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Title: Spirit of the Child by Dr David Hay, Dr Rebecca Nye, David Hay, Rebecca Nye ISBN: 0-00-627855-8 Publisher: Zondervan Pub. Date: 09 August, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.99

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The Spirit of the Child by David Hay with Rebecca Nye
Comment: The authors report and reflect on the results of their research on children's perceptions of spiritual experience. Based on interviews with children, the authors come to describe the spirituality of children as "relational consciousness" -- the child's innate sense of relationship with others, creation, one's self, and God.

This significant research supports the work of Sofia Cavalletti, Jerome Berryman and others in providing children with access to a language that is worthy of the experience children already have of "God's presence" in their lives. It also supports the work of Vivian Gussin Paley, in which she engages children as young as 2 years old, in telling and acting out their stories -- tapping into the child's innate capacity to find and to give order and meaning to an otherwise ambiguous world through play and fantasy. Moreover, the research provides a basis for creating curricula designs that integrate rather than fragment the child's studies in various disciplines.

The research invites religious educators to look again at their approach to religious education. Ultimately, a primary objective in religious education, as in all of education, is not to indoctrinate but to engage the children in the use of skills that enable them to reflect on the meaning of their unfolding experience and to share that with others. This book is valuable not only to religious educators but to anyone responsible for providing childcare.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Ground-Breaking Book on Children's Spirituality
Comment: *The Spirit of the Child* introduces the topic of children's spirituality, making use of David Hay and Rebecca Nye's valuable research of children in England. David Hay, formerly the director of the Alister Hardy Research Centre at Oxford University, and Rebecca Nye, at the University of Cambridge, offer a theory of spirituality that includes religion but is not limited to this area. Spirituality is marked by unusually intense experiences of many possible varieties, and is an inborn aspect of human nature, the result they believe of evolutionary development. Yet Western culture has suppressed this aspect of children to the point that they are often embarrased and self-conscious about the topic. The authors describe their own research with children, including the identifying terms that children use to describe spiritual experiences. They also describe previous research that relates to spirituality of youngsters. Children's spirituality is an important, emerging area of child development that needs to be considered in greater detail by researchers and theorists, as children's spirituality is an almost completely overlooked area of children's development, yet it deserves careful consideration by educators, parents, and others interested in children.

Also see... for details related to a recent international conference on children's spirituality, at which David Hay was a keynote speaker.