Today I want to share with you what I believe is a valuable resource for parents looking to raise spiritual kids regardless of their religious tradition. I have spoken to a number of parents recently who know that their current religious situation is not good for their kids, but they feel they have no reasonable alternative. Raising your kids outside of the structure of Sunday School and youth groups is daunting. We want our children to be part of a community that supports their moral and spiritual development. We value our rituals and having a routine. We value having a curriculum. Uplift kids will not solve all of these problems, but I believe it can be a big part of the puzzle for families looking to raise spiritually healthy kids.

“Uplift Kids grew out of a desire to expand transformative practices for children.” It is a curriculum that is meant for families to use in their homes, though I do know of at least one church youth group that uses it as well. What makes Uplift Kids different is that it doesn’t seek to follow any particular religious tradition, but takes a more universalist approach, drawing from a variety of wisdom traditions as well as the science of child development, mental health, and wellbeing. There is a large library of lessons that center around various aspects of spiritual, emotional, moral and social wellbeing that any person could benefit from. Examples include : Your Inner Compass, Forgiveness, Conflict, Journaling, and Grief. There are also mini lessons on different world religions and on a variety of holidays.

Each lesson begins with reading for the parents on the topic, and questions to ask yourself as you prepare the lesson. I love the invitation to process the concepts and emotions that come along with them, ensuring that you are bringing your best self to each lesson you teach. Next, there is a section on what the science says and another on what various wisdom traditions from around the world say, giving you a variety of perspectives to chose from. The actual lesson has an opening activity, sections for different age groups that you can mix and match to fit your family, and a closing activity.

One thing I love about Uplift Kids is that it is flexible enough to meet the needs of a variety of different belief systems. I’ve seen it used by atheists, Mormons, Quakers, and humanists. You can pick and chose what lessons your family needs and leave the rest. The lessons take 20-40 minutes depending on how many of the optional activities you do, which works great for families who are trying to replace an unhealthy church situation but haven’t found another youth program that works for them (check out this guide to evaluating a church youth program) They also offer daily devotionals where they break down a lesson over the course of a week into little 5 minute bites. I love using these as part of a family bedtime ritual.

Because Uplift Kids is non-dogmatic, they are a great middle ground for mixed-faith families. These are topics that are found across religions and they are taught in a way that respects a variety of perspectives. This also means they are great for parents who are going through their own times of doubt and uncertainty (see here for more about navigating a faith crisis as a parent), because they don’t require that you have all the answers or even to take a stand on a topic. It simply presents the information and invites you to have a discussion. Also, there are credentialed professionals such as therapists, psychologists, and social workers on the team so all lessons are evaluated to follow best practices. That means you can be reasonably assured that they are written in such a way that they will support what we know about the healthy development of children and families.

No one curriculum can replace all of the benefits that a structured spiritual community, but this can be one part of the puzzle that is raising spiritually healthy kids. It can provide some of the structure of Sunday school lessons or daily family scripture study without having to commit to a religious dogma. It can help bridge the gap in a mixed faith family. Even if you have a strong religious tradition and community, this is a great addition for families to bring some of these conversations home in a way that is evidence based and balanced. If you need more specific support, please consider booking spiritual coaching session.

The post Uplift Kids Review first appeared on Shanna Mae Spiritual Coaching.

Raising kids is hard, and it really helps to have a community to help. In fact, that’s a leading reason that people join churches. But, not all youth programs are created equally. How do you know if this will be a beneficial environment for your kids? Will it meet your needs? Here’s some things to consider:

Safety: 

1. Do the adults have background checks? These don’t catch everything, but it’s a bare minimum that all programs should have. 
2. What is their safety policy? Two deep leadership is the general standard in all programs.
3. What is their reporting policy? Concerns should be directly referred to the local authorities, not to internal systems. 
4. For larger programs, do they have files on the kids with emergency contacts, allergies, and a check in/check out procedure? 
5. Do the leaders take a training course on recognizing abuse? Here’s one I was really impressed with.

Community:

1. Are there kids the same ages as yours? 
2. Are the classes small enough for personal attention or large enough for peer interaction?
3. Does your child “vibe” with the other kids? With the teachers? Don’t’ discount it if your child is getting the creeps from a leader or another child. 
4. Kids change as they get older. Will this community be accepting if they come out as LGBTQ in the future? Are they accessible to those with disabilities? etc.

