According to Science & Theology News, religion can be big part of children’s psychology

Psychology and religion have been kept to separate in general. However, recently researchers started to stress the importance of combining these, especially in the case of children.

Ror children and adolescents, the question of spirituality and religion in mental health is not only more intricate than adult psychiatry, but often more immediate a problem.

If you take an adolescent that’s acting out, or using drugs, or behaving irresponsibly sexually, most parents will appeal to some reason to control what clinicians call ‘at risk?behaviors. This appeal to reason, he said, often references a family’s faith tradition or worldview on how people interact based on faith.

Taking account of a child’s worldview, which may include spiritual or religious issues, is important in child psychology.

Children don’t exist in isolation, obviously. Their experiences are in relation to the experience of that family. A family’s religious perspectives matter for a child.

As psychiatry started to see religion and spirituality as a positive resource. child psychiatry has been a little slower in learning that.

“It’s kind of like you have two cultures living in the same geographical area: the religious and the medical community, who both want the most complete health for the well-rounded, healthy development of children.

For example, if a child is depressed, whether they have spiritual concerns may not be as important as a specific medical treatment for depression.

Conversely in certain stressful situations, faith may be the sole factor in determining what is affecting a child’s mental health.

Catholicism has probably a little more emphasis on confession, on being responsible and being forgiven of one sins, which is very helpful for dealing with a stressor that you feel responsible for.

In situations in which the stress is out of a person’s control, that kind of religious coping mechanism may not be the most ideal situation.

A child raised in a Protestant family may feel easier in dealing with those kinds of stressors. Protestants emphasize on faith that says, "Look, God will take care of it and I will look to God for strength and comfort,".

Mercer cautioned that predicting how a family will cope with stresses because of its religious beliefs might be a faulty assumption, especially if those families have Protestant background.

Similarly, punctioning secular families also should not be left out of the equation when studying how a child may cope with stresses.

Just because one doesn’t have a specific formulated faith tradition, that is not to say they don’t have a worldview.

Though these families may not have a specific tradition they still have to deal with their children’s spiritual issues.