Shepherding a Child's Heart

Chapter 2

Your    Child’s Development:    Shaping Influences

My 11-year-old son was raising pigs and he was frustrated. The
pigs overturned their water containers with their snouts, making it
impossible to keep fresh water before them. We decided to make a
concrete watering trough that would be too heavy to upset. We built a
form of wood and began pouring concrete into the form.

(^) As we worked, I began telling my boys how their young lives were
like this project. The structures of our home were like the form. Their
lives were the poured concrete. One day when the form was removed,
they would be strong and useful. The disciplines of childhood would
harden into concrete, adult lives. I waxed eloquent. They listened
politely and appropriately. When I paused for a breath, they ran off to
play, clearly unimpressed with the likeness between their young lives
and swine troughs.
(^) The boys were not ready that day for such heady thinking. I
couldn’t blame them. It is no easy matter to think through the
influences that shape your children’s lives. They are being shaped and
molded by life’s circumstances. All the aspects of family living have
a profound impact on the persons your children become.
Shaping Influences
(^) In this chapter, I will present a chart to help you understand the
shaping influences of childhood. While the term “shaping influences”
may be a new one, what it signifies is as old as humanity. Shaping
influences are those events and circumstances in a child’s
developmental years that prove to be catalysts for making him the
person he is. But the shaping is not automatic; the ways he responds