Some of you know my wife, Janet. What you may not know is that she has been writing a weekly blog for almost a year now about how we can nurture the spiritual development of children. Check out: Child Centered Spirituality.
Her premise (backed by plenty of research) is that children have an innate curiosity about spiritual things and that adults in their lives can help them develop them spiritually in the same kind of ways we help develop them physically, intellectually, socially, and relationally. Rather than telling them what to think, we can draw children out using a coaching approach: we can ask them what they think. We can create open-ended dialogues so they know that they can come to us with questions and that God is not a taboo subject.
Janet’s blog is geared toward people of all varieties of faith… anyone who has a heart for the spiritual development of children. So if you have friends from other religious traditions or from various “spiritual but not religious” camps, this blog should suit them well.
The more we as adults can encourage children to seek spirituality, the better.