Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
328. Forming Resilient Children
Dr. Holly Catterton Allen reveals that spirituality is crucial to childhood resilience. She explains that children are born as spiritual beings with an inherent capacity for deep relationships with self, others, and God. She challenges traditional approaches to children's faith formation by emphasizing contemplative practices and "wondering questions" instead of formulaic answers.
• Children are born spiritual beings, not just physical, emotional, and intellectual ones.
• Spirituality encompasses three essential relationships: with self, others, and God.
• Research shows spirituality ranks as a key protective factor in childhood resilience.
• Creating space for questions without immediate answers builds authentic spiritual growth.
• Simple practices like asking "Who are you in the story?" can open meaningful spiritual conversations.
• Children don't need all protective factors to be resilient if they have a meaningful connection to God.
• Knowing God as present, understanding, and healing provides "the most powerful resilience armor."
Try asking the children in your life open-ended "wondering questions" this week, and see how it enriches your conversations and deepens your connections.
Visit Dr. Holly Catterton Allen here: InterGenerate Conference
Order "Forming Resilient Children."
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As I've listened to the stories of thousands of women of all ages in all kinds of stages through the years, I've kept their stories locked in the vault of my heart. I feel as if they've been walking around with me all through these years. They've bothered me, they've prodded me and sometimes kept me up at night. Ultimately, they've increased my passion to reframe and reimagine the powerful positions of mother and matriarch within the family system. I'm a problem solver, so I set out to find a way to perhaps change the trajectory of this silent and sad scenario about a dynamic yet untapped source of potential and purpose sitting in our homes and churches. It is time to come to the table, heartlifters, and unleash the power of maternal presence into the world. Welcome to Mothering for the Ages, our 2025 theme, here on today's Heartlift. I'm Janelle. I am your guide here on this heartlifting journey. I invite you to grab a pen, a journal and a cup of something really delicious. May today's conversation give you clarity, courage and a revived sense of camaraderie. You see, you're not on this journey alone. We are unified as heartlifters and committed to bringing change into the world, one heart at a time. Hello and welcome to today's Heart Lift with Janelle. I'm Janelle, your guide for today's conversation.
Speaker 1:A very important aspect of mothering is forming resilient children and the role of spiritual formation for healthy development. Today we have a beautiful luminary with us, an expert in this field, holly Katterin Allen. She holds a PhD from Talbot School of Theology. She has served as professor of Christian Ministries and Family Science at Lipscomb University in Nashville, tennessee. She has taught at John Brown University, biola University and Abilene Christian University, and she is the editor of Nurturing Children's Spirituality and Intergenerate and the co-author of Intergenerational Christian Formation. All children need to be able to deal with stress, cope with challenges and persevere through disappointments. Wow, so critical, not only just children, but for us too, as their mothers. While we cannot protect children from all hardships, we can promote healthy development that fosters resilience.
Speaker 1:In this interdisciplinary work Forming Resilient Children Holly's book Holly builds a bridge between resilience studies and Children's Spiritual Formation. Both of these subjects are so near and dear to my heart, and I think that we are living in a time, a very unique time, as we talk about here, where we now can hear and see the news 24-7 with a phone in our hand, an iPad, television screens everywhere, every restaurant, seemingly so that's a universal statement, nail salons they're just everywhere. It's very hard to escape hearing the news. There was a day in time where we didn't have access to knowing what was going on in Israel or going on in the Gaza Strip. We just didn't have access. But in our day and in this age we do so in Mothering for the Ages we really do need to know how to develop this beautiful quality of resilience psychological resilience, relational resilience, emotional and spiritual resilience and she brings some topics to our table that we really haven't talked about before and understanding the difference between faith formation or faith development of children, with spiritual formation in children and even the spirituality of children.
Speaker 1:Spirituality is a universal human quality. I asked her do you have a sense, in the current deconstruction movement that is sweeping the American church particularly, that perhaps we as parents or we as a church system erred in the spiritual formation process? And she just gives us a little deeper, broader understanding of the healthy development of spirituality in children, and it is speaking to me as well and I think it will speak to you. She also shares with us about three relationships that are critical to our spirituality and, as you'll hear, holly and I, you know we are of a different generation in the sense, so we weren't perhaps taught this and she just wants it to be such a part of our conversation today of self, the child's relationship to self, a child's relationship to others and a child's relationship to God. These are three distinctly different relationships.
