Aug 24, 2015 | Nourishment
Small children (ages 2 and 3) have a strong desire to help and imitate adult work. With their limited verbal vocabulary, they express interest in the only way they are able.
The window of opportunity doesn’t last forever, and many adults miss it.
Some want to wait until the child is competent to do the dishes before letting them help. Will it take longer than if you did it yourself? Absolutely. You’ll definitely have to re-wash those dishes later when the child isn’t looking. Will they break something? Very likely, although you can pull out the breakables beforehand and let them wash pans and plasticware and spoons.
Other adults miss the cues because the child is not asking to help, but when offered a rag and shown how to wipe dust off furniture, children participate with gusto.Toy manufacturers produce all kinds of household machinery, which make great gift ideas for relatives looking for something at birthday time.
The point isn’t getting the dishes done or the furniture clean.
It’s helping the child learn, gain confidence and find contentment in working independently.
It is another way that we nourish a child’s mental, physical and spiritual self all at once.
Tweetable: Toddlers gain confidence and find contentment when we let them work, though we have to re-do it later. Click To Tweet
Jun 22, 2015 | Nourishment
“I’m bored” should be two of the most thrilling words children say to us.
“I’m bored” demonstrates a child’s willingness to go outside their default game, the usual videos or familiar TV shows. This is our big chance to suggest activities that will engage children in one of their proven talents.
The child’s emotional payoff will make it easier next time to get outside the usual.
For some children, that could mean engaging in art or learning karate. For one girl, it meant party planning. At 10 years old, she was demonstrating ability in leadership and organization. She loved planning things and being in charge, and she was creative.
Her mother suggested that she plan a surprise party for her sister.
The girl shifted into gear with great enthusiasm. She dreamed up a theme and activities. She planned out the schedule of what should be done when. She created a guest list and invited people.
She designed a menu that would go with the party theme, then made a list of supplies and food for her mother to pick up. This 10-year-old was clearly in her element, and her joy in surprising her sister with a fun party and friends was evident.
Certainly there is a cost to supporting and encouraging a child’s abilities and interests.
Expect to see an impact on the way money will be spent, amount and type of family time spent, and choice of activities outside the home and school.
It could mean recruiting extended family to pay for lessons. As a great-aunt, I’m always looking for birthday gifts that the kids will like and use. Recently I made a comment to two of my nieces about the artistic ability I see in their children. I talked about gifting summer cartooning classes to the one who lives near the Charles Schultz Museum. We know her son is artistic, but let’s see if cartooning fuels a spark in him.
Learn to see boredom as an opportunity for creativity and development for the children in your life. You never know what it might spark.
Next week: The unluckiest kids in the neighborhood
Tweetable: Summer is here and “I’m bored” should be two of the most thrilling words children say to us–here’s why. Click to Tweet
Apr 13, 2015 | Nourishment
Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, writing in 1910, teaches us that artists create as a spiritual impulse. Notice how art breaks down walls for a young boy, Jeremiah, and opens channels with some of our most hurting children.
Creating chaos
Jeremiah’s presence is obvious in almost all social situations. He walks into a room and demands the attention of the people there, both young and old. Often he acts out this demand for attention in the form of all kinds of language choices and violent behavior. It is a creation of chaos.
At first, Caroline Cheek, a mentor at QC Family Tree is “astonished to see all of this chaos stirred up by such a small person, but he is force. His need to create a response in his environment captured me.”
Paper and crayons and a curious friend to draw with him.
Jeremiah is a six-year-old friend of Caroline’s. She and Jeremiah began making art together every week.
I pulled out some paper and crayons….Within minutes Jeremiah was focused, drawing a spider. He told me the story of the spider, about its arms and eyes, and about the bite it had under its eye. His ability to communicate through his imagination is fascinating.
On another day, he talked about needing peace and quiet. I ask, “Where do you go for peace and quiet?”
He drew a picture of a tree with birds all around, where his pet lizard is buried nearby. He explained that he needed to go there when he felt angry. Anger comes up a lot in Jeremiah’s drawings. He is so smart, and he witnesses so much.
With each encounter with Jeremiah, every expressive moment, I feel the walls of my heart open more and more, and motivate me to keep showing up with crayons and listening.
Art is often an outlet for children when they don’t have the words for what they want to communicate.
Through his drawings he tells me stories of death, conflict, comfort and hope. So he reminds me of
- the work that is to be done
- the injustice that is ever present in his world
- the hope that we can find healing through relationships.
How could art be a creative channel for the children in your life?
