Intentional Parents

Smooth and easy. Do those two words describe your home life? Would you like them to? Of course, life will always throw us some curve balls, but wouldn’t it be nice to have more smooth and easy days?

You can. But it will take some work first.

Charlotte Mason said, “The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.”

That’s the secret to smooth and easy days: take pains now to endow your children with good habits. (Notice that word “endow.” You are making an investment in their lives that will benefit them for years to come.)

More Than Brushing Teeth

We usually think of habits in terms of our children’s brushing their teeth and making their beds. But habits can include so much more. If you think about it, character is really a collection of habits. You can teach your child to have the habit of obedience, truthfulness, or kindness just like you can teach him to have the habit of hanging up his coat. How would your home life be better if your children had the habit of obedience or of attentiveness?

Habit is a matter of doing something so often that you eventually do it almost without thinking about it. All right, here’s your science lesson for today. Your brain has neurons that talk to each other. Every time you repeat an action or repeat a thought process, certain neurons talk to other certain neurons. And every time those neurons talk to those other neurons, they lay down a path between them (to put it in layman’s terms). The more those neurons follow that same path, the more you find yourself thinking that thought or doing that action without making a conscious decision to do so. That’s when it is a habit.

Charlotte likened the process to laying down the rails of a railroad track. You have to intentionally lay down the rails correctly; then the train can roll on those tracks without even “thinking” about them. As parents, it’s our duty to lay down those rails in our children’s lives. Help them form habits that will make their lives run easily in the future, and give us smooth and easy days in the meantime!

How To Lay Down the Rails

1. Pick ONE

   Decide on just one habit to work on and devote yourself to encouraging and cultivating that habit for about six to eight weeks. One at a time will keep you focused and seeing progress without confusion. If it takes two months per habit, you can still add six new habits each year.

2. Work Together

   If your child is old enough, have a short, positive talk with him and explain the benefits of the new habit and how it will make his life easier now and in the future. Seek to come alongside him and work together as a team to lay down this new rail in his life. Pray for and with your child as you both seek to instill this good habit.

3. Motivate

   Motivate your child with living examples of other people (in books or in person) who exhibit that new habit. Also motivate with consequences — both good and bad. Remember Hebrews 10:24 and seek to encourage and spur your child on toward love and good deeds.

4. Don’t nag!

   Nagging doesn’t help form those neuron connections. The only path nagging reinforces is the “do what Mom says” path. The trick is to try to get the child to think about the new action (that you want to make a habit) himself. Make his brain trace that path between the neurons.

5. Repetition

   Seek every opportunity to help your child remember on his own to do the new habit. You can say something like, “I promised that I would help you remember something” or “Remember what we prayed about together?” This is where our vigilance and creativity may be stretched, but it is a crucial step. This is the “takes pains” part of the process (as in “the mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days”). The more times your child thinks of and repeats the action or thought with no relapse, the deeper those rails will be grounded. And don’t forget to thank the Lord for bringing the right thoughts to your child’s mind every time he does remember.

Laying Down the Rails

If you would like more details and practical suggestions for cultivating habits like truthfulness, attentiveness, and obedience, you might enjoy these two resources:

• A series of blog posts on our sister site, Simply Charlotte Mason
• Laying Down the Rails, a 240-page book that is a collection of all the habits Charlotte Mason mentioned along with tips and practical how-to’s

Good habits can be a powerful tool for any intentional parent. Let’s put forth the effort to endow our children with good habits.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Character, The Five Gifts of Intentional Parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.