The banging of little metal cars against each other with the sounds of crashes made by young mouths. The shuffle of paper and the clack, clack, clack of a pile of markers being dumped out. An angry squeal by a younger sibling to ‘give it back!’
Belonging
To want to belong is innate. For young children, it’s felt through attention and affection.
Benchmarks for Christians
From time to time the Forma Facebook Group has a post from someone (clergy, youth minister, Christian educator) who is asking if anyone has a “rubric” for what children should learn in each year of “Sunday School” (or whatever you call it).
Our Easter Best
Welp, I turned into a priest-mom-Easter-morning-psycho.I mean, Christ is Risen, right? Might as well go crazy on your family.
Preparing Children for the Passion
It can be difficult for our children to the stories of Holy Week. Here are some tips for preparing children for the Passion.
Changing the Subject: Parenting on Ash Wednesday
Every year my sermon for Ash Wednesday comes down to one thing: this business of smearing ashes on our faces? It’s for us, not for God.
Where God Moves This New Year
During a recent children’s time in church, one of our priests gave each child a slip of four star foil stickers – the ones that typically accompany a good grade on a worksheet from school – colored red, silver, gold, green, and blue.
Saint Luke and Laying On Hands
Several years ago the church I currently serve decided to end their Wednesday healing service, opting instead to add healing prayers to the Sunday morning […]
Building Bridges in Times of Tension
“But we already went to church today!” my son said plaintively. “That’s right,” I replied, but “it was my church; now we’re going to mommy’s […]
Parenting Children to Grow Outside Our Comfort Zones
From the outside, our youngest daughter looks like a typical developing toddler. If you passed her in the store, you would probably think that she […]