TAB 4 Theology of Childhood

Theology of Childhood Page 2

Reverence for the Heart of the Child Page 4

You can see, now, how this theology guides Godly Play®:

 The lessons are presented in a way that allows children to discover the hide-
and-seek presence of God, community and personal meaning.
 The unspoken lesson shows what we cannot say about God’s presence.
 The quality of relationships in a Godly Play® environment bears the property
of blessing, affirming and yet calling forth the best in the children and their
adult guides.

Furthermore, getting to know children is guided by the same three propositions,

which in turn guide how children disclose our maturity to us. Seeking and finding
the elusive presence of children is a metaphor for God’s elusive presence.
Children do not reveal themselves on our timetable or by our standards of
language. To know a child is a subtle art. It takes a continuing game of Hide-and-
Seek. The so-called “quality time” many hope and plan for with children cannot
be scheduled with any guarantee that the children will be ready when the adult is.
God’s disclosure works the same way. We can’t trick or coerce God – or our own
maturity.
Jerome Berryman, Complete Guide to Godly Play, vol. 1, p.132
Theology of Childhood
by Kim McPherson, Accredited Godly Play® Teacher Trainer

Jesus’ “high view” of Children:

From the Gospels, we learn about Jesus’ view of children. He tells us that:

 We must become like children in order to become truly mature, to enter the
kingdom of heaven.
 We must not hinder the children, or become a stumbling block to them.
 We are to bless them. To bless means to affirm the best you can possibly
be.

In Godly Play®, we follow Jesus’ theology of blessing. The blessing we give is

to provide a safe, sacred place where children can play their way to learning
the religious language that will help them talk about the deep questions of life,
make meaning, experience God’s love; and become the best that they can be,
truly mature.

Love vs. Admiration

Our understanding of children’s spirituality is grounded in other sources, as

well. From research done within the last century, we have learned what children
need:
 To be loved
 To be in relationship

Love is not the same as admiration:

Love:
 Is Nurturing
 Is Unconditional
 Is letting children know we see
them, that we acknowledge that
their feelings are real and valid
Admiration:
 Is Toxic
 Is Conditional (attention given
on a conditional basis)
 Requires more and more
energy to provide less and
less satisfaction,

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 Points to Remember about the Theology of Childhood:

 Children already know something about God, even before they have
language with which to express it.
 The language native to children is story.
 Children are open. We must open our hearts to remember our own
childhood experiences and to acknowledge the experiences of the children
in our care.
 Children have existential limits, just as adults do. We all must confront
questions of aloneness, freedom, death, and purpose.

Play
Children – really, all the people of God – play a game of “hide and seek” with
God our whole lives long. To be engaged in play, it is helpful to remember that
play is:

 Pleasurable
 Voluntary
 Done for itself
 Absorbing
 Connected with creativity
 A way to learn languages
 A way to learn about our social roles
 Problem-solving

A complete, or even extensive, study of the theology of childhood would take longer than
our entire accreditation conference! This session instead gives an overview of current
thought about children’s spirituality and the theology of childhood. We recommend that
you seek out books and religious and educational journals for a more thorough
understanding of this subject. Jerome Berryman’s writings about a theology of childhood
include Godly Play: and Imaginative Approach to Religious Education, Teaching Godly
Play, and The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Volume 1.

Kim McPherson

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Reverence for the Heart of the Child
by The Rev. Leander Harding, Accredited Godly Play® Teacher Trainer

Interpreting Childhood
Hermes was the messenger god of ancient Greek mythology. He was depicted with winged feet
as he took the message of the gods to humanity. When a message is delivered there is always
the problem of understanding, of interpretation. You need some principles of interpretation that
help you understand what you are hearing and what you are seeing.

When scholars want to study principles of interpretation or develop a theory of interpretation, it is

called the study of hermeneutics. In what follows I want to call attention to the fact that each one
of us has a hermeneutics of childhood. We have some principles of interpretation, some
presuppositions about human nature and the nature of childhood that we bring to our
interpretation with our children, and which we use to make sense of what we hear and what we
see. There are some ways of seeing children that encourage respect for the child, and some
which make it very hared to have such respect.

How Do We See Children?

Each of us has a way of seeing the world that is based on our understanding of how the human
heart works, and which acts as a set of spectacles. As we look at our children through this set of
spectacles we see them in a particular light. If you have ever had your eyes examined you know
the experience of having the doctor let you try different lenses. Some lenses make things blurry,
some cause things to come into focus, and you can finally make sense out of the eye chart. The
doctor even explained to me that a lens can cause you to see things more clearly than they really
are. If you wear glasses you have also had the experience of forgetting that you are wearing
them.

If we are to do justice to our children, we need to be aware of the lenses through which we are
seeing them and ask if these spectacles allow us to see our children fully and clearly.

An example may help. I used to drop my oldest son at Kindergarten. The school was very firm
about not allowing anyone to enter the building before a particular time. The parents and the
children would line up outside the door and wait for the bell to ring. As they waited for school to
start, the parents would talk.

