Section (1) of Ch.7. (The Power of a Parent’s Blessing)

Blessing Your Child In Infancy And Early Childhood

 

 Another key time at which blessing or cursing can occur is during infancy and early childhood. A child is very vulnerable at this stage because he cannot meet any of his own needs. If he doesn’t feel secure that his needs will be met, the child may begin to trust no one but himself. Of course, this is not a moment in time but a season of life during which the child is lookiing for consistent nurture and care. It is this consistency that allows a child to learn to trust others.

 

Key Role Player

 

 The key role player in blessing a child in infancy and early childhood is the mother. While the affection of the father is important, it is really the mother’s care that is critical to establishing basic trust during this key time of life. She is the one who can answer the key question in the child’s heart with the divine truth that will bring peace to her child’s soul.

 

Key Question To Be Answered

 

 In early childhood the key questions to be answered are: Is there anyone I can really trust to meet my needs? Is there anyone here bigger, stronger, and wiser than I am, who truly loves and cares about me?

An infant must trust people outside himself to survive. As a result, the enemy wants to make sure the child receives no consistent care, thus creating a significant fear of death, inner turmoil, and a struggle to survive. The enemy wants the child to think, “If there is nobody I can count on to meet my needs, then I’ll have to meet all my own needs.” If this is not possible for the infant or toddler to accomplish, and it likely will not be, he will experience much fear, and his soul will not be at rest.

 

Blessing and Cursing In Infancy and Early Childhood

 

 Of course it was God’s plan for children to receive a powerful message of blessing through their parents in infancy and throughout early childhood. Below are some of the ways parents can either bless or curse their children in this phase of development.

 

Blessing at the time of infancy may include:

 

1. The parents communicating verbally and physically that the child is wanted, accepted, received, and welcome, with 

    the mother in particular loving, holding, and physically nurturing the baby.

 

2. The mother breast-feeding the infant to help create a physical and emotional bond.

 

3. The mother giving consistent care and meeting the child’s physical and emotional needs, thus encouraging him to trust

    someone outside himself to meet the needs.

 

4. The father expressing significant amounts of physical touch and affection

 

Cursing at the time of infancy may include:

 

1. The parents communicating verbally and physically that the child is not wanted and not welcome, and the mother 

    withholding love, affection, or physical nurture.

 

2. The mother not creating a physical or emotional bond through breast-feeding or other forms of meaningful touch and

    nurturing.

 

3. The child receiving inconsistent care because Mom is not steadily available to meet his physical and emotional needs

    and therefore outsources this responsibility to an array of caregivers (relatives, day-care workers, nannies, etc.)

 

4. The father not showing appropriate physical touch and affection.

 

 

Potential Consequences of Blessing and Cursing in Early Childhood

 

Children need lots of physical touch and affection from their parents. Cuddling and other forms of physical touch create healthy bonding and impart a sense of security, which is part of the blessing God intended. Research scientist James Prescott, phD, who has studied the effects of early childhood sensory deprivation, says, “If you don’t bond with anyone as a child, you’re not going to bond with anyone as an adult.” 1 footnote

1 Kim Knight, “The Consequences of Sensory Deprivation in Early Childhood,” The Art of Health, July 14, 2010,

http://kimknight 101. wordpress.com/2010/07/14/the-conse-

quences-of-sensory-deprivation-in-early-childhood/(accessed Dec.1o, 2012).

 

 Women’s bodies have the natural capacity to nourish their babies. This is part of God’s design to bless children. Breast-feeding ensures an infant receives lots of physical touch and nurturing. The baby naturally bonds with his mother as he is held and cuddled several times per day. In ancient Hebrew culture (and in most past culture) it was typical for a mother to breast-feed her children. In our modern Western culture many people prefer to bottle-feed their babies. One common reason is that many mothers works outside the home and are not available to breast-feed several times a day.

Through my years of ministry I have found that many people who did not receive blessing through a mother’s touch during infancy develop a deep inner craving for physical touch and tactile stimulation later in life. This need for physical touch and affection is sometimes sexualized. I have encountered many men who look to satisfy this inner need for touch through physical intimacy with their wives. However, this is not what marital intimacy was created to do.

 

 Many times when I’ve counseled couples, the wives have told me privately that they feel overwhelmed by their husbands’ needs. “Pastor,” they say, “I enjoy sexual intimacy as much as anyone, but my husband’s need is excessive. I am becoming exhausted.” As I have prayed with the husbands to discover the root issue, the Lord has exposed that there is a deep need for nurture in the heart of a little boy who was never cuddled as an infant.

