Motivating Ideas on Understanding the Dynamics of Child Growth and Development in Their Formative Years.

Child Growth and Development fall into a specialist area of psychology and one of the family life education books referred to in my course of preparatory studies for marriage, by Allan Petersen J., The Marriage Affair, devoted a voluminous chapter to the issue of how the child develops with respect to age and necessary character traits and behavioral patterns to expect and hence properly manage in order to achieve positive behaviors and characters in contrast to the natural bent based on proven research and informed experience. Natural bent refers to the tendency of the individual to do things the wrong way unless a corrective or disciplinary measure is applied to stop or minimize the unapproved behavior, character or action. Parents who allow their children to grow with such traits with the hope that they will drop them later in life when they become conscious of what is good or bad live to regret their failures or develop defense mechanisms to cover their ignorance of this very important concept.

Natural bent is to be handled with both wisdom and patience. Wisdom plays its role as the parents apply proper understanding of how to enforce necessary discipline in a sustained manner. Patience plays its role when parents first of all realize that they were equally "guilty" of the same traits and enjoyed the same patience they are called to exhibit during their time with their own parents. That character change is not always instant because the child has an original freedom of choice from the outset. This freedom of choice makes it possible for the child to express wilful disobedience as a test of the authority of the parents. It is this wilful disobedience that must be dealt with by a sustained application of proper disciplinary measures. 

We have tried to underscore the fact that patience is advocated only for the management of natural bent while the absolute authority of the parents must be visited against wilful disobedience through sustained unequivocal disciplinary measures. There is an assurance that in nine out of ten cases the natural bent as well as wilful disobedience, can be overcome by this proper handling of each of them. This is the essence of proper parenting and the hallmark of successful parents. 

A table showing the relationship between the age of the child and developmental traits is available in one of the chapters of the book, by Allan Petersen J., The Marriage Affair, and it is worth referring to by the reader, if possible.

When a child is born, the growth takes a peculiar pattern which results from a combination of factors and also affects series of aspects of the life of the child in question. Most of these factors that affect the child’s development are not easy to understand and hence constitute much of the frustration experienced by parents who in most cases are ignorant of them.

For instance, a child that cries does so based on some factors deriving from his stage of life. The foremost being that he does not have any means of communication other than that based on his stage of life. But we have to take special note that his crying signifies something relating to one form of discomfort or the other, including sickness. It depends, then, on the parents, especially the mother, to figure out what the issue is that is causing the child’s discomfort. Investigation may reveal a wet diaper, bowel movement, hot body condition, itching, or even hunger or thirst. Now you can see that his reaction is based naturally on his level of development and this is just the point being made here that all of a child’s behavior depends, to a large extent, on his stage of growth and level of development, apart from inherited factors. And that is where proper parenting comes in because how these factors are handled will determine, to a reasonable extent, to which the child will develop proper behavior or not. Hence, we will briefly browse the developmental stages of a child with respect to his age and growth from the psychologists’ point of view. This will help us understand why God has placed the responsibility of child training squarely on the parents and demanded implicit obedience from the children as a result.

A typical psychological representation of a child’s development processes from birth to five years of age in chronological order can be sourced from the internet. Visit https://sjcschargers.com (Normal Stages of Human Development, Birth to 5 Years). 

The web page presents an overview of child development from birth to five years of age.

It is important to keep in mind that the time frames presented are averages and some children may achieve various developmental milestones earlier or later than the average but still be within the normal range. This

information is presented to help parents understand what to expect from their child. Any questions one may have about their child’s development should be shared with their doctors. You may continue reading at, https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/childdevelopment/normaldevelopmnt (courtesy of Child Development Institute).

Please note that more than fifty percent of the character and personality formation of the child takes place within especially these first three years and up to five years in most, if not all, children. On pages 154 to 159 of the book, The Marriage Affair, the Family Counselor edited by J. Allan Petersen, (References are provided), a chart for child development for ages five to eighteen is presented and forms the basis for further discussion on this subject matter, not available here. The chart traces the physical, social, spiritual, and sexual aspects of the child’s growth and development. The reader is encouraged to source for this chart on the mentioned book or obtain the chart from the original copyright owners: Sacred Design Associates, Inc., 840 Colorado Avenue, So., Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55416, U.S.A. 

