Mar 30, 2015 | Direction
All of us reached adolescence with childhood beliefs, values and morals that needed evaluation.
Beliefs enter a child’s mind and get established in the mental operating system* without a healthy evaluation of the basis for the belief. In a child’s brain, the ability to reason is not yet fully developed.
When children reach adolescence with little attention given to their childhood beliefs….
- We may hear something like this boy’s explanation: “Faith is believing what you know isn’t so.”
- They are less likely to come to parents, now preferring peers and those outside of the family.
Take Easter–the resurrection of Jesus Christ–for instance.
Christianity maintains that Jesus died on a cross and three days later, came back to life and was seen by multiple eyewitnesses.
I suspect that for many of the 2 billion people who identify as Christians, this doctrine remains a hard-to-understand mystery. Some older children may leave Sunday’s Easter Service concluding that the resurrection is incomprehensible and therefore nonsense.
Preteens beginning to evaluate their beliefs usually want our assistance:
- Begin by listening intently to the child’s belief. Clarify until you can precisely express the child’s belief back to him (and the child says “yes, that’s it”).
- Use the same active listening to unpack the child’s conflict, doubt, question about their belief–so that you can state it precisely and the child says, “yes, that’s it.”
- Brainstorm options for checking the accuracy of the belief–resurrection–in our example (weigh evidence from science, history):
- Talk to trustworthy people who see the issues from different perspectives.
- Search the Internet: evidence for resurrection
- Find a workshop, seminar, documentary, book
- Ask, “Which option is best for you?”
By allowing the child to own their choice you teach them how to approach doubts and questions when you aren’t around.
*to borrow a phrase from psychiatrist Timothy Jennings.
Mar 9, 2015 | Direction
Boston University professor Dr. Nancy Ammerman organizes spiritual and religious experiences into four packages. I share her research as one way to help children understand and define these terms.
1) Godless (nontheistic) spirituality
Spirituality is not framed in terms of God but rather as a kind of transcendence that is “bigger than me” and beyond the ordinary. A secularist from Atlanta said:
Experiencing things that are calming and healing in what might almost be a spiritual way–I’ve had that from lots of things: music, movies that I love, and books.
2) God-centered spirituality
Spirituality is about God, especially one’s relationship with God, and any mysterious encounters or happenings that result from it.
I love to be out on a boat on the ocean for the same reason I like to be in my garden, ’cause I feel close to the Lord and the beauty of the world.
3) Ethical spirituality
Spirituality is living a virtuous life by helping others and transcending one’s own selfish interests to seek what is right. This is a definition of spirituality that all survey respondents, from the most conservative Christian to the secular neo-pagan, agreed was the essence of authentic spirituality.
4) Belief and belonging
This spirituality package is defined differently by those who are active in a religion and those who are not. Ammerman wrote,
Believing, for instance, could either be a way of talking about devout spirituality or a way of describing superstition. Belonging can represent a positive identity or a symbol of being trapped in an authoritarian tradition. Tension between the two definitions sheds some light on why people would describe themselves as spiritual but not religious.
Conclusions of interest to children:
- Spiritual and Religious are rarely at odds but intersect often in the daily lives of people as they describe their spirituality.
- When conflicts/tensions arise it is almost always when individuals/groups use religion to draw political and moral boundaries.
- Research shows more common than uncommon spiritual practices and beliefs between those who say they are religious and those who don’t.
Link to complete article by journalist Matthew Brown.
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Jan 26, 2015 | Direction
I interviewed a man whose parents understood the need to tailor their spiritual conversations to each of their children. He was able to offer this perspective:
I am adopted and so are my brother and sister. Our values seem remarkably similar. We are always going to take the kitten out of the storm. That is what our parents taught us to do.
But we don’t otherwise parrot our parents and we don’t much resemble each other. This has led me to favor a theory of human nature wherein we are bestowed a core personality type. You could say this is largely through genetic make-up or perhaps you could call it the soulish essence of a person.
Environment may pinch or stretch or permanently stain us but our essential traits are immutable.
These essential traits show up, for example, in a child who likes routine.
In her spiritual development, this child will resonate with scheduled times for prayer, inspirational readings in the same favorite location every day, or regular attendance at religious services.
Another more free-spirited child will find this style constraining…
and boring and “something I have to do.” So we approach this child about talking to God wherever, whenever, spontaneously. When you are out doing active things and you feel God’s presence, say a prayer of gratitude. When you get yourself into a precarious situation, call on God’s help. In these ways you help them connect with God in different ways that align with their personality.
Adults who take a truly holistic view of children often feel a responsibility to attend to their spiritual need to connect with God just as much as to the physical, emotional and social need to form relationships with other people.
They realize it doesn’t make sense to enforce one style, one method, or only the approach that works for them.
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A child’s core personality guides caregivers in how to discuss spirituality. Click to Tweet
Jan 12, 2015 | Direction
One family doesn’t encourage their children to dress up for church, even though most of the kids who attend dress up a bit more. If you ask them why, they’d tell you: We don’t have to dress up and look good to present ourselves to God. Come as you are.