Speaker 1:She quotes John Swinton as saying interpersonal, intrapersonal and transpersonal, and I just love the distinction that she brings to this and the importance of having all three of those relationships having a self-relationship, having an others relationship and then having a God relationship. And I just think that you are going to experience some growth today spiritually, mentally, emotionally and relationally, and that is what we're all about here. So here we go, let's just hop right on into this conversation with Holly. You offer us a working definition I just want to start right there a working definition of children's spirituality, and I love that you coined it a working definition, because how do you really put that into a finite sense? But what is children's spirituality? And I think it has a lot to do with our own spirituality.
Speaker 2:So it does I? First of all. I think it's important to establish that I think children are born as spiritual beings. They're born.
Speaker 1:I want you to tell us about this. It's so good, please.
Speaker 2:Physical beings are born at, born as social beings, psychological beings, emotional beings, intellectual beings, but they are spiritual beings. This is what's from the animals God has breathed into human beings the breath of life and his spirit, and we are spiritual beings from birth, and that's important.
Speaker 2:First of all recognizing it doesn't happen, you know. You don't later become a spiritual being. Perhaps when in churches we've sometimes thought in terms of when they ask Jesus in their heart, or when they're baptized, or they become a church member when they're confirmed, that is when they become spiritual beings, but they're already spiritual beings. All children everywhere, everywhere, all over the world. They may not know God Yahweh, they may not know him, but that doesn't mean they're not spiritual beings.
Speaker 1:And I do believe in God. They're open to the spirit. They're open. I mean I just stood at the baptism of my sweet little almost. She was almost one year old, a week into, you know, to being one year old in South America, and it was the most beautiful service in Urdu way, and I'm her godmother and I I just her face when the priest was.
Speaker 1:I've never seen anyone do this. I've seen, of course, you know, the water. But then he brought out this exquisite piece of something, container with this sap and the fragrance of the sap was amazing. And he came to her and she bowed her little head like a little bit and he put that sap right here, like right over their little birth, you know whatever that thing's called, I can't remember Soft spot and said may you always carry the fragrance of Christ wherever you go. And her, I mean, received it. Now I know I'm a grandmother, but it was divina, as they would say. It was just divina and you're right, she knew Her spirit was open and it was just so beautiful. So when you say that to us, that is not something that has been taught.
Speaker 2:That's right. Different churches have overlooked this in a variety of ways. Even children, before they're baptized as infants, though, are spiritual beings, and so those who are in believers' baptism churches would say well, what do we do with children before they ask Jesus in their heart or are baptized at 12 or 15? Are they just not spiritual beings? So we've had a longer gap there, but I would like to say that those who practice infant baptism still even before that one year or three months or nine months, Whenever it is 10 days.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right, they're already spiritual beings. So in churches I think we've overlooked that. The other piece that we've overlooked in churches is that for churches who do acknowledge that children are spiritual beings, or at least acknowledge at some point that children can begin to have a child-God relationship, may not realize that spirituality is broader than the child-God relationship. Yes, that God has created us for relationship with others, not just for relationship with Him. That's right. We don't recognize that when we are nurturing our children in their relationships with us and with their siblings and with their friends and with their grandparents or other adults, that is also a spiritual enterprise.
Speaker 2:We've tended to view that as psychological or that's the way you get along with people. You know we need to share our toys because you know that helps you in life. But these are all part of who God made us to be, and you asked earlier something about leaning into the first and second commandments love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. So there are three aspects at least of this relational piece that we are created to be Loving God or relationship with God, loving others, being in relationship with others and actually being aware, keenly aware, that there's a self here, that he has created us individually and uniquely we're not just generic people and that we are to know ourselves in relationship with him and with others.
Speaker 2:Others would add a relationship with the world, and most definitions, or many definitions, of spirituality would include the child's relationship with God, self, others and the world. And I don't exclude that. I just want to ground it very firmly in scripture and that's why I stay with these three. I do in the book, you know, refer to that especially. Some children and some adults especially and keenly relate to God when they are out in nature.
Speaker 1:We know God has that in his heart as well, so I don't want to leave it out.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to particularly and specifically grounded in that passage, but especially for those who have not even been taught about God, there is a holiness to the Niagara Falls that you just are in awe. For those who don't know God, I do think he has created ways for them to acknowledge there is a creator, god, and I love that.
Speaker 1:And so I love that you bring that into our awareness and realize how important it is for children to have that in their formation. It's so critical it is.
