Training From Infancy

There are stages or phases in the development of infants through the years from birth to six years: muscular coordination, speech skills, emotional qualities, memory faculties, thinking abilities, conscience, and others. When the infant brain is growing rapidly and these stages arrive in their turn, that is the opportune time for training in these different abilities.

That is when the infant brain absorbs these abilities or qualities as a sponge soaks up water. Loved, it learns to love. Talked to and read to, it learns both to talk and to read. Put on skis, it becomes an expert skier. Exposed to uprightness, it absorbs right principles. If these favorable learning stages pass without proper input, these qualities and abilities will be more difficult to acquire later on.
The Bible recognizes this, so it admonishes parents: “Train up a boy according to the way for him; even when he grows old he will not turn aside from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

The Keil-Delitzsch commentary renders it: “Give to the child instruction conformably to His way.” The Hebrew word translated “train” also means “initiate” and here indicates the initiating of the first instruction of the infant. Give it according to the child’s way, conformable to his way, according to the stages of his development that he is passing through. That is the appropriate time for him to absorb it easily, and what he learns during these formative years is likely to remain with him.

This is also the opinion of most students of human development: “Nowhere in child-development research have we demonstrated a strong capacity to alter early personality patterns, or early social attitudes.” They admit it can happen, but “more often than not, remediation will not be achieved.” Many exceptions occur, however, through the power of God’s truth to effect change.—Ephesians 4:22, 24; Colossians 3:9, 10.

Language is a good example of training given at the right time. Babies are genetically programmed for speech, but for such built-in brain circuitry to function at top efficiency, the infant must be exposed to speech sounds at the right stage of development. Growth in the speech centers explodes between 6 and 12 months if adults talk to the infant often. Between 12 and 18 months this growth accelerates as the infant grasps that words have meanings.

He is learning words before he can speak them. During the second year of life, this receptive, or passive, vocabulary may go from a few words to several hundred. The apostle Paul reminded Timothy that “from infancy you have known the holy writings.” (2 Timothy 3:15) The literal meaning of the word “infancy” is “nonspeaker.” Very likely Timothy had the Holy Scriptures read to him while he was still an infant, and thus he knew many Bible words before he could speak them.

The point is, there are specific times in the development of the child at which certain things can be learned easily, almost by absorption. If those times pass without the needed stimulation, however, abilities will not be fully developed. If, for example, children do not hear any speech at all until years later, they will then learn it very slowly and very laboriously, and usually never well.