Dear mom of "that" kid…you are a wonderful mother, and I believe in you.

By Jamie Martin, 

Steady Mom

Dear mom of "that" kid, you know who you are. The other kids stay on the felt squares for story time--yours scampers away. The others try plenty of new foods. You can barely get yours to eat at all. The other kids laugh at the birthday party clown. Your kid runs and screams.

"It isn't about your successful efforts--

it's about your faithfulness."

The others outgrew tantrums long ago--yours still has them daily. The other kids skip into preschool, while your child leaves marks on your hand from her death grip. None of the other moms at the playground chitchat about these issues. So it must just be you. That inner, insecure voice accuses and puts you on trial. Condemns right inside your own head. But dearest mom of "that" kid, I have a different message for you today: You are valuable, vulnerable, chosen. YOU CAN DO THIS!

Why Parents Matter

 In the 2014 Ensign Lecture at Yale Divinity School, Professor Christian Smith said that teenagers are far more inclined to be strongly religious later in life when their parents are strongly religious during their formative years.

Smith is professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He said parents are far more influential in their children’s eventual adult religious patterns than any other conceivable cause: more than youth groups, mission trips, religious education, and other adults.

Chief among the relevant factors is parents’ willingness to discuss matters of faith and religion with their teenage children. Even parents whose religious conviction is more tentative, and whose attendance at services is less frequent, can help teenagers become faithful adults — provided they are engaged in dialogue with them about faith and their religious tradition.

Smith made a few suggestions about why this might be the case. First he observed that young people might be considered “bundles of time-attention-energy-activity in formation.” Parents have more access to this bundle, and more responsibility for nurturing it, than any other people.

Second, Smith observed that old tropes about rebellious teenagers refusing any authority but their own, and hapless parents unable to get a word in edgewise, are simply untrue. Parents have far more influence than they know, and teenagers are far more ready to be influenced by them than most are willing to grant.

Third, Smith said religious beliefs and practices are linguistically constituted and meaningful. Learning them requires learning a second language, and students need plenty of time to practice speaking. Parents, with the access they enjoy and the influence they wield, are always going to be the most effective interlocutors with whom teenagers practice whatever kinds of speech they are learning, religious speech included.

Finally, Smith observed that religious culture in America, set as it is within broader cultural movements of Western society, has been undergoing a major shift. That shift is from religious identity as a “cultural solidarity project” to a “personal identity accessory.” Smith suggested that however we regard the value of this shift, it is important to acknowledge it has occurred, and continues to occur. With it has come a compartmentalization of the roles of clergy, teachers, and other adults in teenagers’ development.

This is consistent with patterns of secularization that scholars have been observing since at least the 1960s. It is unclear how these patterns will eventually resolve. What is clear is that the burden of the religious socialization of young people is being transferred more and more fully to the shoulders of parents.

The Rev. Blake Sawicky

The Living Church, 10/28/14

Summer Vacay: Where is Mom’s Coffin?

by SARAH CONDON on Jul 17, 2014
Mockingbird

Officially speaking, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying tells the story of Bundren family traveling to bury their mother, Addie. Quickly in the narrative she dies. Children and husband must fulfill last request to take Mom’s body on a 40-mile trek in a wagon to be buried in Jefferson, Mississippi. Written in 1930, it dances the line between modern and post-modern literature. Different characters’ voices take over each chapter, and as the book progresses, the reader is given a complex, dark, and intimate narrative.

Unofficially, I believe it is a book written about a mother who simply wanted her family to take a vacation together, even if it involved hauling her corpse around. And Mr. Faulkner just wanted everyone to talk (and sometimes yell) all at once. Like you do on family vacations.

Don’t let the gorgeous Instagram photos fool you. This is the season for family vacations and in real life they are always #nofilter. While it might seem like a strange parallel, I think William Faulkner had a fantastic understanding of the theological implications of a family vacation. Like Addie Bundren being hoisted about in her coffin, parents love the idea of a family getaway. And yet, when the whole brood heads to the Grand Canyon, the messiness of life becomes oddly compact. You plan a big, freedom-promising journey and end up all together in a hotel room/car/tent. And there you are. All together in a small space, annoying habits exposed.

I had the good fortune of going on some pretty serious family vacations as a kiddo. No, I am not going to tell you we went to Europe. Or regale you with stories about all those times at our lake cabin. Almost every year we loaded up in an old suburban and drove from Mississippi to New Mexico. I had one backseat and my little brother claimed the other. For the first few days my mom would remind us that it wasn’t going to be the end of It’s a Wonderful Life that we had all imagined.