Speaker 2:It's a missing piece. I did not receive that either, and so it's been neat for me to lean into that. What does it mean if a child understands that I'm an I in relation to you and I am an I in relation to God, that my feelings matter, that my needs matter, that your needs also matter in your feelings, because those are parallel? We taught that other people have feelings, other people have needs, but ours were, like, not as important as theirs.
Speaker 1:They're very suppressed, oppressed, repressed, all depressed.
Speaker 2:All that. I think that's more scriptural, that's more Godly, that's the way God created us to be a balance there, not putting ours above others, but a balance. So that's been a lovely recovery as I've studied this as well.
Speaker 1:Where in your studies? I'm just so curious. Where in your studies? Where in in your movement? Cause you were extremely involved in children's ministry and children's formation. You know for decades ministry and children's formation. You know for decades. So where in your own walk and in your own spiritual formation did that revelation come to you? Was it in your doctorate studies? Was it in a Sunday school class? I'm just so curious. I'd love to know where you thought man, that's a missing piece and it's critical. Yeah, where were you?
Speaker 2:Well, as a children's minister and a student of actually development. Educational psychology was my master's degree, so I come from the education which most children's ministers have in the past. So we have this developmental bias and it's not a bad bias, it's just that's where we go to. But coming from that, that's the way I did children's ministry. I followed what was going on in education and I just brought it whole into my Sunday school, my children's church, and that wasn't evil, it wasn't terrible, it just wasn't whole. So I've had three big changes over the years as I've evolved in my understanding of who God is and who I am and who we are.
Speaker 2:The first probably was in the 1990s. This is the one you know the story of. We were meeting in a church that was intentionally intergenerational and I was in these intergenerational small groups and I began to see children ministering to their parents and other adults. I thought where was that? I never saw that?
Speaker 1:Where is that? Where was that Exactly?
Speaker 2:And praying with their parents and for their parents and other adults, and I thought what's going on here? Yes, yes, leading worship, I just hadn't. I had an educational model and that was the teacher teaches and the children sit and learn, and so this was new. But it was not just the children. The intergenerational setting, I think, was a hothouse for all of us for spiritual formation, and that was my first step into this changing paradigm.
Speaker 2:I said, ok, we need all of us, something is going on here, that was going on in my Sunday school class was not going on when I led children's church. What is it about intergenerational settings? That is such a what.
Speaker 1:Why. That's the question right the effervescence, right Thing is different here.
Speaker 2:Second big shift was moving from a faith development approach to a spiritual development approach. Faith development is how we studied children's growth. It was a developmental model. This was Fowler and all the other people, it was Erickson and Fowler and Piaget primarily because we looked at children as not thinking like adults. They think intuitively when they're little, they think concretely a little bit older and then eventually they grow up and they can be abstract thinkers and we confused those two. We conflated spiritual development and cognitive development. Faith development I view as a child's and our understanding of who God is, what he has done, what scripture says, and it is that belief piece. I believe this is God, I believe he did this, but scripture says the devils believe they do. So there's something more.
Speaker 1:There's something more. I like this. This is so good.
Speaker 2:So then I began to say you know, what is that more? What is different? It's more than just cognitive acknowledgement. So there is this sense that we are engaged with God, is engaged with us. He is entering our realm, has entered our realm, he's calling us into his. That's a relational piece. I had simply overlooked it, and we don't use that language in my background. My Baptist friends did. They said you know, do you have a relationship with God? I truly did not know what that meant.
Speaker 2:I did not perceive it to be a loss. I didn't know what it was, so it didn't seem to bother me for the first 30 years of my life. But I begin to see that cognitive development spiritual development are not the same thing. And so what else is it? And that's when I began down this path of what do I mean by spiritual development. You asked me originally what my definition is, and so my fuller definition is children's. Spirituality is a quality present in children from birth, by which children seek to establish relationship with self, others and God as they understand God. Because I want to make sure that children all around the world know that they can seek this relationship where they know y'all, they seek a transcendent other I think god has placed in us absolutely desire to know this being that is something exists.
Speaker 1:yes, many now call it the universe, right. There's just so many within this. I just think I'm gonna ask this question right now because I think it's very relevant. You, you know, right now, and there's this current wave of deconstruction, and then those fighting no, it's reconstruction.
Speaker 1:And I myself, through the three-year global pandemic, entered a wilderness. You know, when all the trappings were taken away. All the things that you know gave me my understanding as a follower, right? Well, I'm speaking, I'm teaching, I'm leading, I'm doing this, I'm in church, I do prayer groups, I do this. All the trappings, well, that was extracted from us and I believe I'm just going on a limb.
