjoyed taking pictures of family parties and social events until he had an epiphany: “I realized I was spending my whole life documenting the fun other people were having. I put away my camera for years and simply wanted to experience the relationships and social dynamics myself.”
By contrast, video games allow us to enter the environment….
…..to act and interact as if we are there — a tremendous image of the way children could encounter the spiritual. It’s completely different from religious people for whom the spiritual is external, rather than something they enter and experience moment by moment.
Help children engage their spiritual imagination to enter into the moment. Learning comes as they reflect and process, not just flit from experience to experience. Doing both — engagement and reflection — brings insight.
Next week’s post will highlight specific ways to begin doing this.
Tweeable: Video games-a tremendous image of how children could encounter the spiritual dimension. Click to Tweet
A mother describes the morning her daughter held the camera, moving through the house clicking at everything she saw.It’s the vantage point. At 36 inches, her angle is unfamiliar to me and utterly captivating–the study ceiling arches like a dome, her bed a floating barge. The stairs plunge like a gorge. She’s Alice in Wonderland, all the world grown Everest-like around and above her.” (Ann Voskamp)
I find meaning in life by building bridges.
We’re all raised in families, communities and even entire cultures that barrage us with messages about what 
Situation 2 Awe-inspiring activities: “For me, surfing helps. Just being in nature and contextualizing myself with the ocean as this immortal force, this elemental force. And then doing some sort of mindfulness meditation, I think yoga is a good starting point.”
Situation 4 Out-of-control events: One woman says, “When I was a child in Uganda I remember times when things were out of control and I didn’t expect anything positive to come out of it. My mother helped me recognize God when something good did come out of it.”
