When my daughter was an infant, I used to put her in the stroller and take long walks around our neighborhood. Looking back, I am sure people driving by probably thought I was a little strange, as I talked to her constantly the entire time. Whether I was pointing out things for her to notice or telling her stories about what we would do later, she heard constant chatter.
Studies have shown talking to infants makes a huge difference in their intellectual growth. By the age of two years, babies who had been spoken to a lot by their parents were up to six months developmentally ahead of children who heard little conversation from their parents. (Guardian Feb. 14, 2014, Ian Sample) In fact, according to Mr. Sample, Professor Erika Hoff stated, “Children cannot learn what they don’t hear.”
What a powerful thought! Our children cannot learn what they don’t hear. Even more importantly, the article quoted experts as saying television and iPhones were no substitute for adults talking to their children about things they might find interesting. Healthy language and intellectual development were dependent on direct, focused, parental involvement.
What if we applied educational science to spiritual education? How would this information apply to teaching our children about God? What things would we need to do to make sure our children were learning about God in the best possible ways? What if we were as concerned about our child’s spiritual development as we are about their language development?
For Bible stories and principles to become a permanent part of your child’s memory, they must be repeated many times over the course of many years. As a parent and teacher, I am always looking for new ways to make review a little more fun. Yesterday, we decided to use a game to review everything we had learned over the summer. My husband invented the original normal table sized version of this game and we took it up a notch by making it life-sized!
Raising small children is indeed a sticky endeavor. In this case, sticky refers to memorable experiences that “stick” with your child throughout life. What I want to talk about specifically is making God, worship, Church, service and faith sharing a part of the precious memories of your children’s childhood. What can you do to make those memories special, fond ones? How can you help imprint those memories so that if your children are ever tempted to leave God and the Church, those memories call them back?
We have had a lot of fun with the kids at church this summer studying the Jewish holidays. It is a subject Christian children often never study, but those holidays tell us so much about the nature of God. As we studied them, we also realized they point to Jesus in really awesome ways.
Remember the old string tied around the finger? Back when I was growing up, whenever we saw a string tied around a finger, we knew someone was supposed to remember something important every time they saw the string.