On becoming childlike

Some thoughts from watching my daughters be daughters

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

- Matthew 18:1-4

I think a lot about what it means to become childlike, without becoming childish, in the spiritual life and in our lives more broadly. (Can we truly make a distinction here? Sometimes I think there is no real difference.)

But on (another) spontaneous trip to the Zoo (praise God for Zoo memberships), I was reminded yet again to watch my own daughters for clues about what it means to live out my own identity as daughter before God.¹ As we always do, we went first to see the sloths and the elephants, and then I let our two-year-old lead the way as we explored the rest of the Zoo. After a little while, it was time for the baby to nurse, so we sat down by a couple of reptiles, fed the baby, and moved on. Several hours later, on our way out (we took the long way around to say goodbye to the elephants), we passed this same spot, and my daughter told me:

Mommy, I need sit here, feed my baby. My baby hungies.

And she proceeded to sit in the same spot where I had fed the baby hours earlier, pulled her lil shirt up, and popped her doll to her “milk” right there to nurse for a bit. When Doll was finished nursing, it was time for her to take a nap, so my daughter stood up and rocked her to sleep, using the exact same sort of bounce-and-swivel maneuver that I use to rock the baby to sleep in the carrier at the park.

I was struck again by how naturally and how accurately she observes and imitates what she sees. Everything she sees. Everything. Toddler parents, you know what I mean.

As the spirit prompts, so do I wrestle and so do I write, so here I am today writing to you about becoming spiritual imitators, specifically, and spiritual children more broadly.

Children are born imitators

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”

- 1 Corinthians 11:1

As we’ve already established, children are born imitators. This serves several important purposes in their development, from acquisition of language to learning appropriate behavior in various social settings, as well as allowing them to pay close attention and process their experiences. I’ve spoken before about the way our toddler used to (and still does, eight months later!) copycat my nine-months-pregnant-with-a-ten-pound-baby waddle down the hallway, complete with the “ooh! ah! ooh! ah!” sound of my stiff limbs. It’s also been so sweet to watch her figure out which knee Father genuflects on during the consecration and to hear her mimic “let us pray” before the opening and closing prayers at Mass.

As adults, we’ve lost this drive to imitate—in fact, we sometimes dismiss it as “peer pressure” or overthink ourselves into assuming the person we’re imitating will hate us if we “copycat” them. There’s good reason to be wary! Not everyone we encounter is worthy of being imitated.² This is part of why the Lord has given us the Communion of Saints—centuries of holy men and women we can trust and imitate. However, where imitation is almost instinctive for children, it must be a rational choice for us, both because we have reached the age of reason and lost that drive, and because the saints are not living among us presently. Finding a good spiritual biography or a novelization of a saint’s life can allow us to get to know them and begin to imitate their virtues.³

Who is one saint you’d like to consciously imitate this week?

Children are born community members

Another way in which we can become more childlike is to lean into our communities. Children are born with a strong, strong desire to be full-fledged members of their families and their wider communities. I’ve read about half of Hunt, Gather, Parent over the last year or so (my audiobook keeps getting returned before I can finish it!), and one of the most important things I’ve taken away from the book is that children are constantly developing a sense of their identity and role within their family, and that our actions toward and around them are crucial in shaping their expectations.

So often, as adults, we find ourselves isolated by circumstance or choice. We find it hard to ask for help (or our requests aren’t received in the way we’d prefer). We struggle to know how to offer help without sounding pretentious or pitying. We don’t think to ask a friend to run errands with us.

But children want to enter into the community on the same terms as the people they observe and love. They want to help. They want to receive help. They are hard-wired to participate. “Mommy, my do it,” is a constant refrain every time our toddler takes the broom out of my hand and asks me to make it “her size” so she can sweep the floor for me. Children are relentless in their ability to ask for what they need—and to continue asking until they have been heard and their needs have been met (according to their terms, not ours). And they love to spend time with the people they love—whether they’re playing, going on an adventure, or working together on a shared task.

