Summary:
The aim of this dissertation is to research religiousness in childhood and the extent to which it is affected by the mother-child relationship. In the first section, the notion and aspects of religiousness are presented and the areas of human psychological development with which there is interaction. In the second section, the main theories of human psycho-cognitive development are presented, with emphasis on religious development. In the third section, the dependency of the child's religious development on the mother-child relationship is presented. Essential part of this development is the formation of an image of God. The image of God and its dependency on the the personal experiences of the child from its parents are studied through the relevant researches of Ana Maria Rizzuto (formation of God image), D. Hay-R. Nye (children's spirituality), Simone deRoos (5-year-old's God image), and the theoretical works of James Loder and C. Ellis Nelson (primal stages of formation of God image in infancy). Even though toddlerhood is very important for human religiousness, since the image of God is formed then, based on the child's experiences from both its parents (Rizzuto), it is not decisive. In early childhood the children's eagerness to accept a loving God is obvious, notwithstanding their family religious views or their relationship with their parents (Simone deRoos). They do not isolate their religious experience, their spirituality from the rest of their lives, but these are pervasive in their thought daily, throughout any task or activity (Hay-Nye). This led the research to assume that religiousness is inherent and not taught to children, through their relationship with their mothers. The Orthodox religious development theory is presented, as detected in the work “On toddlers dying too early” of Gregory of Nyssa and some very few elements by the “Klimax” of John of Sina: humans come to life as images of God, therefore the relation to God is pervasive in children (as found by the researches of S. deRoos and Hsy-Nye). When childhood is over, the personal struggle to achieve sanctity begins.
Keywords:
mother, child, toddler, religious development, religiousness, spirituality, object-relations theory, attachment theory
