Oct 6, 2014 | Direction
Our rules for children are tools we use to protect them from the damage that results from violating natural law. Until they grow up to understand and incorporate moral laws into their own minds and hearts, they need our rules.
Children easily see how violations of the physical law of gravity will injure them if they’ve jumped off a wall that’s too high, but perhaps have a more difficult time seeing how breaking moral laws will weaken their reason and conscience. They need our help in forming their internal guidance system.
Adults understand the universal laws that govern life,
like the laws of justice or gravity or liberty–laws that are both natural and moral. We know that these laws are not arbitrary–violations of these principles bring destruction in their wake.
Isn’t that why we start with simple rules when children are young?
Your 3-year-old knows he must brush his teeth before bedtime each night and that is because you understand the law behind the rule (the second law of thermodynamics which states that things tend toward disorder). If your child doesn’t brush his teeth, they will decay. You insist on instilling this habit because you know what cavities can lead to, even though he does not.
As children mature we help them understand the reasons for the rules.
We communicate verbally and non-verbally that we are most concerned about how breaking moral laws degrades the mental faculties that recognize and respond to good.
At a time when the Buddha was teaching his son Rahula to live a life of integrity, the eight-year-old told a deliberate lie. Nearby was a bowl with very little water left in it. The Buddha asked, “Rahula, do you see the small quantity of water left in the bowl?” “Yes,” replied Rahula. “As little as this,” the Buddha said, “is the spiritual life of someone who is not ashamed at telling a deliberate lie.”
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Children need our help in forming their internal guidance system. Click to Tweet
Sep 29, 2014 | Nurture
These timely observations were made by a man I interviewed about childhood spirituality. Notice that he gives credit to religious parents who step back from their own religious style and methods, but not from their beliefs and convictions. They allow children to express their growing spirituality in ways that are different from the parents.
Ethics and values and religious education can be imbued to a child.
But each child possesses a distinct style of negotiating his or her way through the world that has not been shaped by parenting or churching. And I think some of these innate personality traits may facilitate or fetter a person’s desire to seek a spiritual realm.
I guess what I mean is that some children are going to see the angels and some aren’t.
The ones that don’t can still experience the fullness of God’s love—but are less likely to experience grand epiphanies, raptures, startling leaps into the divine.
The voice of God is a brash symphony for some that sways their every step—for others it is a whisper, less of a force and more of a companion. I think each child will hear the voice differently and its timbre is unmodulated by parents or environments.
The voice of God is a brash symphony for some that sways their every step–for others it is a whisper, less of a force and more of a companion.
Tweetable: Each child will hear the voice of God differently, unmodulated by parents or environments. Click to Tweet
Sep 15, 2014 | Direction
There are no definitive answers to difficult questions, but there are good ones. –Rabbi David Wolpe *
As a child’s brain continues to develop, cognitive powers of reasoning and critical thinking interact with their human spirit. Children now test assumptions and voice doubts. Their questions become more difficult to answer: What is religion? Why do some people pray?
If they ask these questions of us, we must address them. After all, who among us is satisfied to give children an intellectual, but not a moral or spiritual, education?
Design your own approach from these 5 principles:
Think before they ask
Make yourself aware of your own assumptions, just as you would when discussing anything else. For example, if they bring up purpose and meaning of life, what do you wish to convey to the child, that they are accidents or beings with purpose? That human beings are the supreme power or that there’s a higher power than humans? That a wrong act is okay if nobody ever knows about it?
Whatever your philosophy on matters like these, you owe children an honest and searching discussion– more likely to occur when you know your view of the universe.
Assume they know what they are looking for
Remember that an older child’s questions arise from already established beliefs collected in their earlier years. Studies continue to confirm that children by the age of 6 are guided by a conscience and have some developed concept of God. Ask them what they already think. They are looking to you to provide them with information that sheds more light on their core beliefs.
Help them know where to locate source material
Do an internet search for God and you will find 629,000,000 results. How does an adult even read all of it, much less evaluate it? This search proves to be a daunting task for children and adults alike.
