When I was a Child, I Spoke as a Child
It is helpful to understand the different stages of development of a child. It is in nurturing our children today that is going to influence Christianity tomorrow. It is with this understanding we as Women of Christ can guide and nurture our children to speak, understand, and believed in a living Lord Jesus Christ and serve Him in their full capacity once they have put away childish things and embraced their adult journey with Him and for Him.
1 Corinthians 13:11
Speaking, understanding, reasoning and judging are all attributes that need to be nurtured as our children grown from being a child into being an adult. It is important that we understand the process or stages of life that a child go through in order to grow as productive adults.
Jean Piaget, a contemporary developmental Child psychologist, described the method the mind of a child processes any new information. It is the way the child understands whatever information that is processed that makes up the child’s world view. Piaget described four stages of cognitive that is to say the reasoning, thinking and perceptive development and how it relates to the child’s ability to understand and assimilate new information.
Jean Piaget, (1896-1980) was a Swiss biologist originally trained in natural science. He was hired to field test questions for a standard intelligence test for children. Piaget was supposed to find the age most children could answer each question correctly, but it was the children’s wrong answers that intrigued him. It was more revealing of mental ability than what they know. (Berger, 2005).
He suggested that children progress through four stages and that they all do so in the same order or stages. These four stages are:
* Sensorimotor stage (Birth to 2 years old). The infant builds an understanding of himself or herself and reality (and how things work) through interactions with the environment. It is able to differentiate between itself and other objects. Learning takes place via assimilation (the organization of information and absorbing it into existing schema) and accommodation (when an object cannot be assimilated and the schemata have to be modified to include the object.
* Preoperational stage (ages 2 to 4). The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. Objects are classified in simple ways, especially by important features.
* Concrete operations (ages 7 to 11). As physical experience accumulates, accommodation is increased. The child begins to think abstractly and conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences.
* Formal operations (beginning at ages 11 to 15). Cognition reaches its final form. By this stage, the person no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgments. He or she is capable of deductive and hypothetical reasoning. His or her ability for abstract thinking is very similar to an adult. (Berger, 2005. P. 44).
Just as 1 Chronicles 13:11 tells us a child speaks, thinks and reasons like a child. They are not adults and there is no amount of pressure or study that a child is forces to do is going to make a child speak, think or reason as an adult. They just plain speak, think and reason differently than adults. It is by understanding the stage of development a child goes through that can give us as Women of Christ clues to how best to nurture and teach them to grow into functioning adults.
Every time a child experiences life through touching, hearing, seeing, tasting and smelling through the senses they are processing this information and it is the stage that Piaget called the sensorimotor stage. (Berger, 2005. P. 44). The touch of the people in their world gives clues that the child can build upon. The more a child is touch, talked to, around other people, adding new tastes and even the smell that around the child helps them grow. It is through these senses that a child learns and understands love before they can even say the word.
When the child reaches two years of age they begin to explore their surroundings and try to control whatever they can control. The ages from age two to four is called the Preoperational stage. The child is beginning to build concepts from areas they are exploring. They do not see things as a whole because they are still speaking, thinking and reasoning as a child. When teaching this age group about Jesus being s shepherd this age group of child needs to experience what sheep are and what a shepherd does.
Once a child begins to maneuver his physical world their awareness starts to conceptualize and create their own logic. This is the Concrete operations stage and begins around ages seven to eleven. Now the child learns more mental structures such as general rules that apply to several situations. The logical thought process is forming. (Berger, 2005. P. 44).
It is not until this Formal operations stage that a child can understand faith and apply it to their lives. Faith is not based on reason it does require logical thought. This is not the time to teach the child about the trinity or the incarnation. These concepts will come later. It is during early stages when the child learns the basic concept about the child like love of God, wonderment of Jesus and the desire to pray. The existential dimension of religion, more than the growth of cognition, is key to the child’s developing faith. (Munro, 1978, p. 47).
This is the time that life boundaries should be in place. Boundaries are defined limits and mark the division between one area of our life and another. It is essential to teach children boundaries so our children will be responsible adult. It is the parent’s responsibility to prepare their children for their future. This can be accomplished only when parents put boundaries in place and teach their children there are consequence for not respecting these boundaries. The fundamental nature of boundaries is self-control, responsibility, freedom and love. (Cloud, 1998 p. 19).
It is the responsible of Women of Christ to teach our children that their choices bring either good or bad results. The boundaries we have developed at this stage of our children’s life will help to teach them self-control. It is one of the basic lessons we as people learn in life.
The Bible helps us to understand and can guide us to have self-control. Self-control is temperance. 2 Peter 1:6 tells us “And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness.” Temperance in the Greek is as identified in Strong’s number 1466 is self-control. (# 1466 Strong, J. 2001). Galatians 5:22-23 tells us temperance is one of the fruits of the spirits against such there is no law. Galatians 6:7-10 puts this concept the strongest of all when it says that whatsoever a man sows that he shall also reap. If you sow of the flesh then you are going to reap in the flesh of corruption; but if you sow to the Spirit then you will reap from the spirit everlasting life. Then let us do “good” unto all men, especially those from the household of faith.
