During these years the characteristics of Early Childhood remain in more or less modified form. Physical growth is still rapid in all parts of the body, the brain reaching almost full size by the ninth year. Parallel with this vigorous physical growth is a mental growth and development equally rapid and many sided. Curiosity is as hungry as ever, still more eager concerning things than abstract ideas, and still a goad to active senses. The mind has increased power to retain what is given it, and about the ninth year enters upon its "Golden Memory Period." The ability to reason is gradually increasing, though it is used more upon relationships between things than between ideas.
The child's feelings are still self-centered, yet development of the social and altruistic feelings is apparent. Children enjoy companionship more than in earlier years, but the longing for others does not reach the intensity which demands the club and gang until later. A feeling of sympathy and desire to help must still be awakened by definite cases of need, plus the influence of parent or teacher, as the child does not yet know life's hard experiences well enough to read their meaning and give response to them of himself.
If nurture has met its opportunity in the preceding period, the child's love for God and confidence in Him have grown stronger. The Heavenly Father will be as real to him as an earthly friend, and His help a living experience. "How is it that you always have a perfect spelling lesson at school?" a primary teacher asked of one of her boys. "Why, don't you know that Jesus sits in the seat with me every day and helps me?" he replied. The teacher's face betokened her surprise, and the child emphatically reiterated, "He truly does sit with me and help me." Would that God's older children could live as actually in the Presence that was promised for "all the days."
Actions continue to be largely impulsive, carried out according to the strongest present desire, and though right and wrong are more clearly understood than formerly, they do not often determine an act unsupported by other considerations. This is evident in the matter of obedience, whose strengthening into a habit is one of the most imperative tasks of nurture during childhood. Abstract laws and principles of right, so weighty in middle adolescence, have but slight influence over the child, unless joined with them is a strong personality whom the child loves or fears, and whose favor he desires to win through obeying.
There are certain modifications of earlier characteristics, which demand more than a passing notice, because they necessitate greater change in the methods of nurture.
ACTIVITY
Though the restlessness of the preceding period is still in evidence, more and more activity is becoming purposeful and willed. While the child continues to love activity for itself, he is more interested in what it will accomplish than formerly, but an end is not yet sufficiently attractive in itself to hold him to an unpleasant activity for its achievement. For example, he enjoys both the weaving and the basket, the pasting and the scrap-book, but if pasting and weaving were laborious and difficult, he would not voluntarily go through them to obtain the basket or the scrap-book.
It must be noted further, that activity still expends itself more readily in the realm of the physical than the mental, though there is increasing pleasure in the quest for knowledge, if wisely directed. The Sunday School is beginning to recognize what the day school has learned, that the child both enjoys and masters a lesson which can be approached through physical as well as mental avenues. In consequence, hand work is being introduced to aid in religious instruction, as manual work in the public schools for secular education, with most gratifying results in both cases.
THE SENSES
More skill, more accuracy and more discrimination characterize the work of the senses than in Early Childhood. The impressions are richer in detail and meaning, because of the increased knowledge possessed by the child. It is a commonplace that we receive from anything in proportion to what we bring to it. The ear of the musician hears in an orchestra what the child or the adult without the knowledge of music could never detect, because he listens with more than they. The child can see in a picture or circumstance, and hear in a conversation or a song, what once he could not, because he brings a larger experience to bear upon it. Criticism of others in the home, the lapses from Christ-like living, the scenes of the street, things pernicious as well as helpful have greater significance in character building than ever before. This gives still graver emphasis to the work of nurture in guarding these wide-open doorways to a hungry soul.