How to Talk to Your Child About Easter - iBelieve Truth: A Devotional for Women - March 31, 2025
Enjoy a special iBelieve Truth devotional from guest writer Amy Lowe:
"Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'” Matthew 19:14
Every single Easter, my husband and I remember a story a dear college friend of mine, Jeannie, told me from her childhood.
She and her sister were very small. Her parents were considering not going to church that Easter. They thought that, since they went every other week of the year, it surely couldn’t hurt to stay home and avoid the craziness of a packed church.
But first they wanted to make sure that their daughters knew what Easter meant. My friend’s mother went up to their room that night and asked them to tell her the Easter story. Jeannie’s younger sister said she knew. So Jeannie let her tell it.
“So, Jesus died on the cross,” she began. “The guy next to him looked over and said, ‘What do we do?’ And Jesus said, ‘I don’t know, dude, I’m just hanging out here with you.’”
They went to church the next day, of course, since it was clear not everyone in the family really grasped the meaning of Easter. And now we laugh about it every year.
While the story is funny, it also highlights how easy it is for young children to get mixed up about what Easter means — and for parents to feel a little lost trying to make sure their children are taught correctly, or taught at all.
It’s important to keep the story simple, true and uplifting. Keep the main thing the main thing.
Reading the Bible story together is the surest, simplest way to share the Easter story with your children — but sometimes the Bible story doesn’t quite get the point across to very small children, and it isn’t quite enough to satisfy the curiosity of older children.
There are a lot of educational resources parents can use, including the Bible, but it’s also helpful to unpack Easter’s meaning in three “buckets”: love, forgiveness and hope.
Love is probably the simplest and most immediately available source of meaning for very little children. They love you; they love their siblings, and they know that you love them. It’s something they can relate to since they experience it firsthand. It’s also a key part of the most important reality of Easter, and of Holy Week: Jesus’ resurrection.
Jesus suffered terribly for our sake. But Christ didn’t just die. He rose again, and He did all of it because He loved us.
So don’t bog little ones down with the details. Remind them again and again of God’s tremendous, specific love for them and for the world.
Forgiveness, the second “bucket,” is a little more complex. It’s still generally something even young children can understand and relate to. You can foster this by modeling forgiveness for them. Apologize when needed. Forgive them.
But forgiveness specifically in the context of Easter is connected to punishment—the punishment Jesus took for our sake. And most kids understand punishment; they’ve probably done wrong and been punished. They know what it’s like to make mistakes.
But Jesus was perfect. He had no sin. He never made any mistakes, never needed punishment.
You can help them understand just how hard that is in real terms. Ask them how difficult it would be to go through just one day without making mistakes, for instance. Really hard!
Yet Jesus took the punishment for us. He suffered punishment He didn’t deserve because He loved us so much and wanted us close to Him.
The third bucket, “hope,” is written all over the Bible. It’s written all over our lives — but it’s often something we have to choose to remember when we suffer.
So take Holy Week to remind children that walking with Jesus doesn’t mean you aren’t going to go through darkness. Don’t let them be surprised by suffering. Remind them they can do hard things. They can get through it to the other side and figure out what they learned. Point out patterns of answered prayers in your own life. Be a witness to hope, every chance that you get.
Our children have their whole lives to learn the specifics of Jesus’ suffering and grow in theological and historical knowledge. But when they’re young, we can and should focus on the main thing: His love and His desire to have a relationship with us.
With a little extra work — and patience — we can make sure every child understands the love, forgiveness and hope that Easter promises to each and every of us.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Boonyachoat
Amy Lowe is the director of WinShape Camps for Girls and oversees WinShape Camps for Families. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Samford University and a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Like most other moms, her hobbies include laundry, running the robot vacuum, and unloading the dishwasher.
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