The Development of a Child from a Christian Counseling Perspective

Obesity has become one of the top reasons people die in America. But overeating can also cause detrimental effects in every aspect of your life.

Why You Should Stop Overeating

In the beginning, God creates us in our mother’s womb, and it is good. Ideally, God’s purpose is being fulfilled in a loving marriage. Marriage is holy and sacred as a man and a woman create life in a pale imitation of their Creator. Both parents nurture and cherish each other deeply.

Development of a Child in an ideal world…

Ideally, a baby comes into the world healthy and free of disease and complications. The mother places the baby on her bare skin. The baby is full of oxytocin from his or her mother and forms a secure attachment to her. The baby grows in a healthy environment where both parents show affection and delight just as our Heavenly Father does with us.

In this home, children are accepted and affirmed as they grow up within this stable environment. The parents are attentive to their child’s needs. Children hear praise and affirmation as they grow older. The parents show interest in their child, causing the child to develop value as an individual.

Parents should model their Heavenly Father

Like our Heavenly Father, parents give their children love and discipline. They are patient with their child as he or she develops intellect, emotions, and thoughts. Children learn kindness and respect for others as modeled by his or her parents.

The parents teach their child to accept what he or she has and to be content with it. Children treat other as he or she is being treated. The parents help their child to balance his or her importance. As a result, children cultivate a healthy ego.

To shape their child, the parents gently correct their children. To be human is to make mistakes. Children discover mistakes are acceptable. As a result, they learn from their mistakes and are less likely to repeat them.

Children acquire the knowledge from their parents that violence toward others, judging others, and dishonoring other people are unacceptable. By managing one’s temper, children live at peace their community. By being nonjudgmental, children draw other individuals from all walks of life to themselves. By honoring and respecting others, children earn honor from his or his peers and elders.

By sharing the nature of Jesus, the parents teach their child to balance self-interest versus the interest of others. As a result, children deserve to serve others and be generous with his or her time. By being generous and serving others, children become well-known by others.

The parents instill in their child a sense of worth. Worth of children is intrinsic as our Heavenly Father prizes each one of his children. The assessment of children is not based upon their talents, loveability, adequacy, or experiences. Instead, a child’s worth is simply who they are internally and externally. A child’s worth is not based how many mistakes he or she made. Their parents should not keep a tally of errors made.

Development of a Child in a Healthy Environment

In a healthy environment, the parents teach their child that honesty is revered and leads to trust. When a child is transparent with others, others can be too. When a child is dependable, others can rely on that child’s word. With honesty, transparency, and reliability, a secure environment is created.

In a secure environment, parents protect their children as a grizzly protects her cubs. It is offensive to hurl insults toward their children. It is unacceptable to harm their children intentionally. The parents go to great lengths to protect their children emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Like Jesus, parents are willing to sacrifice their lives for their children.

When parents create a child and bring that child into the world, they have hope for the future. As they preserve as parents, they hope that their child will turn out as they envision. As a result, this child will develop good character. By developing good character, he or she will rely on God in everything that they do.

When their child face obstacles, his or her parents believe that their children have the strength to overcome these obstacles. When their children face trials, their parents pray that their child relies on God to endure. When their child faces painful situations, his or her parents are confident that their child grows from these painful experiences.

Development of a Child in an Unhealthy Environment

From all these vectors, a child matures into adulthood with healthy rules to govern his or her life. If a child does not have these tools, the outcome is much bleaker. As the Felitti Adverse Childhood Experiences study indicates, there is a strong correlation between children who face adverse childhood experiences and future medical, mental health, and substance use disorder issues in adulthood.

Although God expects children to be created in the context of a loving marriage, children are frequently conceived from one-night stands, casual sex relationships, and cohabiting unmarried couples. Sex is perceived simply as a form of pleasure between two consenting adults who don’t understand the psychological, emotional, physical, economic, relational, and social costs of conceiving children. As a result, babies often enter the world into a single parent household.

After the Garden of Eden, there have been struggles between husbands and wives to maintain healthy marriage. Partners drift from one another. They stop cherishing each other with fondness and admiration. Partners begin to turn down bids of connection and affection.

They start trashing each other in private and publicly in front of their child. Partners argue with the intent to win arguments at all costs. They fail to achieve each other’s dreams. Partners began to look elsewhere for potential new partners. They sometimes batter one another. Unfortunately, patterns observed by a child can be repeated for generations to come.

Babies often face challenges from choices of their parents. Mothers take illicit substances while pregnant with their children. Fathers work long hours and barely see their children. Babies cry for long periods of time with no one to comfort them. Verbally abusive parents often curse or berate the baby in its early development.

Abusive, neglectful, rigid, and uninvolved parents refuse and reject their children. Often, these children feel that they are defective and broken, because their parents do not love them properly.

Because of this defectiveness and brokenness, these children fail to thrive, and instead, criticize, and punish themselves. The “warmth” from these types of parents is as cold as an arctic winter. These children internalize messages like “I am bad, not enough, flawed, a failure, unworthy of love, a mistake, a fraud, etc.”

Discipline in abusive homes is excessive. Children experience unspeakable acts of cruelty. As a result, children learn that thoughts and emotions are dangerous when expressed. Trauma severely limits their intellect as they fight to survive childhood. Cruelty and hatred become commonly expressed and demonstrated. In this environment, children often learn that mistakes are intolerable.

Survival in an Unhealthy Environment

To survive, these children often learn to become self-focused. On rare occasions, they learn how to love and be loved in healthy manner. As a result, these children place themselves in one-up position or one-down position. The one-up position requires these children to do anything to hide their real pain, i.e., bullying others, stealing, and taking advantage of others. The one-down position gives these children the idea that they must please other people.

With constant internalized messages, these children are unable to establish a healthy view of value to others. Because some people treat them poorly, they tend to overgeneralize and believe that all people will treat them poorly.

Without anyone to protect these children, they are vulnerable to exploitation, poor development, inappropriate societal messages, and other things that trap them in unhealthy environment. Unless they find help through spiritual communities and/or mental health services, these problems will plague them for a lifetime. Hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness often plague their lives.

The world promises all kind of quick solutions to long-term problems: if you feel unloved, jump in bed with someone. Yet, there are unintended consequences for an active sex life beyond STDs or an unwanted pregnancy. If you are anxious and have trauma, have a drink to calm your nerves. It may be a temporary solution until the alcohol begins to give more anxiety.

If you are depressed, snort a line of cocaine not realizing that cocaine depletes dopamine. Recovering from long-term cocaine use, recovering addicts feel the price of depleted dopamine. If your wife is giving you enough sex, watch pornography and seek self-pleasure. These individuals fail to realize how addictive pornography can be and the damage that it can create in a marriage.

Mental Health Services

It is no wonder that mental health services are in demand. We are broken people living in a broken world. We do not always realize the consequences for our actions. We get ourselves into ruts that are difficult to navigate.

In 1500 words, we have only scratched the surface on potential sources of suffering and pain. In this short blog, one could not accurately capture everything that plagues us. At Spokane Christian Counseling, we focus on various problems that affect the human condition.

We offer a combination of spiritual, Christian, and mental health interventions to help individuals improve their lives. We would be honored to partner with you to help you overcome many of life’s lingering vulnerabilities.