A milestone occurs when children enter school and their relationship pool increases and deepens. They look for ways to connect with others and with God in new ways.
In grade school, you are still the one they most want to hear from about spirituality and the one they most watch to learn what it looks like to live with spirituality as part of daily life.
But now they act in a way that reveals their need to widen the circle to include their friends’ families and a faith community.
For some parents this seems like the right time to affiliate with a religion or faith community.
Community involvement has to do with how a child practices their spirituality, as expressed through various beliefs, practices and rituals. It is an attractive option for millions of families for addressing the longing in children’s hearts for spiritual understanding.
A faith community links up with a child’s needs for attachment and for trust.
It moves them forward to explore the other relational issue of importance to them: how a connection forms between God and a person. One woman remembers when she began to look for this connection:
Just because I was raised in a home in which God was never talked about, doesn’t mean that I never thought about God.
It is true that this influenced me to think that God was not a relevant part of how I go about living my life. And true that being raised in a home where relationship was deeply stunted influenced me to feel that God is distant, even non-existent.
However, these ideas about God being not relevant, non-existent or distant did not form a foundational belief in my core, even though my upbringing should have prescribed it.
There was nothing in my childhood experience to form in me a belief that God is relevant, real or near, but deep down inside these are precisely the attitudes that were rooted in my core, and even helped me to dig out of the relational laziness or isolation that I could have resigned myself to.
A faith Community is an attractive option for millions of families for addressing the longing in children’s hearts for spiritual understanding.
Tweetable: When is a good time to get my family involved in a faith community? Look here for a few thoughts about it.Click to Tweet
Children believe in what they cannot see. They seek God. “It’s like there’s a homing device in each of my children,” a mother told me, “God looking to connect with my child as my child looks for God.” When we talk to a child early about God there is an automatic responsiveness.
By contrast, some adults have had negative experiences with religion being drilled into us and want to avoid doing that to others. Some of us feel that spirituality is deeply personal, so children should find their own way. Some of us have no firsthand experience with God and don’t really know what to say.
Our vantage point is different, like in photography.
A mother describes the morning her daughter held the camera, moving through the house clicking at everything she saw.
“Can you show them back to me now?” She holds the camera out to me. Her arm around my neck, we scroll through her photos on the glowing screen.
Frame of a table. A doorknob. A bookshelf skewed on a tilt. Yet her photos surprise, every single one. Why? It takes me a moment to make sense of it.
It’s the vantage point. At 36 inches, her angle is unfamiliar to me and utterly captivating–the study ceiling arches like a dome, her bed a floating barge. The stairs plunge like a gorge. She’s Alice in Wonderland, all the world grown Everest-like around and above her.” (Ann Voskamp)
It is far better to tell children about God, even if you have doubts of your own.
Something simple, like: You can’t see God but he can see you, and he loves you. He is very good and he wants you to have a good life. He hears you when you talk to him. That is called prayer.
Emphasize what God thinks of the child.
C.S. Lewis argued that the most fundamental thing is not how we think of God but rather what God thinks of us–this relentlessly pursuing love, so bold.
Describe God’s nature. This blog’s Resource page has an video description of what I tell children about God. What can you say about God?
Tweetable: It’s more important to tell children what God thinks of them than how they should think of God. Click to Tweet
Living in the moment–one of the foundations of Buddhism. Life is richer when we savor the taste and texture of our meal or lose ourselves in the excitement of a watching a big game.
After the moment is gone, it becomes The Past but it keeps giving us its richness.
The past offers many gifts. It….
shapes my personality
teaches cause-and-effect
contains all of my life lessons
generates infinite gratitude
empowers me
inspires me
produces family traditions and special rituals
is the way out of fear and anxiety
causes me to trust
I talk about the past with children because they deserve all of these gifts.
The past produces family traditions and special rituals.
Start a conversation with, “Remember when we….” and feel the bond of a shared experience. Sometimes these particular memories lead to a new family tradition. One girl was thrilled to be taken out for “English high tea” for her fifth birthday. After reflecting on it with fondness, she asked her mom, “Maybe we could make it a birthday tradition?”
The past causes a child to trust.
Any child would burst with confidence to hear you say: “You used to be such a great helper with your baby brother when you were little; now you are a great babysitter!” Trust increases when children realize that they are important enough to you that you notice their strengths and their growth.
The past contains all of the child’s life lessons.
Sometimes we tell kids stories that are likely to heighten their consciousness of a life lesson: “You didn’t know how to bike to school safely by yourself when you were little and now you do.”
Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward. Soren Kierkegaard
Note: When there’s significant pain in a child’s past, forgetting is a powerful defense mechanism. A child therapist can provide needed reinforcements to help children work through difficulties.
Tweetable: Live in the moment and after it is over, it becomes The Past and keeps giving us and our children its richness. Click to Tweet
Casey (age 9) has been learning to plan ahead so he gets to school on time. [see previous post]. But when he hears his 6:30 alarm, his self-talk thoughts begin:
“It’s warm in my bed and cold in the house. I’m going to stay here and sleep just a few minutes more.”
“I’m not hungry, so I can skip breakfast and stay in bed a little longer.”
“I won’t take a shower because I didn’t get very dirty yesterday. I don’t have to get up quite yet.”
“The carpool will be late and I don’t like waiting for it, so I’ll stay here for just a minute or two more.”
Casey’s parents are helping him change his self-talk about wake-ups to:
“I know I would enjoy sleeping longer, but it is more important to comb my hair right now. I don’t want to spend all day with hair problems. I want to eat a good breakfast so I won’t feel hollow inside. I’m going to stick with the plan.”
