Thought this thread might give us a chance to explore and share not only practical approaches to contemporary religious curriculum, but also that interface between the natural spiritual disposition so evident in children and the kinds of parenting and socialization which shape/obscure/support such impulses. Of course, there may be other more relevant approaches. For me, this topic seems fruitful not only for parents and those working with children, but reveals some of the simpler and essential renderings of healthy psychospiritual formation at any stage of life.

And yes, this is also an unfunded experiment to see which part of my brain explodes first as I cross back and forth from this thread to the one on war.

Ha, I think the "war" thread has cooled off a bit, though I don't think the world situation we were discussing has.

This is a great topic, w.c., and one that we've had to reflect on a lot as parents. Children do, as you noted, have natural spiritual dispositions--wonder, creativity, playfulness, curiosity, etc.--and sometimes it's seemed to us that the kind of religious education we received in Catholic schools in the 50s and 60s didn't always honor that enough. But neither did it negate it in our case, and there's no doubt that we came out of those years with a better knowledge of the content of our faith that our children have with the education they received, largely through our efforts at home and through religious ed. at Church.

I do believe one of the most influential sources for helping children integrate spirituality and religion comes from family rituals and from the example of their parents. Our children always knew were were people of prayer, who took the teachings of the Church seriously, attended Mass regularly, etc. We had family prayer with meals and other occasions, prayed with them when they went to bed, and allowed them to ask any questions they wanted without feeling silly (and they did ask some amazing ones!).

Anyway, that's a start. I'm eager to hear what others have to say as well.

Phil:

You brought out what I believe is perhaps the most powerful context for religious curriculum: the child's relationship with her parents. When the person of the child is respected, and she feels understood and taken seriously as part of the life of the family, then the spiritual dimension of that experience can extend to the religious community with much more flexibility.

I would imagine most families embody religion as a furthering of however their primary relationships are functioning. Over the years I've run across a number of adults who have managed to retain a fair amount of intrinsic wonder even though their childhood family experience was relatively poor/abusive. Where those families also had strong religous involvement there was a tendency of the grown children to abdicate their cradle faith and either remain agnostic or seek a religous community that didn't resemble the original. The fact that they could have found in the RC and Episcopal communities the more progressive thinking they were looking for in other places shows how powerful the family influence is in patterning future experiences of community life.

Your children are fortunate that they find you and your wife as genuine in each respect, where spiritual life and psychological maturation are relatively congruent forces. How could a child not want to participate in that, regardless of the more formal religious affiliation?