Speaker 1:This is my personal belief that a lot of it was really an opportunity. Did God lead it? I can't say. My mother died of COVID. I do not know.
Speaker 1:All I know is he was saying to me, like he said to the woman at the well, there will be a day when you will not need a temple, you will just worship me in spirit and in truth. And for me, that's what I extracted, that's what I ripped apart, that's what I dove into. What does that mean for me? Janelle Reardon part that's what I dove into. What does that mean for me, janelle Reardon, to just be a child of God?
Speaker 1:And that's why your message is so relevant to me and to the community at large. Even if we're not children, we're all children of God. So this message to me every time you say children's spirituality, I'm like that's my spirituality, it just relates to me. So I think it's just so relevant. But I feel like I got to a level, a depth and authenticity in my relationship with Jesus because the trappings were taken away. That was just my journey and it's so precious, I just want to guard it. It's like so precious, I just want to guard it. It's like so precious. Do you sense that a lot of this deconstruction is because in the nineties and in the eighties, when I was teaching, you know, and children's ministry and leading and guiding that that was the missing piece.
Speaker 2:I think it's a part of it. I think also having access to all the doubters of the world all the time, the world we swim in, it's not welcoming to Christianity. It's not welcoming even to spirituality, except the broadest, vaguest Right. I think the answers that we gave when we were children's ministers in the 80s and 90s were the packaged answers we had received and they had worked for us. I believed what my parents told me. I believed what my Sunday school teachers told me. I did not have doubts as a child. I didn't have doubts as a young adult. I did start having doubts when life started happening. Yes, and that's what intersects with this deconstructing.
Speaker 2:I think, most of our working adults have already had lots of things happen to them. I mentioned in the book that when I was first writing it, that basically our children are divided into two groups those who've already hit a wall, who've already hit some hard places and they've already been called on to be resilient, and then those whose lives have been you know. They had good enough parents, good enough churches, good enough schools, good enough neighborhoods. They've not had good enough health, they've just not had any trauma and it's hard to say that they're resilient yet. They haven't hit anything yet. But actually every child under the age of three, over the age of three, hit the pandemic and it affected. Unless you lived I don't know where, maybe in the Antarctic or something who knows.
Speaker 1:Yes. All children were now, they weren't necessarily deeply affected.
Speaker 2:I mean if you lost a grandmother, yes, If you lost a grandfather. Or, by the way, 140,000 children lost a parent to.
Speaker 1:COVID.
Speaker 2:Oh, holly. So you know, some lost a sibling, wow. But your school shut down. You had to go online, you had to do school in a little screen and your church shut down.
Speaker 1:Isolated only yes.
Speaker 2:McDonald shut down.
Speaker 1:I mean everything shut down.
Speaker 2:Yes, it doesn't seem so traumatic, but was for oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:No, I think so. I think it's absolutely trauma-informed. For sure, there's no way we last global pandemic was century ago, right? I mean it's nuts.
Speaker 2:And so I think of the children in england in world war ii who endured those nightly bombings yes, I think of the children now in Ukraine. So it's not that. But it has been global. I mean children everywhere.
Speaker 1:It's the first time it's been a global a matter, exactly Right, A global trauma.
Speaker 2:And we were so interconnected before it and then, for everything, shut off. My grandmothers, both of my grandmothers, remember the 1918, 1919, 1920 flu epidemic. Both grandmothers told me about knowing whole families who died, that their families were found, all of them dead, and I said, well, how did your family? Well, we lived out on the farm and you know, when we heard about it, we just didn't go into town, we didn't see anybody for a year. It's different, but it wasn't as traumatic. And we live in cities and large cities and large towns. We're not primarily a rural nation. The world is not merely a rural place. So even those remote places, eventually COVID came.
Speaker 1:Our world that we're living in is different, so it's vital that we understand spiritual formation, would you say, in a more contemplative way. Is that something you feel was missing, like the contemplative practices? That's something newer to me. I was raised Catholic so I'm sure that I absorbed more contemplation. I know I didn't have that in my children's ministry, a time where I asked deep questions or created space for those questions. Is that what you're thinking now is vital to a child's spiritual formation?
Speaker 2:I'll connect that to your former deconstruction question. We were raised in a situation in a teacher as the person who knows everything and learner as the existence, and we accepted that many of us not all of us, but many of us and we expected the teacher to have an answer and we were not very encouraged to ask deep questions.
