A little over a year ago, I realized that my parenting was
undergoing a major shift. Or maybe I realized that my parenting needed to
experience a major shift.
What happened last year? My oldest child turned 5. Up until
then, I had millions of weaknesses as a parent, but I felt like I (mostly) knew
what I was doing. As hard as it was to be consistent in training and
disciplining my children, I knew what I was supposed to be doing.
And then my child turned 5. I talked to a few different
people at that time. All I could say was, "Something has changed and I
have no idea what it is or what to do about it."
The issues were more
complex. I began realizing that up until that point, all of my parenting was
centered around establishing authority in my child's life. My young children
and I have had countless conversations like this:
"Who's in charge?"
"God."
"And who did God place in authority over you?"
"Mommy and Daddy."
"Are you submitting and obeying to Mommy and Daddy's
authority right now?"
and so on. (One of my children is brutally honest with their
thoughts. When asked who's in charge, this child had a long season of usually
offering their own name.)
Anyway, as I began slowly learning, at some point (around
the age of 5 or 6), children begin to experience a larger world with more
freedom and more decisions.
I re-watched Getting to the Heart of Parenting by Paul
Tripp. He described my situation perfectly. As we were working to train our
children's hearts, we were moving from authority to character. This explanation
was so perfectly what I needed to hear.
And then he laid out a brilliant theology of what character
issues truly are. They're a question of worship.
"Your children don't so much need character management
as they need worship realignment. They don't first have a character problem;
they have a worship problem that produces a character problem. Because of this
they need more than character critique; they need to be given insight into the
worship function of their hearts and how it shapes the way they react in the
relationships and situations of their daily lives.... They need to grace of
insight, the grace of wisdom, the grace of patient instruction, and the grace
of daily forgiveness. And our ability to give this grace to our children starts
by acknowledging that the list we have considered not only describes them but
us as well. The worship of our hearts gets kidnapped, too, by something in the
creation, and when it does, we don't respond as we should to the people and
situations in our lives. Like our children, we need a patient Father who will
help us to see our hearts so we can confess what is there and reach out for the
change that only he can empower. Parents who are humbly willing to confess
their need of parenting care don't resent those moments when they are called by
their Father to give the same care to their children." - Paul Tripp in Parenting: Gospel Principles
That Can Radically Change Your Family.
This big picture vision was necessary. I walked away
thankful and renewed in my parenting efforts. But as I continued in my
parenting, I found myself a bit lost and confused again. I understood what I
was trying to do now and that was a major relief. But I was still a little lost
as to how to get there.
I had conversations with friends. We talked through
different ways of memorizing scripture, pinpointing what aspects of character
to work on with our children, and various programs that are out there for
studying character with our children. But I still felt like I was treading
water in the middle of the ocean. These thoughts were nice, but they weren't
helping me see what I needed to be doing with my children in the midst of the
daily grind.
Enter Andrew Kern.
This is really the ironic part of my story. Usually when
people talk about listening to Andrew Kern, they say they love listening to his
philosophy, but he's just not practical enough. But when I started listening to
Andrew Kern, I found all of the practical advice I needed at just that moment
(I'm just going to assume that was the Lord's guiding hand).
I've learned about a million things from Andrew Kern, but
for the sake of this discussion, I can pretty
much boil it down to two things. He gave me a brand new vision for what
education should be. And he gave me one simple tool for daily working to form
character in my children.
I quoted this definition before, but here it is again (Click
here and here for a more thorough fleshing out of this definition):
I just read an article by Mystie Winckler and she put it
like this:
"Character building used to be called education, but now
it is talked about as some subset, an add-on we use to supplement."
Mystie says many more beautiful and incredibly practical
things about how that works daily in the home so if you're working this out for
yourself, I'd strongly encourage you to go read the article.
Andrew Kern gave me one simple tool for how this works in
the school day. It's called the "Should Question." It works like
this. Read a story together. Choose a character from the story and something
that character did. Ask this question: "Should ______ have done
______?" (Click here for a little more about the "should question.")
I started using this advice immediately. And I started
having beautiful conversations with my daughter. She was 5 at the time. And I
was asking some pretty big questions. I didn't intend to. It just happened.
Suddenly my 5 year old daughter and I were discussing world hunger and how to
help the poor (You know: Give a man a fish...). But here's the thing. I just
asked some simple questions. It was my 5 year old daughter talking it through.
I wasn't lecturing, preaching, or offering counsel. I became the mentor. I
learned to ask follow-up questions to steer the conversation. I learned to
insert small thoughts here and there. And I started learning a lot from my daughter.
Five-year-olds don't have all the baggage we adults do. Their innocent
perspectives are lovely to consider.
