Catherine Stonehouse

Many children today are growing up in the midst of adversity, whether brought on by family difficulties or larger societal crises. All children need to be able to deal with stress, cope with challenges, and persevere through disappointments. While we cannot protect children from all hardships, we can promote healthy development that fosters resilience. In this interdisciplinary work, Holly Catterton Allen builds a bridge between resilience studies and children's spiritual formation. Because children are spiritual beings, those who work with them can cultivate spiritual practices that are essential to their thriving in challenging times. This book equips educators, counselors, children's ministers, and parents with ways of developing children's spirituality to foster the resilience needed to face the ordinary hardships of childhood and to persevere when facing trauma. It offers particular insight into the spiritual experiences of children who have been hurt by life through chronic illness, disability, abuse, or disasters, with resources for healing and hope.

How do children experience and understand God? How can adults help children grow their life of faith? Throughout more than a decade of field research, children's spirituality experts Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May listened to children talk about their relationships with God, observed children and their parents in learning and worship settings, and interviewed adults about their childhood faith experiences. This accessibly written book weaves together their findings to offer a glimpse of the spiritual responsiveness and potential of children. Through case studies, it provides insight into children's perceptions of God and how they process their faith. In addition, the book suggests how parents, teachers, and ministry leaders can more effectively relate to and work with children and pre-adolescents to nurture their faith, offering a helpful picture of adults and children on the spiritual journey together.

Understanding how a child's faith forms is crucial to knowing how adults can most significantly enhance the child's spiritual development. This book provides parents, teachers, and Christian education leaders with valuable insights into spiritual formation during childhood. With a biblical perspective as a starting point and a recognition of the crucial role of both the family and the faith community, Stonehouse reviews important contributions from noted child development experts Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and James Fowler. This overview gives insight into the processes of psychosocial, cognitive, and moral development in children and adolescents. Stonehouse concludes with solid guidelines for designing children's ministries. By carefully "setting the stage" through liturgy, sacred stories, and parables, Christian educators can help children meet with God. Quiet times of "godly play," carefully adapted to the age level of the child, enable adults to join with children on the journey toward deeper intimacy with God.