Spirituality for Children with Emphasis on Ayatullah Shahabadi and Imam Khomeini’s Ideas

Spirituality means to attend and develop the spiritual dimension of man. Bringing up and rearing human spirituality particularly in childhood is an inevitable condition for the attainment of psychic health in a world wherein the storm of technology, mass communication, and conflict of ideas threaten them from all sides. Psychologists usually prescribe two fundamental components for the spiritual training of children as follows: spiritual intelligence and moral intelligence (virtue). According to Imam Khomeini, spirituality is a willful attention to the world of meaning which consists of various levels and finally lead to the realization of the station of perfect man. From the perspective of this philosopher, spiritual training is a monotheistic upbringing which contains three angles of teacher, student, and training. Imam Khomeini is of the view that apart from the role of teacher and student, there are some other factors such as fitrah (nature), thought, will, and moderation which are effective in bringing about spiritual training. In his view, by spiritual training of children it means to draw the attention of children towards the world of meaning in order to actualize their spiritual and natural dimensions with the aim of achieving the final goal. All these depend on the human will power and the role of the parents even before the birth of their children.