For Children (of all ages)

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. (Mark
12:30)

It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my
mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not
hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in
the depths of the earth. (Psalm 139:13-15)

When the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that
he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the
Son of David,’ they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what
these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out
of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for
yourself”?’ (Matthew 21:15-16)

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in
the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12) My child,
keep your father’s commandment, and do not forsake your mother’s
teaching. (Proverbs 6:20) Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for
this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’- this is the first
commandment with a promise: ‘so that it may be well with you and you may
live long on the earth.’ (Ephesians 6:1-3)

People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them;
and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it.
But Jesus called for them and said, ‘Let the little children come to me,
and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God
belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God
as a little child will never enter it.’ (Luke 18:15-17)

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Psalm 127:1.

Why does everyone (or almost everyone) love children? Partly because
little ones remind us of the pure innocence we once experienced, but
have left behind as we grew up. Just today, Cathy, aged two, was handed
back to her parents after a four-day ‘holiday’ with us. She taught us so
many things this Easter weekend. She noticed birds and colours and
sounds we had taken for granted. She was full of spontaneous aliveness.
Looking into her face as she wondered, about the stars or the story I
read to her, was to look into the face of the divine…

No one ever really stops being a child. The adult simply suppresses
the child that is deep within the reality of their psyche with layers of
sophisticated complexity and seriousness.

Every child’s history begins in the creative mind and heart of God.
God knew you were coming into the world from before anything else was
made. He knew exactly what you would be like: ‘In your book were
written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet
existed’. (Psalm 139:16)

Then, from the security of the womb you were thrust into a
frightening world. From earliest years the child needs to experience
belonging. ‘You are to whom you belong’: if a child hears loving
parents communicate ‘You belong to us and we love you’ he or she is
saved from becoming a psychopath (people who felt they never belonged to
anyone). Belonging is also communicated through touch: you have heard
of hospitals years ago where children’s wards emptied when people
cuddled and touched them. A man in New York joined 26 golf clubs but
never really belonged to any of them. Why? He never felt he belonged
anywhere as he grew up.

Children need a regular, daily diet of human love and praise. These
should be given in a fully-focussed way, not from behind the ironing or
a newspaper. Rats, we all know, prefer electric shocks to nothing at
all. Children, too, if they have to choose between being ignored or
scolded, will be naughty to get the latter.

Professor Selma H. Fraiberg in The Magic Years desribes how human
disasters have resulted in children being emotionally deprived.
Children orphaned by war early in life generally are unable later to
bond themselves with other people, or experience tenderness, grief or
shame. They become slow learners, apathetic, a prey to many kinds of
mental illness.

From age two a key question dominates: Do I have worth? If you do
not have a sense of worth, it’s because you received messages from
significant others that you’re ‘not OK’. I am not what I think I am, I
am not what you think I am, I am what I think you think I am. The self
is a series of reflected appraisals.

The two-year old also begins to learn the meaning of a little word
formed from the middle two letters of the alphabet – ‘NO’. Parental
discipline helps the child figure out the difference between what is
right and wrong, what is safe and what is not.

My own father had a ‘military belt’ for what he regarded as serious
offences committed by his three sons. (There was a church-going father
in England who had a motto under his belt, ‘I need thee every hour’).
My father used to quote (from the Authorized version) ‘Foolishness is
bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it
far from him’ (Proverbs 22:15). Discipline is necessary to teach the
child what is harmful. But the child must know that the behaviour is
being attacked not the self. Otherwise children get the idea they are
only loved when they are good, or clever. So reject the behaviour, not
the child. The child should not believe ‘I am only accepted when I
please mum or dad’. All children (of any age, including adults!) ought
to know they are loved for who they are not for what they do or do not
do. One of the worst things you can say to a child is ‘God will not love
you if you’re naughty!’ God loves us as we are, naughty or good. Of
course he loves us too much to be happy with us staying the way we are.
One of the tragedies of our day is that children are not taught more
about the God Jesus described.

Child psychologist Dr. Maurice Balson has the view that most
problems in a child’s behaviour stem from those children having doubts
about whether their parents respect them. Respect is the happy mean
between ignoring the child on the one hand (remember when we were to be
‘seen and not heard’?) and pampering them, so that the child does not
learn to solve problems on their own sometimes. Respect means asking the
child to help you make some decisions, for example when shopping
(‘should we buy pears or apples today?’). Respect means never ridiculing
a child’s opinions, and making them feel foolish. When discipline is
related to respect, the child gets the feeling that he or she is not
living up to the parents’ high opinion of them (so smacking or yelling
is rarely, if ever, necessary). I like the ‘time out’ or ‘thinking spot’
idea, where children who have misbehaved are given an opportunity to
think about the consequences of their behaviour before they can join in
another activity.

