habit training

I have been re-reading some information from Charlotte Mason on cultivating good habits in our children (and ourselves). I came across a wonderful (and free!) e-book by Sonya Shafer outlining her teachings. It is a quick read that gently leads you towards the importance of habit training. You really must check this out!

And now for some quotes from Ms. Mason:

"The mother devotes herself to the formation of one habit at a time, doing no more than keep watch over those already formed." (Vol. 1, p. 136)

"The education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions- a running fire of Do and Don't, but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose." (Vol. 1, p. 134)

"The mother who is distrustful of her own power of steady effort may well take comfort in two facts. In the first place, she herself acquires the habit of training her children in a given habit, so that by-and-by it becomes, not only no trouble, but a pleasure to her. In the second place, the child's most fixed and dominant habits are those which the mother takes no pains about, but which the child picks up for himself through his close observation of all that is said and done, felt and thought, in his home. (Vol. 1, pp. 136, 137)

If you are interested in going deeper into the methods of Charlotte Mason, check out For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. This book opened my eyes to a whole different way of educating children. It is wonderful.