To begin, let us not look at consciousness as belonging to a child or an adult. Let us look at the idea of consciousness as yoga believes it to be. Consciousness is energy and at the same time it is a state of being.There are two states: one state is of becoming, when we use the potential, the activity and the power to change what we are at present to something else; and the other state is being. We become, we are. In consciousness both these possibilities exist: of becoming and of being, and these possibilities actualize themselves when in the right environment.
When we are born, our consciousness is pure, without any influences or impressions of the present day environment and that pure consciousness remains with us in our young days until the age of eight. This state of consciousness is like a sponge; it is simply absorbing everything: absorbing all the information, absorbing the information received through the senses, absorbing the information received through the interactions, absorbing the information received through the intellectual and emotional inputs. In this manner, the consciousness conditions itself to survive and to exist in this material plane.
Until the age of eight, the information, which is received by the consciousness is purely intuitive. I would also say non¬linear, non¬sequential information is received, the idea of the right brain and the left brain hemispheres.

When we begin our school education a change happens in the pattern of consciousness and we begin a sequential learning process, a linear learning process. The moment the sequential linear learning process begins our personality changes; we become fixed to certain ideas, that A is before B, C follows B and an understanding like this is developed. That understanding is a very set understanding and this is where the personality undergoes a major transformation in life.
Swami Sivananda used to say that the nature, the personal¬ity, the mindset of a child is like a lump of clay. You can give it any shape you want. The families contribute to giving shape to that consciousness. The culture in which we live, the social environment in which we live, the religious environment in which we live, the educational environment in which we live, all contribute to the formation of the human consciousness.
The Indian tradition and the yogic traditions say that development of consciousness at all levels happens before the age of eight; intuitive, spiritual, cultural, social, personal, psychic, everything happens before the age of eight, before we actually join the first class of primary school. The day we join the first class of primary school this development stops and linear development begins.

Abstract from Yoga education for Children 2, Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati