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 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
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
Feb 2, 2015 | Attachment
Children are drawn to video games. Kids get wiped out here and crushed over there, but they learn how to navigate even when they are too young to read. They recognize that a certain character has special powers. The holistic experience of surround sound with all the different visual game elements engages their mind, senses and spirit.
The same is true of imagination games, immersing children into an environment they create. It’s how they like to learn and play at a certain age.
But what happens when we introduce them to religion?
When adults tune in to religion, we are most likely tuned in to what others did or experienced. When we read sacred writings, discussion is on the interactions of someone else. When we hear a sermon, we are spectators to someone else’s thoughts and observations.
Outsiders looking in
Like a Sci Fi movie in which aliens observe human beings on Earth but do not enter into the human experience, this approach to the spiritual world has somehow become objectified as the outsider looking in.
As a teenager, Robert enjoyed taking pictures of family parties and social events until he had an epiphany: “I realized I was spending my whole life documenting the fun other people were having. I put away my camera for years and simply wanted to experience the relationships and social dynamics myself.”
By contrast, video games allow us to enter the environment….
…..to act and interact as if we are there — a tremendous image of the way children could encounter the spiritual. It’s completely different from religious people for whom the spiritual is external, rather than something they enter and experience moment by moment.
Help children engage their spiritual imagination to enter into the moment. Learning comes as they reflect and process, not just flit from experience to experience. Doing both — engagement and reflection — brings insight.
Next week’s post will highlight specific ways to begin doing this.
Tweeable: Video games-a tremendous image of how children could encounter the spiritual dimension. 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
