018: The Spiritual Child: Possibly exaggerated, conclusions uncertain

  Someone in a parenting group on Facebook suggested I do an episode on The Spiritual Child, by Dr. Lisa Miller.  My first thought was that it didn’t really sound like my cup of tea but I was willing to read it and at least see what it had to say. I was surprised by the book’s thesis that spirituality can play a critical role in a child’s and adolescent’s development.  But I was astounded that her thesis was actually backed up by scientific research. I invited Dr. Miller to be on the show and she initially agreed – but during my preparation I found that the science supporting spirituality doesn’t seem to be quite as clear-cut as the book says it is.  I invited Dr. Miller again for a respectful discussion of the issues but I didn’t hear back from her. In this episode I describe the book’s major claims, and assess where the science seems to support these and where it doesn’t.  I conclude with some practices you can use to deepen your child’s spiritual connection, if you decide that this is the right approach for your family. Note: I mainly focused on the research related to child development in this article, but as I was about to publish this episode I found an article claiming that the science behind some of Dr. Miller’s other assertions might not be so solid either.   I didn’t read all of those studies (because they’re not directly related to child development, and it took me a lot of hours to find and read just the ones that were), but the author’s conclusions very much mirror my own. References Benson, P.L., Roehlkepartain, E.C., & Scales, P.C. (2012). Spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. In L. Miller (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality. New York: Oxford. Berry, D. (2005). Methodological pitfalls in the study of religiosity and spirituality. Western Journal of Nursing Research 27(5), 628-647. DOI: 10.1177/0193945905275519 Boytas, C.J. (2012). Spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. In L. Miller (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality. New York: Oxford. Button, T.M.M., Stallings, M.C., Rhee, S.H., Corley, R.P., & Hewitt, J.K. (2011). The etiology of stability and change in religious values and religious attendance. Behavioral Genetics 41(2), 201-210. DOI: 10.1007/s10519-010-9388-3 Cloninger, C.R., Svrakic, D.M., & Przybeck, T.R. (1993). A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry 50(12), 975-990. DOI: 10.1001/archpsyc.1993.01820240059008 Gallup. (2016). Religion. Survey retrieved from (and updated annually at): http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx Kendler, K.S., Gardner, C.O., & Prescott, C.A. (1997). Religion, psychopathology, and substance use and abuse: a multimeasure, genetic-epidemiologic study. American Journal of Psychiatry 154, 322-329. Full article available at: http://medicina.fm.usp.br/cedem/simposio/Religion,%20Psychopathology,%20and%20Substance%20Use%20and%20Abuse.pdf Kendler, K.S., Gardner, C.O., & Prescott, C.A. (1999). Clarifying the relationship between religiosity and psychiatric illness: The impact of covariates and the specificity of buffering effects. Twin Research 2, 137-144. DOI: 10.1375/twin.2.2.137 Kidwell, J.S., Dunham, R.M., Bacho, R.A., Pastorino, E., & Portes, P.R. (1995). Adolescent identity exploration: A test of Erikson’s theory of transitional crisis. Adolescence 30(120), 785-793. Koenig, L.B., McGue, M., & Iacono, W.G. (2008). Stability and change in religiousness during emerging adulthood. Developmental Psychology 44(2), 532-543. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.2.532 Mahoney, A. & Tarakeshwar, N. (2005). Religion’s role in marriage and parenting in daily life and during family crises. In R.F. Paloutzain & C.L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (p.177-198). New York: The Guilford Press. Chapter available online at: http://psychologyofreligion99.blogspot.com/2013/07/religions-role-in-marriage-and.html Miller, L., Warner, V., Wickramaratne, P., & Weissman, M. (1997). Religiosity and depression: Ten-year follow-up of depressed mothers and offspring. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 36(10), 1416-1425. Full article available at: http://highriskdepression.org/files/1997C.pdf Miller, L., Davies, M., & Greenwald, S. (2000). Religiosity and substance use and abuse among adolescents in the National Comorbidity Survey. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 39(9), 1190-1197. DOI: 10.1097/00004583-200009000-00020 Miller, L., & Gur, M. (2002). Religiousness and sexual responsibility in adolescent girls. Journal of Adolescent Health 31, 401-406. DOI: 10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00403-2 Miller, L., Wickramarante, P., Gameroff, M.J., Sage, M., Tenke, C.E., & Weissman, M.M. (2012). Religiosity and major depression in adults at high risk: A ten-year prospective study. American Journal of Psychiatry 169(1), 89-94. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.10121823 Miller, L., Bansal, R., Wickramaratne, P., Hao, X, Tenke, C.E., Weissman, M.M., & Peterson, B.S. (2014). Neuroanatomical correlates of religiosity and spirituality: A study in adults at high and low familial risk for depression. Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry 71(2), 128-135. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.3067 Miller, L. (2015). The spiritual child. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Plante, T.G., & Thoresen, C.E. (2012). Spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. In L. Miller (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality. New York: Oxford. Shoshani, A., & Aviv, I. (2012). The pillars of strength for first-grade adjustment: Parental and children’s character strengths and the transition to elementary school. The Journal of Positive Psychology 7(4), 315-326. DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2012.691981 Sloan, R.P. & Bagiella, E. (2002). Claims about religious involvement and health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 24(1), 14-21. DOI: 10.1207/S15324796ABM2401_0 Wagener, L.M. & Maloney, H.N. (2006). Spiritual and religious pathology in childhood and adolescence. In E. Roehlkepartain, P.E. King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (p.137-149). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  We have a bit of a different episode lined up for today: we’re looking at the book Your Spiritual Child by Dr. Lisa Miller.  I was chatting with some parents in a Facebook group a while back and mentioned that I’m always looking for podcast episode topics, so one of them suggested I do an episode on this book.  My first thought was “well that doesn’t really sound like my cup of tea but I’ll read the book and see where it goes from there.” So I read the book and I was pretty surprised – Dr. Miller makes all sorts of claims about the integral role that spirituality can play in a child’s development.  Her thesis is that children are naturally spiritual and that by not allowing them to develop this quality we’re depriving them of an essential ingredient in their success.  The really surprising part to me, though, was that her claims are underpinned by actual scientific research.  So I emailed Dr. Miller and said “hey, I’m an atheist but I read your book and I’d love to interview you on the show so we can dig into this and both my listeners and I can understand it better.”  She initially responded with something along the lines of “sounds great!” but we had some scheduling difficulties and then I stopped hearing back from her.  While the scheduling attempts were going on I was doing all the background research I normally do for an interview and I started to get more and more worried.  I was finding discrepancies between the outcomes of studies Dr. Miller referenced and the way she was describing them in the book -not in all cases, but in enough that I wanted to understand the issues further.  In the end I emailed her and told her what I’d found, explained that I was really interested in a rigorous intellectual discussion and didn’t have any malicious intent, and invited her again to be on the show but she didn’t respond.  I told her it would be a bit of a bummer to have spent all this time doing research and not have an episode to show for it so I would plan to go ahead and run it without her if she decided not to participate – so here we are. So, let’s start with the book.  Dr. Miller defines spirituality as “an inner sense of living relationship to a higher power, which might be God, nature spirit, universe, the creator, or whatever your word is for the ultimate loving, guiding life-force.”  The important thing here is that spirituality is not tied to religion – it’s about an individual’s personal relationship with the transcendent, not about how organized religion might shape that experience.  We know this through the results of a study of White, Caucasian twins in Virginia by Kenneth Kendler, which asked the twins about their...