The last couple of weeks have given me a good bit of time to do some reading. Newborns aren't particularly fast eaters; sitting down every 3 hours for 45 minutes or so to feed Robbie has gotten me through a fat stack of library books in the last two weeks. (It has also gotten me through multiple readings of "The Promise Rainbow and Noah's Ark" and "Dr. Seuss's ABC Book," two of Mara's favorites. I bet you didn't know that Z is for Zizzer-Zazzer-Zezzer, did you?) One of the books I've kept contemplating is Charlotte M. Mason's Home Education: Training and Education Children Under Nine . I have skimmed through this book but this time a couple of topics really stood out: first, her discussion of the power of habits, and second, her overview of the training of children.
The Power of Habits: "Habit Is Ten Natures"
Mason's basic premise is that education is the formation of habits. First, we must understand that "the effort of decision is the most exhausting effort of life" and even moreso for the child than for the adult, because they lack a fully developed strength of will. "It is the business of education," Mason says, "to find some way of supplementing that weakness of will which is the bane of most of us as well as of the children."
Our human natures provide us with natural tendencies, desires, affections, emotions universal to mankind as well as the particular quirks of personality unique to each individual. Mason points out that leaving the child to develop "unhindered according to the elements of character and disposition" results in very little progress in the child, if any at all, because "...it is unchangeably true that the child who is not being constantly raised to a higher and a higher platform will sink to a lower and a lower."
Human Nature vs. Habit
But habit, to be the lever to lift the child, must work contrary to nature, or at any rate, independently of her. ...exactly anything may be accomplished by training, that is, the cultivation of persistent habits.
What Mason calls the extraordinary power of habit is the tool of the parent and the educator in leading a child to full physical, moral, and intellectual development, for "it is easier for the child to follow lines of habit carefully laid down than to run off these lines at his peril." Children, like adults, are creatures of habits and as such will walk in the way of their habits whether they have been consciously or unconsciously formed. What parents tend to view as distinct preferences in their very young children are, most often, merely the expression of the power of habit. The preferences can be diverted by replacing an old habit with a new one. Certainly, there is a struggle against letting go of the old habit at the beginning; but once a new habit has become sufficiently ingrained in the child's life, it will be as preferred as the old one ever was.
Overcoming Human Nature Through Habit
It follows that this business of laying down lines towards the unexplored country of the child's future is a very serious and responsible one for the parent. It rests with him to consider well the tracks over which the child should travel with profit and pleasure; and, along these tracks, to lay down lines so invitingly smooth and easy that the little traveller is going upon them at full speed without stopping to consider whether or no he chooses to go that way.
A child who is in the habit of eating only carrots and chicken nuggets will develop into an adult unable to enjoy most of the flavors and textures of food; conversely, a child who is taught the habit of eating what is given without complaint will grow into an adult who consistently tries, and finds that he enjoys, many kinds of food.
The forming of the habit is the most difficult part; once the habit is in place, it will develop in strength with only a little oversight from the parent. During the forming process the continual help of the parent is needed, to remind the little person of what is expected and to let no diversion from the new habit go unchecked. So, to lteach the child to try all new food, the parent must be willing to spend as much time as necessary for those first meals. Perhaps only a bite or two of something unfamiliar is given with the rest of the meal. The parent will point out, at the beginning of the meal, in a conversational way, that there is something new and the child is expected to eat it. Will the child resist? Guaranteed, if the new habit of eating all food usurps an old habit of eating only what is familiar and accepted. At this point the parent must remember that the resistance is not of pain, deprivation, or even preference on the part of the child. Rather, the child is merely rebelling at the idea of jumping from an old, familiar track into a new one. Jumping tracks requires effort and does not appeal to a creature of habit. But the parent knows the child's life will be richer and better from forming this new habit, so the parent must the all-wise ruler in the situation and persist despite resistance.
The child sits in the chair until he takes the two bites. At the new meal, two bites of something else are introduced. There is no need to repeat the instructions; the child will remember. Again, the parent must persist despite resistance no matter how long it takes. Consistence is the only way a habit can be formed, and if the child sees just once that the new behavior is truly only optional, it will take ten times as long and a hundred times as much effort to instill the new habit.
With every meal, a few bites of some new, unfamiliar food are introduced and the unalterable expectation is maintained. The child will initially resist, but less and less as the habit of eating what is new becomes more familiar than the habit of refusing. As acceptance replaces resistance, larger amounts of new food can be introduced, always with the same quiet, unflinching expectation. Soon enough a new habit is formed and once formed requires only that the parent be alert enough to see that it is maintained in new places and situations just as steadily as it is at home.
