Child Development Basics

Take some time to look over the physical, social-emotional, and spiritual ways that the children and youth are making progress on growing up. Pay special attention to the age group you'd like to work with. Adapted from Tracey Hurd using Fowler's faith stages.

Infants and Toddlers: Undifferentiated Faith, Held in the Love of Others: The Basis for Later Faith

• Infants are born with potential but without the ability to act on it.
• They are rapidly making new mental connections to learn how the world works by seeking out sensory experiences and by "experimenting" with objects.
• One of their big tasks is learning whether they can trust the world and the people in it.
• Experiences of trust become the basis for emerging notions of faith; trust plants the seeds of hope.
• Pre-Images of others, images formed without language and labels envelope the infant in care. These early relationships are imbued with spirituality.
• Physical changes: Infants and toddlers rapidly grow larger and become stronger. They gain more and more control over their bodies.

Preschool Children: Faith by Imitation/Intuitive-Projective Faith

• Faith development is linked to cognitive and social development.
• Children begin pretend play. They understand that one thing can mean another (symbols), but their reasoning isn't logical.
• Play is important at this age, as it allows them to begin to initiate and plan activities, though the "plan" may change in the space of a few seconds. Process is more important than product to these children.
• Knowing what we do as people of faith, nurtures a sense of belonging.
• Imitating routines or rituals of religion, the child learns them first as things to do and later as part of a more complex picture. They thrive on routines.
• Child sees spirituality in everyday life; they is open to “big questions,” sometimes shocking and befuddling their parents and caregivers.
• Experiences of love with others, gets projected more broadly to the faith community.
• Physically, they continue to grow rapidly and become more and more coordinated. Improving fine motor skills is a big task for this age group.

Young School Age Children (Approximately K-2nd Grades): Intuitive-Projective Faith

• Interest in big questions becomes tempered by beginning knowledge of the literal world as the first precursors of logic begin.
• Participating in religious activities becomes another building block of “knowing” or authority.
• Children “do” religion as a way of owning religion. Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick says the seven year old, spiritually speaking, is like a person from Missouri, “Show me,” she demands.
• Inviting young school age children into the life of the faith community lets them know what it is like to have faith.
• Product becomes more important than process, and some children this age become frustrated when their products don't match up to their unrealistic standards.
• Physically, young school age children continue to develop their gross and motor skills and get much stronger.

School Age Children (Approximately 3rd-5th Grades): Joining in Faith: Mythic-Literal Faith

• Concrete operational thinking—logic of action and an ability to hold actions as mental representations—influences faith development.
• Literal understandings of faith prevail as logic skills begin to develop.
• Children develop “myths” or story-like ideas based on logic about big questions.
• Holidays, rituals, community service all become satisfying ways to both “do faith” and “claim faith.”
• Peer groups become increasingly important during this age.
• Physically, children's physical growth tends to plateau for a while near the end of this stage as the begins of puberty appear.

Young Adolescent (Approximately 6th-8th Grades): Discernment: Synthetic Conventional Faith

• Belongingness—as an individual—becomes important to a sense of faith.
• Many young adolescents are drawn to religion as they try to make sense and meaning of their lives with newly developed capacities to think about thinking.
• Young adolescents want to find coherence, to put together pictures or concepts of how things work. Some may be drawn to the clarity of creed-based religions.
• These adolescents are able to begin thinking abstractly and imagine hypothetical situations, though they may need some adult help thinking through things.
• Sustained involvement in a congregation can provide comfort and coherence that answers a yearning to matter, to feel unique, and to feel a part of something bigger.
• Engaging adolescents in the life of the congregation and marking their presence (through recognitions, coming of age ceremonies, and involvement) may help make faith alive for youth.
• Physically, in this age group, if puberty onset did not happen earlier, it is now, along with the accompanying confusion and self-consciousness that we all feel during that time. Youth in this age range are typically experiencing a growth spurt as well.

Middle Adolescents (Approximately 9th-11th Grades): Synthetic Conventional Faith

• Interest in faith can often increase or decrease during these years.
• If faith offers them a sense of coherence, purpose, and meaning then they will be more drawn towards it.
• Faith becomes a base for synthesizing values. Religion, however, is still often seen as holding outside authority.
• Questioning of faith can lead an adolescent to hold tighter or to abandon faith during these years.
• Providing meaningful faith-based activities nurtures adolescents spiritual agency and may draw them deeper into faith.
• Peer groups remain very important to these youth as they see themselves more separate from their families.
• Physically, many young women complete their growth spurts, while young men may continue to grow through their late teens.
• These youth have almost certainly reached sexual maturity, though they may not fully have the wisdom to make wise sexual choices.

Older Adolescent/ Young Adults (Approximately ages 18-25): Deeper Understanding, Reflection: Individuative Reflective Faith

• Existential thinking and the promise and pressures of becoming adults can help late adolescents explore faith more deeply or abandon their faith.
• No longer trying to belong to faith, the young adult seeks to construct her/his own understanding of it, through crucial reflection, questioning and participating.
• Young adults are supported by knowing that faith offers more than psychological reasoning, but a way of being spiritually connected beyond words and thinking
• Engaging young adults in spiritually satisfying service, worship and spiritual practice can help them deepen their sense of faith.
• People are still growing and developing during this time, though almost imperceptibly. Brain development (specifically the part of the brain that keeps us from making unwise, impulsive choices) completes at about age 25, though there continues to be some ability for the brain to make changes throughout life.

The Next Step - Wrought Faith (click on Making Faith Happen for essay)