In the Beginning: A Christian Parent’s Guide to Building Confidence in the Early Years

By John Kaites

A heartening and supportive guide to raising authentically confident kids

In the Beginning provides Christian parents with faith-based encouragement and guidance for raising healthy, confident children from birth through age seven. In it, pastor and father John Kaites details how repetitive brain patterns formed between the ages of zero and seven can significantly influence how we approach things as adults, contributing to how we think through situations and solve problems. These patterns affect our ability to be resilient, resourceful, and effective in life and can inform who we become, how happy we are, and how confident we feel.

If we, as parents, better understand these foundational years, we can parent in a way that sets our children up for success. In the Beginning devotes a chapter to each year, walking parents through brain-development milestones at each age and what we can do to build our children’s confidence. With John’s patient guidance, we can help our children feel bolstered and happy, have a healthy sense of who they are, and become all God has created them to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781632995872

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

After giving the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks in Matthew 7:24–27 about the importance of building a strong foundation in our lives. He said if we listen to His words and follow them, our lives are like a house built on rock. The wind will blow, and the storms will come, but because we have a strong foundation built on rock rather than sand, we will always stand firm. This, He said, is wise, and He offered this instruction because He wants what’s best for us.

God’s teachings are themselves foundational to helping us live a life that pleases and honors Him, while also allowing us to be at our fullest potential. When we have a strong foundation, we have hope, peace, and joy. We live meaningfully, purposefully, and confidently.

As parents, we want this for our children too. We do our best to give them a solid foundation in life so that they can grow stronger physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We want them to be able to stand tall with confidence, to know who they are, and to live fully.

When we think about our lives now, we likely recognize that we have certain approaches, feelings, and responses to situations that are driven by our own personalities. How we tackle a problem, move past a barrier, or work toward a goal might be unique to us and bring about either positive or negative outcomes. But what many of us don’t realize is that the ways we think and act now are significantly influenced by repetitive patterns that formed in our heads from when we were born until we were around the age of seven. Those patterns continue into adulthood to drive much of our success or failure, and they dictate how we approach and solve the fundamental problems life can bring our way.

Certainly, after age seven, we mold, shape, and refine our minds in response to the good and bad that we experience in life; we grow and adapt, and development continues through our teen years. But this book specifically focuses on how the first eight years of our life (from birth through age seven) create the foundation of our subconscious mind. These beginning years, with their unique developmental milestones, are critical, and I believe that with a better understanding of how to parent in these early years, we can help build a strong foundation for our kids. If we were building a house, we wouldn’t choose a foundation made of sand but would want the sturdiest and most solid foundation available, right? In the Beginning is about providing you with guidance, research, a biblical perspective, and firsthand experience as a parent, so you can establish this strong foundation for your kids right from the start.

As parents, we have immense power to influence our children’s development and also the amazing privilege of helping our kids become all God has created them to be. What we do amplifies either positively or negatively in their minds from the first day they’re conceived. Our habits and emotional, physical, and mental well-being transfer to our children’s own emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Research shows that 97 percent of everything we do is subconscious.¹ Humans are primarily subconscious beings, and while you may think you control your thoughts and emotions, you probably only see and feel the finished product of the thoughts and feelings that have already filtered through your subconscious mind.

Between the ages of zero and seven, the mind develops rapidly and uniquely, so much so that even the simplest repetitive encouragement can prime a child’s brain and allow them to feel the kind of safety and security that can launch them toward a healthy life, one in which they dwell in authentic confidence. It’s humbling to realize that most of a human being’s I can do this mentality forms during these early stages of childhood. It may be even more humbling to recognize that most of the I am not good enough to do this mentality is also formed during these ages.

This book will help you understand that everything your child sees, hears, feels, and senses in this small window of time becomes part of the subconscious story they will likely tell themselves for the rest of their life. Their subconscious is a critical part of their emotional and physical foundation as a human being. We as parents have the opportunity in these beginning years to understand how our kids are growing and actually input data points into their brains in a way that allows them to flourish. A healthy, happy child with authentic confidence possesses a deep inner-subconscious knowledge that no matter what challenges they may face, they will be okay. Their mind will be full of the truth about who they really are, and their identity will be secure, largely unaffected by the lies that the world can tell them. Our authentically confident kids will understand that they are fully known and loved by you and by God. They will know the truth: that they are good enough and capable enough, loved and loveable. They will feel that they are bolstered by God’s grace, hope, peace, and strength, and in this, they will be intentional in their choices and unafraid to take on the challenges of life.