In using the chart, however, the reader should remember that there is no “normal” or “average” category, according to the authors. There are exceptions to these characteristics which majority of people may experience. Resources for the material in the chart include the Minnesota Department of Health, as well as writings of Arnold Gesell, M.D., Dr. Kent Gilbert, Frances L. I l g, M.D., Milton I. Levine, M.D., John Lewellen, and Willard C. Olson. 

The chart shows steady growth and development of the physical, social, spiritual and sexual aspects of the child per year at five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven and over a range of years at twelve, thirteen, fourteen as well as fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and eighteen, respectively. Parental influences are required in order to help the child develop normally in each aspect of the child’s growth and development and are paramount, hence, any wise parent should want to obtain the information in line with the necessary character traits that needed reinforcement at each stage of growth and development in the respective years and range of years. 

Two among these important issues are the need to guide the child in his choice of friends and other associations and the need to give the child adequate sex education so as to inculcate sexual discipline and responsible sexuality in them. The former is underscored by the strict injunction of the Scripture that “bad company corrupts good character” (First Corinthians chapter fifteen, verse thirty-three). Parents should insist on being acquainted with their child’s friends and associates with the view of lovingly guiding them in their choices whether with regard to same sex or the opposite sex. This guidance is very important because children can easily be influenced by their peers as they do easily pick traits they find easy to obtain and drop those they find hard to maintain. 

I remember vividly how I had to work on my first daughter to stop stammering which she picked from a close peer on their very first association. She may have thought that it was normal to stammer and wondered why we, ourselves, her parents were not stammering at home. The latter is equally underscored by the same Scripture thus: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality…”; “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.” (First Corinthians chapter six, verses thirteen and nineteen).

A wise parent, then, would want to acquire the necessary information for proper sex education of the child in relation to the particular age of growth and development. Sex issues from the age of five to pre-teen years are often understood by children at given ages of development on factual basis, biological, rather than, relational concepts. 

From the early teen age to later teen age the matter of sex becomes a serious relational concept and parents should have handled sex education to an adequate level so as to sail the difficult later teen sexual issues more smoothly with the teenage child. The most important weapon at the disposal of the parents is love for their child and not high handedness. Parents who succeeded in promoting a loving relationship with their children prior to this time will certainly achieve success at this time in guiding their children in the path of moral rectitude. Remember that the child must have sensed this love from the love shared by the couples between themselves first and foremost so that there is no room for suspicion of hypocrisy on the part of the parents. 

Love must be unconditional love.

Children should not be made to feel that their parents will not love them unless they are good otherwise they will have a misconception of God as a loving Heavenly Father. The truth is that God loves us whatever we do and our “rights” are the rights of a love-relationship, that of sons and heirs, not the right borne of achievement in the moral realm.

Hazen G. Werner wrote: “The simple, homely virtue fundamental to the happy maturing of the life of your child is love”. Most authorities on human development with regard to behavior agree with him. This is because genuine parental love, naturally demonstrated, comes nearer to being the cure-all for all the problems of child care than anything else that one could possess. Parental love is most important to your child at the very moment when he is least lovable. It is as needful to the spiritual and emotional growth of the child as food is to the body.

We cannot over-flog the importance of parental love because research studies have revealed, as done by Dr. Rene Spitz, a New York United States psychoanalyst, that without emotional satisfaction, children die! Dr. Spitz said, “Emotional starvation is as dangerous as physical starvation. It’s slower, but just as effective”.

Dr. John G. McKenzie agreed, “There can be no question of the fact that to be loved and to love does give that sense of belonging to someone, that sense of security which is necessary to the possession of confidence. Without confidence we cannot face life". 

In parent-child relationship, a child lacks the feeling of acceptance if parental love is absent. The danger is that this lack breeds the trait of delinquency in contemporary societies blamable to such homes where parental love is absent. Without parental love which implies approval and acceptance of the child, the youngster lacks a sense of self-worth. He feels frustrated in his desire to belong. He appears to have been shut out and rejected by those who should have stood by him in his time of identity crises. Parents should not condition their love upon a child’s good behavior. Parents should not condition their love on a child’s willingness to please or they will get depressed and react in undesirable ways.

Parents should not impose perfection on their children otherwise they will be frustrated. Parents should not compare their younger children with the older ones or any other child for that matter. It is unfair and injurious to the younger child. As a matter of grave importance, parents should love their children because they are theirs. They should love them just for themselves and because they are theirs. That gives the children the greatest security in the world. It gives them a sense of belonging, of being needed, of being sufficient. That is how children grow up to be sound, mature persons.