Nov 10, 2014 | Nourishment
Talk to any 3- or 4-year-old and you will find a capacity to think about God. Researcher Justin Barrett says, “They already have something like an impulse to think about supernatural beings, to account for why things are the way they are and how things work in the world around them. They’re really inclined to make sense of it in terms of something like God.”
Cultivate that natural capacity as they get older.
So how does that work? How can parents, or any adult who’s caring for a child’s spiritual well-being, encourage engaging with the mind of God? Dr. Barrett continues:
You can ask them to consider: How does God think?
How might that be different from how they think? What is God’s perspective on their life, on the lives of those around them? This kind of engagement might be good for their personal development but it’s also great for their social, cognitive development.
Children’s social intelligence increases as they consider these kinds of questions.
There is evidence that thinking about others who have different perspectives is good for developing children’s social intelligence:
- others who look at things a different way
- others who feel something differently
- others who know different things
It helps them develop the ability to navigate the world around them
It builds up those muscles for thinking about other people who have different perspectives, and maybe loosen up the erroneous idea that I am the center of the world. How I think is the way everyone else thinks. What I think is right and wrong is what everybody else thinks is right and wrong.
God is a really interesting test case for that possibility.
Thinking about God, engaging with God, and considering the difference between God and them can help stretch a child. It can bring the understanding that I could be wrong about certain things because God captures the truth better than I do.
It is healthy for children from a very young age to begin engaging with how God thinks.
This post is composed of excerpts taken from a magazine interview given by Dr. Justin Barrett.
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Nov 3, 2014 | trust
Hide and Seek can be fun for kids… but the thrill is in being found. No one wants to stay hidden forever. That means they’ve been forgotten and are not part of the group anymore.
An (admittedly imperfect) analogy can be drawn to hiding our wrongdoing
When adults do something wrong, our temptation can be to hide it. But we quickly learn that the hiding becomes a problem in and of itself.
It cuts us off from our community. It allows our detrimental behavior to continue to harm us. It brings unwanted feelings of shame.
We don’t want this for our children.
Why do children often begin to cover up their wrongdoings?
For one thing, it is usually easy to hide a hurtful wrong, while deciding to reveal it is hard.
For another thing, children are scared of the consequences, especially when that may include punishment in some form. So instead of acknowledging the wrongdoing and exposing themselves to the adult’s potentially negative reaction, their temptation is to hide it.
Also, children sense a breach of relationship when adults get angry or express disappointment in them, making their choice to hide seem like a safer alternative.
What can we as parents or caregivers do to help children navigate these difficult waters well?
The most important action we can take is also the most simple: Show them through modeling. When do children see you admit that you have done something wrong or handled something badly? When have they seen you apologize for your actions?
One dad sometimes gets mad at his kids and yells at them. (Admittedly, they’ve generally done something to provoke that response.) He knows he shouldn’t yell at them, so after he cools down he will come back and apologize to his children. Through this they learn that it’s okay– even good– to be honest about your shortcomings.
The more honest I can be, the less I have to hide…when I have nothing to hide, I have everything to give.
–American singer/songwriter Kenny Loggins
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Oct 20, 2014 | Direction
I have noticed that very young children are quite honest and open about their wrongdoing.
A child who is told to stay in the living room and not come into the kitchen will slide one foot into the kitchen and then look at the adult to see what they will do. The child is not hiding what they are doing– it’s more like they are experimenting to find out what will happen.
What the adult does next matters
One little girl saw some pretty headbands with sparkles at a friend’s house where she was playing. As Chloe and her mom were walking home, the mom noticed Chloe holding the sparkly headbands. “Where did you get those?” “From Hannah’s house.” “Did Hannah give them to you?” “No.” So they marched right back and returned the headbands to Hannah and her mother with an apology from Chloe.
What did this little girl learn about wrongdoing and guilt?
- Stealing is wrong. I should not take what doesn’t belong to me.
- When I do something wrong, the way to handle it is to go back and acknowledge what I did.
- The apology should come from me, not from my mother. No one else is responsible for my actions.
- When I admit what I did and apologize, I am forgiven and the relationship is restored.
Incidences of wrongdoing are a valuable learning experience for children. The way the important adults in their lives respond becomes the way the child will respond for the rest of their life when they do wrong.
Imagine this mom had behaved differently. What different lessons might be hard-wired into Chloe’s internal guidance system?
“Did Hannah give them to you?” “No.”
- Response #1: “Oh. Well, I’m sure it’s no big deal. They’re just hair bands.” And they keep walking.
- Lesson #1: Stealing is no big deal. You don’t need to address it. OR: It’s better to not let people know if you’ve done something wrong.
- Response #2: Seeing the hair bands and pretending not to. Saying nothing.
- Lesson #2: This is acceptable behavior.
- Response #3: Taking the child back to return the hair band with the mom apologizing to the other mom.
- Lesson #3: I am not responsible for my actions– my parents are. It brings shame on them when I do something wrong. My parents need to right the wrong, not me.
- Response #4: Yelling at the child, bringing the issue up multiple times, shaming the child in front of others.
- Lesson #4: I am a bad person because I did this. If I do something wrong in the future, I should hide it.
The way the important adults in their lives respond becomes the way children will respond for the rest of their life when they do wrong.
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Oct 13, 2014 | Uncategorized
Guilt is generally a negative term. It’s a feeling heaped on us by others that makes us feel bad and decreases our emotional health. Some of us also heap guilt upon ourselves. It weighs us down.
Is there ever a place for guilt?
Is it ever helpful? I would say yes– and I might consider renaming it “conscience” or “healthy guilt” when it comes from the internal guidance system inside us as opposed to being heaped on us from others.
A working moral compass makes children stronger
As children get older, their conscience is what bothers them when they have done something wrong. Often it prompts them to right a wrong, make amends, or apologize… all of which promote personal and social health.
There’s a place for sadness over what we have done
When a criminal has been convicted, we watch to see if they feel remorse– sadness for what they have done. That is guilt… a healthy response to one’s own wrongdoing. When someone feels no guilt for obvious and severe wrongdoing, society considers them a sociopath.
How can we help children develop an internal moral compass– a conscience– but without the negative baggage that guilt brings? How can we help them not just have a change of actions, but a change of heart?
I welcome ideas from readers as I am thinking through this issue.
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Is there such a thing as healthy guilt? Is there ever a place for guilt in childhood? Click to Tweet
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
