Are you out of the loop about childhood spirituality?

What is child-centered spirituality and why is it important? Here’s the short answer and a story from someone who is in the loop with it.

What is child-centered spirituality?

loop of young child's spiritualityIt is listening to and nurturing what is already inside a child’s soul. The way to encourage children’s innate longing for the divine is found in opening yourself up to their world, in asking them questions and answering theirs, in listening. It is about honoring the soul–the sacred space within them.

It’s serving more as guides, or even fellow journeyers, than we do as teachers. It is working on the assumption that spirituality already exists inside the heart of every child, and that God is already at work there. Maybe our role is just to help facilitate and develop what is already resident there.

Why is it important?

Children’s faith in God’s presence with them, in God’s goodness and care for them, can sustain the mental and emotional resiliency they need to live. It can provide perspective on life and death, eternity, guilt, grace, forgiveness.  Children’s inner spiritual anchor can be a safe place to turn when life’s challenges come upon them. Older children will, as we all do, turn to something when they feel overwhelmed. Yesterday’s lead article in my local newspaper was, “Xanax abuse rising at schools.”

In the loop with Jay

father daughter loopI dove into teenage life for all it was worth. My energies and activities, my adventures, risks, and yes–faith meant I found a second home in faith communities independent of my family. I settled easily into the context of a church youth group and a Christian club at school.

My parents practiced child-centered spirituality. They recognized my need for adults outside the family who knew me well and I drank deeply from the water these adults provided. That I went on to become a high school English teacher was a natural extension of all I learned and eagerly wanted to offer others in those pivotal years.

Now with our own children, my wife and I take best practices from our parents and our own experiences that we hope will make a developmentally positive and enduring spiritual difference.

Tweetable: Get in the loop with childhood spirituality. The proven benefits of making peace with God should be encouragement enough to invest time and attention in their holistic development. Click to Tweet

 

 

 

 

Finding their own way back to God

Mitali Perkins, award-winning author of books for young readers, shares a heartbreaking adolescent experience and losing her way spiritually:

way in world map“I was raised in a Hindu home, where Dad taught his children that God was a divine spirit of love. Dad’s job as an engineer took us from port to port, so that by the time I was 11, we had lived in India, England, Ghana, Cameroon, Mexico, and the United States. No matter where we were posted, Dad led us in a daily practice of gratitude to God.

I believed in this good God until high school, when a friend was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver. Clayton’s death opened my adolescent eyes to a world of suffering. What kind of God would allow this and then, according to Hinduism, reincarnate us into a painful world? I grieved for my friend and put my questions—and God—aside for the rest of high school.”

way back to GodIn conversations with young people about difficult topics…

  1. Let them think, speculate, imagine. Resist the impulse to answer their questions for them.
  2. Mirror back their thoughts to them so that they can hear themselves and continue their conversations with you.
  3. Don’t minimize the complexity of the issues.
  4. Aim for spiritual growth, not answers.

Trust that God will show the way to greater resolution of a young person’s confusion and upset as they remain open to allowing God’s various ways of communicating with them.

Time and space to pursue understanding

way to religious artMitali Perkins did remain open-minded. Here I’m paraphrasing part of her article, “When God Writes Your Life Story.” In her junior year of college, she went to Russia where she toured cemeteries, prisons, museums, and churches. At the Hermitage, an English-speaking museum official was taking her group from room to room. She was deep in thought as she looked at the many religious paintings.

As her group was leaving, the museum official pulled her aside and asked quietly what she was thinking about so deeply. “A loving God. Human suffering. How can both exist?”

He spoke briefly to her about being at an intersection of choice. She went away determined to read the original source material for those paintings, the New Testament. What she found there carried her to a deeper understanding of the heart of God, newfound faith, and eventually to represent and champion the marginalized child in her writings.

Tweetable: Let young adults speculate, imagine and think their way through spiritual questions. You may set them on one path in early childhood (could be a path of no religion) but give them freedom to approach God in their own style. Great example here. Click to Tweet    

Seek opportunities to experience awe with kids

awe inspiring fireworks“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast or beyond human scale, that transcends our current understanding of things,” according to Dacher Keltner. He leads UC Berkeley’s Social Interaction Lab and he helped Facebook create the recent additions of emoji’s to the Like feature.

When is the last time you felt awe?

For me, it was experiencing a whole sequence of events line up so that I was in the right place at the right time to be of assistance to someone. The sheer number of converging variables demanded an explanation beyond coincidence.

For Immanuel Kant: “Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”

Michael Lerner says: “Nothing is more contagious than genuine love and genuine care. Nothing is more exhilarating than authentic awe and wonder.” He says that the universe produces a feeling of awe for him.

Goodness. Beauty. Truth.