Is it any surprise that almost all of us start looking for reliable sources of information within our own family traditions? What was your family’s source of information? Maybe you have not stopped to reflect on where your parents and caregivers acquired the knowledge they used to inform your early thought processes. How did they educate themselves in spiritual matters? What can you take from their model to use with the children in your life?
Introduce them to sacred writings
In addition to learning from the living community around them, children can study spiritual wisdom from the writings of the past. These texts can take children outside of themselves, their family system and their community of friends. They encounter words of God, acts of God, eternal questions, and laws or principles of life existing wholly apart from them. They face an objective standard in the sense that the texts exist on their own merit and they must evaluate that merit.
Find trustworthy people outside your family
The older children get, the more important influences from outside the family circle will become. 
Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to someone other than mom or dad. And sometimes mom or dad are quite glad to get some outside help with spiritual education. That’s when many begin to look for some kind of faith community.
Allow yourself to be open to the direction that spiritual exploration can take you. Once again, as so often, through teaching our children, we learn.
*Thanks to Rabbi Wolpe for sharpening my thinking on a couple of these principles.
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5 principles help parents design a response to an older child’s doubts and questions. Click to Tweet
Sep 8, 2014 | Uncategorized
Sooner or later, every child sees trouble coming into life. Things go wrong. When their questions come up, this perspective– written in a child’s vocabulary– may help you talk about it.
Even as a young child you feel anger, disappointment, grief, pain, loss. You might not like the design of your body, the parents you got or didn’t get. You are surprised when you first learn that adults aren’t always fair or kind. You are sad when the people who are supposed to keep you safe don’t do their job. You feel helpless when bad things happen or no one listens to you.
God understands everything you feel inside.
He is always with you. He brings you comfort by being right there with you and never leaving you alone.
So why doesn’t God make it go away?
He is powerful and he could make people do what’s right. He could make people stop. He could see to it that everyone has enough food and a home to live in.
Yes, he could, if he wanted to control people’s lives. He would have to eliminate choice so that no one ever chose to do wrong or make trouble again.
What kind of world would this be if God forced people to do right?
Or insisted that they feel happy all the time? Wouldn’t God become the dictator of the whole world? What kind of person would you be? Your freedom would be gone. You could not make choices.
Trouble is here to stay, and with it, people’s right to think their own kind or cruel thoughts, feel their own hate or love, do good or bad. Remember that in your troubles you have God who shares them with you. You can put complete trust in God’s intention to bless you, not harm you.
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Try a different perspective when kids ask why God doesn’t stop trouble. Click to Tweet
Aug 11, 2014 | Direction
How do we introduce God in our conversations with young children? How do we do that in a way that informs, yet leaves the door open to explore and journey and be curious as they grow up?
Here is a description of God that may prove useful, written in a child’s vocabulary.
This view is acknowledged in every area of the world from sub-Saharan Africa and tribes in the South Pacific to urban centers in Europe, farms in the Americas, and Middle Eastern deserts.
It is not the view of a particular religion, yet is found in the majority of world religions. It is mainstream.
Who is God?
God is a being. God does not have a body. God is invisible. People are beings too—human beings. God is a being who is greater than human beings. You can’t see God but you know He* is there. God has always been there.
God is love. All love comes from God.
God knows everything. He knows what will happen in the future. God knows what you are thinking. God knows all the facts about any subject you can imagine.
God is everywhere at once. He is not limited by time or space.
God does only what is right, good and just.
God has no beginning and he has no end.
God is pure. There is nothing evil about God.
God has unlimited power and authority.
God never changes. He is the same today as God has always been.
God is one-of-a-kind.
God makes himself known by displaying these qualities so that any child can recognize them. The human mind cannot understand God completely. God exceeds our brain’s capacity. But you can understand a lot about God.
*God is spirit, but I use the male pronoun because it is what I encounter most often when people talk about God.You may substitute the female pronoun if you wish.
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