Charlotte Mason

I have been reading some of her books again, and I have, specifically, been reading about Habit Taining for children under four.

Here are her thoughts:

1) Realize that your child will not simply grow out of his faults.

"What you would have the man become, that you must train the child to be."

2) Your child can learn many good habits by being surrounded with them in your home.

"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."

3) Good habits will give you smooth and easy days now and eqip your child well for the future.

4)Determine which habits you want to instill in your child.

"Parents should take pains to have their own thoughts clear as to the manner of virtues they want their children to develop."

5)Intentionally teach adn train your child in each good character trait that you want to become a habit, using good examples, Scriptures verses, and reinforecement.

6) Identify any bad habit in your child and determine to set up the opposite good habit in its place.

"A child has an odious custom, so constant, that it is his quality, will be his character, if you let him alone; he is spiteful, he is sly, he is sullen. No one is to blame for it; it was born in him."

7) See taht your child does the new good habit as much as possible for at least a month.

"Let the month of treatment be a deliciously happy month to him, he living all the time in the sunshine of his mother's smaile. Let him not be left to himself to meditate or carry out ugly pranks. Let him feel himself always under a watchful, loving, and approving eye. Keep him occupied, well amused."

8) Devote yourself to the correction of a bad habit as you would to nursing a sick child.

9) Keep a diary to help you oversee your child's progress in character and good habits.

"Every mother should keep a diary in which to note the successive phases of her child's physical, mental, and moral growth, with particular attention to the moral...."

10) Depend on the Lord's help and pray for your child during habit training.

"Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain..."

11) One good habit you might want to instill would be to teach your two-year-old to put away his toys.

12) You can also practice good manners by role-playing with your child.

13) Train your child to be habitually truthful.

"It is more important to cultivate the habit of truth than to deal with the accident of lying."

14) Teach your child to unselfishly give, share, and serve. This habit will deter a mind-set of "It's not fair" later in life.