Nov 17, 2014 | Nurture
A child’s human spirit and conscience develop like a new building under construction with scaffolding around it. Parents and other adults provide a framework for support, but the child is the one under development. The point is the child—or the building.
Everybody looks past the scaffolding
They are trying to see around or through the scaffolding to get an idea of what the building is going to look like. So it doesn’t matter what scaffolding looks like, as long as it serves its purpose.
Instead of worrying about what others think of our efforts, what if we keep our focus on the best interests of the child?
What will help develop their human spirit?
- Letting them make mistakes. Not covering those mistakes up, but 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.
A friend of mine is struggling with oncoming empty nest syndrome
Two children who have left the nest are doing great, and one is still in high school and becoming very independent. When her second child left home recently, I sent her a note of encouragement saying,
You are now a masters-level parent. They can do much more on their own now, and that’s a sign of success.
When scaffolding is no longer needed, it goes away.
I’d argue that this removal of support doesn’t happen all of a sudden at age 18, but gradually throughout childhood and the teen years as kids take on more responsibility and make wise choices more consistently.
Paradoxically, the sign of good parenting is when they don’t need you anymore.
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Nov 10, 2014 | Nourishment
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:
You can ask them 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
It helps them develop the ability to navigate the world around them
It builds up those muscles for thinking about other people who have different perspectives, and maybe loosen up the erroneous idea that I am the center of the world. How I think is the way everyone else thinks. What I think is right and wrong is what everybody else thinks is right and wrong.
God is a really interesting test case for that possibility.
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.
Tweetable: Children are really inclined to make sense of the world in terms of something like God. Click to Tweet
