Teaching Your Children Good Habits ~ Charlotte Mason Series

"The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days…"

~ Charlotte Mason

The thought of home education can be daunting to many mothers. Perhaps they are imagining children hanging from the ceiling fans, running circles around the learning center and living a sloppy, tangled, disorderly life. The truth can be anything but that when mother puts the actual training of her children at the center of home education. These important lessons on character building to instill good/godly habits will bless all other areas of the parent's and child's life. Because you have created an orderly environment (and our magnificent God is a God of order), your home is now a fertile ground for education! You will be able to successfully teach and your children will successfully learn.

"The habits of the child produce the character of the man, because certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on forever unless they should be displaced by other habits. Here is an end to the easy philosophy of, 'It doesn't matter,' 'Oh, he'll grow out of it,' "He'll know better by and by,' 'He's so young, what can we expect?' and so on. Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend."

~ Charlotte Mason

"Consider how laborious life would be were its wheels not greased by habits of cleanliness, neatness, order courtesy; had we to make the effort of decision about every detail of dressing and eating, coming and going, life would not be worth living. Every cottage mother knows that she must train her child in habits of decency, and a whole code of habit causes a shock to others which few children have courage to face. Physical fitness, morals and manners, are very largely the outcome of habit; and not only so, but the habits of the religious life also become fixed and delightful and give us dues support in the effort to live a godly, righteous and sober life."

~ Charlotte Mason

"But all the minor moralities of life may be made habitual to him. He has been brought up to be courteous, prompt, punctual, neat, considerate; and he practises these virtues without conscious effort. It is much easier to behave in the way he is used to, than to originate a new line of conduct."

~ Charlotte Mason

"In conclusion, let me say that 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. The gardener, it is true, 'digs about and dungs,' prunes and trains, his peach tree; but that occupies a small fraction of the tree's life: all the rest of the time the sweet airs and sunshine, the rains and dews, play about it and breathe upon it, get into its substance, and the result is --peaches. But let the gardener neglect his part, and the peaches will be no better than sloes." 

~ Charlotte Mason

Perhaps we can glean from the well known verse (Matthew 6:33 paraphrased), "Seek the kingdom first and the rest will follow." In the world of home education, we can also adopt this similar thought, "Seek to train in good/godly habits first, and the rest {academics, etc.} will follow!"

"Train up a child in the way he should go:

and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

~ Proverbs 22:6

Visit here for more posts in the Charlotte Mason Series.

You may also be interested in:

Biblically Principled Picture Book List

"Help Me Be Good" Book Set ~ Child Rearing Gems

Miller Family Series ~ Biblical Character Building Basics
Our Favorite Elementary Bible Studies {Affiliate Link}

Reading the Bible and Narration ~ Charlotte Mason Series

Queen Homeschool Supplies, Our Favorite Charlotte Mason Curriculum

{Note: We are affiliated with them and do receive a small commission if purchased through our link.}

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