This is what my daughter and I now do every day. It is the heart
and soul of our education and it brings lots of joy into our relationship. Now,
when I'm pre-reading the stories she'll be reading on her own (Yes, my
6-year-old child reads well enough to read all of her school books on her own -
though I still choose to read some to her), I think of questions to ask her. I
don't necessarily think of a question for every reading and I rarely ever think
of more than one. They're not always "Should Questions" (which can be
worded more creatively as well by the way), but they're always questions which
work toward building a relationship with my daughter.
All of this was really helpful, but I still hadn't gotten
all the way to character education in the daily grind. This is where Charlotte
Mason came into my story. As I was listening to Andrew Kern, he made some
references that pointed me to go back and look at Charlotte Mason again. I then
spent the rest of the spring and summer beginning to study the many things this
brilliant woman had to say about educating and training children.
She said this:
"We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that
our aim in education is less conduct than character."
I read most of the first of Charlotte Mason's series of
books on education while on vacation with my family. This one is focused on
children through age 9. Here I found the next incredibly practical advice I
needed to hear. In this book, Miss Mason describes a number of scenarios (Clickhere to read it yourself.) and talks through how our role as a parent (or
governess, etc.) should be to continually reinforce good habits in our children
because:
"The habits of the child form the character of the
man." -Charlotte Mason
Stop and think about that. It really makes sense, doesn't
it? I'm pretty certain everyone on earth has lied at some point, but it's the
person who has a habit of lying that we label a liar.
Anyway, I said I got helpful advice. But I didn't say it was
easy advice. She describes a scene where a mother is teaching her son to shut a
door when he leaves a room. What is the mom to do? Remind him every time he
forgets to shut the door until the habit is trained in him. But she's not to be
a nag. They should be on the same team. She is always to be there as the coach
- providing helpful reminders - not angry shouts (Ahem).
"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
"What common error do people make about the formation of
habits?
They allow lapses; they train a child to "shut the door
after him" twenty times, and allow him to leave it open the twenty-first.
With what result?
That the work has to be done over again...
...How long may it
take to cure a bad habit, and form the contrary good one?
Perhaps a month or six
weeks of careful incessant treatment may be enough.
But such treatment requires
an impossible amount of care and watchfulness on the part of the educator?
Yes,
but not more than is given to the cure of any bodily disease-measles, or
scarlet fever, for example. "
Do you have any idea how convicting this is and how
hard it is for me to hear? Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am not the
type of person who will even notice that the door has been left open (or care).
If I'm training a child to shut a door, it is most likely because they're
driving their dad crazy by letting hundreds of flies into our house (that may
or not be a real scenario from this last summer). And comparing it to caring
for my sick child was not encouraging. (Do you have any idea how much I dread
caring for my sick children!?)
So I found myself contemplating all of this. How can I train
my children to have good habits when I don't even have good habits? How can I
be consistent with this every day? How do I train my children to have good
character when this whole conversation just convicts me of all the areas my
character is sadly lacking?
Four thoughts came to mind:
The first was quite simple: How can I? I can't.
From Gloria Furman in Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are
Full (If you haven't read this book yet, then you need to stop reading, drop
everything and go find a copy RIGHT NOW):
“When we acknowledge our inability to mother our children
apart from the Lord’s provision and strength, we honor God. Of course we are
not able to do this work of raising children and training them in the
instruction of the Lord. That’s why we desperately need the Lord!
And from Paul Tripp: "Like our children, we need a
patient Father who will help us to see our hearts so we can confess what is
there and reach out for the change that only he can empower. Parents who are
humbly willing to confess their need of parenting care don't resent those
moments when they are called by their Father to give the same care to their
children."
The second had to do with what Charlotte Mason said. She
emphasized that we be our child's ally: "But the little fellow has really
not much power to recollect, and the mother will have to adopt various little
devices to remind him; but of two things she will be careful––that he never
slips off without shutting the door, and that she never lets the matter be a
cause of friction between herself and the child, taking the line of his
friendly ally to help him against that bad memory of his."
Since, we're in this together, I need to remember to be on
my child's team. (So all that yelling I've been doing....? Yeah.)
The third thing brought me back to the beginning. What am I
worshiping? What are my children worshiping? We don't first have character
problems. We have worship problems that produce character problems.
And the fourth was... grace. We all need it.
St. George and the Dragon is one of the most wonderful examples of what C.S. Lewis was referring to. The power in the message of this book leaves us speechless - and I'm not just referring to the children here. "Before you climb to [that high city] and hang your shield on its wall, go down into the valley and fight the dragon you were sent to fight."
to be a really helpful resource. Don't make it complicated. Just listen to it in the car... or during a meal... or while playing...