Creating a Summer Rhythm

by Rhett Smith

Striking a balance between being super busy and doing nothing over the summer can often be difficult for families. Hopefully in the process of communicating expectations for the family a good rhythm can unfold between busyness and rest.

Lots of kids, as well as parents, come to the end of the school year completely exhausted. Sometimes a period is needed for families to rest and rejuvenate before launching fully into busy summer mode. But the reality of family life today is often that both parents are working, and therefore kids need to move quickly from school into summer activities.

Depending on your family, you may have characteristics that help you go about finding the right rhythm. But here are a few suggestions that I have found to be helpful:

Create “White Space” – As you look at your summer calendar, make sure there are days on the calendar where there is nothing planned. There should be “white space” on those days. In our busy world, it’s important to have days where kids and parents don’t have something to do.  These days allow families to be spontaneous and creative in the absence of planned activity.  I recommending purchasing a large white board calendar if you don’t have one, or drawing a calendar on a white board. Capture

Live Fruitfully and Honestly: Life Assurance From E.B. White

There are moments in every life when the shadow of uncertainty descends, when we lose our sense of purpose, when finding joy seems an insurmountable hurdle.  E.B. White, the beloved children's book author of Charlotte's Web, wrote this letter to his niece on the occasion of her own uncertainty — something I wish I had read when I was lost. His words are reassurance that a life lived fruitfully and honestly needn't be difficult or very far from reach:

"I know just how you feel, Judy. Frustration is youth's middle name, and you mustn't worry too much about it. Eventually things clarify themselves and life begins to divulge a steadier destination. In a way, our lives take form through a simple process of elimination. We discard what we don't like, walk away from what seems to inspirit us. My first job was with the United Press, but I knew within half an hour that my heart was not in it and that I would never be any good at gathering straight news under great difficulties and with the clock always running out.

The Value of Volunteering

While parents everywhere worry about raising spoiled kids, they also go to great lengths to shield children from things like poverty and disaster.

Teaching your children that life can be hard and empowering them to make change will lead to increased self-confidence and empathy for others.

It's no big secret that little kids love to help. From the moment they are able to mimic their parents, they begin helping. While some of their help might not actually seem as helpful as it is intended, the important thing to remember is that they love to help.

Helping others is the best way to build a strong sense of community and compassion. It builds empathy and teaches children to think about and respect their surroundings, other people in their community and the world as a whole.

Family volunteerism is a great way to introduce the concept of community service to even very young children. Even toddlers can lend a helping hand when it comes to planting a community garden, packing gift baskets for sick children and playing with animals at a local animal shelter. When you take the time to volunteer as a family, you teach your children that we all need to take care of one another, and we can have a lot of fun doing it.

The benefits of instilling a strong sense of community service in your child are numerous

Take it, Break it, Share it, Love it

Making Communion Meaningful For Children

In the second season of the TV drama Mad Men, young and rising advertising copywriter Peggy Olson lands the Popsicle account by comparing a mother’s act of taking a twin pop from the freezer, breaking it in two and giving it to her children to the ritual of sharing in the Sacrament of Communion.

Sharing a Popsicle, she tells the executives, is not just something that you do in the summer heat, but a ritual that is enacted all year around. No matter if it came from the freezer or from the ice cream truck, each time you: take it, break it, share it, love it.

A shift has occurred, during my lifetime, to openly welcome children to participate in the sacrament of Communion no matter their age. I can remember the very first time I participated in Communion as a child, and the discussion I had with my parents that morning in preparation.

Communion is unique in that it is not just a story that we tell or a service that we attend, but a fully sensory experience that we have together as a community. Clearly these are the kinds of experiences that can be especially meaningful to children. 

Communion: I Serve You In The Love Of Christ

by Jill Clingan

I felt a tap on my shoulder, startling me from my reverie. It was a spring Sunday morning.  My husband was upstairs helping with the kids. I was sitting alone in my pew.  The service was winding down, and it was time for communion.  As I was sitting in that pew, with my head bowed, I probably looked the part of a pensive, meditative worshipper.

But I was not praying. I was staring down at the spiral bound notebook in my lap. The tap on my shoulder was so startling because I was afraid I was going to get caught, and I immediately sought to conceal the small book.

I had not been jotting down sermon notes or composing a pre-communion prayer. Instead, I had been scribbling out my to-do list, a list that spanned laundry and homeschool prep and long-overdue emails and housecleaning. As I stared down at my completed list, I felt overwhelmed and a wee bit panicky that I was sitting quietly in church rather than ticking something off of that list.

The tap on my shoulder had distracted me out of a meditation more tellurian than sacred.

