Category: Trying to Figure it out

Letter From God

Easter Disaster

Well, Easter didn’t go as I hoped as far as “Children’s Church” goes. I had finally come up with the idea of focusing on new life and hope with the kids. I felt like that captured the essence of Easter. I wasn’t ready to go into Jesus’ death with my 4 and 2 year old. Plus, Easter is about the resurrection. I had planned to use “tickly worm” (it’s a game between my boys and me). Tickly worm is my finger and often he either tickles them or “tells” me what my boys are upset about. They really like “him” so I thought he would get their attention. I had him (my finger) pop out of a plastic Easter egg, I had hollowed out the bottom. But my oldest simply wanted to grab him and play with him. Tickly worm tried to teach them about God’s lessons on hope and new life using spring but they really weren’t interested. I had a couple of time lapsed videos that show winter melting away and spring blooming but I had trouble getting them on my phone and they really didn’t hold their interest. In hindsight I could have prepared much better but some weeks seem to fly by more than others. It was a tough day to pull this off with all the activities that weekend, egg hunts and sugar. I was in an uphill battle but it was still disappointing. I’m already looking to next Easter to redeem myself.

Struggling to find my way

The following week was another bust. I struggled to come up with ideas all week and finally pulled something together late Saturday night. I’m not sure what was going on with me Sunday morning but I wasn’t feeling very great about the lesson and a few things were going on in the home. Max didn’t seem interested in doing Children’s church and a part of me just deflated and gave up.

I didn’t want this to be something that they were forced to do. I wanted to engage them in a way that would be enjoyable. I know from my background in psychology that when you begin to force these kinds of lessons much of what I value is then lost in the process. But that is a tall order to try and engage a 2 and 4 year old each week. I can right that with a degree of empathy for past weekend “me.”

That night as I put my oldest to bed I brought up my children’s church supplies and did the lesson with him before he went to bed. I wanted to test out what I had prepared in order to see if it would help and engage him.  I thought that it might go better during a quieter environment with fewer distractions. It did go much smoother and it has me thinking about how to go about this, Sunday mornings may not be the way to go?

I started by reading him a letter from God that I thought would capture some of what God would want him to know. He really enjoyed it, I saw his face light up. Then he smiled and asked me if I wrote that “for God.” I loved that question and told him yes.

Then I showed him a little booklet I made with some scenarios and a single question- “What would God say to that person?” I wanted to get him thinking about what God is thinking. So I had a little boy who was alone, a boy who was sad and I a boy who was shy. I loved his answers! But the shy one caught my attention (he’s a bit shy), “God” told the shy boy it was OK to be shy. I found myself pondering that answer for a while. With that one I also brought out a bunch of stuffed animals and re-enacted the shy “toy.” We had the other toys come around him and love him a bit. This had a lasting impression. He wanted to sleep with the “friends” and we brought them around the house with us for a couple of days.

Where do I go from here?

The Sunday morning struggle left me thinking and praying about what I am trying to accomplish. I took inventory of my kids. My boys know about God, they know about love and know they are God’s art….so what does Children’s church entail now? I hate redundancy and rote learning which also makes this a challenge.

I was overjoyed when spontaneously the other day Max said,“I love Mommy and Daddy and Maddox, I love God and the earth.” I’ve also noticed that Max regularly asks questions about God.

Maddox (my youngest) will reference a lesson every so often and randomly start singing “Yes, Jesus loves me.” I didn’t attempt this sort of thing with Max when he was that age and honestly, developing a curriculum that works simultaneously for both a 2 and 4 year old is rather daunting. I’ve kind of just been pulling my youngest in and hoping a few things stick (which they have) but I may need to be a bit more intentional.

So I want to say that I am on the right track and I’m proud of me and my kids but this journey is a difficult one, its challenging. In many ways I feel as if God has been sending letters to me and I’m thankful for the encouragement.

