Dec 7, 2020 | Security
Seven years ago, the Child-Centered Spirituality website launched based upon the premise that a child’s spiritual development is as important as physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development.
Regular blog posts served as a vehicle for best practices and stories supporting that premise. The posts led to a book. The book led to a workshop. Now, this final blog.
With appreciation
- Tara Miller, coauthor of Child-Centered Spirituality, edited the posts and offered suggestions for six years. She’s been a guest blogger on occasion.
- Alisha Ule provided social media support. She contributed art ideas, created the posters for quotations and more.
- Michelle Coe steered the book launch, designed the book cover and redesigned the website.
- Annette Schalk did the German translations for four years.
- Readers gave ideas for discussion through their questions and comments.
My reflections: People of faith who taught & coached me
I am certain that the rewards of beginning one’s spiritual journey in childhood are profound and plentiful. I am certain that wise adults who are good listeners matter to a child’s quality of spiritual life. As someone who had these adults in my childhood–and throughout my adult life–I can attest to the rewards that millions of people reap from living their life with God. Personally, I became a disciple of Jesus but I appreciate the broad reach that child-centered spirituality has enjoyed with families of all faiths.
My reflections: Rewarded with quality of life
- A greater balance of mind, body, emotions and spirit produces a sense of well-being.
- Increased awareness of God’s presence within and in the world around reduces fear and anxiety.
- An attachment bond with God brings belonging and meaning.
Be blessed
May you be blessed with an abundant life anchored in the reality of who and what is Truth. Look for God’s presence in your everyday life. You’ll be surprised by how great is God’s love and how often God attempts to make you aware of his interest in you (and all God’s children) each day. May you find ways to make a difference in the lives of other people. Make it a top priority to support wholeheartedly the spiritual development of the children you love. Grace and peace to you. Amen.
Oct 26, 2020 | Security
A milestone occurs when children enter school and their relationship pool increases and deepens. They look for ways to connect with others and with God in new ways.
In grade school, you are still the one they most want to hear from about spirituality and the one they most watch to learn what it looks like to live with faith as part of daily life.
But now they act in a way that reveals their need to widen the circle to include their friends’ families and a faith community.
For some parents this seems like the right time to affiliate with a religion or faith community.
Community involvement has to do with how children practice their spirituality, as expressed through various beliefs, practices and rituals. It is an attractive option for millions of families for addressing the longing in children’s hearts for spiritual understanding.
A faith community links up with a child’s needs for attachment and for trust.
It moves them forward to explore the other relational issue of importance to them: how a connection forms between God and a person.
One woman remembers when she looked for this.
“Just because I was raised in a home in which God was never talked about, doesn’t mean that I never thought about God.
It is true that this influenced me to think that God was not a relevant part of how I go about living my life. And true that being raised in a home where relationship was deeply stunted influenced me to feel that God is distant, even non-existent.
However, these ideas about God being not relevant, non-existent or distant did not form a foundational belief in my core, even though my upbringing should have prescribed it. Deep down inside I had formed a belief that God is real. When I was in middle school, this belief helped me to dig out of my spiritual isolation and ask my parents’ permission to go with my friend to her church. The youth group addressed the longing in my heart for spiritual understanding.'”
A faith community is an attractive option for millions of families for addressing the longing in their children’s hearts for spiritual understanding.
Sep 14, 2020 | Security
As children get older, their disappointments grow larger. Hurt and angry feelings get directed at God too, often due to:
- Prayers not answered.
- Hurt by religious people.
- Overwhelmed by evil and suffering in the world.
Many children say that unanswered prayers disappoint them the most.
They see the needs within their extended family. They hear the adult conversations. Some of them pray about it. When the situation doesn’t change according to their wishes, they may conclude that God hardly listens and feel personal rejection by God.
This topic is obviously a vast and complex one. My only goal here is to try to find a few ways we can help children when they feel disappointed with God. We can help them when we:
- Offer empathy by listening without trying to change them or their feelings.
