Not At School Today

*Update 01/06/09* For some of Charlotte Mason’s quotes on the subject of habit training, please see my post here.  

Charlotte Mason says that the first 6 years of a child’s life should consist mostly of 1) time outside, and 2) habit training. This second one of habit training makes sense to me, as I see it as doing the ground work in preparing the child for everything that comes with formal schooling later in life. I find the arguments compelling for waiting until a child is 6 or 7 before beginning proper school, but sometimes it does not feel like we’re doing anything! This helps keep me on track.

With Jude, we have been working on various physical habits - toilet training, washing hands, sleeping in his own bed (rather than coming in with us), with varying degrees of success. Miss Mason says in Vol. 1 that to train a habit, we should sit the child down, explain the importance of what we are asking, and then leave it up to the child to remember, calling him to account whenever he forgets. (”Tact, Watchfulness and Persistance,” Vol.1 p122.) I’m not sure how much Jude would take in using this method, but he has certainly grasped some concepts, such as washing his hands because of germs. I think what I have found mostly is that habit training requires a lot of hard work and dedication on the part of the parent - if I let up for a second, let something go by because I am too tired to correct it, then lots of good work is undone.

I like what Elizabeth Krueger says in Raising Godly Tomatoes - the only thing you need to teach your children is obedience. I would disagree that that is the only thing (or else you would still be telling your children what to do all day, even if they did it instantly, which goes against Miss Mason’s idea of ‘masterly inactivity’), but I would say that obedience is certainly the most important thing, and everything else stems from that.

Here are three things I am doing with Jude and Isobel at the moment to try and achieve that aim.

1. Playing the “Yes Mummy” game with Jude. For 5 minutes or so, each day (or as often as we can), I give him small tasks to do. He has to say “Yes Mummy” and do them as fast as he can. For example - find me something yellow, jump up 10 times, run and touch the front door, find me something that is a square. Jude really likes playing this, and making it a game, at a time when we are not in conflict (i.e. he is being disobedient) I hope is definitely getting him into the “habit” of obeying.
2. With Isobel (14 months), again as often as I can, I am asking her to come to me. I don’t want her for anything in particular, there is no stress on the situation, but I just want her to stop whatever she is doing and “come to Mummy”. This can take a varying amount of time, but when she does I reward her in some way, with lots of hugs and kisses and tickles. I think I will also start asking her to give me the toys that she is playing with as well - “Mummy have it”. As she gets older there will be a discipline for not obeying quick enough, but at the moment I just want to start the ”habit” of coming to me and giving up whatever she has.
3. Quiet Time training: I sat Jude and Isobel on the sofa with a toy, and set the timer for 1 minute. They had to sit where they were, and be relatively quiet, until the timer was up. I will gradually increase the amount of time that they do this for, and I really hope that this training will help us, for instance, when we’re at Church. I can’t say much about how it’s going as we’ve just started, but fingers crossed! 

Habit Training Resources: the ideas I’ve mentioned here are adapted from a few places that I hope to review in greater depth at some point.
Laying Down the Rails - a compilation of all Miss Mason’s writings on habit training over her 6 volumes.
Raising Godly Tomatoes
The Duggars: 20 and counting!