Speaker 2:I was a question asker and I learned fairly young that those were not very welcome and didn't do that. You know, I eventually, as my younger sister, said, why didn't you just quit asking? And of course I eventually did Not.
Speaker 1:You, holly, please don't quit asking Never. And of course I eventually did. You can't Not, you, holly, please?
Speaker 2:don't quit asking, never. Well, I recovered that as an adult, but as a child I did quit asking. People were uncomfortable. This generation is asking and they're seeking Hungry, but they don't get the answers that we give. Well, the Bible says it's true, so it's true, that's right, believe it Just believe it, just believe it.
Speaker 2:I believe it. Your grandmother believed it. So this generation is not falling in line. They are seeking, but they want to find the answers. And one of the ways to find the answers, and for us to help them find them, is through this more contemplative way to ask, wondering questions.
Speaker 1:I do wonder.
Speaker 2:I love that, that's part of your book Wonder yes, why did God have the Israelites kill all, even the babies in Jericho? That was one of the questions I asked as a child. That was shut down very quickly. You know God can do what he wants to.
Speaker 1:That's who he is and that was the end of that, oh, and the finger was there, that pointing thing, yeah, yes, that was good, and now to ask that question, say I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are some of the understandings we have, but I don't know, I don't understand, and it's all right to leave open questions Right Before you even join up or get out.
Speaker 1:You're right question, right uh, before you even join up or get out.
Speaker 2:and now, we're making or living in some doubt, uncertainty and even, especially for our 20, something saying I'm just not sure I believe like you believe. And um to say I can understand that Throughout the ages people have believed somewhat differently. Where are the places that we see God and then try to find these common ground places? He's powerful, he's loving. Well, let's say, I'm not sure he's loving. Well, tell me about that. But leaving space, that's different.
Speaker 1:Well, tell me about that. But leaving space, that's different no-transcript.
Speaker 2:It would have been when we were children as well. It would have been lovely for the faces to look at us and say that's a really wonderful question. I can't answer it today, but let's continue to explore it and find what other people have said and ask God. That's another thing I didn't know to do. What if somebody? I just would go to the minister and he would tell me you know the priest or somebody, but they would know, somebody knew, somebody knew. Yeah, that nobody knew was not possible. Somebody would know. But what if we were to say let's ask God. Why don't we ask God and let's see what he says this week? He may reveal some new things to us about that question. What a wonderful thought.
Speaker 1:I'm just calming down. It's like every part of my nervous system that I don't know the answer. I don't know what is just calming down, because it is invitational. I think it's resisted. And tell me what your thoughts are. It's resisted because it's not formulaic, of course, and it can be very uncomfortable, but it also requires space. It requires the silence, the solitude and the stillness. You know those disciplines that goodness Richard Foster tried to tell us about. You know, in celebrations of discipline it requires that, and in a, you know, in a classroom or in a setting, we don't know how to do that today. We are a very overproductive, highly ambitious bells and whistles. You know all the shiny stuff, right?
Speaker 2:We have been. We've moved from a basically study book. You know, read the bible, fill in the blanks, yes, school approach from that and I was old enough to remember that and it was perfectly fine for me because I liked school. Then we went to the entertainment model. By the time we were children's ministers, the big entertainment model was really big because puppets, all the things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's the bells and whistles and the smells and everything. And of course I leaned into that a little bit and thought, wait a minute, this is probably. We don't really want to go crazy this way, but I did see it when I was teaching children's ministry courses. I would ask my students to visit some of the big megachurches and just describe what they saw. What was the point of the lesson, what the children were, what do you think the children got, what was the main message they walked away with and what were some of the questions that were asked and things like that. What do you think the goal was of the class? And you know they would come back.
Speaker 1:I think it was so that the kids would say it was the funnest hour of the week for me oh my gosh, what of the week for me? Oh my gosh, what a great. I'm so glad you are a professor and a teacher. Oh, I'm so happy that you do what you do.
Speaker 2:Okay, Keep going, so they, they would come back with this and I said is that the goal of Sunday school? Is that really what we're after, so that kids will have fun and make sure that they come back? Well, you think, well, we do want them to come back. Is there a way for it to be an enjoyable, enriching, good, deep experience?