One day I overheard one mother speaking to another about the difficult night she had just had
with her new infant. “He cried and cried,” she said. “finally I just shut the door on him and let him
cry it out.”

Another mother replied, “Yes, that is right. It is a battle of wills and you can’t let them get the
better of you. You can’t let the baby manipulate you.”

I was very sympathetic to the struggle of the tired mother with a crying infant. Both my wife and I
have walked miles holding crying infants. But I was struck by the power of interpretation that was
a work in this exchange. I was struck by the hermeneutic, the way of seeing childhood that was
being shared between these two mothers.

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The cry of the child was being interpreted as part of an ongoing, even desperate, struggle
between the will of the parent and the will of the child to see who will dominate. All we know for
sure is that a child is crying in the night. The advice to listen to a strong maternal instinct and pick
up the child and hold it all night long if need be, or the advice to close the door and let the child
cry it out, will depend on how the cry is interpreted. We know for sure that the child is crying in the
night. It would be just as serious as it sounds.

To see the child as essentially greedy, selfish and willful is a particular hermeneutic of childhood
that has its roots in some strands of the Christian Tradition. There are great Christian teachers
who have stressed the reality of sin and the fallenness of human nature. Other teachers have
stressed the essential goodness of human nature made in the image of God.

But the goodness of human nature and the reality of sin need to be kept in balance in a Christian
understanding of human nature. We are inherently capable of goodness, creativity, and love. We
also can turn away from God and from each other and are capable of evil.

If our hermeneutic, our way of seeing children, sees the child in either too negative a light or too
positive a light we are likely not to see things about our children that are very important. We are
likely to misinterpret their behavior and respond to them in ways that are based on
misunderstanding rather than deep understanding.

Our children are neither worse nor better than we are. They are made good in the image of God
and are tempted by evil just as we are. They are neither little angels nor little demons. They are
human beings just like their parents. To see them as being worse than they really are or more
noble than they really are, can hurt them and do them an injustice.

Each one of us has a deep need to be seen, accepted and loved as we really are. If we are never
seen good or even capable of being good, it hurts. And if we are seen to be so good that
goodness is not a struggle for us, this hurts as well.

Our faith presents us with a very realistic understanding of human nature, and it can help us
understand the reality of our children. Our children’s sense that we truly understand them and
sympathize with them is one of the things that builds trust and love, and which motivates them to
try to do those things which we value and honor.

In the world of psychology there has been the same tension between seeing children, as either
naturally good or naturally selfish, that we have seen in the history of religious thought. Sigmund
Freud, the great Viennese doctor and founder of modern psychology, thought of children as little
savages governed by overpowering physical instincts for the satisfaction of natural appetites,
including the appetite for sex.

Parent and society needed to restrain and discipline the needs of the libido so that children could
become functioning members of society. In a way the Freudian hermeneutic of childhood is a kind
of secular version of what some theological writers called the “utter depravity of human nature.”

A Relational View of Children

Since World War II psychologists have developed another way of seeing children -- a way that
they feel is more consistent with the reality of the children they are seeing in their consulting
rooms. This school of thought is referred to as Object Relations perspective. These writers see
that children do indeed have many instincts and desires like all human beings, but they believe
that the strongest need that children have is for relationship. If this need is frustrated, children can
become emotionally and physically sick -- and I would add that their ability to develop and grow in
faith may be adversely affect.

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Alice Miller is a Swiss psychoanalyst who has written extensively about childhood from this
Object Relations perspective. Miller says that the primary need children have is the need to
be loved. Love is different from admiration. Love is nurturing. Admiration is toxic. Love is
unconditional while admiration is conditional. A child needs to see that his or her parents,
especially the mother, see who he or she is and accepts, values and loves him or her for
who she or he is.

The child needs to look into the face of the parents, and especially as an infant, into the face of
the mother and find him or herself in the returning gaze of the parents. The child needs to have
his or her reality acknowledged and validated by the parent. This does not mean we approve of
everything we see in our children but it does mean that we see they see that we see them, and
that we acknowledge that their feelings are real and valid.

Love is the ability to give another human being, and especially to our children this accepting,
valuing attention. No one is able to do this perfectly. It is easy to give our children our attentive
regard when they are showing us something that is pleasant and agreeable. If the child is
interested in us -- loving, pleased, and pleasing -- it is not hard to focus our loving attention on the
child. When our children are show us something that is upsetting or disturbing, it is human nature
to tend to withdraw.

When you are an infant and your care givers withdrawal their attention if feels life threatening.
You will do anything to keep that gaze upon them. Children have a kind of radar about what
makes their parents emotionally comfortable, and what makes their parents uncomfortable or
anxious. If too much anger, too much fear, too much enthusiasm, too much delight in their own
bodies causes parents to become anxious and emotionally withdrawn, the child will try to hide
those parts of him or herself.

When you are an infant and a small child you live in a glass house and the only place to hide
things is underground. These parts of the child’s personality become cut off and buried. As an
older child or adult, the person forgets where these parts of their personality are buried. Children
begin to develop a false and conforming self, while important aspects of their real self remain cut
off and buried.