Tweetable: Here’s another way to open a communication channel with our most hurting children. Click to Tweet
Mar 2, 2015 | Nourishment
Through music, we teach children how to recognize and process certain spiritual experiences and messages coming to them. Music opens a child’s spirit like nothing else does. They can sing out their joyful feelings. They can use an instrument to celebrate life or to play out their sorrow in a minor key. Budding musicians make music with all their soul. And some kids use music as a way to express their feelings toward God.
How does music influence your child’s spiritual and emotional well-being?
Notice in the following example how music met this child’s deep need:
My first music performance was at the orphanage with an audience of other children at House-Grandmother’s. They encouraged my love for singing and performance when no one else did.
Music kept up the spirit of this woman I interviewed about her childhood spirituality. Through years of foster care and orphanage life, music “supported me as a child. I also came to my first awareness of God as someone who loved me unconditionally.”
Do you notice how emotion and spirit connected in her inner life? The same may be true of your child in certain situations.
Music can help a child calm herself.
After children have an angry outburst or an upset, they have their own ways of expressing their wish for peace and calm to return. Can you think of times when music played a part in reducing your child’s stress?
Music helps children rise above their circumstances.
Newspaper reporter Steve Lopez was at the County Jail with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He spoke to an inmate who links her spiritual well-being and music:
Music digs deep into my soul. Melody calls me, it’s soothing, and it lets me know I’m safe emotionally and spiritually, and I can go where I want to go.
Through music we help our children recognize and process spiritual experiences and messages coming to them.
Tweetable: Through music, children and teens absorb perspectives about the nature of life, humanity, redemption and love. Click to Tweet
Dec 29, 2014 | Nourishment
“Morality is not just something that people learn, it is something we are all born with,” wrote Gareth Cook in his recent interview with Yale psychologist Paul Bloom in an issue of Scientific American (Nov 12, 2013) (italics mine).
The interview with Bloom continues:
“At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginning of a sense of fairness.
The sort of research that I’ve been involved with personally, looking at the origins of moral judgment, is difficult to do with very young babies. But we have found that even 3-month-olds respond differently to a character who helps another than to a character who hinders another person.”
This kind of research supports the core of child-centered spirituality–
… that conscience, morals, character are in them already. That the way to develop children’s spirit is found in opening yourself up to their world, in asking them questions and answering theirs, in listening.
It is universal, but we still avoid the topic
Think about the last time you were in a discussion with people of diverse spiritual perspectives about how your child’s human spirit is developing. I’m guessing it wasn’t anytime recently at a play group, team barbeque, or playground bench.
Do we want to normalize it?
In light of the research, this topic is of more importance to children than many of us realize. I wonder if it would be in the best interest of the child to attempt to normalize the topic by talking more opening about cultivating our child’s spirit. For example, asking other parents to give you recommendations for some picture books their child likes with spiritual themes of forgiveness, equality or sharing. Or swapping stories of family spiritual experiences such as visiting an elderly friend or taking a nature walk.
What would it look like if you did that?
Would open interaction point us toward a framework that helps us understand ourselves and others and our place in the world?
Tweetable: At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginning of a sense of fairness. Click to Tweet
Nov 24, 2014 | Nourishment
We didn’t say grace at our house when I was growing up because my parents were atheists, explains author Anne Lamott.
I knew even as a little girl that everyone at every table needed blessing and encouragement, but my family didn’t ask for it. Instead, my parents raised glasses of wine to the chef: Cheers. Dig in.
But I had a terrible secret
which was that I believed in God, a divine presence who heard me when I prayed, who stayed close to me in the dark. So at 6 years of age I began to infiltrate religious families like a spy—Mata Hari in [pink] sneakers.
One of my best friends was a Catholic girl
Her boisterous family bowed its collective head and said, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts…” I was so hungry for these words; it was like a cool breeze, a polite thank-you note to God, the silky magnetic energy of gratitude. I still love that line.”
My two brothers and I all grew up to be middle-aged believers
I’ve been a member of the same Presbyterian church for 27 years. My older brother became a born-again Christian–but don’t ask him to give the blessing [at a holiday dinner], as it can last forever. I adore him, but your food will grow cold. My younger brother is an unconfirmed but freelance Catholic.
So now someone at our holiday tables always ends up saying grace
We say thank you for the miracle that we have stuck together all these years, in spite of it all; that we have each other’s backs, and hilarious companionship.
We savor these moments out of time, when we are conscious of love’s presence, of Someone’s great abiding generosity to our dear and motley family, these holy moments of gratitude. And that is grace.
Excerpts are taken from a column, “Views by Anne Lamott,” November 11, 2012. View entire column here.
Tweetable: Will you say grace at your holiday feast? Find inspiration through the eyes of a 6-year-old girl. Click to Tweet