In the Beginning is designed to give you the knowledge you need to help your child grow a healthy, confident brain and minimize the possibility that they will develop an insecure, fearful brain that hinders them in life. Each of the seven chapters focuses on the corresponding year in a child’s life, providing insights that will allow you to better navigate your way as a parent through the first seven years. Chapter 1 covers birth through the end of age one, Chapter 2 covers through the end of age two, and the remaining chapters provide the relevant information you’ll need for each subsequent year until age seven. The chapters also end with a short prayer to frame the information and allow you to connect with God on how to implement your newfound knowledge.

If you’re a first-time parent, a grandparent, a caregiver, or a foster or adoptive parent, this book can help you. Though this book isn’t intended to serve as an exhaustive resource on the first seven years of a child’s life—and I recognize that every experience is different—it does highlight information that, if used correctly, can become the sturdy building blocks of a strong foundation in a child’s life.

I once drew a graph on the back of a napkin to illustrate the big picture of parenting. Our children are entirely dependent on us at birth, and they rely on us for everything. However, if we do our job well as parents, each year we raise them to become more independent and more authentically confident, equipping them with what they need to succeed and live a good life beyond their teen years.

The graph, as follows, shows a healthy trajectory of growth, with a child becoming more and more independent with every year. By the age of eighteen, the child should be fully capable of being independent, as they will be equipped with the skills, knowledge, and experience they need to continue through life in a confident and fruitful way without your assistance. The implication this has for us as parents is that we are actively and intentionally coaching our kids with this goal in mind. We will love and guide them but with each year, we need to give up more and more control so that our kids can practice and learn how to be independent. This doesn’t mean we care less. It means we recognize that to be truly authentically confident and living life at their fullest potential, our kids need us to give them room to grow.

When I coach new parents on the strategies and tactics of raising authentically confident children, I emphasize studying to be a great parent. If you think about it, being a parent is the most important lasting legacy that we leave on this earth. How we raise our children will affect generations of our descendants and impact the world exponentially over time. Interestingly, we spend years studying for our careers or training for our vocational futures, but more often than not, parenting seems left up to our own experience or initiative—what we’ve observed, read, been told, or tried. We don’t necessarily have degrees in parenting, and sometimes, we’re not even positive we’re doing it right. The result often winds up as a subconscious transfer of our own personal strengths and weaknesses to our children and, beyond that, to their children. I recommend learning all you can about parenting kids in these crucial beginning years of their life, adding the insights in this book to your parenting toolbox.

In the days before the internet, my wife and I made it a practice to visit our local library and look at all the books pertaining to the ages of our children. Over time, we developed the practice of reading five age-relevant books per year, usually around our kids’ birthdays. This gave us a brief but helpful, insightful look into the future year with each of our kids by removing some of the developmental surprises, allowing us to better anticipate what was to come, and providing us with some proven strategies and tactics we knew we would be able to use if needed.

Consider this book as offering a similar approach. You can skip ahead to the chapter and age that applies to your child, or reread a particular chapter around a birthday so you can prepare for the next year. I encourage you to read through the entire book first and then to later return to find what you need, so the information is fresher in your mind. I pray and expect your life and your child’s will be dramatically benefited when you know where they are in their development and how you can be intentional about growing their brain in a loving, encouraging way.

God knew exactly what He was doing in creating us in the way He did. Our brains are miraculous, and our children are miracles themselves. My hope is that in going through this book, you will feel more confident as a parent, and your child will thrive as a result. Let us help our kids live free of fear, worry, or insecurity so that they may be fully and authentically confident. And let us be humble stewards of the amazing kids God has entrusted to us, as we seek to bring out their best and raise them in a way that is all about His goodness and glory. This is my vision for you and the reason for this

Reviews for In the Beginning

[Autumn Bonner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thoughtful, practical, and surprising tender from a man that has accomplished so much.