The Blessing of Faith and Tradition
Source/Author: Kate Fierce
December 11, 2014
All children have a deep need to believe in something more, something bigger than themselves. Young children are particularly open to wonder and reverence, whether it’s their awe over a beautiful rainbow or their profound questions about life. Children find tradition and ritual deeply comforting.
In The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Dr. Wendy Mogel invites parents to explore their child’s need for spirituality. In this article, we will take spirituality to be a concept broader than any particular religion. Clearly, neither I nor Shorecrest Preparatory School seek to promote a particular religion or, indeed, any religion at all. Instead, we will define spirituality as a set of guiding beliefs and principles. Families of any religion and even families who do not emphasize religion can teach their children a set of guiding beliefs and principles.
In The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Dr. Wendy Mogel invites parents to explore their child’s need for spirituality. In this article, we will take spirituality to be a concept broader than any particular religion. Clearly, neither I nor Shorecrest Preparatory School seek to promote a particular religion or, indeed, any religion at all. Instead, we will define spirituality as a set of guiding beliefs and principles. Families of any religion and even families who do not emphasize religion can teach their children a set of guiding beliefs and principles.
In her counseling practice, Dr. Mogel discovered that the children she saw needed something different from their parents. She encountered many loving and sensitive parents who were looking in the wrong places to remedy their family’s distress. They were “measuring their children by sizing up their moods, their grades, or their social standing.” But we need to take a longer view and measure differently, argues Mogel. We must “look at children’s capacity for reverence, for gratitude, and for compassion.
Building strength and self-reliance requires something more. These are qualities that don’t kick in automatically, least of all from a math tutor. It requires planning and discipline. It takes us figuring out what we believe and becoming conscious about bringing that into our lives through our teaching, our values, and our practices.
“Children can learn to play tennis whether or not you play,” writes Mogel. “They can learn desktop publishing and how to do refined Web searches, but learning values and developing a sense of the holy must start at home. You are your child’s first teacher.”
“Children can learn to play tennis whether or not you play,” writes Mogel. “They can learn desktop publishing and how to do refined Web searches, but learning values and developing a sense of the holy must start at home. You are your child’s first teacher.”
If you wish to convey a set of family values and morals to your children, here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Help your child develop a moral identity. Values such as kindness, fairness, and responsibility to others can be explicitly discussed and modeled within the home. By requiring children to help around the house, by insisting that children be respectful to us, to their friends, and to our friends and to strangers, by talking to children about why values matter, we can weave values such as responsibility to others into their sense of self from an early age.
- Teach your child, or get help in teaching your child, how to manage destructive emotions. Often emotions, such as fear of being a “loser” or being left out, lead us to our transgressions. Developing a value system and a sense of spirituality in children is about preventing them from experiencing high levels of shame, envy, entitlement or other destructive emotions. Model appropriate responses to your child. Talk with them about their actions. Get help for both of you if needed.
- Help your child develop the skill of moral reasoning. Children usually can tell adults what is expected of them in clear-cut moral quandaries. However, real life more often consists of moral dilemmas, in which different values clash and collide. For example, if a friend steals a calculator, should a child be honest with the teacher who asks what happened to the calculator or loyal to her friend? Children need help developing the capacity to sort through these moral dilemmas and problems. This means, in part, helping children take multiple perspectives and think about the impact of various decisions on themselves and their community.
- Teach your child key social and emotional competencies. Adhering to a strong value system also means having the skills to treat people well everyday. For instance, children need to know how to offer help without being patronizing, and how to provide constructive feedback. Adults can guide children in developing these social and emotional skills. This guidance is most effective when is its modeled by adults and then discussed with children.
- Nurture a sense of strength and maturity in your child’s self-concept. To stand up for important principles or to take responsibility for others can mean painful ostracism or other hardships. History is full of stories of good people who did the right thing during tough times. Cultivating a strong values system also means avoiding false promises to children, such as that everything will go their way if they do the right thing. Good decisions often require sacrifices. Adults can model this and support children through the bad parts of doing a good thing.
To be fair, growing spirituality in children, inculcating them with strong values and morals, is not an easy task. It can often require a community of adults coming together with a common purpose. But it stands a real chance of helping many children become strong, fair, and caring adults.
This concludes our series on The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. If you missed it, you can catch up on this article series by clicking the links below.
Article 1: The Blessing of a Skinned Knee
Article 2: Overindulgence
Article 3: Emotional Regulation
Article 4: Acceptance
Article 5: Having Someone to Look Up To
Article 6: Over-protectiveness
Article 7: Gratitude
Article 8: Work
Article 8: Food
Article 9: Self-Control
Article 10: Time
