HOLIDAYS: CHILDREN AND A THOUSAND QUESTIONS

Children ask questions. Lots of them. Some are easy: "Why is the sky blue?" "Where do babies come from?" "Why can't I have another biscuit?"

Then there are the ones that make adults pause. "How do we know God is real?" "Why does God allow bad things to happen?" "Why do some Christians behave badly?" "Does God really hear me when I pray?" "What happens when someone dies?" 😳

These questions can come unannounced in the car, over dinner, out of nowhere. And because we don't always know what to say, our first instinct is often to shut it down.

"Don't ask such things." "Just believe." "Because the Bible says so."

But what if your child is not challenging your faith? What if they are trying to understand it?

This holiday, let your children think, observe, and ask. Make room for it.

A child who asks hard questions is not necessarily losing faith; sometimes they are trying to build one that can survive hard questions. We don't have to pretend to know everything. There is nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know. Let's find out together." That sentence may teach more humility than any Bible lesson.

And sometimes the question is not even theological. It's "Why are some people poor?" "Why did that Christian treat someone badly?" "Why didn't God answer Grandma's prayer?"

These need conversation, not quick answers, and they need honesty from us. Because children are not only listening to what we say about faith. They are watching how we live it: whether we apologise when we are wrong, how we treat people who can't do anything for us, whether we stay honest when it costs us, whether our faith holds when life gets hard.

The holiday gives them plenty of chances to see the difference. A parent saying, "I'm sorry, I was wrong." A child encouraged to forgive a sibling. A parent praying openly in a hard moment. A family giving thanks even when nothing went to plan.

None of that looks like formal spiritual instruction. But they are learning it anyway.

Eventually, every parent will face the bigger question: what happens when we are no longer there? Our children will grow up. We won't be there to remind them to pray before an exam, or to hear every conversation, or to supervise every friendship and decision. One day, their faith has to become their own.

That changes what we are actually raising them for. Not children who behave like Christians under our roof, but young people who know why they believe, who know where to turn when life gets hard, and who have seen enough real faith to recognise it when they meet it.

So we should not fear their questions. We should welcome them, listen to them, search for answers together, and when we don't know, say so.

The holiday may give you more time with your children. Use some of it to find out what is actually going on in their minds and hearts. You might be surprised by what they have been thinking about, and even more surprised by what they have been afraid to ask.