The Bible is not for kids (but God is)

The pandemic has changed much of our lives and challenged us in many ways. I have a four year old and a two year old. I began to think about my four year old and how I can teach him about God. Honestly, I must reveal I was reluctant when he was younger. I did not know how to teach such complex ideas and I didn’t want to scare him either. I certainly didn’t trust anyone else to do it either- yes, this probably says much about who I am. I’m not paranoid but I’m a do-it-yourselfer for sure.

I remember finding a “My First Bible” and thinking I’ll read this to him. He was around 3 years old at the time and loved stories. It started out nice enough with God creating the world and Adam and Eve. Then it takes a nose dive, “They did something God told them not to do. Now God is punishing them. They must go away from their nice home…The angels won’t let them go back….” Did I mention that I’m a therapist, trained as a psychologist? I was horrified!

Fortunately, I was reading through it on my own and hadn’t started reading it with my son. The next page was even worse with Cain killing Abel, concepts I did not want my son exposed to yet. I imagined us reading this story and my son asking if I’d kick him out of our house.

I put the bible away and started thinking, for the first time, how I would introduce God to my children. I thought it would flow naturally from me, I wanted to be a living Gospel to my children. And, honestly, I still do but I became convinced that this was not working by the time the pandemic hit.

At a loss, I began googling online children’s church. There was far less out there than I had anticipated. After combing through a lot videos and websites I was really disappointed. I found one series by a church that looked promising. As I was reviewing it on my phone, my children came over and crawled into my lap. I wanted to preview it first but they were really interested so I let them watch.

I was mostly concerned about how interesting it would be for them and it started out well enough. It was focused around trusting in God to overcome your fear- this was exactly what I was looking for because my oldest had developed a significant fear of monsters. This would be a great start…trust God so you aren’t afraid of the dark!

As the video progressed we got to Daniel and the Lion’s Den. It started by talking again about God’s punishment of the Isrealites and moved to the story of Daniel. I wasn’t thrilled, concerned about their perception of God but I was still open. It went pretty well until Daniel’s accusers were thrown into the den and “gobbled up” by lions. Ugghh! I realized at that point that the bible was not suitable for children—my evangelical roots were shaken to the core but I was used to challenging my belief systems at this point and knew my faith in God could sustain this tremor.

But along with this revelation came a thought- what is the value of teaching a bunch of stories to my children if what I really wanted was for them to have a relationship with God. It also made me look at my motivation for that particular lesson. I wanted God to solve a problem I was having with my children but all that would have done was make God a magic formula or talisman against monsters. Now I really needed to step back and think and pray about what I really wanted for my kids.

Being a trained psychologist I decided that I needed to refresh myself on what 2 and 4 year old life was like. What are they capable of? What are their life’s challenges and developmental stages? So now I’m prayerfully considering what their introduction to God would look like by starting to understand them better- what do they need rather than what did I want them to have? And I’m hoping to hear from you and make this a collaborative effort.

A Child’s Brain: It matters

This is just me trying to work through and figure this out. Once I let go of teaching some bible stories I was left a bit to aimlessly flounder.

I began to try and create lessons that would make my son Max feel safe because he’s struggling with fear of monsters. But I’m beginning to think this was a panic response looking for a quick fix. The lessons should be about foundation, not quick fixes- trust God and everything will be ok. What are these monsters? How does he see himself? Hard questions for a 4 year old who can’t really answer them. But God isn’t a magical vending machine and He’s not a simple cure all.  

I needed to work through where they were at and what they needed so I started with some of my earlier training. I knew that they were within Piaget’s pre-operational stage but to test it I would give my oldest son one of the tests. Basically you show them two glasses filled with the same amount of water and in front of them pour one glass into a taller skinnier glass. Because they are in this stage they will say that there is more water in the taller glass because among other things they do not yet have the Conservation of matter down even though they are watching you pour into the taller glass.