Speaker 1:You know, I was just recently in a very deep conversation with a 40 year old woman, you know, and it was like she was asking such deep, deep questions and I just said Well, what do you think? This is what I've learned recently. And it was so different. I just remember, like I've said it recently on the podcast, I just remember saying to myself man, five years ago I don't know if I would have been like that 10 years ago, definitely not 15 years ago all I would have been caring about is that she received Christ right there, that she is a believer, but it was. I let it be invitational and welcoming and it was. So it was Easter Sunday, it was beautiful, and I know that she is seeking. And isn't it better, isn't it better, when we find the answers ourselves?
Speaker 2:Yes, and we can trust God to do that. That's what we didn't know to do. We thought we had to get it right for everybody else, because they might not get it.
Speaker 1:Such pressure we weren't trusting.
Speaker 2:God. I know we weren't trusting God to reveal what they needed to hear at that time.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, we haven't really touched on resilience. Oh my goodness, we haven't really touched on resilience. But what we've touched on is the footing for resilience. Why is resilience, or what is resilience? First of all, let me ask you what that is. And then why do you think it's vital to becoming a spiritually sound person? You know what is the link there, what is the bridge?
Speaker 2:Well, I did not know this until I began teaching a course that I started about eight years ago here. I taught the course before, but it was not connected to resilience, it was just children's spirituality. But here at Lipscomb I had to find a population of children for my students to spend time with, because this was going to be a assault class, a teaching, learning class, and so I had to have an organization who would allow us to connect with their children, for this to be this kind of a class and so I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first organization I found was Tennessee Prison Outreach Ministry, and a woman there helped us connect with children whose parents were in prison, and so each of my students spent an hour each week with a child whose mother in this case, all of them, it was their mother who was in prison, oh my gosh, I have chills.
Speaker 2:Without exception, none of these children was in contact with their father. So all of these children were, in a sense, orphans at the moment and they had a mother, but she was in prison and some of them talked about her and visiting her, which was also fairly traumatic. Some of them were around when their parent was arrested, some remembered their father also being in trouble and some had died drugs and that sort of thing. It was a very hard population to start with, yes, and so I had to read the literature. You know how do you help kids whose parents are incarcerated.
Speaker 2:So I began reading that literature to begin to weave it in, and I found several articles for my students to read. And lo and behold, among the resilience factors for children whose parents are in prison is spirituality. Now they listed other things like having loving grandparents or other adults who can step in. They mentioned things a child who has some self qualities. Those qualities like self-motivation or high self-esteem. Those kids tend to be a little more resilient, kids who have a wonderful place to belong somewhere. Well, that didn't fit any of these kids.
Speaker 1:They just didn't have? Were they in foster care, or were they with grandparents or family?
Speaker 2:None of them was in foster care but they were all with family, friends who weren't relatives or with, I thought at first was relatives, turned out not to be. This is my grandma, only it wasn't so they call them grandparents. One child was with her grandmother and one was with an aunt. She called her auntie, but none of them was in foster care, which was, I think, an unusual population In that situation you would think they might have to be, but all of them had found someplace to be, to be, but all of them had found something else to be.
Speaker 2:But that's what surprised me in the literature, that I found that children who are involved in a religious setting, in a church, tend to have more resilience or have a strong connection to God, who know, a God who sees them and knows them and is present for them. And I thought, well, who knew that was here? And then I began the next year. We had a different population. We worked with children who were refugees. We have a big refugee population in Nashville and so I had to read all the refugee literature and, lo and behold, guess what showed up? And my mind began going oh, there's a link. So the resilience literature draws primarily from psychology, and psychology, because of the long, long shadow of Freud, has not been very friendly to religion and it has not typically gone to spirituality or to religion as an answer. They've, most often in the past, have seen it as the problem.
Speaker 2:So we're coming to that area. Now, after a hundred years, we're beginning to see and actually believe it. When children say, well, god was with me, we don't say, and who else was with you? We don't just ignore that, we listen to that. So we're starting to find out about that. Yeah, and it's in the literature now. So I found it in that literature. I found it in the literature on children who are in generational poverty. It's also there. If they're part of a believing body of believers, that can help. If they have a relationship with a God who knows them, knows them by name, is connected with them, that they pray to, it can help. It can be part of the resilience response, part of their own personal resilience. So there are a lot of factors and I list in my book, as you noticed, nine. They grouped Ann Mastin has kind of grouped all the 50 or so different possible resilience factors into 10. And the first nine include, you know, having capable parents or you know, having these self-quality problem solving.
Speaker 1:Problem solving skills.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, you're the kind of kid that says, oh my goodness, look what shape we're in. Oh dear, what can I do to help this? Right, you have a better chance, to be more resilient. But you know, all children don't have that. No, they don't but you don't have to have all 10. You do not have to have all 10.
