May 4, 2015 | trust
Children who go to religious education classes, Sunday School or parochial school benefit from opportunities to experience God beyond learning facts about God.
Earlier this week, I took my four-year-old granddaughter to the library and to the park for a Bug Hunt. As I steered the car into a parking spot, I asked “What is God doing today?”
Long pause. “I don’t know,” she said.
I continued, “Maybe he would like to come with us to the park to hunt for bugs. Should we invite him?”
Longer pause, then: “Yes, God can come with us while we look for bugs, and other Gods can be with other people so everybody has God with them today.”
Soon we walked past a bush and she said, “Look! There’s threads on this bush,” and we traced the path of the threads from a leaf all the way to the sidewalk. I offered, “Maybe we can find a book in the library to tell us more about the threads.”
The librarian found a picture book for us about spider webs and another book about our best sighting of the day–ladybugs–which we read together in the beanbag chairs provided by the library.
Finally it was time to go home. As we talked about our adventure, I said, “I had so much fun with you today. Do you think God had fun with us?” Her silence was more profound this time.
This silence was that same kind of hush I’ve seen whenever she processes a new experience.
Then she burst into song. I didn’t catch all the words but something about joy and God. I never said anything about her song because I understood that it wasn’t really intended for my ears anyway.
Tweetable:
Ask children, “What is God doing today?” and see how they experience God beyond the facts they’ve learned. Click to Tweet
Apr 27, 2015 | Attachment
Skill #1: Attentiveness: Notice spiritual activity in children.
It occurs most often in the context of everyday life, but don’t overlook its presence here:
- Dreams
- Awe-inspiring activities
- Peace in hard times
- Out-of-control events
- Coincidences and unexplainable events
Skill #2: Active listening: Engage the child in conversation about it.
- Situation 1 Dreams – “As my son was going to sleep he said he was afraid to go to heaven because he didn’t know what it would look like. I told him to ask God to show him while he was asleep. When I followed up two days later he gave me a detailed description. I asked him if it took away his fears, now that he saw it, and he said yes.”
Situation 2 Awe-inspiring activities: “For me, surfing helps. Just being in nature and contextualizing myself with the ocean as this immortal force, this elemental force. And then doing some sort of mindfulness meditation, I think yoga is a good starting point.”- Situation 3 Peace in hard times: “I was 6, maybe 7, when my pet cat died. I wanted to know where my cat went, why she couldn’t come back, etc. I was completely satisfied with my parents’ answers of “She went to Heaven.” God is watching over her now.” That’s when I realized there was some other higher being out there. I felt peace. I remember it distinctly. It was peace knowing that there was someone watching and caring for us that we couldn’t see or touch, but they were out there.”
Situation 4 Out-of-control events: One woman says, “When I was a child in Uganda I remember times when things were out of control and I didn’t expect anything positive to come out of it. My mother helped me recognize God when something good did come out of it.”- Situation 5 Coincidences and unexplainable events: “My teenage daughter called me to tell me that she had pulled a 10-year-old up from the bottom of the pool where she lifeguards. The next morning she said, ‘I couldn’t sleep last night, Ma. I kept thinking about that girl and what might have happened if I hadn’t rescued her. Nobody noticed she was lying at the bottom of the pool. Not even her own sister who was with her. I just can’t believe what happened.’ And I responded, ‘You did something extraordinary. You should feel incredibly good about yourself.'”
Skill #3: Acceptance: Discern if the child wants information or empathy.
Pay attention to this distinction. Accept it either way and respond accordingly. The child in Situation 3 needs information about her cat. The child in Situation 5 wants understanding.
Tweetable: Good news. We use these same 3 skills with kids to develop either spiritual or emotional intelligence. Click to Tweet
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
Apr 6, 2015 | Security
Many people have chapters of their life that they may be hesitant to tell their children about. Ask yourself 5 questions as you weigh the pros and cons.
Is my child very likely to hear about my past from another source?
When I was in middle school, my friend learned of her father’s affairs and pending divorce by overhearing adults talking at a family gathering. If family members, friends or neighbors know about your past, there is a good chance your child will eventually hear about it too. Is it important that they hear it from you?
Is there an uncomfortable secrecy in your family?
