spiritual mind
When we raise children, life becomes hectic. Between work, after school activities, homework, team sports and social events, there is very little time left to think about spirituality, unless you are a parent already involved in church, temple, religious and/or spiritual practices. Even having a strong religious and spiritual belief system, it is difficult to teach this to our children. The questions I hear most often are "How do I share my spirituality with my children? How do I teach my child to meditate? My child does not like going to church or temple, should I force them? My child has no interest in guided meditations and prayer. Is he not spiritual?"
In the past it was assumed that children's religious education must match their capacity to think and reason. So religious education focused on learning prayers and bible stories, and left the exploration of the capacity to have deep spiritual concerns to adulthood. Today we know that even very young children ask the kind of questions that can only be called spiritual. “Who created the earth? Why am I here? How do I know what's right and wrong?” Some children find answers to these questions in church or temple, others develop a moral sense completely separate from organized religion.
Children start thinking about spirituality at about the time they learn language. By the age of 4 or 5 most children are intensely interested in right and wrong, good and evil. The researcher, Maria Bindl noticed that up to the age of about six or seven, children have a "naive relatedness" to God after which there is a noticeable decline in "spontaneous experience of the numinous".
In thinking about spirituality, many parents give their children a religious education because it’s part of the family's spiritual values and cultural identity. It’s a way to connect with a heritage going back thousands of years. Spirituality encompasses religious beliefs, ethical behavior, social responsibility and faith to name a few. Some ancient religious philosophers believe that if a child is utterly convinced that his or her existence has meaning and his/her deeds have consequences and we can teach them that our every thought and deed is of real, even global, significance, then I belief we have succeeded in blending all aspects of spirituality.
About the Author:
Mind Spectrum Institute located in North Miami Beach, Florida specializes in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and ADD/ADHD in children and adults. It is a multidisciplinary treatment center that uses therapeutic interventions, included but not limited to psychotherapy, family and couples therapy, individual and play therapy, neurofeedback, biofeedback, psychiatric evaluation, and psychological and educational testing for accurate diagnosis. For more information about Mind Spectrum Institute, please call 305-936-8960 or visit Mind Spectrum Institute
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Children and Spirituality
