Researchers investigating the intellectual impact of foster care found that children who were removed from orphanages and put in foster care had far better reasoning, language, and other intellectual skills than those who remained in the orphanage. The data confirm that foster care can help reverse the damage to a child’s developing brain caused by severe neglect. The study concludes that institutionalized Romanian children have greatly diminished intelligence quotient (IQ) scores and that children who are subsequently placed in foster care show an average gain of eight to ten IQ points. Children moved to foster care before age two exhibit even greater intellectual improvement.

What about the Christian mother’s job in the home?

Proverbs 29:15—The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. KJV

The phrase, left to himself (OT:7971) uses the word shalach (shaw-lakh’); a primitive root; to send away, for, or out (in a great variety of applications):

(Biblesoft’s New Exhaustive Strong’s Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)

–Beth Johnson