- Accept all the child’s feelings and thoughts about God.
- Express care and support.
- Be mindful of our own feelings about God and not try to project them onto the child.
- Sort out expectations or conditions the child places on God.
Every relationship involves expectations.
1. Ask the child, “What do you expect God to do when you pray for something?” Allow the child to respond by writing it or by speaking it or by returning to it later after they think about it. Now here’s the part we almost always overlook: Help the child find a way to express expectations directly to God (and how they feel about it), using an approach they decide on.
2. Help change expectations to be more realistic.
- In what ways do they expect God to respond?
- What are God’s limitations? (For example, some would say that one of God’s self-imposed limits is refusal to force people to do anything against their will.)
- Observe others and search out some different expectations for God.
3. Decide what to do.
- Exit: Some children choose to terminate the relationship with God, but that is rare before adolescence. (And from many sources we glean that God never stops trying to connect with them.)
- Stay and withdraw: These children continue to believe in God but withdraw from trying to have any kind of relationship with God at this time. If the family is religious, they may pretend to go along with it.
- Stay and revise: By changing expectations of God, the child is more conscious of the possibility that God’s perspective is different, and that God’s gift of presence is only beginning to be discovered.
Dr. Bill McRae’s organizing principles for expectations were adapted here for use with children.
Aug 31, 2020 | Security
Skill #1: Attentiveness: Notice spiritual activity in children.
Attentiveness is used 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.
- 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.” Later, his mom listened to the dream and asked if it took away her son’s fear.
Awe-inspiring activities — When a teenage girl was asked what she liked about surfing, she said: “For me, just being in nature and feeling the ocean as this elemental force, and then doing some sort of meditation. I think yoga is a good starting point.”“- 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.” I felt peace. I remember it distinctly. That’s when I realized that there was someone watching and caring for us that we couldn’t see or touch, but they were out there.”
- Out-of-control events: “During the pandemic things were out of control and I didn’t expect anything positive to come out of it. My mother helped me recognize some good things did come out of it.”
- 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.’ 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.
Aug 17, 2020 | Security
“One size fits all” doesn’t make sense in children’s faith development. I like my cousin’s perspective. He said, “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.”
One child’s essential traits tend toward ritual and 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.
Adults who take a truly holistic view of children will help them connect with God in different ways that align with their personality. They realize it doesn’t make sense to enforce one style, one method, or only the approach that works for them.
A child’s core personality guides caregivers in how to discuss spirituality uniquely with each
Aug 3, 2020 | Security
Talk to any 3- or 4-year-old and you will find a capacity to think about God. Researcher Justin Barrett says, “They already have something like an impulse to think about supernatural beings, to account for why things are the way they are and how things work in the world around them. They’re really inclined to make sense of it in terms of something like God.”
Cultivate that natural capacity as they get older.
So how does that work? How can parents, or any adult who’s caring for a child’s spiritual well-being, encourage engaging with the mind of God? Dr. Barrett continues:
Ask your child to consider: How does God think?
How might that be different from how they think? What is God’s perspective on their life, on the lives of those around them? This kind of engagement might be good for their personal development but it’s also great for their social, cognitive development.
Children’s social intelligence increases as they consider these kinds of questions.
There is evidence that thinking about others who have different perspectives is good for developing children’s social intelligence:
- others who look at things a different way
- others who feel something differently
- others who know different things
- myself who is not the center of the world
- myself who does not think the way everyone else thinks
- myself who isn’t always is right nor is what everybody else thinks wrong
God is a really interesting test case
Thinking about God, engaging with God, and considering the difference between God and them can help stretch a child. It can bring the understanding that I could be wrong about certain things because God captures the truth better than I do.
It is healthy for children from a very young age to begin engaging with how God thinks.
This post is composed of excerpts taken from a magazine interview given by Dr. Justin Barrett.
Seven years ago, the Child-Centered Spirituality website launched based upon the premise that a child’s spiritual development is as important as physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development.
