Nurturing Hope in Children

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Nurturing Hope in Children
Duane R. Bidwell, Ph.D.
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Absent mother. Secondary to deportation
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What ACCOUNT would you give of the SOURCE
of HOPE for this family?
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How would you nurture hope?
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• Two dialogue partners
• Theologies of Christian hope
• Psychologies of general hope

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Hope is the sense of possibility that generates
and sustains moral agency.
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Hope is born when we feel empowered to act
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Classical Hope as moral/theological
virtue Contemporary Hope as critical/prophetic
tool
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Embedded assumptions about

• Eschatological vision
• Divine power
• Human agency

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Classical Tradition

• A habit
• Goal is to act well
• Ordered toward a suitable end
• Closely tied to action and agency
• End is kingdom or union

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Contemporary Tradition

• Hope within history
• Goal is flourishing of creation
• Human power works with Gods power

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possibility
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open, provisional, flexible
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intergenerational, social
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• Three clinical models
• Emotional
• Existential
• Cognitive

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human attribute narrative process temporal, tied
to future sustained by Christian story
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Pastoral theological proposals anthropological,
not theological temporal, not eschatological indiv
idual, not communal affective, not cognitive and
conative colonial, not prophetic
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Seeing oneself as agent, having
agency Envisioning abundant futures Imagining
realistic paths to desired futures
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Vision
Community
Voice
HOPE
Identity
Faith
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Hopeful Practices Clarifying Identity
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Clarifying Identity

• Children
• are more than the problem or situation that leads
  to despair
• can identify preferred ways of being in a
  situation

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Externalizing the Problem

• Use language to separate the child from the
  problem
• Focus on problem as a thing rather than a
  quality of identity
• Naming the problemthe child has naming rights

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Externalizing allows you to

• Map the influence of the problem on the child
• Map the childs influence on/over the problem

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Hopeful Practices Enhancing Agency
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Enhancing Agency

• Identify/amplify past agency
• Identify present/future agency
• Agency to access resources God places in childs
  life

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Before I got married I had six theories about
bringing up children . . .
. . .now I have six children and no theories.
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester