Stars: ★★★★★ (Study This Book)
Premise
This is not a typical pick-it-up-and-read-straight-through type of book; it’s actually more like a workbook. But I have found it so life-changing in our family that I think it’s worth sharing. It begins by explaining that teaching our children good and godly habits is like laying rails on the train tracks. They take significant investment to build them originally, but once they are built, they keep the trains running smoothly. They require a maintenance sometimes but largely, they do the work once they are laid down. If we make the investment to build these habits in our children, the habits then do most of the work – periodically requiring maintenance and review but not often.
Each chapter focuses on a single habit that fits into one of five categories – propriety, mental, moral, physical, and religious. The chapter explains how Charlotte Mason described the habit and then provides very practical suggestions for implementing it in the family. The book instructs the family to intentionally focus on one habit at time for multiple weeks, not moving to a new habit until everyone in the family has mastered it.
Loved
- The Practical Advice
I struggle with theory. I believe that’s why I thought I was bad at higher math for so long because it was ethereal to me. I never would have imagined that I would do statistical analysis for a living, but I needed to see the practical application before I understood it – this book provides practical application in droves. For example, in the chapter about Attention, it provides 20 precise ways to teach your child to pay full attention to a lesson or a project. One of them is to ensure that the parent does not require not too much work or too difficult work for the child. Families build the habit of attention starting with very small tasks like reading for five minutes. Once the child has mastered that then try an art project for ten minutes, keeping the activities varied and interesting as well as short and manageable. This trains the child’s brain to give full attention to the task at hand.
The book provides these guides and practical suggestions for each of the habits, which can seem overwhelming at first. But again, you only focus on one at a time, choosing either on ones that are particularly important to your family or areas that your children need to strengthen. It’s an investment of time an energy over the course of years.
- The Variety of Habits
There are more than fifty habits described that fit into the five previously listed categories. They cover all facets of life, and I appreciate that they are not focused on a single area. To be honest, I would love the book even if it only focused on area because the chapters are so detailed. The fact that it covers such a variety of important habits feels like a gift. One of the main principles of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is that a child is a whole person, and these habit allow parents the opportunity to teach that whole person.
Sometimes habits get a bad rap, but we all have habits, whether good or bad. Training our children to have healthy habits in a well-rounded way is setting them up for long term success.
- The Importance of the Listed Habits
Cleanliness. Kindness. Meditation. Integrity. Reverence. All habits that will strengthen our children through their lives. I surely want my children to be reverent, but I have no idea how to teach that except to model it. The chapter on reverence discusses five specific ways that we can help build this habit, especially during church services. As a children’s ministry coordinator, I understand the role that Sunday School can play in a child’s life. However, I also believe strongly in the importance of children attending worship services. If they never attend, how will know what is involved in their communal worship? And each habit in the book is as important as this one.
Sometimes, academics and school can feel so important, so life-altering, that families focus on these to the exclusion of others. But it doesn’t matter how many historical or even biblical facts that our children can memorize if they do not have integrity, honesty or kindness.
Didn’t Love
The excerpts from Charlotte Mason’s original writings are not easy to read. In fact, some of them are downright difficult. Each of the main bullet points in the chapters has a paragraph or two of text from the late nineteenth century. Many of the sentences require two or three reads to fully digest the message, even with the bullet point in modern language giving some hints. Don’t get discouraged with these passages. There is much to learn and implement from the book even if you don’t fully comprehend these parts.
One of the main tenets of a Charlotte Mason education is to learn from living books that do not dumb down language or storylines for children; so I understand why the advanced language is included and in many places, especially the stories, it is beautiful. I does slow the reading down though.
Lessons Learned
- Consistency is key. After choosing a habit to focus on, the children have their own tasks to complete in a separate workbook. There are daily reminders to help master the habit, and the whole family works on it together. The goal is not to complete a worksheet, learn some ideas, and move on. It is to invest small amounts of time daily to lay down rails that will guide the train.
- Focusing on one at time is the way to manage them all. I am inpatient by nature and would want to work on all of them at once. Well, maybe not all of them, but at least the ten that I consider a priority. At the end of six months, maybe we have brushed the surface of all ten but not mastered any of them. By looking at one a month, at the end of six months, we have mastered six. As a family. And we are much farther ahead for the intentional focus.
- This is not only for homeschooling moms. The book is based on Charlotte Mason, which is a homeschooling philosophy, and habit training is built into the school curriculum. But it can be implemented in any family, no matter their school choices.