Tag Archives: families

Mindful Parenting: A Q&A with Kristen Race

Leave a reply

maxresdefault

I reviewed the book Mindful Parenting recently, and today I’m delighted to share a Q&A with Kristen Race, the author of the book. Thank you for your time and expertise, Dr. Race!

1. What first led you to research stress responses in the brain, and especially its effect on children and teens?

When I was working in schools I became increasingly concerned by the high level of stress that students were experiencing. I knew that this stress was influencing their attention, their mood, their behavior and their ability to learn. I want to learn more about how stress and these other symptoms were linked. When I first learned about the stress response in the brain it was like an “Ah ha” moment for me. I started sharing this information with students and it was as if I could see a weight being lifted off of their shoulders. They suddenly had an explanation for how they were feeling!

2. Your book is written primarily for individual parents to use in their own families. But I was intrigued by your “Hang Up and Hang Out” initiative that partnered with local schools to encourage parents to put away the cell phones and just focus on their kids. Are there other models or practices that you’d like see implemented throughout entire communities, rather than just household by household? (I see lots of potential in churches and other religious communities, for example.)

Absolutely. Hang Up & Hang Out is tailor-made for those organizations that you mentioned. During the Hang Up & Hang Out week we hosted a family fun night at one of the elementary schools. The theme of the night was “Ways to Engage without Technology.” We had a family yoga station, a dinner games station, a station where families decorated boxes that they would use to hold devices during family time, and we had a dance party station in the gym. We were blown away when we had 480 people attend the event! It was a blast!

3. My favorite chapter of the book is “A Guide to Creating a Mindful Family,” which has tons of activities and practices that parents and children can do together. I can’t wait to try the Praise Pancake! Is there a particular practice that’s your personal favorite, either for your kids or yourself?

We love Rose Bud Thorn in our house. We play it around the dinner table, and every person gets a turn to share their Rose (something good that they experienced over the course of their day), their Thorn (a mistake that they learned from today), and their Bud (an act of kindness that they witnessed or initiated.) It is a great conversation starter, and there are tons of elements to this activity that benefit brain development, including teaching kids that struggles are ok.

4. In my work around Sabbath-keeping, I’ve found that it’s easier for parents of young children to envision making changes in their family’s behavior, whereas parents of teens feel like it’s too late, that the patterns are already set. What advice or encouragement would you give specifically to parents of teens who want to take your message to heart?

I am asked all the time, “Is it too late to start?” The beauty of practicing mindfulness, informally or formally, is that it benefits the brain for a 2 year old as well as the brain of a 92 year old. MRI scans demonstrate this. We need look no further than the Google campus, and the waiting lists for mindfulness classes that their company is offering, to see the demand for these types of support by adults. My single piece of advice for parents of teens is to start small, with one or two activities. Starting a ritual of a family adventure can be a great place to start with teens. And remember, modeling still matters when you have a teen! Think about how you manage your stress (do you go for a run or run for the liquor cabinet?), your teen is watching.

5. How have you changed your own parenting as a result of your research, and what aspects of mindful parenting do you still struggle with?

I have become much more compassionate towards myself as a result of my research. I am a recovering perfectionist:) I now realize that I AM going to make mistakes as a parent, that I can learn from those mistakes, and that modeling that mistakes provide opportunities for growth is incredibly important for my children!

~

So thankful to Dr. Race for her thoughts. Folks, do check out her book, it’s worthwhile.

Related Posts from The Blue Room Archives:
Jesus the Buddhist?
What It Means to Be Attentive
Brother Lawrence’s Guide to the First Day of School
What Are You Paying Attention To?

Does Sunday School Work?

23 Replies

A few years back, I was talking to a parent whose children had been enrolled in her church’s Sunday School and evening children’s program. By all accounts, and from what I could tell as an uninvolved observer, this church has an absolutely exemplary children’s ministry. And yet this mother was looking for another church. “I recently asked my kids some basic questions about the Bible and some of the foundational stories of Christianity,” she told me. “They couldn’t answer the most basic questions. What are they learning in Sunday School? Is all this programming even doing what it’s supposed to do?”

I thought about that mother this week when I saw this article from Associated Baptist Press about a new documentary. It should go without saying that the theology that undergirds the study, and the video (excerpt) at the link are quite foreign to me. But here’s the gist:

In Divided, young filmmaker Philip Leclerc sets out to discover why so many people of his generation are leaving the church. …Leclerc acknowledges grouping kids and age and developmental stages makes sense on the surface. In the Bible, however, parents are given the responsibility for religious instruction of their children.