A Child’s Rage
One of the parts of the true self that often gets buried is the rage and anger that the child feels at
having the deep human need for relationship frustrated. The child needed to be seen and
acknowledged, honored and validated, and this need has been violated. This is an experience of
outrage, and this feeling of outrage is so threatening that the child cannot risk showing this to the
parent.

The only way to not show it is to not feel it, to cut off and bury this feeling. These cut off feelings
and aspects of the true self turn poisonous and this repressed rage often gets projected inward
as depression and self destructive behavior, or outward as hatred and violence toward others.

Admiration of Children
All children end up burying some parts of their true selves. Most children have what has been
called “good enough” parenting. Their parents can love and accept them well enough so that they
are able to come of childhood with enough of a sense of a solid self to grow and develop as
healthy adults.

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Some children have not enough love in their lives and too much admiration. According to Alice
Miller, admiration is attention which is given on a conditional basis. I will attend to you and
maintain my connection to you as long as you show me things that make me feel good -- that
comfort me, that reduce my anxiety. The sub text of the message of admiration is always, “I love
you now, but my love may be withdrawn at any moment if you show me something that makes
me uncomfortable.”

In such a circumstance the normal balance of the relationship is turned upside down. The child
exists for the sake of the parent, and the focus shifts from the emotional needs of the child to the
emotional needs of the parent. Children in such circumstances really lose themselves, and often
become good and dutiful, but joyless adults.

One of the characteristics of admiration is that it takes more and more admiration to provide less
and less emotional satisfaction. Children who are admired, rather than loved, are desperate for
attention. Often they are not able to get the kind of loving attention they really need.

It is part of the sadness of this pattern that a deficit of human love can make it hard for these
children to feel and believe in the love of God. These are the children who are easily led astray
by peer pressure and become the prime targets for cults. They are easily bought by displays of
attention, and really do not know what they think or feel.

The way we think about childhood and the way we see children can make it easier to see our
children and their needs and to offer them love. Or the way we see children can make us prone to
offer a conditional admiration.

The Child’s Need for the Love of God

Understanding this dynamic of childhood helps us see the importance of the experiences of the
love of God for normal human development, and helps us understand why an approach like
Godly Play® is especially appropriate to the emotional and spiritual needs of children.

In order to develop a true self which is capable of a growing intimacy with other people and with
God, children need to experience love rather that admiration. There is no earthly parent who is
able to give pure love. It is inevitable that our love for our children will be mixed with admiration

In our relationship with our children we cannot always keep them in the center of our attention in
the way that they need, and at the time that they need. Children have a need for love that is
beyond the capacity of even the most attentive and loving parents and teachers to provide.
Children have a need for the complete and perfect love of God -- whose gaze is unfailing; who
sees all and never withdraws; who accepts everything about us both good and bad and loves us
anyway; and who offers us strength and help in the struggle with evil and the struggle to love as
we are loved.

At first this love need to be mediated to children by their parents who, to the best of their ability
with God’s help, love their children as they themselves are loved by God, out of all proportion to
any merit.

The Love of God for the Child Mediated through Godly Play
Ultimately this love, which is mediated in the relationship between parents, teachers and children
needs to be made available to children in a more direct way. The religious materials of Godly
Play® give children an opportunity to become engaged in a very direct way with an experience of
the Love of God. As Sofia Cavaletti says, this way of working with the religious education of
children allows the cry of the child, “let me experience God for myself,” to be answered.

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As the children interact with the materials in an atmosphere that is permeated with a philosophy
of respect for the child, the children are able to experience the deep love which they need in order
to find and develop their own true selves, and to grow emotionally and spiritually strong. As they
manipulate the materials, they are able to engage parts of their experience which have been cut
off and buried, and to reexperience these elements in the face of the total acceptance and love of
God. They are able to acknowledge and engage their temptations and the reality of evil, and to
find that God is really their helper

In touch with the Love of God these children will not be easily bought by the manipulation of the
need for admiration. They will know who they are and what they think and feel, and what is true
and good and beautiful. They will know that God loves them just as they are, forgives them when
they are wrong, and helps them to be better. By giving our children Godly Play® we give them an
experience of the love of God which fills their deepest needs, and which will make it possible for
them, in turn, to put their children in touch with the never failing source of love.

Our Need for God’s Love

All that I have said here about the need that children have for an encounter with the love of God
holds true for each one of us as well. Our ability to offer our children a nurturing love, as opposed
to a poisonous admiration, will depend on our experience of being loved. We need to have the
love of God mediated to us by other people. We need that direct contact that comes from an
immersion in religious symbols, in the words of the scripture, and the sacraments of the church.

As parents, teachers and caretakers of the young, we need the conviction that God sees the
secrets of our hearts and does not draws back; sees how hard it is for us to be as good as we
want to be and comes to help. Knowing this, will help us look upon our children with love, and will
help us be genuinely helpful in their desire to honor God.

From The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Vol. 5, pp 118-123

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