EARLY CONDITIONING July 15, 2020

Very early in the morning a couple of days ago, I saw a boy of about nine or ten years old (he was thin and wiry and looked small for this age, but his face looks mature) near our street corner, who was knocking on the gate of somebody’s home asking for scrap bottles and plastic, or possibly scrap metal and rubber, for him to sell at a junkshop.  And this afternoon, I came across a tweet about a four-year-old boy named Harry in rural England, who opened up a roadside honesty stall where he sells some chicken eggs from the family farm, but somebody took his money and some of his stocks away.  A kind neighbor took a picture of him and his little stall and tweeted, in the hopes that whoever made off with his wares would feel guilty, and “not have a good night’s sleep.”

These stories tug at the heart of anybody who helped care for nephews and nieces and godchildren, for we all know that at this time this year, they should already be in school and spending their days without a care in the world, but just to attend classes and play with their friends.  But because of the pandemic, and the new kind of poverty it brings, which the IMF so imaginatively called “pandemic poverty and hunger”, we see instead many children trying to earn some more money to augment the family’s income, at the risk of being apprehended by the quarantine officers.

However seemingly pitiful such situations may be, one good thing that may come out of it is that these children are taught to work hard and be diligent, be faithful and honest, because earning a living is no easy matter, and working for an income is no joke.  At least, even through hardship and want, such children learn more meaningfully and have a better chance of growing mature earlier than their age.

Which is why though the Word today talks about those things that godly people must do, like being faithful and trustworthy, being diligent and humble, having fear of the Lord and acknowledging Him as the source of everything in their lives, in the book of Proverbs chapter 22, I believe the heart lies in the sixth verse which says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Numerous studies have been made, about children who have high intellectual abilities, children who are gifted in one or more fields, or children who have mental and psychological disorders, but none of them stood out through the test of time as that which was made (if I am not mistaken around the 1950s or ‘60s or so) about emotional quotient or emotional intelligence.  The one where each child was given a marshmallow and told that if he does not eat it yet, and wait for the adult to come back, he will receive another marshmallow.  Those kids who were not able to help themselves but ate the marshmallow as soon as the adult turned his back, were analyzed in later life, along with those kids who waited for the adult to return and were given the second marshmallow.  What the researchers found out that those kids who waited turned out to be more successful in later life than those who did not.  So, there is a correlation between how a child is instructed at a young age, and how it manifests itself in his or her interaction with a stranger, as to how it will turn out for him when he matures.

And so we see that we and the people around us today, more especially our leaders whom we entrust our future and our community to, are who they are today because of who they were when they were children, and how they were raised and nurtured.  And this should be a lesson for us all, who are in positions of parenting and/or mentoring.  If we want to make our children experience the better and greater future we envision for them, we should teach them diligently now, the proper way to live, and show it by our examples.

It doesn’t matter what our economic or social status may be because in the Word today, the second verse says, “The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.”  And so, regardless of our station in life, we all have the responsibility to ensure that our children go through early conditioning in the right way.