Child Care
Child Care[1]
If we wish to speak about the stages of age in care, the first stage we speak about is early childhood.
Here we ask: When does the care of the child begin?
The answer is: before he is born, while he is a fetus in his mother’s womb.
This is so that we may avoid, as much as possible, passing on to him anything that harms him.
How many books have been published about caring for the fetus and the pregnant mother. We advise parents to read some of them.
Care for the fetus includes caring for him physically and psychologically as well.
Here we advise the mother during her pregnancy to avoid any nervous or psychological tension, lest her blood be disturbed by it and she pass on to her son what troubles him. She should also avoid any disorder or violent shaking of her body during the period of pregnancy. Before pregnancy she was responsible for herself only. But now that she has conceived, she has also become responsible for her fetus and how he will be born in a sound condition.
From the health standpoint, she is responsible for him as a fetus and as a child.
He is nourished from her while he is a fetus, and she must provide him the adequate nutrition so that he may be born healthy and physically complete. The body needs calcium to build the bones, protein to build the tissues, and iron to build the blood. Therefore the pregnant woman needs special nutrition, especially in the last months of her pregnancy. The laws of the Church give exemptions to pregnant and nursing women (in wisdom, not in laxity).
All this enters into the responsibility of both father and mother.
The husband must treat his pregnant wife kindly during her pregnancy, as well as during the postpartum period, and while she is nursing the child.
Of course, good treatment is required throughout life, and especially during pregnancy and nursing, for her sake and for the sake of their newborn son.
And they must present him for baptism without delay.
When we baptize a child and hand him to his mother, we say to her: Here is your son, pure and clean. He has come out of the baptism in righteousness, symbolized by the white garments he wears. Preserve this righteousness which we receive in the new birth (Tit 3:5; Gal 3:27).
The proper upbringing of the child is training him practically in religious life, along with teaching him the principles of the faith.
Long ago, we used to face this question: Is religion handed down or taught?
The answer is: both together. We hand him down the religious life through tradition, good example, and practice. If we sign ourselves with the sign of the Cross, he will sign himself. If we bow, he will bow. If we get used to praying before eating, he will also get used to it. If we chant, he will learn chanting as well. And likewise in all other matters.
We must also present him with religious concepts through handing them down.
He accepts everything in belief, for he has not yet reached the age of dialogue. And the more firmly religious truths are rooted in his mind during his childhood, the more firmly they will accompany him continually.
Likewise, the child’s memory is a trust in our hands.
We must fill it with what benefits him, before society later takes hold of it and fills it with information beyond our choice.
It is a virgin memory, able to contain many things, like a new cassette tape for a recorder or video on which nothing has yet been recorded. Added to this is the child’s desire to know, and his many questions for which he wants answers, and the answers become fixed in his mind.
Do not underestimate children’s memories, and do not neglect them.
Do not think they can bear only trivialities; they can bear many things. And nowadays, through the computer, children are presented with far higher levels of information than what was presented to us when we were children!
Long ago, the first program we offered in ministry was a program for children of kindergarten age. But it seems now that a program must be prepared for the child’s memory in early childhood, the pre-school stage, and the program should be offered to the family to help them, as well as to nurseries.
Certainly nurseries need an educational curriculum.
Besides play, health care, and recreational means… even play itself has a curriculum that suits the psychology and mentality of the child in that stage of life.
The child also needs to be bound to us by love.
Love in the home—in the circle of parents, family, and relatives. And love in the Church—from the priest and the servants. And love in every other field…
Children who do not receive enough love in their early years may be exposed to deviation or search for any love outside the family and the Church.
The child is ready to obey the one who loves him, and to resist the one who hates him.
Even when he grows and goes to school: he benefits from the lesson taught by a teacher he loves, and he dislikes the lesson of the harsh teacher or the one whose personality does not help him to love him…
But love does not mean harmful pampering.
For some mothers, in pampering their children, flatter them in many mistakes and may even encourage them in them to win their love.
[1] An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III: Care Page – Child Care, in Al-Keraza Magazine, 15/5/1998.For better translation support, please contact the center.
