I didn’t know that faith, beliefs and tradition are very important in our culture. Until recently I was considering faith as just a sense of hope. I didn’t know that faith is so strong, so marveling and above all determines our beliefs and traditions. Of course I knew that my traditions and beliefs are important in shaping my characters all aspects of my interactions. In fact I had a broad knowledge of facts and postulations within my culture that shaped my experience based on my beliefs and traditions. Thus, I was able to understand the importance of faith, tradition and experience in shaping ones characters and behavior. However, I didn’t know that children between the ages of 5 and 10 had already known what shapes their culture and experience. Indeed it took me 10 hours to interact with them and learn about their experience. During this time I gained insight into understanding children within a broad context of their experiences and learnt what traditions, faith and beliefs mean to them. The most striking thing in this my experience is the fact that children recognize the role of faith, the role of beliefs and the role of traditions in during play, food and reading.
Training a child the right way means that the child will acquire the practices and the values that the parents consider important. In fact during my service placement experience I learnt that children consider what they eat depending with their religion and faith. For instance, one of the children whom I interacted with was from a Muslim background. This child during eating time couldn’t eat pork. When I asked him what propels him not to eat pork, he explained that the parents have always warned that it is not in accordance with their tradition and faith. Another child informed me that he must read a biblical verse every time before going to bed. This experience increased my insight into how faith and religion plays an important role in shaping our lives and experiences. This experience changed my view of theology because it helped further understand the strong role parents play in shaping their children’s faith. Of course I knew that parents have got a role in children’s religion but I couldn’t explain what this role means to a 6 year old child. In fact it is because of this experience that I know strongly believe that each parent should find time and share their experiences with children, otherwise these children will acquire faiths and beliefs which are consistent with the people whom they interact with (Vergot, 16).
As I conclude this paper, it is appealing to know that children’s religion, including their faiths, beliefs and traditions play a big role in their play, reading and what they eat. A child will find it easy to read a biblical verse before going to bed because it is the culture the parents have desired. Another child will hold values that influence his eating as is the case with the 7 year old Muslim child. This means that the roles of faith, traditions and beliefs can’t be ignored in the world of children.
Work Cited
Turner, Colin. “Islam without Allah?” New York: Routledge, 2000. pp. 11-12.
Hinnells, John R. “”. New York, Routledge. pp. 439–440.
Vergote, Anderson. “Religion, belief and unbelief: A Psychological Study”. Leuven University Press. 2011, pp. 16.
