Thinking like a child

Ian Carmichael continues his introductions to the newest Matthias Media resources.

Now that my kids are all grown up, it’s hard to say exactly which ages and stages I enjoyed most as a parent. There were different things to enjoy all the way through. And there still are, of course, now that they are adults.

Naturally, for sheer cuteness, it’s hard to go past the toddler stage. But there is another reason why that stage is so enjoyable: it’s the fascination of watching our kids change right before our very eyes.

The development that goes on between a child’s arrival into the world (indeed from their conception) and their fourth birthday is just astonishing when you stop to think about it.

Not that the development stops there. There is still a long way to go, a point about child development that is not lost on the Apostle Paul:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (1 Cor 13:11)

But if you think it’s hard for a child to think like an adult, spare a thought for the adult who is trying to think like a child in order to teach the child.

That’s the challenge for adults who have the responsibility—as parents do—for ‘instructing’ their children in the Lord (Eph 6:4): how do I teach my children in a way that is appropriate for their age and within their learning capacity? And the further we reach back down the age scale, the greater the gap between our own adult experience and our child’s, and the easier it is to make mistakes.

In fact, teaching children in those first few years is like cross-cultural ministry to people with English as a second language—their vocabulary is limited and they think very differently to us. In addition, their brains are still forming, so their reasoning ability is quite modest (although growing all the time) and they think in very concrete terms. Their knowledge of the world around them is very local and focused on themselves.

They are, in short, very different creatures; they’re not just small adults.

That’s why I am so thankful for the wisdom and skill of my wife, Stephanie.

As you may know, Stephanie has made something of a specialty of “teaching little ones”—and teaching other adults how to teach little ones. That’s an insider reference, by the way—one of Stephanie’s great achievements (apart from our own two children) is writing the six CD-Roms-worth of children’s curriculum called Teaching Little Ones. She also wrote a manual for Sunday School teachers called Their God is So Big, and more recently four illustrated storybooks for young children.

Now Stephanie has developed a series of six picture books for children aged 1-4 as a new resource for parents (and others). These books use age-appropriate text and gorgeous photos to help introduce children to the God who made, loves, and knows them. (I can personally testify to the many hours of work that went into not only the text, but also the careful selection of each photo.)

You can see the six books on the Matthias Media website and browse through a selection of sample pages. I suggest you start with God Made Me, and if you scroll down the page there are links to the other five.

Actually, the books themselves are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve also just finished putting up a webpage for each of the six books that provide parents and other adult readers with tips and ideas for how to read every page of every book with children: extra questions, ideas and comments that help you make the reading of the books more of a conversation than a passive experience. 

Like a good kids’ movie, I hope that you can find a child to take with you into these books. After all, reading to young kids is one of life’s great pleasures.

You can purchase ‘Books for Little Ones’ through Matthias Media (AU), Matthias Media (US), 10ofThose (UK).