Not sharing such experiences can lead to an uncomfortable secrecy in some families. Obviously, what you share, how many details you give, and when you disclose them will be age and situation appropriate. Will your children feel empowered within your family from knowing what the others know? Will the initial upset they feel upon hearing it be less than the damaging effects of hiding secrets?
Am I clear about my motives for doing this?
- Children respect parents who are honest with them, but you have the right to your privacy. If you don’t want to reopen old wounds, don’t feel obligated to do so. Will you be sharing from a place of free choice, self-imposed pressure, or outward compulsion?
- David Sheff, comments on a parent’s common motivation for sharing about a past drug addiction:
Parents’ hands are tied. If you lie, you put your entire relationship on the line, risk being caught in a lie and ruin any trust you’ve built over the many years of parenting.
But if you come clean, you run the risk of showing your kid that it’s fine to try anything because, hey, you’re still here to talk about it.
Either way, “It’s not going to determine whether your kid uses or not,” says Sheff. “The reason kids are going to use or not use has almost nothing to do with what their parents say.”
Sheff continues, “It has to do with the relationship you have with your kids, and how open are they going to be with you,” he notes, “and how involved in their lives you are to perceive the struggles they’re having below the surface.”
Have I made peace with myself [and my God] about my actions?
“There are shameful things that parents feel, and they have to come to terms with that first,” says Eileen Bond, supervising faculty at the University of Michigan Center for Child and Family and a clinical social worker.“Shame should not contaminate their response. And that requires reflection.”
When making peace with past experiences, many people turn to a counselor, clergy person, chaplain, support group, or spiritual director. What are your resources for reflecting and processing toward a place of greater peace before discussing it with your children?
Is my child judging and criticizing others?
An anonymous mother says: My 12-year-old daughter had been flipping through television channels when she stopped on a talk show about women who’d had abortions. “Those women must be awful,” my daughter said scornfully. “How could anyone kill a baby like that?”
At that moment, I knew that I wanted to tell my daughter about my own past. I offered a silent prayer, then burst into my story.
“Those women aren’t necessarily awful,” I began. “Sometimes they’re simply trapped. I had an abortion when I was a teenager. I was young and scared, and I thought abortion was my only option. Eventually I met and married your awesome dad, and we were blessed to have you.”
My daughter was crushed. “She cried like a baby about my past. I felt terrible, but I knew I was right to tell her and I believe she won’t go on being judgmental toward women who’ve had abortions.”
Older children are insightful enough to know you have things you aren’t proud of. How will your honesty make you more believable and approachable? What will be the reward for self-disclosure?
Tweetable: Five questions help parents weigh pros and cons of whether to share your old life with your children. Click to Tweet
Mar 30, 2015 | Direction
All of us reached adolescence with childhood beliefs, values and morals that needed evaluation.
Beliefs enter a child’s mind and get established in the mental operating system* without a healthy evaluation of the basis for the belief. In a child’s brain, the ability to reason is not yet fully developed.
When children reach adolescence with little attention given to their childhood beliefs….
- We may hear something like this boy’s explanation: “Faith is believing what you know isn’t so.”
- They are less likely to come to parents, now preferring peers and those outside of the family.
Take Easter–the resurrection of Jesus Christ–for instance.
Christianity maintains that Jesus died on a cross and three days later, came back to life and was seen by multiple eyewitnesses.
I suspect that for many of the 2 billion people who identify as Christians, this doctrine remains a hard-to-understand mystery. Some older children may leave Sunday’s Easter Service concluding that the resurrection is incomprehensible and therefore nonsense.
Preteens beginning to evaluate their beliefs usually want our assistance:
- Begin by listening intently to the child’s belief. Clarify until you can precisely express the child’s belief back to him (and the child says “yes, that’s it”).
- Use the same active listening to unpack the child’s conflict, doubt, question about their belief–so that you can state it precisely and the child says, “yes, that’s it.”
- Brainstorm options for checking the accuracy of the belief–resurrection–in our example (weigh evidence from science, history):
- Talk to trustworthy people who see the issues from different perspectives.
- Search the Internet: evidence for resurrection
- Find a workshop, seminar, documentary, book
- Ask, “Which option is best for you?”
By allowing the child to own their choice you teach them how to approach doubts and questions when you aren’t around.
*to borrow a phrase from psychiatrist Timothy Jennings.
