Kids and school

School is such an exciting place to be. Stimulating opportunities meet up with energetic learners. To ensure that youthful energy and intelligence is always channeled in the most productive direction, it's helpful to identify the spirituality of children that reveals the uniqueness and completeness of each child.  

No child is one of a series on an assembly line.  Each one of God's ideas is the unique and infinite expression of the divine Mind that is God. Knowing this protects each child from stereotypes and anything else that would limit opportunities.

Mind manifests itself through intelligence, perspicacity, poise, reason, judgment, discernment, reflection, thoughtfulness, understanding, intellect, logic, conception, creativity, originality, wisdom, good sense, knowledge, prescience, intuition, receptivity  and perception. Every child can discover and express in quality each of the attributes of Mind.

Mind's attributes are individualized in children - not parceled out in bits here and pieces there, but fully reflected in a unique fashion by each one. For this treasure store of potential, there are are no early birds or late-bloomers. At God's table, everyone is fully served, even while each ones experience at the table is unique and special.

But what if there seem to be problems with learning or behavior at school?  Does this mean that potential is thwarted for that one? Can a child miss the boat entirely on fulfilling his or her particular purpose? Is the path to succeed just simply harder for some?

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I have a helpful story. A young boy was having difficulty in school. It's not that he didn't want to do well; but every time he answered a question the wrong answer popped out.  Frustrated, he asked parents for help. His father recognized right away that he was struggling with something Paul wrote about in Scripture, "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do." (Romans 7:15) The boy felt like he was trapped by this problem.

His mother diligently worked with him each morning to understand why children go to school - not to amass a pile of facts in one's head, but to cultivate the natural faculties of Mind.  Before school she would discuss one or more of the faculties of perception, reason, memory, application and judgment, in a way he could understand. For example:

• We see a new idea through the faculty of perception.

• We integrate that idea into our understanding through the faculty of reason.

• We hold onto the idea through the faculty of memory.

• We express the idea to others through the faculties of application and judgment.
  
  

The mom made sure her son understood that the Mind that is God is the creator and source of all these faculties and that they can't be lost or hidden from us, Mind's creation. In fact, she pointed out that every child must express them, without exception, according to God's law. She concluded that every single child has the equal right to be a genius at school and that he, her little boy, could insist on his divine right to express all his faculties of intelligence.

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She discussed these and other ideas in varying degrees every morning before school for about two weeks. When the boy understood that God was the source of all that he needed to succeed, and that he had constant instant access to God, therefore to all the divine faculties, he had no more trouble in school. This kid ended up graduating from Harvard. (Story originally recounted in Destiny of The Mother Church, p.109, Bliss Knapp)

I particularly love the engagement of the mom with her child. She prayed for him, then she helped him to know himself and his relation to God better. Prayer does that for parents. Prayer isn't a passive "sit back and hope" approach to problems. It engages with spiritual solutions, good ideas that lead to practical steps and progressive conversation where it may be needed to encourage and protect children, and to promote their growth.

Winter/Christmas break is upon us and many parents and children may be breathing a sigh of relief that school is out. But these break times can also provide the needed space to rethink, to pray, and to gain ground on a fresh approach to our kids and school - all the good we can expect for and from our children.

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