What is one way you can lean into your community this week?

Children are trusting and forgiving

You’ve never known forgiveness until you’ve apologized to a child. Their capacity to restore emotional well-being is incredible. My daughter still brings up times she felt sad because of something I did (going to Confession without her, for example), but she doesn’t hold it against me. She, as children do, plays through the situation with her stuffies to process it—“Mommy, baby sloth sad her mommy go ‘fession.”—but she doesn’t nurse a grudge. Beyond the initial tantrum, there is no ill-will toward me, no desire to hurt me in punishment for doing something that offended her. A hug, a smile, a word of affection, an apology when needed, and all is well again. There is a vulnerability here—children don’t know how to conceptualize abuse and their trust can be wielded against them—but when that trust is placed in worthy hands, something beautiful can arise. And when we see those inevitable conflicts and hurts, they forgive and love again so easily.

This is something that I still struggle with a lot! Over the years, I have allowed a habit to form in my heart of nurturing hurts and cultivating resentment, and although fighting well has certainly been a grace of our marriage, I sill struggle with the forgiving and the moving on.⁴

Taking a leaf out of our parenting playbook: when our toddler is super upset, we usually give her some time and space to feel her feelings, and then offer something enjoyable as a distraction to help her return to a stable and happy mood. Often, when she gets hurt, we’ll step outside for a moment, as the fresh air is incredibly helpful in her re-regulating. Is this something I can do for myself? Would this practice help me to cut the cycle of resentment short, rather than allowing myself to create a bigger problem by ruminating and nursing my hurt feelings?

Alternatively, can I remind myself of the ways in which things have worked out in the past? Can I put myself in the other person’s shoes, or choose to give them the benefit of the doubt? I don’t have answers to these questions, but I am choosing to lean into them. This is one area where the Lord is certainly calling me to become more childlike.

How can you take one step toward forgiveness this week? What is holding you back?

A word on becoming childish

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

- Clive Staples Lewis himself. The man, the myth, the legend.

In any discussion about becoming childlike, I think it’s important to state that the goal shouldn’t be for us, as adults, to mimic every behavior of our favorite child in our life. This is obvious. We all know that children can be selfish, whiny, prone to emotional outbursts, and wildly irrational. These are the areas we would classify as childish when seen in adults.

The way I see it, the childish (as opposed to childlike) forms of the behaviors above would be:

• Copying people out of envy or jealousy, out of a superficial desire to gain status or fame, or in mockery

• Refusing to be part of the community: to assist one another, to receive assistance when we need it, to take on responsibility for ourselves and for the good of our community

• Holding grudges, refusing to forgive, throwing tantrums, throwing things

But friends, being a little bit emo in our relationship with the Father is not necessarily childish. Our children can be highly emotional because they are overly attached to things that we know are not for their good. Likewise, we can be overly attached to things that are not for our good, and the Father has space to hold us while we cry about it. He isn’t afraid of or threatened by our feelings, even while He wants to help us pursue our true good and flourish as we strive to begin living Heaven on Earth.

What childlike traits did I miss? Where in your life do you still see a desire to be “grown-up” or a need to become more childlike? Have you ever seen a child’s action and felt called to imitate it?

1. I started—years ago—this four-part series on the identities of woman from the ladies at Abiding Together. What I listened to, I enjoyed, and what I remember of it now leads me to think that it would be a worthwhile spiritual practice to listen to it again, perhaps more contemplatively than I did last time.

2. Obviously this is also true for children—not everyone they encounter is worth imitating, which is (part of!) why our role as parents is so critical. We need to be people who are worth imitating, and we need to ensure that the things they pick up from other individuals are good habits and not vicious ones. It’s a high calling!

3. Here are a few that I’ve read and enjoyed!

4. I really enjoyed

Scoot

’s recent podcast episode on boundaries, which included quite a lot on apologies and forgiveness. It should be available for all subscribers until March, if my math is correct, so I’d highly recommend giving it a listen.