So what makes a happy childhood? Feminist Germaine Greer (who wrote
a book with a haunting title, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You), said ‘Children
come up just the same, brought or not.’ That’s too simplistic. But so is
behaviourist J.B.Watson’s view that depending on early conditioning the
child could become either a violent criminal or a genius.

I like noted child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim’s concept of the
‘good enough parent’. What kinds of childhood experiences cause an adult
to look back and say they were well pleased with the way they were
raised? As a parent you may occasionally become irrationally fed-up
with your child, and spank him or her too hard in your anger, but if
there is a genuine love and affection, and it is communicated to the
child in loving ways they’ll be OK.

A parent is the architect who designs the rooms of the temple in
which the child will live for the rest of his or her life. We learn to
relate to other people by how our parents and others relate to us. But
no parent perfectly satisfies all the deep needs of the soul in the
child. All parents, in a sense, sin against their children. Later the
child in the adult wants to blame their parents for who they have
become. One of the best maturity-producing ‘aha!’ moments a child will
ever have is when they realize the horrifying truth that some of their
needs will not be met by their parents.

Some psychologists talk about ‘the too precious child’: the idea in
some parents’ minds that a single negative event may ruin the ‘fragile
ego’ for life. This is a heavy responsibility to have on one’s
conscience. However, that is not to say that painful experiences in
childhood do not discolour one’s life, even one’s whole life. Just this
week a man told me of a humiliating thing his father said after he felt
good about something he had done, then showed his dad: he still shrivels
a little inside, he told me, when he thinks about his father’s sarcastic
reaction. And women who have been sexually molested don’t easily get
over it.

In the 1980s we took up the idea of ‘quality time’ with our
children. This is a good notion, provided it doesn’t mean scheduling
time away from leisure or chores because the kids need you and you’d
better pay attention to them. Perhaps some this was really ‘leftover
time’.

Don’t be too negative or scolding. Communicate in positive ways –
‘How was school today?’- rather than ‘nag’ all the time: ‘why aren’t you
dressed?’ ‘have you cleaned your teeth?’ Some child psychologists are
telling us that Anglo-Saxon parents are not good at being positive in
parenting. (My mother used to say: ‘If you don’t wear a jumper when
it’s freezing, you’ll get a cold, and that might develop in pneumonia
and you could die!’).

Children, we said, need daily doses of love and praise. Praise tells
them they have competence: that they can do something well. Every one of
us has been created by God to experience significance: not necessarily
being more clever than others, but with a strategic goal for our lives.
In effect we say to every child, ‘Congratulations, you’re gifted!’
Effective parents will tease out what a child does best and encourage
the child in those areas. And if parents always finish projects their
child starts those children may eventually opt out or become
workaholics. Children want to join their parents in the work they do:
to identify with father and mother, before later moving away from them.

Recently I was told, ‘Bill has had a breakdown’ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Oh,
he was made redundant.’ Later in the conversation I had to say, ‘That
was not the real reason he broke down. Somewhere back in his formation
he believed what he was worth was defined by what he did, and how well
others appreciated what he did. His self-esteem was geared to positive
or negative feedback about his performance.’

So when what we perceive as needs are not met we experience pain.
Each of us has ‘moments of existential despair’: we live in a
terrifying world, where we cannot get everything we want or need. This
is where God comes in, I believe. You are designed to enjoy a
relationship with God. As Tolstoy said, the soul is a God-shaped blank:
only God can fit into it. But within us there is a stubborn desire for
independence: that which Adam and Eve experienced is our experience too.
There is in all of us a clenched fist saying ‘I will survive without
God.’ Shirley Bassey has a song ‘This is My Life!’ Frank Sinatra sings
‘I did it my way!’ Hell is the enjoyment of one’s own way forever, wrote
Dorothy Sayers.

At some stage the mature person moves beyond dependence (my
self-worth is a function of what you do or say to me) through
independence (I’m going to make it on my own) to interdependence (I need
you and you need me, but we don’t have to be victims of each other’s
feedback). The stubborn commitment to independence, if it continues too
far into adulthood, is manifested in too much self-sufficiency (I’ll
manage my own life without anyone else’s interference), self-protection
(I won’t get close to people who are likely to hurt me) or an
exaggerated selfishness (I will put myself first, and pursue only those
things which enhance my own well-being). Rather a mature person is able
to grow through experiences of helplessness, vulnerability, and
humility.

