List of Usual Problem of Early Childhood Education Children:
Ø Emotional Problems:
Crankiness and irritability most of the time
A lack of interest in other kids
An inability to adapt to day care or nursery school
Aggressive, undisciplined behavior
Resistance to hugs, kisses and affection
Avoidance of eye contact
A developmental lag behind other kids
If a child between the ages of 3 and 5 shows two or more of these signs for more than a month, a parent would be wise to have that youngster evaluated by a child psychologist
For school-aged children, the tendencies are as follows:
An inability to develop healthy peer relationships.
An unhappy demeanor
An uncooperative nature; a lack of interest in pleasing parents
Underachievement in school
An unpleasant nature
As with the warning signs for a preschooler, if a school-aged youngster shows two or more of these signs for more than a month, a parent should consult with a child psychologist.
Ø Mental Problems:
· Psychotic Behaviour
· Impaired concentration
Ø Social Problems:
Ø Physical Problems:
· Delay in Talking
Ø Spiritual/Theological Issues of Children and Childhood:
Children of poverty faced a spectrum of dangers ranging from hunger to abandonment, but disease and death cut across class lines. Indeed, the perils of childhood deeply impressed the early Christian writers, and with the end of persecution they turned their theological attention to children.
The plight of the Holy Innocents (i.e., Herod's slaughter of "all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under" [Matt. 2:16]) loomed large in the imagination of Christian men and women in late antiquity. Sermons considering Herod's cruel slaughter of the newly born (Matt. 2) proliferated in the late fourth and fifth centuries in the West. These infants had died without the rite of Christian baptism, and theologians speculated that they were baptized by the tears of their mothers and their own blood. They were the first Christian martyrs.
Nor were biblical children the only ones under scrutiny. Augustine, himself the father of one son, Adeodatus, observed children closely and put their world without language into words. In his autobiography he lamented the many beatings he received as a child at the hands of schoolmasters who were "behaving no better than I" (Confessions, 1:9, p. 12). With similar compassion Bishop of Antioch John Chrysostom (347–407) noted the simple trust of a child: no matter how badly its mother treated it, the child always longed for her. As bishops Chrysostom and Augustine spent a great deal of time caring for the physical and spiritual needs of children. Behind their observations one glimpses the hard life of children in the ancient world.
Eastern and Western views. As theologians from Eastern and Western Christianity reflected on the plight of children, however, a striking difference emerges. Western church fathers focused on a legacy of inherited sin; too often children died without the redeeming effect of baptism. Eastern church fathers worried about untimely infant death; too often children died before they could be educated or inducted into the life of faith that baptism inaugurated.
In the West Augustine focused debate on the legacy of Adam's sin, passed on by parents to their children. Original sin infected even the infant, and Augustine cited as evidence a newborn's jealous rage when, even after it had been fed, it saw another infant at the nurse's breast. Yet Augustine acknowledged stages in the life cycle, and these marked an increasing moral responsibility. An infant could neither speak nor reason; in addition, it was too weak to harm anyone. Infants were not innocent, but they were also not wholly sinful. Without speech and the capacity to reason, they were literally non-innocent, non-nocens.With the acquisition of speech, the child gained the capacity to understand commands and to obey or disobey them, and thus had a degree of moral accountability. With ADOLESCENCE the ability to reason and comprehend basic laws of human equity conferred greater accountability. Augustine illustrated this stage of the life cycle with an adolescent prank. As a youth he joined a group of young boys in stealing pears from a neighbor's tree. The boys were not hungry; they knew without being told that what they did was wrong. Their culpability as adolescents was therefore greater than if they had been infants or children. Augustine's theology featured a graduated accountability for sinning, beginning with infancy. For this reason Augustine urged infant baptism, as salvific redress of their inherited sin.
Eastern church fathers focused on the untimely death of infants, which cut short a life of ongoing formation in the Christian faith. In a treatise entitled "On Infants' Early Deaths," the great Cappadocian theologian Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) tried to reconcile divine justice with the suffering and death of infants. Infants had had the opportunity neither to err nor to do good: what could they expect from eternal life? Without wishing to grant these tiny souls the rewards of the good, who had struggled successfully against temptation, Gregory settled for an afterlife of increasing participation in God and knowledge of divine goodness. He found in infancy an innocence born of ignorance, not Augustine's "non-innocence" begotten in sin.
Eastern church fathers remedied this ignorance with education, and from their pens emerged a whole literature on child rearing. Chrysostom charged parents with the Christian nurture of their children. In the treatise "On Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children," he offered a taxonomy of biblical stories appropriate to the child's place in the life cycle. Parents ought to teach infants and young children biblical stories, being certain to abstract the appropriate teaching from each. Older children eight to ten years of age were ready for more fearsome stories of divine punishment: the flood, the destruction of Sodom, and so on. Chrysostom advised waiting until a child was fifteen before relating stories of hell and grace.
Contrasting Chrysostom's graduated program of religious education with Augustine's graduated accountability for sin, one glimpses the difference between the Eastern and Western church fathers' approach to childhood. A comprehensive assessment of the impact of Christianity on childhood remains incomplete because the voices of the children themselves remain silent. The evidence available comes solely from the hands of adults, who view childhood through the distortions of time and theological interest.
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