On Raising a Spiritual Child

Why Kids Need Spirituality in Their Lives

What does it mean in our current age to nurture and prioritize our children’s spiritual needs? Turns out, emerging science has answers.

On Nov. 1, award-winning clinical psychologist and researcher Lisa Miller, Ph.D., presented a fascinating ParentEd talk based on her groundbreaking exploration of the neuroscience of spirituality and its role in fueling an inspired life of meaning and contribution. Miller detailed the surprising connection between innate spirituality and how developing it in our lives and in our parenting enhances grit, optimism and resilience in ourselves and in our children — as well as insulates us against the ills of addiction, trauma and depression.

Following are just a few takeaways from her thought-provoking presentation. We invite you to watch the full talk at parentmap.com/miller; and to register for the remaining events in our 2022–2023 ParentEd Talks series at parentmap.com/live.

continued from page 22 How do you delineate spirituality vs. religion? To be very clear, spirituality and religion are not the same thing, although they go hand in hand for about 70 percent of people in the United States. So, 70 percent of people in our country say, “I am spiritual and I am religious. My deep transcendent awareness and my deep spiritual core are held in the embrace of my faith tradition — in our prayers, our meditations, our sacred text, our ceremony, our community.” Thirty percent of Americans say, “I am spiritual, but I am not religious. For me, spirituality is experienced in nature.”

But whether or not we are religious, we are all born with an innate capacity for spiritual awareness. And we can awaken our natural spirituality through practice, through choice, through nature, through prayer and meditation, through good and right action. This is our birthright. So, while science does not prove spirituality, science can hold up a lens to lived human spiritual life and show how radically game-changing a strong spiritual core is on the rest of our lives. And that this is most apparent in this era for our children. As parents, we have an enormous impact on the developmental path of our children’s spiritual life.

Science says a spiritual child is happier and healthier — what do the numbers suggest? Spirituality plays a significant role in child social, emotional and cognitive development. Research shows that children who have positive active relationships to spirituality are 40 percent less likely to use and abuse substances, and have 60 percent less depression than other teenagers.

Often, it’s the case in mental health to identify diagnosis at the level of the individual: That young man is depressed, she has addiction. But when half of the teens in the United States report a disease of despair, addiction, depression, and even suicidal behavior, it’s best not to look simply at the level of the individual, but to look instead at our culture and climate, in order to understand the tidal wave [engulfing] our children and how we as parents can take control of our shared parent culture.

How can we begin to remake parent culture? There is in the middle of our public square and in our schools and our boardroom — everywhere we go — a giant hole wherein belongs the spiritual core. There is a lack of sanctity. This is not because of how we have parented — this is because of the air and water, the tidal wave. Forty years ago, in the good attempt to be inclusive, we threw all religion out of the public square. And with that went the spiritual baby with the bathwater. As a result, we now have a spiritually non-conversant society … [one that] actually became radically exclusive as a result. This deeper understanding of who we are to each other needs to return to the middle of our society.

How is the spiritual core developed? First, every single one of us is a naturally spiritual being. Big claim. The core is innate — it is our natural endowment — and it is the center, the hub, from which grows moral, social and mental health. With respect to the environmental factors, we as parents, we as grandparents, our teachers, the 10,000 exchanges by the locker room, our choice of community … all weigh in to shape the spiritual core. The embrace [of the innate core] is environmental. And within this highly formative embrace can be the richness of our family faith tradition, or it can be the spiritual way of life that we teach and show to our children.

As parents, how do we help strengthen our child’s spiritual core? One of the foremost most powerful ways that we can help shape our children’s spiritual core is to provide transparency into our own spiritual life. When we pray, when we meditate, when we walk in nature, when we feel a great love, when we look at the sunset, we can stop and narrate that moment: I look at you, my daughter/my son, and I just know that this is a generous, loving universe. I look at you and I know you are a gift from God. I could have never produced you alone. When you talk out loud, when you speak of the spiritual reality, children know, “Hey, that something I’m feeling, it’s real.” It locks in. It’s relational spirituality. ■ Lisa Miller, Ph.D., is the author of the best-selling titles “The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving” and “The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.” She is a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Columbia University, Teachers College, where she founded the Spirituality Mind Body Institute. Learn more at lisamillerphd.com.

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