When should we begin to teach our children to know God? It is good to start working on the process before we become parents. The more we have cleansed the love of the world out of our hearts, so that we love the Lord with more of our hearts by the time we become parents, the better chance we have to be able to effectively teach our children to love God with all their hearts.
Recent research has shown that even in the womb, babies begin learning language from their mothers. “The mother has first dibs on influencing the child’s brain,” said Patricia Kuhl, co-author and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. “The vowel sounds in her speech are the loudest units and the fetus locks onto them.” (http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/02/while-in-womb-babies-begin-learning-language-from-their-mothers/).
Recent research led by Christine Moon, a professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University, also shows that infants, only hours old, showed marked interest for the vowels of a language that was not their mother tongue. “We have known for over 30 years that we begin learning prenatally by listening to the sound of our mother talking,” Moon said. “This is the first study that shows we learn about the particular speech sounds of our mother’s language before we are born. Previous studies indicate that the fetus seems to remember musical rhythms,” she said. “They now seem to be able to learn language partially.” (http://www.plu.edu/marcom/news/2012/12/01/language-learning-begins-in-utero-new-study-finds/).
Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter says that rhymes reveal evidence of learning in the womb. By third trimester, unborn babies respond to rhymes recited by their mothers. (WebMD News from HealthDay http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20140725/rhymes-reveal-evidence-of-learning-in-the-womb).
Charlene Krueger, nursing researcher and associate professor in the University of Florida’s College of Nursing, said in a university news release, “Babies seem to learn even before they’re born. By the time women are 34 weeks pregnant, their unborn babies can respond to the sound of their mother’s voice reciting a familiar nursery rhyme. The mother’s voice is the predominant source of sensory stimulation in the developing fetus. This research highlights just how sophisticated the third trimester fetus really is and suggests that a mother’s voice is involved in the development of early learning and memory capabilities. This could potentially affect how we approach the care and stimulation of the preterm infant. This study helped us understand more about how early a fetus could learn a passage of speech and whether the passage could be remembered weeks later even without daily exposure to it. This could have implications to those preterm infants who are born before 37 weeks of age and the impact an intervention such as their mother’s voice may have on influencing better outcomes in this high-risk population.” (http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20140725/rhymes-reveal-evidence-of-learning-in-the-womb
So all this is talking about a mother reading and singing ordinary things to her baby while it is still in the womb. Research says the baby can and will learn those things. Could the Christian mother also read Bible story books or passages from Scripture and sing hymns to that same baby as well as the infant or toddler on her lap? Which would be better for the babies to learn—the things of the world or the things of God? “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16).
—Beth Johnson, Bible Studies for Women: Muliebral Studies; Muliebral Viewpoint; Articles and Books by Beth Johnson