More from Chapter 22: Helping Children Cope with Stress

The authors feel strongly that there's a lot more work to do before they can draw conclusions but they make suggestions about how caring adults can help children cope with stress. And I'm adding some of my own comments. Hopefully, I'm understanding what they're saying:

A child's worldview significantly affects how a child faces stress in life. It helps to know to what degree a child's religion or faith influences their view of the world. How does the child perceive God? Does the child see religious or spiritual implications to the crisis he/she is facing? If so what are they? In order to join a child and empathize, the adult also has to assess his/her own view of the situation, and identify ways that he/she is thinking the same and different. (CS pg 376-7)

What spiritual/religious resources are available to help a child cope? (CS pg 376-7)

-a child's religious/spiritual beliefs and activities (routines?). The concerned adult's spiritual beliefs and routines. I'm wondering if they're thinking activities like devotions and prayer as opposed to how-tos but any combination could potentially be helpful.

-the religious/spiritual people in a child's life, relevant religious institutions, their faith community, religious/spiritual texts. They also suggest that it's good to know how the child's developmental level, social influences and the supernatural elements of the situation are affecting the child's potential resources. (CS pg 376-7)

Here's the thing. If you have a terminally ill child, sometimes parents can help a child cope. Sometimes the affects of the child's situation on the parents make them less able to help, but maybe the faith community can help. If a crisis affects the whole faith community, they might not be a helpful resource to the child in this particular situation. If a child is going through parental divorce, the parents may not be the best resources to help them cope. If the faith community or extended family members disapprove of the situation or are otherwise unable to empathize with the child, they might not be a useful resource to help a child cope in that particular situation. If a resource is pulling out lots of negative passages from the scriptures as opposed to comforting, encouraging, empathetic passages about God or if the passages being used say the opposite of what a child is going through, the child might not see this as a useful resource. I think that's what they're implying. All of this will also depend on the age of the child, the spiritual social network around them and what God does supernaturally to intervene.

And when we're talking about outcome, what does positive or negative mean? What does "end result" mean? They will be different for the child who is dying than they would be for a child suffering from relational issues at home.

The key here, is probably growing the ability to see the situation through the eyes of the child and maybe, by the grace of God, through God's eyes, too. It's something multi-dimensional and very relational.