Unwinding and additional needs: FAQs

19 January 2024

In session three of the original Parenting for Faith course, and session four of the Parenting Teens for a Life of Faith course, Rachel talks about how we are all on a life-long journey of developing our views of God. Along the way, our kids may get mixed up ideas that affect how they feel about God or what they understand about him. Parents and carers can help to spot and unwind any wrong views.

These are some questions about what this might like look if a child or teen has additional needs, together with answers shaped by some friends of Parenting for Faith, Kay Morgan-Gurr, Mark Arnold and Naomi Graham.

If my child can’t tell me what they think about God, how can I tell what their views are?

You are an expert in your child, and you will have ways of communicating together that work. You will also be able to tell a lot about their likes, dislikes and responses simply from your knowledge and observation of them. As you talk about God, share Bible stories, pray or sit in church, you may notice how your child responds, for example:

  • Which Bible stories do they particularly like?
  • If your Bible storybook has pictures, do they like any in particular?
  • What about church or worship or your prayer times gives them peace?
  • What are they curious about?
  • What is your general sense of their connection with God?

Don’t worry if you can’t detect any particular views of God in your child – you may not need to do any unwinding right now. But what you can do is to make sure that you help them to experience a balanced picture of God which will help them get a right view of him.

The bias exercise in session 3 of the original Parenting for Faith course will help you see if you have any strong preferences for how you view God. If you do, make sure you share Bible stories that show other characteristics of God as well. Some suggestions for giving children a balanced view of God include:

  • Deliberately choose to give your child a wide range of Bible stories, and as you tell them, share or wonder what God was doing or thinking.
  • Share stories of times you’ve experienced God differently – when you felt alone and realised he was there with you; when you were afraid and trusted God; when you were full of joy because of something he’d done.
  • Help frame life experiences by referring back to the Bible: for example, ‘Gosh, I really don’t know what to do! What does the Bible say? Look, here in James 1:5 it says if you need wisdom, you can ask God and he will give it to you. Let’s ask God for wisdom to know what to do, and see if we can catch his answer.’
  • If your child has something coming up in their life – such as a change of carer, an operation or a new sibling – you can think about what aspect of God you would like them to know about and then talk about Bible stories that will help them understand God in that context. For example, the story of Samuel moving to live in the temple might help a child think about how God was already in his new home and knew his name.
  • The ‘when I am’ tool can be useful for some children. This works by pairing how we feel or what we do with truth about God so that children understand that God’s love for us isn’t dependent on our behaviour, character or temperament: for example, ‘When I am sad, God hears me’; ‘When I am angry, God loves me’; ‘When I am frightened, God is there’.
  • Share the whole story of the Bible so that children’s core truths about God’s love and care sit in the bigger context of a broken world. We also have free video versions of this teaching.

How can I show my child the different characteristics of God without explaining using language?

As you build a sense of what your child’s views of God are, you can proactively begin to broaden that. If they love worship music, can you introduce a song that talks about God in a new way? How can you use their senses to help them understand more of God? For example, by sharing something sweet while talking about God loving to give us things we love; wrapping your child in a snuggly blanket and praying for God’s comfort and peace; playing hide and seek to show how God looks for us; sharing a lovely smell as we talk about how good it is to be with God.

What if my child is angry with God or feels he is distant and uncaring because of their condition?

It would be worth talking through this together, and there are some suggestions for how to approach it in these FAQs on framing. Then begin to gently unwind their wrong views of God as suggested in the course, perhaps using some of the ideas from this next FAQ.

I know I struggle with how I see God. How can I stop this damaging my child’s views of God?

Sometimes we can struggle with how we see God – perhaps we don’t understand how a loving God could allow our child’s suffering, or we feel everything is just unfair and we have been let down. We may have been praying for them to be healed, but it feels as if God has ignored us. Or we are finding life just so very hard that we can’t seem to connect with God at all and he feels very far away. Or the church that is meant to be loving and supportive just isn’t.

A really important part of giving our child a balanced view of God is to allow them, when appropriate, to see our struggles and where God is in that. Sometimes we feel we ought to shield them from what we see as our own lack of faith or our failures, but helping them see how we work things through with God will equip them to deal with difficult situations themselves. The Psalms are full of complaints, times David lays out his raw feelings to God, no holds barred – and that’s okay. Jon Bloom describes faithful complaining as: an honest, groaning expression of what it’s like to experience the trouble, anguish, and grief of living in this fallen, futile world (Romans 8:20–23). God does not mind this kind of complaining. In fact, he encourages it — and teaches us how to do it in the Bible.

If you are struggling with God, you can still persist with sharing a balanced view of God with your child, for example:

  • Explore stories from the Bible about people who struggled: Paul, who was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked and more as he went around founding churches; Jeremiah, whose lifetime of faithful prophecy simply resulted in anger and opposition from those around him; or Hagar and Ishmael, rejected and thrown out of their family home with no thought for their survival. Where was God in those stories?
  • Share stories of Christians whose lives have been difficult. These may be stories about famous Christians, such as Corrie Ten Boom, Brother Andrew or Joni Eareckson Tada, or they might be stories about people you know. Wonder together, or ask, how did God help them? Remind your child that God never promised us an easy life (John 16:33) but did promise us his presence, his love and his power.
  • Even if you aren’t experiencing these yourself, you can preface statements about God with ‘the Bible says’ or ‘I know it might seem like God isn’t hearing our prayers right now, but the Bible says he is always listening’.

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