Children and Eucharist

by Genelda Woggon

Our grandson, born in the late 1980s, was blessed to belong to a church that did indeed honor the rich spiritual potential of the young child. At their Sunday morning Family Eucharist he was welcomed at the Table of the Lord to receive the Bread and the Wine along with his parents and the parish community. It is his generation that will be among the first in the Episcopal Church to never remember when he was not fed at the Table of the Lord.

It was his mother’s generation, however, that came of age at the time that General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1971 asserted that “admission to communion is to be based upon baptism alone, not upon baptism plus Episcopal confirmation.” This was not a decree that came to fruition overnight – but a long . . . slow . . . process that is still unfolding in various stages in different places around the country.

It took almost another 10 years for this to really begin to sink in. In 1988 the General Convention made it necessary to make yet another statement saying it “unequivocally affirms that all baptized persons, regardless of age, may receive communion.”

This was the turning point for infants and toddlers to be really invited to the Table – but always at the parents’ discretion as to the exact and most appropriate time for each child to receive. . . . . It was quite interesting to see the differences in how parishes responded – to some degree based on geography and cultural dynamics more than on liturgical or theological reasoning.

Life After High School

by M. Craig Barnes

I recently went to parents’ night at our local high school in Princeton, New Jersey. The way these evenings work is that parents walk through their children’s schedule, going from classroom to classroom. There we sit in remarkably uncomfortable chairs for a 15-minute introduction to the teacher and the course he or she teaches.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in a high school, and memories flooded over me.

As I shuffled down the halls looking at the posters advertising the next dance, a homecoming pep rally and tryouts for the spring musical, I was transported back 40 years to when I walked through high school halls in a blue-collar neighborhood on Long Island. I realize that youth culture has changed dramatically over these years. But the beige linoleum floors, the tiled state-hospital-like walls, the wide stairwells that beg for someone to slap down an armful of books—they are all the same. I walked past one locker that was dented—and prayed for the nerd whose head had been pushed into it. And don’t even get me started on the bathrooms. Have the graffiti artists developed no creativity after so many years?

No one ever gets over high school. I am sure my stepsons’ teachers were saying important things that night as I sat in their classes, but I couldn’t stay focused. The familiar halls beckoned old memories that overtook my mind and soul.

The Spirituality Parenting

More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of parenting tends to raise spiritual questions anew. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. The spiritual life, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers.  

Click here to listen to Krista Tippett's interview with Sandy Eisenberg Sasso on The Spirituality of Parenting

How Can Adults Nurture Children's Spirituality?

Even with clear evidence that spirituality is an important resource for individuals, and clear mandates to address the spiritual needs of children, evidence-based practices for promoting spiritual well-being in children and adolescents are hard to find. 

What can be found instead are large numbers of books and articles aimed at educators and parents, most of which contain guidelines or suggestions that are loosely based on research but do not rise much above the level of good advice.

In the face of this reality, what can adults who care about children do? We know that children come to us with an innate spirituality, but that spirituality is very vulnerable to the cultural forces that devalue it. It follows then, that the most important thing we can do to nurture it is value it – value it by our words and our actions.

Sundays Are Worth the Effort!

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds, but a man took it and planted it in his garden and it grew and grew until it became a tree and all the birds in the air came and nested in its branches."

- Tomie dePaola, adapted from Matthew 13:31-32, Mark 4:31-32, Luke 13:19

Is it easy to bring our children to church on Sunday? No. Do most of us have routines or traditions that celebrate Sunday as special? Not really. Does it make a difference for our children's faith if we do? Yes!

It isn't easy to get the family to church on Sunday or create Sunday traditions, but the impact of this weekly effort on our children is enormous. Maybe it's a struggle to get to church regularly, or we long for a peaceful church service, or we're lucky if we manage to light a candle at a Sunday meal. Yet every effort strengthens our children's experience of Sundays as extra special.

Sabbath: A Day of Being, Having and Doing Enough

What if the quiet voices that tell us that we have done what we could, given what we were able, tried our best - what if this inner knowing has been silenced?  If we move too fast we ignore the signals we receive from our bone-weary souls, day by day, moment by moment, voices that tell us, shout at us, trying to get us to listen: Our house is already on fire.

Nowhere in scripture do we find texts that insist God wants us to be miserable, overwhelmed, bone-weary, exhausted or discouraged.  But there are countless verses about having a life abundantly well rested, well nourished, along with tidings of great joy; this is the day the lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it; Come to me all who toil and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Remember the Sabbath.  Remember who you are, remember that being alive is a gift.  Listen to the breeze

rustle the leaves of the trees, speak a word of kindness to someone in need of hearing it, place your hand on your child, your beloved, and offer them your blessing, be still, be quiet, listen.  God is offering us the most elegant, magnificent present...we only have to stop.  

Click to read the full article by The Rev. Wayne Muller