Imagine with me for a moment. . .What if your child, just as soon as she could talk, informed you that for most of her life up to that point, she'd been bored to tears with the lack of significant substance in what had been communicated to her in words? How would you feel?
A healthy sort of fear of that very thing happening is what motivated me as a young mother. The last thing I wanted to have happen was to find out that I had wasted time and opportunities to introduce her to Jesus, to teach her what is true, to explain what really matters in life. Not concerning myself with what scientists said about how soon children can comprehend, I began talking to her even while I carried her the nine months before we saw her face. I determined not to waste even one day. If I was going to err, it would be on the side of too deep and too much communication. Heaven forbid the reverse!
So it wasn't just 'baby talk'. I talked to her about big ideas. Along with introducing her to the names of simple objects, I told her about the Creator who made everything, including her. Her Daddy and I told her all about our family, how we had prayed for her, and how much we loved her. We told her that God had a plan for her and how He sent His Son to redeem her. We answered why questions she wasn't even asking and explained how various things worked. I told her what I was thinking and explained what was going on around her.
Did she get every bit of it? I suppose not, but I am convinced that she did comprehend more than anybody would have expected her to. And so did her brother who came next. Let either of them have engaged you in conversation when they were three, and the evidence was irrefutable.
At this point, I have to say that I'm not holding us up as perfect parents who did everything right--we are far from it! Neither do we have perfect children. My point, instead, is simply this--that I know for a fact that children can comprehend far more at a very young age than is generally supposed. And the evidence has been living in our house for nearly eighteen years.
In an earlier post, I mentioned our thirteen year old son's advice to "not dumb down God's Word" for children. This time I'd like share something the seventeen year old evidence had to say on the topic. Her thoughts on training children included this, "Have and give reasons for what you say, and don't expect them to not be able to understand what you tell them."
I realize this flies in the face of some very popular ideas on child development and education strategies, which maintain, instead, that children aren't capable of much reasoning 'til somewhere around the junior high years, and that dry facts are what children crave before that age. There is a whole lot zooming around in my head on that topic, but that will be for another day soon. For now, I simply ask this question. If young children can really only handle dry facts, then why do two and three year olds incessantly ask, "Why? Why? Why?"?
God, of course, knows, definitively, the in and outs of a child's developing mind and is not silent on these things. I choose to trust Him rather than rely on fad ideas from folks who have never even raised children of their own. Joshua 8:35 gives us a picture of God's intentions, "There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel with the women and the little ones and the strangers who were living among them." (italics mine) Deuteronomy 6 and Judges 2:10, among other passages, tell us relationships and conversations, or the lack of them, will shape hearts.
How young is too young for shaping hearts? I'm not taking any chances. I'm not comfortable with one wasted moment. Are you?
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