It is important that children understand if they make good choices their life is going to be better than if they make poor choices. Children should be taught to do the right thing for the right reason. It is a balancing act between balancing freedom, choices and then the consequences. Freedom equals responsibility which equal consequences with equals love. (Cloud, 1998 p. 64). It is imperative for parents to remember not to get in the way of children paying the consequences for their poor choices. They cannot learn if the parents are paying their consequence. Children have to learn if they choose to do something then there is a price they must pay. Sometimes this is good and sometimes not so good. Children have to learn that whatever they sow they will also reap.
The Formal operations stage according to Jean Piaget beginning at ages eleven to fifteen. Cognition reaches the final form. It is by this stage the child no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgments. It is now the child is capable of deductive or logical reasoning. (Berger, 2005. P. 44). It is at this stage where the child is growing into adult hood in their speaking, thinking and reasoning.
The child is reaching a maturity of adolescence. They are capable of problem solving; they can make application to principles. It is important to instill responsibility into the child. Responsibility teaches the child that they are responsible for their problems. The boundaries that are set should be for the goal of teaching the child that eventually they must take the responsibility and the burden of their own problems. Galatians 6:5 tells us that every person shall bear his own burden.
It is going to take love and limits to teach responsibility to the child. Taking responsibility does not come easy for children at any age or any stage. The reasoning behind boundaries and rules needs to be explained and must be age appropriate. There needs to be an emphasis placed on setting limits for protection and guidance, rather than for punishment and power. (Simpson, 2001).
This is the time the child knows about good and evil. They are able to realize they have a choice between making a commitment or rejection of Christ. The child will need nurturing to understand it is a morally responsible. The foundation for this stage is logical thought, making a conscious decision possible, and a sense of identity, making responsible commitment possible. This is the time Women of Christ teach such concepts and principles of honesty, kindness, patience, and even good works. The child at this stage can understand sin and the belief sin is an action against the LORD God. The nurturing period of religion that has been shared by parents and church members now can become the child’s own belief system.
The child continues to grow and continues to need nurturing by others. They are developing new attitudes: are the attitudes or opinions we have toward people and issues. Many of the decisions that will be made in a lifetimes are based on attitudes that are formed in the different stages of growth. Children need to cultivate an attitude regarding:
Their strengths and weakness, their likes and dislikes
Their role in the family
Their choice of friends and their attitude about choosing friends
Their role in school their responsibility and their interests strengths and weaknesses
Their thought on work their view and aspiration for the future
Moral issues such as sex, drugs, and gangs. (Cloud, 1998 p.77).
The nurturing Women of Christ can guide these attitudes but also have to be ready to show them the consequences for their attitudes. It is helpful to guide them in the path to have a positive attitude toward families, friends and most of all a positive attitude toward Christ. Moral issues such as sex, drugs, and gangs and even the avoidance of peer pressure c (Cloud, 1998 p.78).
The child needs to take responsibility for the way they behave. The lesson of behavior is conducted through love, teaching, modeling and their experiences throughout life. A great teaching tool parents have is make behavior more painful to be impulsive than to restrain their behavior. This is done by validation: letting them know their feelings are real. Instruction: teaching appropriate and inappropriate emotions and the consequences of their action. Experience: parents need to give consequences for their behavior. This is done by praising good behavior and punishing inappropriate behavior. The Women of Christ need to let their child know it is okay to ask for help when things get to overwhelming. (Cloud, 1998 p.79).
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
With the understanding of the stages of development of a child now we as Women of Christ need to understand the most important element of the structure and influence if Christianity for tomorrow is literally the way we nurture our children today. With this understanding we can guide and nurture our child to speak, understand, and believed in a living Lord Jesus Christ and serve Him in their full capacity once they have put away childish things and embraced their adult journey with Him and for Him.
Reference:
Berger, Kathleen Stassen. (2005). The developing person through the life span (6th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers. ISBN: 0-716-75706-0.
Cloud, H. &Townsend, J. (1998). Boundaries with Kids. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Munro, Joyce Huth. (1978) The Family: Cradle of Spiritual Development. vol. 75, Review and Expositor Volume 75, 1 (Louisville, KY: Review and Expositor. P. 43.
Simpson, A. Rae (2001). Raising Teens: A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action. Boston: Center for Health Communication, Harvard School of Public Health.
Strong, J. (2001). The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
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MLA Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne “When I was a Child, I Spake as a Child:.” Becker Bible Studies Library Jan 2015.< https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=1999 ,>.
APA Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne (2015, January) “When I was a Child, I Spake as a Child:.” Becker Bible Studies Library. Retrieved from https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=1999,.
Chicago Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne (2015) “When I was a Child, I Spake as a Child:.” Becker Bible Studies Library (January), https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=1999, (accessed).