Reinforcement encourages Casey to continue.
When he carries out his plan, Casey’s parents reinforce the behavior. “You did it!” or “Way to go!” But more importantly, they show them him how to listen for his own inner voice–his human spirit–telling him, “Well done! I did think about sleeping a little longer but I told myself that I wanted to have time to eat a bowl of cereal and I did!”
His parents show him how by practicing self-talk themselves.
When Casey is around, his mom says things like,”I controlled my anger. I did get mad at that kid, but I told myself not to yell at her and I didn’t! I put up with my frustrating feelings and they went away.”
They include a provision for what to do in case Casey fails.
They know it’s not the end of the world when Casey doesn’t do it perfectly. Casey’s father said, “We’ve been talking together at the dinner table almost every night about what Casey has been planning and doing. He wants to be responsible and independent.”
“Today he was late for the carpool and we asked him what he said to himself about it. Casey told us, ‘I told myself I want to hang in there. I’m not going to quit trying. I will teach myself to do what I really want to do.’
“I think Casey’s brain is gradually rewiring itself so he can think and plan.”
Tweetable: Self-talk helps children teach themselves to do what they really want to do. Here’s how. Click to Tweet
Psychologist Candace Backus shared these principles before she passed earlier this year.
My friends Laura and Mamitte (not their real names) were having coffee at Mamitte’s apartment while their 7-year-old boys and a neighbor boy played in the courtyard. Mamitte walked out to check on them and discovered that they had smashed a bunch of snails. She said to them, “Oh, I am so saddened by this,” and returned to the apartment to figure out, along with Laura, what to do about it.
What’s really important, they decided, is the greater lesson of how we treat creatures.
When both women went outside, the boys began to play “he said/she said” about who actually smashed and who watched. But Mamitte asked them if they were willing to gather the snails’ bodies and put them to rest in God’s earth. The boys said they were willing to participate.
They gathered the snails’ bodies.
As they did, they had time to process and look at what they had actually done. They then put the snails in the specified resting place.
Mamitte asked them if they wanted to say something.
Ethan said, “We ask God to forgive us for how we treated the snails.”
Raul said, “And forgive me for not protecting them.”
Logan sang a little song and said, “And that God would give them a home and love them in heaven.”
Then they all said Amen.
The moms decided to take it one step further.
Because the snails had been smashed all over a long bench in this courtyard where everyone sits, Mamitte got out rags and a cleaning solution to disinfect the bench and brought those out to the boys.
As they sat on the ground, scrubbing different parts of the bench, they bounced ideas back and forth to each other. It was all Mamitte and Laura could do to keep their mouths shut (a very important parenting skill).
The boys figure it all out on their own.
One says, “Gosh, I don’t want to be doing all this WORK right now. This is so much WORK and we could be playing.”
Another says, “Well, that’s what happens when we make bad choices.”
And as they’re going back and forth, the third boy says, “I. will. never. do. this. again.”
Those are the huge connections that we want–
They are experiencing the consequences of their actions.
The heart issue, the core of it, is that we shouldn’t treat other beings like that.
The two moms celebrated silently, standing behind the boys so they couldn’t see.
When they returned to their coffee cups in the apartment, they asked each other, “How did we do that—It worked so effectively?!”
Here’s what they came up with:
Our parenting was not reactive. Laura said, “My first instinct had been to take my son, rip him out of the courtyard, put him in the car and say, ‘Well, if you’re going to act that way over here, we can’t be over here.'”
We asked if they would be willing. Mamitte said to Laura, “When you approached them and stopped the bickering, you asked if they would be willing to gather the snails’ bodies. I was shocked, thinking, “I can’t believe she’s asking them because they aren’t going to do it.” And they all chose it! It wasn’t anything forced.
We found a teachable moment. Natural consequences are often the teachable moments. We guided them, we didn’t punish. We invited them to take responsibility to care for the snails’ bodies.
Tweetable: See how three boys increase in respect for all creatures at a memorial service for snails. Click to Tweet
A milestone occurs when children enter school and their relationship pool increases and deepens. They look for ways to connect with others and with God in new ways.
For some parents this seems like the right time to affiliate with a religion or faith community.Just because I was raised in a home in which God was never talked about, doesn’t mean that I never thought about God.
A mother describes the morning her daughter held the camera, moving through the house clicking at everything she saw.
It’s the vantage point. At 36 inches, her angle is unfamiliar to me and utterly captivating–the study ceiling arches like a dome, her bed a floating barge. The stairs plunge like a gorge. She’s Alice in Wonderland, all the world grown Everest-like around and above her.” (Ann Voskamp)
Living in the moment–one of the foundations of Buddhism. Life is richer when we savor the taste and texture of our meal or lose ourselves in the excitement of a watching a big game.
The past produces family traditions and special rituals.
The past causes a child to trust.
Casey (age 9) has been learning to plan ahead so he gets to school on time. [
Reinforcement encourages Casey to continue.
They include a provision for what to do in case Casey fails.
My friends Laura and Mamitte (not their real names) were having coffee at Mamitte’s apartment while their 7-year-old boys and a neighbor boy played in the courtyard. Mamitte walked out to check on them and discovered that they had smashed a bunch of snails. She said to them, “Oh, I am so saddened by this,” and returned to the apartment to figure out, along with Laura, what to do about it.
Mamitte asked them if they wanted to say something.
The boys figure it all out on their own.
When they returned to their coffee cups in the apartment, they asked each other, “How did we do that—It worked so effectively?!”