Introduction

Any railway train if starts its journey on wrong track and without realizing the blunder, will reach somewhere at end of journey covering a long distance. But will it reach to its destined station? Will such journey have any meaning and value for the sake of satisfaction? Rather it will be a disaster for most of the mortal ordinary persons. This way, almost whole world is moving on the life journey.

Childhood is the foundation of the building of human life. Childhood is the starting point of the life's journey. Just observe where childhood life is heading to. Read few unfortunate happenings in the society all over world:

• In a space of three days in January 2009, three under eleven years of age hanged themselves in Mumbai, India… In 2005 a class eight Delhi boy stabbed his older college mate… In 2007 another boy shot dead in Gurgaon, India…

• News of suicides by ten years old children have become an annual feature after declaration of school or competition results. In U.S.A. many incidents of shooting by under teenaged children in schools were reported in past. Twelve years boy fathering a child and teenaged girls getting pregnant don’t surprise anybody now. Child labor, child abuse, pedophilic misconducts have almost lost the interest of the society, barring a few social service organizations. Problems on the children's front are really getting serious and need immediate attention of the societies all over world.

Core of the Problem: A tree gets its strength because of its stem and roots. Inspite of giving lovely flowers and fruits, small plants and bushes have small life because of poor stem. All vegetables producing creepers need support and they too die with short life span. Likewise childhood provide roots and stem to the tree of human life of an individual.

Modern medical science agree that every seven year an individual human body gets a completely overhaul because of cells replacement. Medical science also support that quality of human life depends on quality of cellular system. A human being is not a mere physical body like moving rocks. He/she has different aspects of his/her being: Physical; Emotional; Mental; Intellectual; Absolute etc. Overall development of all these aspects decides the quality of an individual's life.

Spiritual View: Vedic texts are great source for development of human life. Upanishads (texts of knowledge part of Vedas) say: The moment a life appears in the womb, it carries lot many seeds with it. Once a child comes out of womb, these seeds start sprouting and resulting into developed life. At any stage of life, a particular seed has more growth if provided with proper inputs. These are seeds of gross body, etheric (emotional) body, astral body, mental body, consciousness body, and so on. Rishis (Spiritual scientists) further observed that particular body grows much faster during particular period of life. This cycle of development has a period of seven years. Their findings were

(1) Gross body: It develops much faster during 0-7 years of age. We can observe that a body of 2,0 Kg. at birth time, grows to 10-12 Kg. in a year. Rate of physical body's growth is very fast during 0-7 years of age. So child needs full attention of proper fooding during this period particularly. It doesn't mean he/she can relax later on, but much high attention should be given during this age period. This age gives roots to the one's life.

(2) Etheric or Emotional Body: This is the stem of the life's tree. Think: what the virtues in life that gives feeling of enjoyment on doing service to others, helping and caring others, living with compassion etc. Spiritualists say: Between 7 and 14 years of age, in deep recess of a being of a child, develops a body that pours out such energies that produces compassion, kindness, peace etc in one's life. This body is called "Etheric Body" or "Spiritual Heart". Physical body's existence and quality depends on physical heart as major organ. Likewise overall existence and quality of a human being exists on the health of spiritual heart or emotional body. Any body having week emotional body will live like a brute. All criminals have very very poor, rather dead emotional body. During this age period child builds up emotions and needs a matching response. If somehow positive responses are not coming to him/her, he/she carries knots of such emotional feelings for whole of his/her life. He/she gets a distorted personality build-up.

(3) Astral or Fine Body: From 14 to 21 years age fine body of the teenaged boys/girls starts blooming.

(4) Mental Body: 21 years of age is the age when young boy/girl starts dreaming. Their thinking faculties develop more faster.

(5) Consciousness Body: On reaching 28 years age men/women start feeling about purpose of life. Lost in the material world, they fail to notice that. This brings miseries in the future life. One should seriously pay attention to such inner calls to get right direction for peaceful life.

(6) Other Bodies: From 35 years onward there are progressive development of Non-duality Body, Body less Body and Fully Conscious Body (also called Service Body). If all these stages of body are properly developed, one gets two achievements: (i) His/Her life becomes a festival to celebrate daily. (ii) He/she reaches to a fully realized state for the true purpose of life.

So, for overall development of one's life (also called fully evolved life), the most part is to take care of emotional body's health. That's why; the title of this write-up is given "Children Development".

What do Do:

In fact overall development of all other bodies except physical depends on the health of physical body. Healthy physical body provides you a chance to practice and work on it (the physical body).

Two prong approach are suggested:

(a) During 0-7 yrs of Age: During this period child should be provided with healthy nourishing food. Food must provide development to all systems of physical body; Skeletal system (bone development); Digestion system; Respiratory system; Circulatory system; Nervous system; Endocrine system etc. Besides food, mild form of exercises in form of physical sports should be pressed into child's daily routine. Child must attain such a physical strength of the body by 7 years, that he/she can be put to some less rigorous finer practices.

(b) During 7-14 yrs of Age: This is watershed part of children's life. Once he/she has achieved a sound physical body, he/she has established roots of his life tree. Such children should be guided with such practices, which mainly care for his/her emotional body. Yoga has a very holistic approach for this.

Yogic Solutions: As per Raj Yoga, quality of body of any individual at any age can be gauged by the quality of his/her breathing pattern. In fact one thing that always determine the health is the breathing pattern. Emotionally deprived children always have a suppressed form of breathing. Inspite of very good physical health if a child is emotionally starved, he/she will always suffer bad breathing. As per Yoga traditions a set of mild asans and few mild breathing practices help immensely in developing the emotional body of a child. Even a simple practice of sitting idle (static) with closed eyes and erect spine, as in meditation posture, helps in emotional growth of a child.

Remember: Children are tender plants; they need care, help and guidance to grow as a balanced person. World can only experience peace if we give proper attention to the "Development of Children". Parents and caretakers like teachers, have big responsibility in this direction. Peace in society depends on such cooperation. Let us pledge and join hands in this mission.