The point is not about proper attire for church, temple, or mosque
Each culture has different clothing that may be considered appropriate, and for different reasons. A mosque may require modesty in dress. An African American church may encourage people to wear their best as a celebratory gesture in worship.
The point I make with that story is that we need to find a way to help the children in our lives present themselves with honesty to God and others. Some parents have a primary concern about what others will think of them if their child does something wrong. What will the neighbors think? That preoccupation can be subtle but damaging. It tells children they must look good above all else, with very little room for the mistakes that teach them so much.
Instead of worrying about what others think, what if we flip the focus back onto the child?
What will help develop their human spirit?
- Letting them make mistakes.
- Not covering those mistakes up.
- Helping them process wrongdoing so they can learn from it.
- Serving as a sounding board as they think, reflect, and make the kind of internal changes that will allow them to grow.
There’s a big difference between asking, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” and asking, “How would that look to so-and-so if they saw you doing that?” One results in personal growth, the other in external conformity. The difference is between looking good and being good.
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- How can we find a way to help children present themselves with honesty to God and others? Click to Tweet
- Be a sounding board as a child reflects and thinks and you’ll see them grow in common sense. Click to Tweet
Oct 20, 2014 | Direction
I have noticed that very young children are quite honest and open about their wrongdoing.
A child who is told to stay in the living room and not come into the kitchen will slide one foot into the kitchen and then look at the adult to see what they will do. The child is not hiding what they are doing– it’s more like they are experimenting to find out what will happen.
What the adult does next matters
One little girl saw some pretty headbands with sparkles at a friend’s house where she was playing. As Chloe and her mom were walking home, the mom noticed Chloe holding the sparkly headbands. “Where did you get those?” “From Hannah’s house.” “Did Hannah give them to you?” “No.” So they marched right back and returned the headbands to Hannah and her mother with an apology from Chloe.
What did this little girl learn about wrongdoing and guilt?
- Stealing is wrong. I should not take what doesn’t belong to me.
- When I do something wrong, the way to handle it is to go back and acknowledge what I did.
- The apology should come from me, not from my mother. No one else is responsible for my actions.
- When I admit what I did and apologize, I am forgiven and the relationship is restored.
Incidences of wrongdoing are a valuable learning experience for children. The way the important adults in their lives respond becomes the way the child will respond for the rest of their life when they do wrong.
Imagine this mom had behaved differently. What different lessons might be hard-wired into Chloe’s internal guidance system?
“Did Hannah give them to you?” “No.”
- Response #1: “Oh. Well, I’m sure it’s no big deal. They’re just hair bands.” And they keep walking.
- Lesson #1: Stealing is no big deal. You don’t need to address it. OR: It’s better to not let people know if you’ve done something wrong.
- Response #2: Seeing the hair bands and pretending not to. Saying nothing.
- Lesson #2: This is acceptable behavior.
- Response #3: Taking the child back to return the hair band with the mom apologizing to the other mom.
- Lesson #3: I am not responsible for my actions– my parents are. It brings shame on them when I do something wrong. My parents need to right the wrong, not me.
- Response #4: Yelling at the child, bringing the issue up multiple times, shaming the child in front of others.
- Lesson #4: I am a bad person because I did this. If I do something wrong in the future, I should hide it.
The way the important adults in their lives respond becomes the way children will respond for the rest of their life when they do wrong.
Tweetable: Your reaction to children’s wrongdoing gets hard-wired into their internal guidance system. Click to Tweet
Oct 6, 2014 | Direction
Our rules for children are tools we use to protect them from the damage that results from violating natural law. Until they grow up to understand and incorporate moral laws into their own minds and hearts, they need our rules.
Children easily see how violations of the physical law of gravity will injure them if they’ve jumped off a wall that’s too high, but perhaps have a more difficult time seeing how breaking moral laws will weaken their reason and conscience. They need our help in forming their internal guidance system.
Adults understand the universal laws that govern life,
like the laws of justice or gravity or liberty–laws that are both natural and moral. We know that these laws are not arbitrary–violations of these principles bring destruction in their wake.
Isn’t that why we start with simple rules when children are young?
Your 3-year-old knows he must brush his teeth before bedtime each night and that is because you understand the law behind the rule (the second law of thermodynamics which states that things tend toward disorder). If your child doesn’t brush his teeth, they will decay. You insist on instilling this habit because you know what cavities can lead to, even though he does not.
As children mature we help them understand the reasons for the rules.
We communicate verbally and non-verbally that we are most concerned about how breaking moral laws degrades the mental faculties that recognize and respond to good.
At a time when the Buddha was teaching his son Rahula to live a life of integrity, the eight-year-old told a deliberate lie. Nearby was a bowl with very little water left in it. The Buddha asked, “Rahula, do you see the small quantity of water left in the bowl?” “Yes,” replied Rahula. “As little as this,” the Buddha said, “is the spiritual life of someone who is not ashamed at telling a deliberate lie.”
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Children need our help in forming their internal guidance system. Click to Tweet
