Attending to Children, Attending to God: Children with ADHD and Christian Spirituality

This article explores the spirituality of children with ADHD from an asset-based perspective, highlighting possibilities rather than deficits. Drawing on Hartmann’s hunter–farmer metaphor, it emphasizes how ADHD-related differences—present-centered attention, impulsivity, and heightened responsiveness to novelty—can enrich Christian spiritual practice. Children with ADHD invite faith communities to embrace movement, surprise, aesthetic engagement, immediacy of action, and presence with those who struggle. Their experiences of loneliness, social difficulty, and inattention call for practices of “crisis contemplation” and a spirituality that welcomes interruption and diversity of attention. By attending to these differences, the church can critique cultural norms that constrain participation, foster inclusive communal life, and expand its understanding of embodied, relational, and dynamic engagement with God. The article argues that reframing ADHD as a source of insight offers transformative opportunities for nurturing spirituality in children and enriching the practices of faith communities.