Inspiring wonder, awe, and empathy: spiritual development in young children

Abstract

Dr. Schein has written a useful guide to help early childhood practitioners identify and nurture spirituality in young children at home and in child care. Schein emphasizes the need for adults to think of spirituality when relating to young children, especially by paying attention to and remarking upon the children’s signs of spirituality (such as wonder, awe, and empathy). Young children tend to look more to their caregivers’ behaviors and interests than their words, in building their own brains and lives to fit in with the world they experience. Schein brings home vividly these themes with ample photographs and stories, in a discussion with the reader peppered with examples of the windows of opportunity she has witnessed. This is not a book of research findings, although Schein briefly describes some relevant research along the way. Rather, it is aimed at helping the classroom teacher move in a direction toward nurturing spirituality equally with the physical, sensory, selfhelp, emotional, social, communication, and cognitive domains. She emphasizes that young children grow best when they can integrate the different domains into their play, rather than when academic skills take priority before the children are ready for them. She praises the integrative power of exposure to nature. ‘Nature provides an excellent milieu for supporting a child’s spiritual development’ (p. 71). Schein characterizes spiritual development as beginning with a spiritual embryo, using love, connections, and relationships to build a positive sense of self. As the next step she sees the emergence of the child’s basic internal dispositions, spiritual moments and feelings of wonder, awe, joy, and inner peace. The third stage she describes as one of complex dispositions, leading to values, morals, and a sense of duty to others. These stages culminate in a self-sustaining system in which all three stages work together. This approach to spiritual development recasts more conventional categories of early childhood development in a way that might not resonate with some teachers or researchers, but it serves Schein’s purpose of organizing an approach emphasizing spirituality into the lattice of early childhood development. Schein goes into some detail about cultivating spiritual moments with young children. She reports that in her dialogues with teachers, many have difficulty understanding her references to spirituality until Schein asks: ‘Have you ever seen a child’s face light up with pure inner excitement and wonder?’ (p. 91) Schein then examines factors leading to such moments, such as