To paraphrase a couplet of James Russell Lowell:

Children, of all ages, are God’s apostles, day by day Sent forth to
preach of love, and hope, and peace.

All children everywhere have these rights:

• To enjoy special protection;
• To be given opportunities and facilities to enable them
  to develop in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions
  of freedom and dignity;

• To have a name and a nationality from their birth;
• To enjoy the benefits of social security, including
  adequate nutrition, housing, recreation and medical services;

• To receive special treatment, education and care of any
  handicap;

• To grow up in an atmosphere of affection and security,
  wherever possible in the care and under the responsibility of
  their own parents;

• To receive education;
• To be the first to receive protection and relief in times
  of disaster;

• To be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and
  exploitation;

• To be protected from practices which may foster any form
  of discrimination.

Declarations of the Rights of the Child, United Nations, 1959,
reaffirmed in 1979. [131]

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but
they have never failed to imitate them.

James Baldwin in Robert I. Fitzhenry (ed.), Chambers Book of
Quotations, Edinburgh: W&R Chambers Ltd., 1986, p.76. [19]

It seems children grow on praise… The more children receive praise
from their parents, they better they are able to achieve.

Many parents fear that if they praise their children, the children
will get a swollen head and will not strive any further. It seems this
fear is misplaced. Children are more likely to stop striving if they
feel too anxious or depressed about their failures and faults. One
mother said, ‘You should praise your children often, then they will be
able to withstand the criticisms of others.’ Most studies report on
praise for genuine achievement. Praise given indiscriminately is
probably not associated with achievement…

Studies of well-functioning families find a constant stream of
praise and affirmation of other family members running through the
conversation.

Moira Eastman, The Magical Power of Family, Blackburn: Collins Dove,
1991, pp. 23-24. [126]

• Regardless of the ambitions you have for your children,
  your children have a mind of their own.

• Allow your children to feel comfortable expressing their feelings and
  even sharing their secrets.

• Mentally prepare yourself to be patient and persistent.
• It isn’t money or social status which leads to family well-being.
• Have faith in children so they may believe in themselves.
• Don’t withhold love.
• Behaviour which is acknowledged or praised tends to be
  repeated.

Patricia C. Bernard and Michael E. Bernard, The You Can Do It Little
Book for Parents, Blackburn: Collins Dove, 1993, pp. 1,2. [74]

God does things quite differently from us. When there is trouble,
we send a policeman, a soldier or a diplomat. He sent a baby!… The
American preacher, Halford Luccock, said that whenever the ordering of
society is discussed, whether for nations or small groups, the first
question is ‘Who is the greatest?’ ‘For about thirty centuries’, he
said, ‘people have discusssed that question’… Jesus took a small
child, placed him in the midst of them, put his arms around him, and
said, ‘Whoever wants to be first, must place himself last. Unless you
reverse your attitude and become like this little child, you will never
enter the Kingdom of heaven’… In Jewish society that was an incredible
thing to do. In Gentile society of the period, it was unthinkable. The
worth of a child was seriously questioned.

Neil Adcock, Child in the Midst, NSW Baptist, Nov/Dec 1993, p.25.
[148]

Recently I wrote and recorded a series of sound cassettes for use by
children in primary schools. A number of teachers listened to the tapes
and… put forward some good ideas to improve them. This was ‘teacher’
domain and I respected it. However, I was told that one narration would
have to be changed because it ‘put children down’ and was ‘patronising’.
The reason given was that it suggested I knew more than the children and
that I was less awkward than them. In reply, I explained that what
really puts children down is assuming that they will be offended by
being told the simple truth that an adult knows more than they do.
Children are more intelligent than that; more charitable, too, in
accepting such facts with goodwill. I went on to say that if I had been
talking to the children in a class I would have explained the difference
between us this way ‘You don’t know as much as me, not because I’m
smarter but because I’m older and have been around more. You are
clumsier than me in some ways – don’t know how to use your limbs as
smoothly perhaps – because I’ve been using mine for years longer than
you. It’s like learning the piano. Somebody who has been at it for ten
years must be better at it than somebody who took it up last week.
Right?’ This is the kind of talk which presents facts to children in a
way they understand.

Keith Smith, How to Get Closer to Your Children, Surrey Hills NSW:
Waratah Press, 1985, pp.58-59. [248]

We need love’s tender lessons taught As only weakness can; God hath
his small interpreters; The child must teach the man.