Of course it didn’t go smoothly but I found my son’s deductive reasoning awesome. When I showed my son the two glasses he used his hand to measure, drawing an imaginary line between the two. He even dipped his finger into the water and tried to measure from the top. It was cool how excited he was about this. My problem was I couldn’t get the two glasses to have the exact amount of water and my son detected the subtle differences each time.

So I just took the one glass and poured it into the taller glass and asked if it had the same amount of water as the glass I poured it from. He responded no because this glass was higher. So despite his intelligence, deductive reasoning and imagination, he is still in this preoperational stage.

Think about what that means! It is perfectly acceptable for someone to pour water into another vessel and for it to have more water than the vessel it was poured from. Things just happen. There aren’t rules. What I see in the moment, the present, is often unlinked to the past or the future. In this way, life is magical. Things just happen! He isn’t thinking about “object constancy,” something we take for granted. It is completely acceptable for something to simply appear! Things can change and change instantly without explanation. This space is important because it is ripe with Faith, Hope and Love.

Unlike adults, children are already magical. They are intuitive, filled with wonder, concepts are living breathing things. Invariant representation has not taken hold of their lives. So how do I help them develop their God awareness in this magical world? If I believe that God is already at work within them, how do I help them to see/feel it?

As I ponder this space, I wonder what it means for my children’s spiritual growth. I think more of Max because although Maddox is within the same stage he is only 2 years and I’m just hoping I can keep him engaged and he can pick up things here and there as he grows with us. My hope is just to expose him as I try to reach my oldest, but I am conscious of him as well. I imagine that the songs we sing and movements will mean more to him. And as I think about that I wonder about creating my own songs or some kind of God-yoga to bring them into a bodily experience.

I don’t need to teach them to listen to their bodies because they are almost all “body” in the sense that they are intuitive and “right-brained.” I think my goal would be more to channel those experiences and perhaps help them know that they are listening to their “bodies.” The fish are the last to know about the water, they may not know that they are swimming in their body’s sensations. So how do you teach a 2 and 4 year old that they are living through their bodies and experiencing God through their bodies. I operate under the assumption that God is in them, with them and consistently speaking to them. The issue with all of us is simply being aware: developing our God-ception. But with children, it may be that they are aware and hearing but don’t know they are aware and hearing.

They are slowly losing their pure sensory experience, having it replaced with invariant representation. Concepts and ideas will filter their raw experience. As language begins to name what they know and live, they will lose the pure essence of it. They are at the place that we are working back toward. So our role will be to help them mold their words and concepts so that they can accurately hold on to what they are experiencing and not forget it. We are trying to remember God in our lives, they are blissfully living it but without a label it will disappear from conscious awareness. But we must help them put words to it and resist putting our own words to it as much as possible. Write down the story they give us and repeat it. God is perhaps the first label that we offer but maybe we can resist defining him and how He is experienced- attempting to draw that out of them? I’m not sure I’m up for that task. I wonder how Jesus was raised?

 Everything for a child is experience, there is no such thing as “head knowledge,” they are too integrated and visceral for that…they have not succumbed to invariant representation- everything is too novel. They are concrete but that does not make their knowledge simply cerebral. Their “heart” is involved every step of the way.

Knowing that both my children were in Piaget’s Preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7) and this was confirmed with my oldest through our experiment gives me a little more insight into their mental world. At this stage they are able to think symbolically but their thinking is based more on intuition than logic. Corresponding to Piaget’s mental stage, Erikson points out that the primary emotional struggle at this stage is: Is it ok to be me? As parents during this stage we provide the “secure base” that they can use to fuel up, “venture out and assert their will” then return to us in order to re-fuel. In other words, they draw strength from our safety and presence, attempt something on their own and then return for reassurance and safety. This process continues as slowly that sense of confidence grows within them. According to Fowler’s stage of Faith, my children have a more experiential faith that “develops through encounters with stories, images, the influence of others…”

It is that fundamental question, “Is it OK to be me?” that I have begun to focus on and a continued awareness that attachment and belonging are fundamental. Now I have to pull it all together!