The modern idea of age-graded Sunday school, youth ministry and children’s church came from somewhere else. When it started in the 1800s, Sunday school was intended for poor children without Christian parents. In most American churches today, Leclerc insists, Christian fathers [sic] relinquish their leadership to programs based on secular educational theories instead of the teaching of Scripture.

The video uses the word “carnal” about eleventy-five times, and I didn’t even watch the whole thing. I don’t resonate with many of the article’s comments either. But I suspect the basic thrust is right. Now I want to go back to that mother and say, “What about your responsibility as a parent? What could the church do to support you as your child’s primary Christian educator?”

Let’s take my church as an example. We are small, with a good number of kids for our size, but the “Sunday School” aged kids range from kindergarten through third grade, with a smattering of middle and high school students.

We have Sunday School twice a month, during the worship hour—it is not practical to have Sunday School at other times—and we have a team of teachers who take turns leading. We went to this model because, well, our old model of having one teacher lead every week until s/he gets burned to a crisp didn’t feel very biblical.

But even if we had a top-notch Sunday School every week, our most dedicated families are here maybe twice or three times a month, due to sports, out of town trips, and other weekend activities.

This is insane.

Churches are smaller, budgets are smaller. Tiny Church is not unusual. I look at this situation and think, This doesn’t make any sense. Why are we trying to have a traditional Sunday School? Why aren’t we offering truly intergenerational worship, and training parents to do religious education at home?

I could easily dismiss this study as so much patriarchal BS. (Why is it only the father who bears primary responsibility for faith formation in the family? That’s rhetorical; don’t answer.) But I can’t dismiss it outright.

It reminds me of the REVEAL study that came out of Willow Creek church some years back. The study found that greater involvement in church activities did not foster deeper commitment to the way of Jesus. (My paraphrase.) Some mainline folks crowed about the study, feeling vindicated that seeker-sensitive megachurches were finally admitting that they were serving up the thin gruel we’d always suspected. But the REVEAL study is not cause for smug rejoicing, but serious self-reflection. We are often no different in our mainline churches.

So what is the answer? I wish I knew. But I’d like to get some people together to talk about this. Let’s start here. What do you say? Has your church figured this out?

Today’s Episode of Not Getting It

18 Replies

I guess I shouldn’t expect anything much from Parade Magazine. Yet I keep coming back, because I like reading about celebrities I’ve never heard of, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a few feisty articles, debunking conventional wisdom and afflicting the comfortable (really). But this one is just a load of tone-deaf idiocy:

Mitch Albom: The Joys of Summer

I feel sorry for today’s kids. Summer comes, they’re finally free from school—and bang! Band camp. Science seminars. Internships.

Instead of downtime, it’s get-up-and-go time. Chorus travel, archaeological digs, dance tours. My nephew from Michigan flew to Georgetown University for a summer medical program, replete with cadavers. He was 16.

(Am I the only one thinking that the doctor camp sounds awesome?)

When I think of my childhood summers, I remember lying in the grass, hands behind my head, feeling the blades dig into my fingers. I studied the clouds. I joked with my friends. None of us wore watches.

And none of you had a mother who worked outside the home.

BINGO!

EUREKA!

And I am shocked, shocked to learn from Wikipedia that Mitch the Parenting Expert does not have children of his own.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “If we don’t enroll our kids in an activity, all they’ll do is text. Or watch TV (and text) or talk on the phone (and text).”

No you don’t. I’m thinking, if we don’t enroll our kids in an activity, I’ll be put in jail for leaving an 8 year old at home by herself to study clouds while I go DO MY FREAKIN’ JOB.

…Mitch.

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.

These are serious times we live in. And you have completely missed the point.

I wonder if the people who’ve been out of work for 18 months or more are thinking, “Well, we’re one illness away from losing our home, but it’s worth it because my kid can lie on the grass without wearing a watch while her friends are at archaeology camp.”

What an opportunity you had, Mitch, to talk about the economic realities of two-career families, or maybe even single-parent families, remember those? Or to wonder whether three months of summer vacation even makes sense anymore when parents work and other countries are cleaning our clock in math and science. Perhaps an oblique mention of the fact that the gap between rich and poor keeps widening to dangerous levels, especially in communities of color, even as those of us lucky enough to have jobs continue working our tails off.

Aw, who am I kidding?! Who wants to read depressing, eggheaded stuff like that? Much better to offer up a big stinking pile of parental guilt-mongering and get-off-my-lawn buffoonery.

That sells.

Actually it doesn’t sell. But it does come free in the Sunday newspaper.