Speaker 2:Right, If you just have one if you have nothing going for you in your life, but you have a teacher or you believe in a God who is with you and for you and will stand with you even if no one else does. This can be a resilience factor that holds you despite what happens in your life. That was so amazing to me.
Speaker 1:It's amazing yeah it is I'm like really.
Speaker 2:Can I read the 10?
Speaker 1:Can I just take a moment? I really would love to read the 10. I'm going to read the 10 protective factors and I will put this chart and make sure it's available to everyone. And you have to get her book. For sure you need to get Holly's book because it is actually such a self healing book as well. As I read it I'm like reparenting myself and that is a huge part of what we do and reattaching myself. So 10 protective factors and then there's basic human adaptive systems. The 10 protective factors are effective caregiving and parenting quality. So it's what I pound the table on. I'm just trying to help parents give a house that is safe and secure, where kids are seen and heard and known and belong, so they have attachment, secure attachment, close relationships with other capable adults. I think that's brilliant. That's, like you said teachers, coaches, aunts, uncles, grandparents, close friends and romantic partners for youth Interesting. Why is that one part of that? I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, and I know several stories of people in my life who came from very problematic home lives. But at 15, they met a boy who knew Jesus and they started going to church with him.
Speaker 1:Got it Okay. There was a faith factor brought into it. I love that.
Speaker 2:Or vice versa.
Speaker 1:Correct For me it was a best friend who lived next door, who had a beautiful, healthy Methodist faith and I just would go over there and go. Why is this family so different? Yes, she planted some deep, deep, good attachment in me and planfulness. So if you have a good emotional regulation which really comes from the top four, you know it builds into that learning how and what emotions even are right. That's what we do here. Motivation to succeed yes, self-efficacy I love that one. That would have been me for sure. Effective schools, effective neighborhoods, collective efficacy there's that community part.
Speaker 1:None of us heal in isolation. So it could be a neighborhood rec center right, it could be the YMCA, it could be anything collective like that, a really solid soccer team. Faith, hope and the belief that life has meaning I just love that. I think those are all so powerful, and so that's what you're really calling. You're calling back to us and to where I'm calling back to everyone following me to make these things be part of the children's lives that we're serving and loving, even in our own neighborhoods. You give children a lot of credit. That's what I wanted to say. They have a capacity to entertain and to think about deep questions and deep answers, right?
Speaker 2:They really do and we did not know that as children. We did not know that we underestimate. And giving space though these children in this class every week, you know I open it out and I pray that God will continue to call them by name. I pray, god, as you know these children, I know you're calling them, that they are hearing your voice, so I'm speaking truths into them, come to know in a way that maybe they've not heard before, so I'm helping to reorient their understanding of God and so then they can begin to ask those questions. I'm trying to open that out so that they can ask questions that are not Sunday school type questions and don't need Sunday school type answers. It's lovely to hear them coming now, so it's really yes.
Speaker 1:Wherever you are in your spiritual journey. I know that we are all being invited to bring more of the contemplative practices into our life, to ask the deeper questions of ourselves and ask them in the hallways of our home, to slow down, to take a breath and to create atmospheres like Holly is creating in her fifth grade, sunday school. Just creating an atmosphere because we know more is caught than taught. We know that, so she is just imaging to her class as well. You know this beautiful, newfound way of seeking Jesus. So what advice, what can you offer our community here, holly, as we close, on how we might just take some first steps, creating that kind of atmosphere in our home, or with our grandchildren now, or with the young mamas that are listening with their small children, their middles, their high schoolers, their college age. Yeah, what can we do today to begin creating that environment?
Speaker 2:Yes, something you can do today with almost any age child is. This is starting the open-ended questions and the child self, the child, others relationship to start with. Anytime you read any book to any child, ask them who are you in the story? And that is an easy question. You don't have to think, oh, what was that question? Oh, my goodness, and it will reveal to you something about your child or this child and eventually they might ask you well, who are you in the story? And you can say who you are in the story. Well, who are you in the story and you can say who you are in the story.
Speaker 2:This began when with a grandchild who was a little bit of an impish kind of kid. She was always kind of annoying other kids, tricking them. We read Anansi that's about a spider who's always tricking people, and I read her the story and I said who are you in the story? And most kids would say that they are the little bush deer who helped people who were tricked, and she said, oh, I'm the spider. And I said, oh, tell me about that. She said, yes, I like to trick people and then she said, well, I'm also the little bush deer. And I said, oh, why are you the little bush deer. And she said I like to spy on people Because the little bush deer was watching what was happening.
