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

Celebrating Family and Friends - Art History For Kids

This activity focuses on Grandparents, but can also be done with anyone you'd like your children to know more about.  It includes great tips for appropriating art and how to create a portrait. Enjoy!

We are fortunate to have my mother-in-law, Carol, living down the street. “MaMaMa” visits for dinner twice a week. Our energetic kids are 4, 5 and 7 so you can imagine mealtime is a bit of a circus some days. Lately I’ve asked MaMaMa to share a few stories from her childhood and when she does, something magical happens. The children actually sit in their chairs, eat their broccoli and listen to her with wide, curious eyes. They enjoy hearing about great-grandpa Lawrence who was a Marine and one of the first men to land a plane on an aircraft carrier at night. And how when she was little there were no computers, cell phones or video games, and only one black and white television in her home.

My mother, “MiMi,” was recently visiting from New Orleans and I wanted to create opportunities for the children to get to know her family history too. My daughters enjoy art so I thought it would be fun for them to paint her portrait. I decided to make it a group art lesson and invited a few neighborhood friends over. They each brought one photo of a grandparent.

The holidays are the perfect time of year for this family art activity. Here’s an idea: after Thanksgiving dinner, have your child paint a grandparent’s portrait.

Art history for kids – get the creative juices flowing!

Click here for the full activity - enjoy!

Family Memories at Thanksgiving

What better time to capture family memories and stories than when you and your relatives gather to celebrate Thanksgiving? For the past several years, several organizations have encouraged families to listen to one another and record family history over the Thanksgiving weekend. StoryCorps, for example, has launched The National Day of Listening.

So put down that pumpkin pie and forget about the mad dash to the mall. When the parade is over, sit down with an older family member and ask them about their lives, their memories, their stories. Many families have started to ask older family members to tell stories at the Thanksgiving dinner table—memories that provoke more memories and stories. It’s a wonderful way to connect older generations with newer ones, and to create a shared family tradition.

Also, think about preserving those memories for generations to come, away from the hubbub of the dinner table.

The ancestor book and the scaffolding of a family

Re-posted by Mary Cay Kollmansperger, 11/9/2013

When we were in Utah for Spring Break last year I found a treasure. Like, a serious treasure.

It was our “Ancestor Book.” 

It is a vintage-y looking large book that my Dad bought when we were all young and that he gradually filled with stories of our ancestors.

...I had been meaning to find that big book of ours for a while…I wanted to check out some of the ancestor stories we had helped write and illustrate as a model for doing something similar in our own family.

But wow, I found so much more than ancestor stories.

All that time I thought that book was just filled with stories of those who went before us.  Little did I know it was also filled with stories of US.  What made our family run.  In that beautiful ancestor book I hit the goldmine: the whole “framework” for our family.

The scaffolding.

...As I looked through that book memories washed over me like velvet.

How incredibly grateful I am for my parents who masterminded their family to the very best of their abilities.

Want to Give Your Family Value and Purpose? Write a Mission Statement

A somewhat corny, mostly brilliant tip from corporate America

Bruce Feilier, February 2013, The Atlantic

Every parent I know worries about teaching values to their children. How do we ensure that in today's ever-changing world they understand some beliefs are timeless? How do we truly know if they grasp the qualities that are most important to us?

For a long time, my wife and I were so busy responding to the chaos around us in our family that we never had a chance to address these questions. But when I set out a few years ago to try to find the qualities that united high-functioning families, I kept encountering a similar object in many homes. Some families call it a "belief board," others a "statement of purpose."

Could such a document be one answer I was looking for?

The first reference I found to a family manifesto was in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, which was published in 1989. A management consultant from Utah with a Harvard MBA, Covey often asked his corporate clients to write a one-sentence answer to the question, "What is the essential mission or purpose of this organization, and what is its main strategy in accomplishing that purpose?" Executives were usually shocked at how much their answers differed. Covey then helped them create a more unified mission statement.
(full article)