Adults and children alike experience awe. We hold that in common. Feeling amazed by goodness, beauty or truth seems to be a universal human response. I ask myself, “Is awe one of the pathways God provides for humanity to experience God?  Could it be that feelings of awe are yet another attempt made by a loving God to connect with each of us? How can I provide awe-inspiring experiences for the children in my life?”

Ideas for kids

The second half of this article gives specific ideas of how families can experience awe.awe nature walk

Paula Scott, from her article here on awe, adds another idea, “High school teacher Julie Mann takes her students on ‘Awe Walks’ to connect with nature or art. When they write about these experiences and share them in the classroom, she says, kids who never talk in class or pay attention come to life. ‘It helps them feel less marginalized, with a sense that life is still good.’ She suggests journaling, collage, photography, drawing as ways for students to reflect about awe for time, space, amazing events and people.”

Click to Tweet: We call it goosebumps, spine-tingling, tears in our eyes amazement. Good ideas here to add more wonder to everyday life. Click to Tweet

Attachment theory applied to God

attachment father daughterIt hit me like a bolt of lightning as I was preparing a workshop that I presented at a national children’s spirituality summit last month. (My topic was spiritual learning styles and how a child most naturally connects with God.) God is a primary caregiver and attachment theory applies to a human being’s relationship with God, not only to our human relationships.

Others have the same perspective.

For example, Peter Lovenheim, author of The Attachment Effect, discovered:

Of course I can have a true attachment relationship with God even though God cannot be seen. My sister, after all, had been unseen by me for more than a year now, yet I still had a relationship with her that met the attachment criteria…. I continue to keep her close (proximity) with photos and other objects, and by talking to her. And our love continues to strengthen me (secure love) and comfort me in times of stress (safe haven). My love for Jane and hers for me survives her death, as does our attachment relationship.”

attachment university studentWe are born to connect.

Harry Reis, Professor of Psychology at the University of Rochester, writes: “Attachment theory always captivates students. When I lecture about attachment theory, even the most distracted student soon starts to pay attention.”

In my experience, if the subject of a relationship with God has come up in conversations I’ve had, everyone has admitted, “If it were possible, I would want to know God personally.” Kids are no different. Most of us want to feel attached to God.

How can I help a child strengthen his or her attachment bond with God?

All of these previous blog posts give a description of different styles children use while bonding to God, with practical ideas and conversation starters. This is so valuable to a child’s continued growth in faith.

Attachment theory’s observations are at once wise, astute, and intensely personal–it’s hard to listen to an account of attachment theory without thinking, “Yes, that’s it!”  (Professor Harry Reis)

Tweetable: Is your child asking about God or interested in knowing about God? Or maybe your kids resist going to religious services? Be sure you know the child’s natural way to connect with God. It’s almost certainly not the same as yours. Click to Tweet 

When God is mean

is God mean?Recently I spent time after school with a 5-year-old in my extended family. Her homework assignment that day was, “List at least five words that describe you.” After she gave her list I called out to her siblings, “Hey, do you want to do this too? And they did. Then it was my turn. I started my list of words describing myself when one of them added, “Mean—sometimes you are mean.”

Well, that was a new one for me! I’d never been called mean, at least not that I could remember. Selfish? Sure. Insensitive? Sometimes. But mean??? That’s pretty harsh.

“Sometimes you are mean.”

mirror is God meanOvercoming a first impulse to be defensive, I began to investigate: “Tell me about the last time I was mean to you.” I listened without comment or criticism to several minutes of conversation, and the evidence became clear. I was mean anytime I said no to a request, or when I said “Wait and ask your mother; she’ll be home soon” to something the child wanted to do.

That’s a normal response to get upset when we’re told no. We all want life to go our way. So I simply acted as a mirror for the child: “You want me to say yes–not no or wait–when you ask for something. You seem frustrated with me.” There was a momentary silence (I’m inwardly hoping it was an Aha! registering in the child’s awareness) and then we moved on to something else. Just planting a seed.

It got me thinking…. Do some children believe God is mean, too?

Most children (and adults), at one time or another, want God to use God’s power to give us what we want. A child will pray. In the midst of upsetting circumstances, the child might pray with tears, “Don’t let my parents get divorced.” “Please make my cousin get well.”  When the outcome is not what the child asked for, some children can turn away and accuse God of not loving them. Who wants to get close to a God who is mean? Other kids might conclude that there is no God.

Be aware and keep listening.

Encourage kids to tell you how they arrive at their conclusions about us, or about God. Let them speak without criticism or argument. The topic will arise again and I want to be a trusted listener when it does. Don’t you?

Tweetable: Do you sense that your child believes God is mean? Despite their outward compliance with your family’s religious beliefs, something else may be brewing under the surface. Click to Tweet