Teaching spiritual lessons to children

Without a hint of jest, Jack Drewry says he and his wife, Myrlene Bazile, began spiritually educating their first child in utero. Both choir members at Union United Methodist Church in the South End, they performed at the opening of the FleetCenter (now the TD Banknorth Garden) without realizing that she was pregnant with little Jack, who thus was probably the only fetus ever serenaded simultaneously by choristers and James Taylor, Patti LaBelle, and the Boston Pops.

Inadvertent as that introduction to Christian music was, the couple deliberately inculcated their religious values in Jack (soon to turn 11) and their 6-year-old, Fednor, ever since. They took both sons to church from an early age.

"As soon as he could walk and talk," says his father of Jack, "we put him in the children's choir. He's been playing the piano since he was 4." Recently, his mother began teaching Fednor a simple nighttime prayer about Jesus that the Haiti-born boy, who couldn't speak English when they adopted him last year, has begun to memorize.

The spiritual education of children has become more salient in the last dozen years, as demographers detected a rush back to church by those who, offended by society's sometimes soulless secular values, wanted a spiritual insurance policy for their kids.

Yet passing on spirituality is not an easy task. Worship services that can seem interminable to adults are lethal to children's short attention spans, and toddlers are too young to wrap their minds around the most abstract and profound ideas undergirding religion and theology.

But that doesn't mean the cause is hopeless. A website owned by Johnson & Johnson, BabyCenter.com, quotes a pediatrician who says children's innate "sense of wonder" is a built-in spiritual vein waiting to be tapped. The site offers suggestions, some tailored to the parent who may be spiritual but not religious.

Even agnostics and atheists should inventory their own beliefs about what it all means. In a religious country, their children are going to hear about God anyway, so it is important for those parents to instill their own values, BabyCenter says, and to prepare for their child's inevitable questions: What made the world? What happens to grandma now that she has died?

Those who want their children to attend church should do the same, the website advises, especially if spouses practice different religions and must choose which to pass on.

Step two: Do not pretend you know all the answers to profound questions. It is OK to say that people are not sure what happens after you die, that some believe there is a heaven with God.

When your child asks what you think, you can share your own faith or, if you're not sure, answer truthfully, that this is a question many of us wrestle with for a lifetime.

Daily life is littered with teaching moments. Nonbelievers find the sacred in nature and can share that sense, by cleaning up after picnics or in gardening or explicitly welcoming a beautiful day from Mother Nature when waking the children in the morning.

For believers, BabyCenter.com suggests simple ideas such as putting a child to bed each night with "God bless you, sweetie pie."

Parents wary of taking restless toddlers to church have other tools for imparting spiritual values. Children can begin practicing rituals early on -- from lighting candles to singing hymns together to daily prayer -- that establish spirituality as a natural part of life, according to BabyCenter.

Even as religion-free a ritual as a regularly scheduled moment of silence with parent and child can connect the latter to something outside the frenzy of daily life. Sharing religious photos and heirlooms harking back generations tells a child that spirituality has been a family tradition.

Storytelling is the lingua franca of childhood, and, above all else, religion is stories: how people came to be, why there is good and bad, what God has done and not done in the world.

The faithful can tell the stories of their tradition to their children; religious and nonreligious alike can teach toddlers about the many different beliefs about God by reading children's versions of the great religions' stories, suggests BabyCenter.

Maybe the most important lesson is not to expect the ideal. Little Jack Drewry answers with a child's candor when asked if he likes going to church: "No."

"I don't like being cooped up in a place," he elaborates. But when he says he goes for God, and as he plays "Carol of the Bells" on the piano and sings an Easter hymn with his little brother, you catch a glimpse of his parents' spirit.

Questions, comments or story ideas can be sent to spiritual@globe.