 

 Young children who have not experienced physical love and cuddling from their parents will frequently develop doubt that their needs will be met. When this happens, the enemy often attempts to impart a fear of death in the infant, who has no ability to care for himself. If there is not consistent cuddling and nurturing from Mom, the child may from an early age begin to trust in himself to meet his own needs, fearing he will die otherwise. The child does not usually do this consciously. He simply begins to conclude, “No one is here to meet my needs, so I had better take care of myself. Since no one is here for me, I won’t trust anyone outside myself to provide for me.”

 

 When this fear and insecurity are established deep inside a child, they do not lessen as he grows and enters adulthood. They simply produce a teenager or adult with an inability to trust his friends, spouse, or even God. As an adult, this person may give his life to Christ and say, “Lord, I trust you with my whole life.” Yet when crisis awakens the deep fear inside, this person will immediately take his life out of God’s hands and act on his own behalf.

we have prayed for several people who have had a deep inability to trust a spouse or God. When we asked the Holy Spirit when this insecurity started, we quickly learn that it started in infancy due to a lack of nurturing. The first time I encountered this in a married man, I wasn’t sure how to help him. So we prayed and asked God how to meet his deep need for nutrute since he could not now receive it from his mother. The Lord instructed me to tell this man that God was the only one who could meet his need.

 

 In this particular case the Holy Spirit reminded the husband that one of God’s Hebrew names is El Shaddai. The traditional meaning of the name is “the one who is more than enough to meet any need.” The literal meaning is “the double-breasted one.” Thus El Shaddai, who created man in His own image, male and female, is the double-breasted one who is more than enough to minister to the love deficiency in the heart of any man.

 

 As I shared this with this man and asked him to open his heart to El Shaddai, God began to minister to the depths of his heart and fill him with the love and security that should have been imparted in infancy. After allowing the Holy Spirit to do a deep work in his heart, the man reported that his need for physical intimacy had been quieted, and both he and his wife were now very satisfied with their sexual relationship.

 

 Since I ministered to that couple, I have encountered this situation many times at our Blessing Generations weekend events. I praise God that others have experienced a similar heart resolution when they received from God the impartation of blessing they were supposed to get from their mothers in infancy.

 

 In Hebrew culture it was typical for a mother to be available to cuddle, hold, and meet the needs of her small chlildren. She was neither working outside the home nor involved in twenty five other activities as many mothers today are. A mother’s role was held in high esteem. There was very little chance that a child in that culture would not be cuddled, breast-fed, and nurtured because this was a mother’s top priority, and it is what society expected of her.

In contrast, I believe motherhood has been significantly devalued in our culture today. A stay-at-home mom is sometimes thought to be lazy or unproductive. Even among Christians there is an expectation that a woman should earn money, have a career, or be involved in ministry outside the home. Sadly in our culture there is a significant chance that a child could pass through early childhood without much cuddling and blessing through physical touch.

 

In reality, motherhood is a very high calling in the sight of God. Nurturing and sowing into the lives of her children is one of the most important things a mother will do. I believe it should be the exception, not the norm, for a mother to work outside the home. I realize this would probably not even be possible for single moms and some other families in our current economic situation, but I believe this is God’s ideal.

 

 Another interesting tradition in the ancient Hebrew culture is that children were frequently not weaned until after the first year. In our modern culture this would seem very strange, but I believe God had a purpose in this practice. Because they nursed for so long, babies learned to trust and depend on their mothers. Dependence is a natural phase of healthy emotional and spiritual development. Children who learn to depend on a mom to meet their needs develop a healthy sense of being loved and valued, and later in life they have an ability to trust others to help meet their needs.

 

 On the other hand, children who never learn to depend upon a mother may learn to be independent and self-sufficient from an early age. In our modern culture some parents want their children to become independent as quickly as possible. There are two common reasons for this. One reason is social pressure, so they can keep up with those around them. The second reason is that we are very busy people, and we don’t want to be bogged down taking care of little children. If we can get our toddlers to do things on their own, that frees us to continue our busy lives.

 

 I suspect that we treat our children just the opposite of how God intended and how the ancient Hebrews treated children. We want small children to become independent as qucikly as possible. Then when they become teenagers – the time when God intended for us as parents to release our children to make their own choices as young men and women – we often try to control their choices and make them more dependent.

 

 If children never develop basic trust and security that their needs will be met, then they may instead develop an independent spirit that refuses to receive wise counsel from their parents during their teenage years. This may motivate parents to attempt to control their teenagers’ choices. Weaning children a bit later made it almost impossible for an ancient Hebrew child to not learn dependence and basic trust in early childhood. This made for much more secure teenagers, who were far better spiritually and emotinally prepared to be released into adulthood.