And Parents
July 7, 2011 (Thursday)
I’ve been reading about child prodigies lately, and found out about one who graduated from college at age 10, and another at age 11. I read about a Korean boy who got a PhD at age 15 and another PhD not long after that. Apparently there is a long list of people who are so much smarter than the rest of us that there is no comparison.
Scientists are studying such people and their brains, in an effort to theorize about why some children are so intelligent. Perhaps some day they will know for sure, but as of today, only theories exist.
Now that the field of genetics is booming, new regulations are coming into being, seeking to head off wild-eyed genetic engineering designed to produce people with traits that will make super people out of them. Scary.
In the meantime, many people don’t even want to know if their expected child is a girl or boy. They live with the excitement of the unexpected. Like so many of us, they will gratefully accept whatever is given to them, and do their best to raise it up in a responsible manner.
The Bible urges us to raise our child in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” promising that when he grows up, he will continue to live as he was taught. We have learned that the promise is more complicated and complex than we thought, and functions better as a general principle than as a hard and fast rule.
We know that a person is born into this world with certain traits inherent in his/her genes. We know also that interaction with parents and siblings affects the way a person acts and, similarly, the way he/she thinks. We have also found out that the one, great principle involved in maintaining a healthy marriage and raising well-balanced and motivated children is LOVE. We have also discovered that “love” takes many forms, and is not always easy to practice in its highest and best expressions.
Most children are not prodigies, but they begin learning from the very first moment they enter this world. Much learning will be in the home from their parents, so people should want to be good parents. The groundwork for becoming good parents is to become good husbands and wives, loving and respecting each other, modeling the virtues they hope to see developing in their children.