Training Up a Child

Share

After playing racquetball last night, like I often do, I spoke with the woman who mans the front desk. She asked me for my opinion for a sociology paper she's writing on when the best time is to train up a child. I had never really thought about this before, but my answer surprised both of us.

Children learn amazing things. I remember this three-year-old I met in Innsbruck who spoke German, English, and Italian albeit not yet fluently. Her parents spoke to her in their native tongues (German and Italian respectively) and to each other in English, which she had picked up. I told the woman who asked that I believe young children can learn at an amazing rate, one far greater than we realize.

She countered my suppositions. I told her that I thought children needed to be trained before they turned eight. She thought that was too young. Yes, there are things they cannot conceptualize at that young age, but by the time you are eight, you can do and desire to do a great deal on your own. We discussed bullying, which typically arises around the age of ten, at least in the case of everyone we asked as to whether they were bullied or the bully and at what age they recall it. By that time, the behavior that is expressed comes from things learned in the preceding years. While it is possible and demonstrated that these behaviors can be corrected, they are often ingrained by that time.

Much of what we learn occurs before we realize it. I know that when I was five years old and living in England that my mother read to me. In fact, over the last few years, I have spent considerable amounts of money buying brand new copies of the books she read to me to read to my own (hopefully) children when they are young. Reading to me transformed my life. It made me the nerd that I am and kept me out of trouble and into other kinds of activities that cause me trouble now (because I am opinionated, educated, and articulated). The woman admitted that because she was not taught to read as a child it wasn't until now (she is in her 40s) that she values reading.

Before children can talk and act, they observe. If you can't communicate well but your eyes work, you can pick up on lots of nonverbal cues. They hear, they see, and they model what they observe. Children are I believe trained up far sooner than we realize. By the time they are eight, they are actively engaged in choosing their own adventure, and there are few limits on the opportunities besides naivete and the law. By the time they reach middle school, they are their own people; by high school, it might be too late to change their behavior without a concerted and individual effort to instill correct scripts.

Scripture means literally "true scripts". They teach us how we ought to be. For this reason, I think there is wisdom in the old Proverb of Solomon. Train up a child when he is young, and when he is grown he will not depart from it. The more we do to teach our children good scripts when they are willing, able, and inclined to pay attention, the better kinds of citizens, spouses, employees, students, friends, etc., they will be able to be as adults. If we train them up to be poor people, or their models for training are not the models we would like, then we cannot expect them to snap to attention and exhibit correct behavior at command. We must be good examples, because our children watch us for years before they can communicate at all, and even more years before they can effectively communicate. By then, the damage is done and the ruts are relatively deep.

By the same token, if the ruts we cut are good ruts, it will be difficult to derail them to dark paths. I attribute in many ways my ability to chart and hold a straight course to good models of behavior shown to me when I was a youth. My parents worked very hard when I was young to be the kind of parents who actually raised up their children. They taught me how to learn and were good examples, and so much of my original discipline and behavior was planted in me by parents who availed themselves of opportunities when I was malleable to build a good foundation. I thank them for the faithful execution of their role as parents. I stick the course because they helped me set a good one whose ruts run deep, and so I go on, straight on, headed to that distant horizon and a far, green country.