Mom According to the Kids

There's a survey going around Facebook right now called "Mom According to the Kids" that's pretty funny. Moms interview their (usually young) children and record their answers to questions like, "How old is mom?" "What is her favorite thing to do?" and "What does your mom like most about your dad?" But not surprisingly, the answers tell us more about the child than they do about the parent.

What they tell us is that children, even young children, have an understanding of how the world works that they piece together through observation, speculation, and drawing conclusions, even if they're tenuous. How else would my three-year-old niece "know" that her mom's favorite food is ice cream, or that clapping makes mom happy, or that mom is really good at "doing calendars"? More precisely, who told her these things?

Chances are that she was told none of these things, and that fact has huge implications for us in education, particularly religious education, where our goal is to impart a version of the world and of life that has God as its source and its center. Only it turns out "impart" is a rotten word that reflects misunderstanding of what's really happening in a child's mind most of the time, so let's discard it. Rather, our job is to, first, recognize and understand the process of learning that's already occurring in a young mind, and, second, to attempt to shape and influence what's already going on.

A few years ago in a social studies classroom I had a young boy tell me he'd always thought Vietnam was in South America. Now, how did that get in his brain? The same way my niece "knew" that her mom had a bottle as a baby. Young brains (and old brains) are constantly making connections and drawing inferences, sometimes by our invitation, but usually not. If humans didn't do this, we wouldn't survive. We need a workable model of the world in order to function. As we get older, this understanding usually improves - that's wisdom. But we're constantly learning, fitting in new information to the understanding we already have, discarding old conclusions that no longer make sense.

Experts in moral development tell us the way to morally influence someone is not by first speaking (lecturing), but by first listening. Only when we understand the way someone is thinking about a moral issue can we step into the process and, by approximations, move them to a place of different thinking.

And yes, kids think about God. They draw conclusions - sometimes humorous - about what he looks like, where he lives, what he does, what he thinks of them, and why he acts. They develop expectations of what God will do, and ought to do. Our job - as parents, religious educators, and other caring adults - is certainly to give them a correct understanding of the world. But there again, "give" is a misnomer - it really doesn't work that way. Instead, we steer, we guide, we ask clarifying questions, we invite them to consider new information, we cause them to reflect - and understanding emerges.

This is not relativism, an attitude of "whatever you think is your truth" - it's the opposite! But if we think we will implant or transfer understanding directly into young minds, we've got another thing coming. You don't educate a young brain as you would program a computer. Great discipleship - and here I'm talking about the informal type, that arises unplanned in the course of life - begins by bringing forth the understanding (or misunderstanding) that's already there. This, I think, is why traditional courses in discipleship usually fail. Paper-and-pencil workbooks can contain "truth", but the truth fails to connect with where the student is at. And if discipleship fails at the earliest stages, people will never progress to later stages, when didactic methods (systematic approaches like reading books or listening to lectures) are more likely to be effective.

So what's the message? If you want to teach and want to influence, listen. You must listen, and do it in such a way as to draw out honest perceptions, assumptions, and conclusions. Get to know the values that drive your child's thinking. And remember that spiritual development is a lifelong process. And then join Facebook and complete "Mom According to the Kids". It's pretty hilarious.