Oct 10, 2016 | Attachment
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 interactions between caregivers and their babies. Science Journalist Paul Tough observes that these interactions create secure attachments and they motivate a child’s enthusiasm in practicing social interaction, speech and language.
But I also observe the same serve and return dynamics in the development of human spirituality, sparking growth in conscience and character.
Serve-and-return spirituality
Children experience the calm in the inner space of their human spirit that they need to incubate perseverance, tenacity, and the other significant character qualities. These character qualities then carry over into their everyday life.
From serve-and-return spirituality flows an ability to calm oneself– spiritual self-soothing, so to speak. This ability to calm oneself helps children persevere through problems and to begin seeing mistakes as opportunities for learning.
Take perseverance and tenacity, for example–
“In order for kids to have perseverance and tenacity in school later on, they need to start with self-regulatory abilities—the ability to calm themselves down, to focus on something for long periods of time, executive functions, as researchers sometimes call them,” explains Mr. Tough.
Parents know all too well that their child’s self-regulatory abilities, or lack of them, mimic their own. What do you do under stress? Are you easily distracted?
Besides modeling for them, we teach younger children through activities, and older children by listening and coaching. Parents contributed these examples below that have worked for their families. What’s working for you?
Activities to practice serve-and-return spirituality
Infant – age 3: Hold the child in your lap when you’re meditating or praying to show them the habit of sitting quietly and mimicking what you do, followed by smiling, talking, laughing.
Age 4-6: Your bedtime rituals establish a family culture of serve-and-return. Your face-to-face, back-and-forth communication carries a message of unity and belonging: “These are the books, songs, chants, or prayers this family uses at bedtime and no other family uses the exact same ones. We belong to each other.”
Age 7-12: Breakfast Club (can also be done in the car en route to school): Siblings (and adults) take turns going back-and-forth with each other for a short affirmation such as:
- I wish you well in your book report today.
- I saw you studying for your math test. You can relax because you are well-prepared.
- I know you can handle anything that happens today.
Tweetable:
- Serve and return spirituality sparks growth in a child’s character and conscience. Click to Tweet
- It pays to turn more attention to developing childhood spirituality. Three simple activities here. Click to Tweet
Aug 29, 2016 | Direction
Young people raised with moral or religious principles and practices typically arrive at adolescence ready to find answers to a questions like “How do I know and experience and be ‘right’ with God? How should that look different for me than it does for my parents?”
After all, the faith they have now cannot be the faith they had when they were 4 or 8 or 10.
Nor will it be their faith when they’re 21 or 48 or 83. Faith is a force that will continue to develop and mature over the course of a lifetime, and sometimes it needs to change in order to continue to invigorate and sustain people as they enter different stages of their own development.
Show them how
So how– now in their teens– can you show the kids in your life how to experience and navigate a relationship with God? Here are some thoughts I have… feel free to adapt them for your own use.
- Explain “relationship” with God as an internal conversation that includes questions, doubts, heart longings/prayers. God is big enough to handle it all.
- Ask them questions… and really listen to their answers.
- Do NOT pretend you have it all together and do NOT pretend you know everything. They will know you are lying.
- Open up to share appropriately (less is more) when you’re going through something that life throws at you and how you experience God in that situation.
- Confirm that a relationship with God is a good idea, even when you don’t know all the answers. Open dialogue is good.
- Invite them to come along with you when you’re doing community service… or just doing something nice for others. Making a meal for someone who just had a baby is a tangible way of showing the love of God. Make that connection.
- Don’t major on the minors. When kids get sidetracked on minor points of doctrine and belief, try to call their attention back to the main points and general principles.
“But I’m not a religious person.”
if you don’t think of yourself as having spiritual awareness, ask trusted family friends whose spiritual life you respect to stand in for you. Meanwhile, communicate positive intent toward God and faith, much like divorced couples who have learned it is best for the children to speak positively of the other parent, though they personally feel quite differently.
The evidence confirms the value of faith to young people.
Studies of religiousness/spirituality have found a positive correlation with an adolescent sense of well-being, positive life attitudes, altruism, resiliency, school success, health and positive identity, as well as a negative correlation with alcohol and drug use, delinquency, depression, excessive risk-taking and early sexual activity.
Their questions are deeper than we think.
“A number of years ago I overheard my then teenage son discussing with his friends the origin of AIDS. Not how AIDS developed…. rather they were arguing why — a deep spiritual question. Was this disease a simple development of nature? A cosmic punishment? Or even a divine opportunity for compassion?
The conversation surprised me,” said Dr. Ken Doka. “I was confounded by the intensity of the debate. I should not have been. We often fail to acknowledge the intense spirituality that underlies adolescence. It’s a spiritual time of development, complete with idealism and questions of identity and meaning.
Tweetable: The faith adolescents have now cannot be the faith they had when they were 4 or 8 or 10. Here’s why. Click to Tweet
Apr 4, 2016 | Direction
We all have a spiritual history. Awareness of our history—experiences, stories, defaults, blindspots–allows us to be fair with the important children in our lives.
A personal example–one of my blindspots
My spiritual history contains a chapter of my life in which I insisted on getting people to agree with my religious perspective. I felt responsible for their faith decisions.
My shift from ignorance to awareness
I don’t recall when or how I shifted from ignorance to awareness. Suddenly I recognized each man, woman and child is on his or her own journey of spiritual discovery and it may take them somewhere different from mine. I backed away from playing God in the lives of my friends to understand God is guiding them on their own path. I carry the same attitude into my conversations with children now.
Notice how another parent was confronted with her own spiritual history– and ambivalence– as she tried to answer her child’s questions.
My husband and I were raised in a Catholic family although our parents never had us attend Mass unless it was for a wedding, etc. The other day, we were passing by this gorgeous church in downtown Oakland and my 3 1/2 year-old asked me what it was. I told her it was a church.
She said: “Is that a place to go for lunch?”
And then… I tried to find the words to explain that some people go there to think about loved ones that are gone, etc… Too complicated!!!!
Our view on spirituality is that we are non-religious persons believing that there is something or someone out there but we don’t really know what/who. And that religion is the answer to humans about everything we couldn’t understand, or to control population. How to explain this?
Questions to increase mindfulness of your spiritual history
- What do you remember about your first awareness of God?
- In what ways did your parents or other caregivers engage with your early spiritual development?
- What were your early ideas of what God was like? What positive emotions did you associate with God? What negative emotions?
- What stories did your parents tell you of their spiritual history?
Tweetable: Awareness of our spiritual history increases the likelihood we’ll be fair when we discuss religion with kids. Click to Tweet
Mar 16, 2015 | Attachment
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
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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
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.
Tweetable
A child’s core personality guides caregivers in how to discuss spirituality. Click to Tweet
