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Great and fascinating post. Robert Coles wrote “The Spiritual Lives of Children” which adresses this subject in depth. But, intuitively speaking, I think adults don’t give kids enough credit for or know how to address this area of life with kids these days. Maybe due to its taboo nature in American society (along with sex, drugs, and and and…) while we also lack this exposure through our secular education system where it can become intellectualized or a point of friction (mainly between adults who already divided or see the educational system infringing their First Amendment rights. My question might be: how can we open kids to these experiences so they can become more comfortable with religions and practices? How can we give them a vocabulary of experiences to scaffold their own onto to help them make sense of the choices and visions of religious experiences in the world? And how can adults come together with their own practices enough to do this with kids?

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Chad, and for the book recommendation. Talk about something we could use a “national conversation” about in the U.S…! It’s a sensitive topic that could so much more productively be a topic for sensitive, nuanced exploration. I’m looking forward to reading Coles’ book.

Thanks for your post Chad and your excellent questions, which I have posed to myself. I wrote my meditation book in nondenominational prose so that readers can develop their own vocabulary for the experiences they have when they slow down their breath. I have left blank pages for readers to fill as they experience beyond their everyday mind.

At age four, my own son used to announce to me that he saw beings who sent out rainbows from their heart, which went into people. Once we walked in the park, and he shouted that the beings were right in front of me. (I had never given this idea or image to him or read anything to him with similar imagery.) I could not see the beings he saw. But I explained that each of us has a different and unique way of experiencing the Beyond. This was his special way. And I was pleased to know about what he saw.

I have always encouraged parents to open up to these kinds of conversations with their children without imposing a specific vocabulary on the conversation. Children can gain confidence in their experiences if they are allowed to express themselves freely.

Thanks, Whitney, for your very important addition to this topic. You have really encouraged me to think more broadly about how we are conditioning our kids by our silence at such a critical time in their lives, and our own…

I think adults are very uncomfortable with the child in themselves, particularly when they become parents. Many adults believe that parenting is about ‘controlling’ their child, making them behave in away they deem appropriate to societal ‘norms’ and so, to be a parent, they need to control the child within themselves. Disowning this child in themselves is, in a way, disowning their own spiritual selves for I believe young children have no boundaries between themselves and the spiritual world. Watch a young child at play and they will talk to all manner of beings around them. Their faith and belief in the world is endless. As we grow older and try to understand the world around us we try to control our surroundings and act in the way we think is expected of us: adult, sensible, controlled. Spirituality cannot be explained or controlled and so it is dismissed, or fashioned into rules and regulations or worse still, religious dogmatism. I believe if we listened more to children, really listened, instead of trying to control and dominate them all the time, we would see how much we have to learn from them and we may even find ourselves revisiting the child within ourselves.

Sally, what a wonderful addition to this conversation your comments are! “Becoming Buddha: the Story of Siddhartha,” which Whitney wrote and you illustrated, is a great example of a spiritual book for children in both a traditional informational sense and in the sense you and Whitney and Chad are talking about–a book that confirms children’s own experiences of the liminal and spiritual without didacticism. Likewise, Whitney’s new book on meditation for children.

I’m also thinking of books like Woolvs in the Sitee, by Margaret Wild, illustrated by Anne Spudvilas, which I had the pleasure of reviewing for PaperTigers recently. It’s about fear, one could say, but also about love and the courage it takes to overcome fear. With its dramatic and unusual artwork it might not “look” like a “spiritual book” at first glance but the feel of the experience of it is certainly deeply moving in a spiritual way. I’m interested in other books that fit this (rough) category. Another librarian at a private school in San Francisco (other than Chad) recommends Jerry Spinelli’s “Crash,” for example, a YA book about bullying–she’s looking at how to encourage the discussion of values in a non-bullying way!

There is so much to ponder here and it makes me think hard about the amount of time we spend doing things with our children as opposed to just being; the importance of giving them the space to engage their own imaginations in their play as opposed to presecribing their activities. It also reiterates for me the need for the provision of some kind of spiritual space in the teaching of religious studies, not just the bare facts on the one hand or, as Sally points out, religious dogma on the other. That is a challenge!

I like this Amy. You did a great job on those folds under her arm.
And liberties...yes, definitely something to be thankful for.