Speaker 1:What is the name of this book? First Tell me again.
Speaker 2:It's Anansi and in the jungle, or something like that, I forget.
Speaker 1:How do you even spell that?
Speaker 2:Anansi story A-N-A-N-S-I. There are a bunch of Anansi stories. I love it, but it was an ordinary book. It's not a Christian book, it's not a Christian book, it's not a religious book. But I just said, who are you in the story? She was four at that time, four, and already knew she liked to trick people.
Speaker 2:And she was willing to tell me. That's what I just learned. Oh yeah, she knew herself and she was willing to talk about it. Lovely, anyway, she's 20 now and we have a great relationship because over the years I've continued to ask when she was reading the Harry Potter books who are you in the story? I thought she would be Hermione, she was not, and then she said who are you in the story? I said I'm Hermione.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that so much. That is so rich. I'm going to say it again I'm so glad you're her grandmother.
Speaker 2:But that's a simple thing you can start doing with. I have a little grandchild. He's four but even when he was two I would say you know story or point to your favorite page, and it began to reveal that child to me and then eventually got into the habit of he would say what was his favorite page and I would say and this is my favorite page because I like that helicopter and you know you can stay surface like that.
Speaker 1:Yes, but sometimes Uh-huh. The moment comes.
Speaker 2:I don't like that page. Why not? Because that helicopter looks scary. Well, you didn't know that about your child or your kid.
Speaker 1:So and why?
Speaker 2:is that scary? What does that?
Speaker 1:mean? And where do you feel that? In your body-grandchild, and why is that scary? What does that mean and where do you feel?
Speaker 2:that in your body, yeah, all that. But it's a simple thing. You don't have to be afraid that you're not going to be spiritual enough to ask it.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you?
Speaker 2:Yes, because we feel such pressure to do all these spiritual things. But that's an ordinary thing. Any mama, any daddy, any grandma, anybody can do, and it begins on that child's health, child-others relationship, the child, God. All the rituals that we do, the tucking in the prayers, scripture, all those are good.
Speaker 2:All my college students when I say what are some of the spiritual markers of your childhood, they say my parents read to me every single night and of course I know they didn't read to them every single night, but it feels like the 18, 19, 20 year olds. They remember it as their parents coming in every night saying a prayer and they have ways of describing that, so don't feel guilty if you miss a night or two, it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or if you get upset or frustrated, it's just being human being, a good, beautiful. I mean, that's what I love about your book Forming Resilient Children, but it's also just about the essence of spirituality and the essence of spiritual formation.
Speaker 2:Yes, I want to leave you with one really important thing, though. Okay, if the last thing is, we want our children to know the God that we've been coming to know, and so that is the God that you will talk about all the time. It won't scare them. It will be a God that they want to know, and I think this deconstruction that's going on is connected to who wants a God like that over there?
Speaker 1:Who does?
Speaker 2:I don't connected to who wants a God like that over there.
Speaker 1:Who does? I don't.
Speaker 2:These are my final words Children who know God, who is present, who understands the enormity of what they've gone through, who offers them additional love, who is at work bringing about justice, who is orchestrating healing and restoration, possess the most powerful resilience armor there is. If you know, I am a child this God that can sustain you in the most difficult circumstances. So that is the God that we are introducing our children to and the God that we are learning to believe in, and that will hold our children even if some of those other factors fall down. It will.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. This was a holy moment. Thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:And may God bless you in all of your endeavors. And may God bless you in all of your endeavors and as all of us go further up and further into who God is, who he is showing himself in our lives.
Speaker 1:I love that Further up and further in. Thank you, absolutely, oh, heartlifter, we went long, so if you're still here, I found myself really tearing up as Dr Hawley spoke about the findings and how spirituality faith seemed to be very strongly correlated to resilience. I think we need this message now more than ever. It is my hope and prayer that perhaps this week our lean-in can be in all of our relationships, especially those with our children, whatever age they are, that we might begin asking wondering questions, or we might say open-ended questions. Well, what do you think about that? Tell me more, hmm. So join me. Please continue this conversation with me at HeartLift Central on Substack, or write on our Instagram at Janelle Reardon. I really want to hear your thoughts and see how perhaps asking wondering questions to those in our spheres of influence has enriched your conversations and perhaps led to some deeper spiritual conversations.