John Greenleaf Whittier, Child-Songs quoted in Carol Tannenhauser
and Cheryl Moch(eds.) ,In Celebration of Babies, New York: Ballantine
Books, Fawcett Columbine, 1987, p.57. [21]

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and
daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not
from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have
their own thoughts. You may house their bodies, but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not
to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with
yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows
are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; for even as he
loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, Heinemann 1926 (reprinted 1974),
pp.20,23. [173]

Syndicated columnist Mike Royko spoke for many when he recently
declared, ‘I enjoy TV trash as much as the next slob. But the quality of
truly trashy trash has declined’… One reflection of viewer
restlessness is the tendency toward ‘grazing’ in their nightly viewing –
using remote controls to switch stations in the middle of a program.
According to a major survey for Channels magazine in 1988, 48.5 percent
of all viewers regularly change programs during a show – and nearly 60
percent of viewers in the crucial eighteen-to-thirty-four age group.
‘Grazing is by definition a sign of dissatisfaction,’ explained James
Webster, professor of communications of Northwestern University.

Michael Medved Hollywood Vs. America, New York: HarperCollins, 1993
pp.5-6. [106]

The illusions of childhood are necessary experiences. A child should
not be denied a balloon because an adult knows sooner or later it will
burst.

Marcelene Cox, Ladies’ Home Journal quoted in Carol Tannenhauser and
Cheryl Moch(eds.) ,In Celebration of Babies, New York: Ballantine Books,
Fawcett Columbine, 1987, p.139. [25]

Kids are not the ‘adults of the future’. I wince when I hear some
church elders use this expression. To say this is to deny kids any
status or value in the present. They exist now as persons in a specific
developmental stage. They may be in another developmental stage in six
months’ time. Sometimes kids are aware of this rate of change. Sometimes
they find it frightening. What they need is to be valued, loved and
discipled right now. It is not healthy to infer that they will be valued
at some later stage (when given adult status).

Ted Endacott, ‘Discipling Kids’ in On Being, Vol.20, No.5, June
1993, p.31. [99]

Is it fair to be stuck to a painful past? Is it fair to be walloped
again and again by the same old hurt? Vengeance is having a videotape
planted in your soul that cannot be turned off. It plays the painful
scene over and over again inside your mind. It hooks you into its
instant replays. And each time it replays, you feel the clap of pain
again. Is it fair?

Forgiving turns off the videotape of pained memory. Forgiving sets
you free. Forgiving is the only way to stop the cycle of unfair pain
turning in your memory.

Lewis B. Smedes, ‘Forgiveness: The Power to Change the Past’,
Christianity Today, January 7, 1983, p.26. [100]

Why do children seem to love teachers who are the strongest
disciplinarians? [This] statement is only partially true. No one likes a
mean old grouch, even if he does maintain strict order. [But] children
are drawn to the teacher who can control a class without sacrificing an
attitude of love and pleasantness. And that is a highly developed art
which most topnotch teachers have discovered. Children love good
disciplinarians primarily because they are afraid of each other and want
the security of a leader who can provide a safe atmosphere. Anything can
happen in the absence of adult leadership.

James Dobson, Discipline While You Can, Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1987,
p.85. [99]

Lord, bless our children, and bless them through us. Help us to be
genuinely interested in what they are doing. Remind us that children
can read feelings very well, and quickly recognize insincerity. Give us
an ability to adjust to the quick shifts of a child’s mind. Our
children use actions rather than words in expressing feelings or
problems: give us humour and understanding in relating to them at these
difficult times.

May our children know, without a shadow of doubt, that they are
loved, and respected, that they belong, they are worthy of praise, and
are special and unique.

Lord, keep the child alive within us all. Help us to enjoy play and
fun and stories, to delight in wondrous things and the world of the
imagination, to listen to the sounds and see the colours around us, to
be trusting and unafraid, because our trust is in you.

So may our children learn to love and trust you because they have
experienced your love and trust in our lives with them. May they
increasingly experience hope and purpose, knowing that you are their
special Parent, loving and guiding them always. Amen.

Father, look kindly on your children who put their trust in you;
bless them and keep them from all harm, strengthen them against the
attacks of the devil. May they never offend you but seek to love you in
all they do. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Daily Mass Book, Brisbane, The Liturgical Commission, 1990, p.38.
[49]

A Benediction

May your home be a foretaste of the joys of heaven.
May your
laughter and fun be a reminder of the joy of the Lord.
May you have
faith and hope and courage and wisdom in times of hardship and
difficulty.
May the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, bless
you always.
Amen.