Values:

1. Do they center values over in-group/out-group thinking? Some programs spend a lot of time in boundary maintenance. In my opinion, a good children’s program spends more time actually teaching values rather than a specific dogma. Some red flags for me are teaching a “victim mindset” where the “world” is out to get the “believer”. It also is a red flag if we label who is and is not a true believer. That is different from teaching values, which are goals to strive towards, not measuring sticks to beat yourself with.
2. Do they treat everyone as deserving of love and belonging?  Beware of worthiness talk. Teaching excessive self-monitoring with the goal of being “worthy” can lead to serious mental health disorders in some children. A healthy program treats all people as worthy of love and belonging, even as they encourage them to be their best selves.
3. Do they engage in dangerous or unhealthy discipline? Exclusion and other shaming practices should never be used as a punishment. For example, a teen is suspected of being sexually “impure” and so is not allowed to go on any special trips for 6 months or must stand aside during rituals, that kind of treatment is highly damaging not only to the children that are excluded, but also to those that witness such treatment. Of course, physical forms of punishment are also unacceptable.

So what if you can’t find a program that checks all your boxes? Well, that’s where a lot of young families are right now. For more personalized help, I encourage you to book a coaching session and we can talk about your specific needs and what resources are out there for you and your family.

The post How to Evaluate a Church for a Healthy Children’s Program first appeared on Shanna Mae Spiritual Coaching.

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The first thing I want to aknowledge is that a faith transition is destablizing, no matter what you do, but especially if your faimly dynamics are such that you are the main source of your family’s spirituality. Part of raising spiritually healthy kids is helping them to have their own internal compass and their own relationship with divinity. This can be protective to a certain extent because they aren’t entirely anchored to you. Still, it is natural for children to look to the adults in their lives for answers, and when you don’t have answers or when your answers change, that will be a new experience for your kids. 

In this episode I will be speaking from my own experience, not as a professional, but as a parent who has been on her own faith journey as a parent. I was lucky in that me and my husband had our faith crisis alongside one another. We left the religion of our upbringing for different reasons, but around the same time. It was a blessing that when I finally decided that this faith crisis wasn’t going away and I needed to come cleean to my husband that I was seriously considering stepping away, he too confessed that he wasn’t so sure about our belief system either. That is not everyone’s experience, and depending on your religious tradition, having a different understanding of God than your spouse can be great cause for pain and greif. Many marriages end over such differences. 

Still, we were still left with the task of navigating our children out of our old church and into… well, we weren’t so sure. One thing that I think really set us up for success is that my husband and I had always wanted our children to have their own beliefs, and to respect those with different beliefs from our own, though we kind of assummed that our beliefs were “correct” and that our children would be able to see that and agree with us on their own. Yes, I realize that isn’t entirely congruent, but it’s how I thought of things before. Because I wanted our children to chose our religion “on their own”, when then asked existential or theological questions, we would say, “Some people believe….. Others believe…. We believe….” This exposed them to different ideas, but still imposed our own beliefs. 

In our faith transition, my husband and I started to have our own beliefs, rather than necessarily conforming to the teachings of the elders of our church, which also meant that my husband and I didn’t always agree on everything. This added a new spin to the above script. Now it was, “Some believe…. Others believe…. Dad believes….. Mom believes…..” Before, while we had offered other possible beliefs, we still indicated what we thought the correct belief was by saying what we as a family believe. Now, there was no right answer given to our kids. I worried that this would be confusing or even feel unsafe. Shouldn’t we as parents have all the answers? If we didn’t, would our kids feel unmoored? 

Our script needed one more edit. Our kids needed an anchor, and I couldn’t be that anchor anymore. Maybe I never should have been to begin with. After listing possible beliefs, I added, “What do you believe?” The anchor my children needed was their own internal compass. They needed the ability to look within themselves, look to their own conscience, heart, connection to God, whatever you call it, and find their truth there. I can hear the critics saying that there is only one truth and the idea of people having their own subjective truth is the path to demonic deception. I hear you, and I chose to have faith in my children and in a God that gave each of us the ability to find our own spiritual path in life. 

The post Navigating a Faith Crisis as a Parent first appeared on Shanna Mae Spiritual Coaching.