Ep 04 | Habit: Obedience
The way Charlotte Mason talks about moms and kids and obedience can easily sound like she’s frolicking in a field of whimsical flowers with a rare sort of child. It’s tempting to lift your coffee mug to your smirking lips and remind yourself that she didn’t have children of her own.
She doesn’t really know what it’s like.
Or does she?
———
Ps. Yes, I have a cold.
Episode Notes
Continuing Education Picks
Obedience Series, Risen Motherhood
Heartfelt Discipline: Following God’s Path of Life to the Heart of Your Child, Clay Clarkson
The Habit of Obedience, A Thinking Love
“Motherhood is One Big Millstone-Avoidance Project,” Brandy Vencel
Classical Heavyweights
Hints on Child Training, H. Clay Trumbull
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Principles 3 and 4, Charlotte Mason
3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but—
4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT
The way Charlotte Mason talks about moms and kids and obedience can easily sound like she’s frolicking in a field of whimsical flowers with a rare sort of child. It’s tempting to lift your coffee mug to your smirking lips and remind yourself that she didn’t have children of her own.
She doesn’t really know what it’s like.
Or does she?
______
Sometimes, when I’m just about to give my children a command, I think of Miss Mason’s words that a mother should be able to say, “Do this,” in a calm, authoritative tone and expect obedience.
And for some reason, I immediately picture her in a field of flowers. That obedience just sounds so lovely.
Maybe you’re thinking, “But that doesn’t work in my house!” or “No one listens to me the first time!” I think the little tip she’d offer us is that we’ve allowed our kids to disobey sometimes and so now they do what’s right in their own little eyes.
Does that sound possible? Let me put it another way.
You were so busy trying to change the baby’s diaper and listen to your daughter explain what she’d do if she was a kangaroo, that when you called to your toddler to come here and she ran the other way, you let her.
Or, you asked your child to clean up the toys before dinner, and when he gave a big sigh and dragged himself into the living room, you thought, “I’m going to let that attitude go because he’s probably hungry and pretty tired from the day.”
I think you know what I’m talking about.
It’s not hard to let disobedience slide sometimes, and those little moments that seem so fleeting and so small are actually laying down habit tracks of the wrong kind. While we don’t mean to, we forget our own duty to obey God and we unintentionally let our children form their own idea of what’s right, namely whatever they want, because to go run after the three-year-old or to help a child choose a cheerful attitude is just too inconvenient.
Who knows if Miss Mason ever doled out motherhood advice in the flowered fields of Ambleside, but she did say that children who’ve disobeyed, “have succeeded in doing as they chose and not as they were bid, and they will not put their necks under the yoke again without a struggle. It is in little matters that the mother is worsted.”
Welcome my friends, to the first order of habit training: obedience.
Obedience is something we moms think about...a lot. What it looks like. How to get it. What to do when it doesn’t happen. Obedience is just the thing on the mom-brain.
Do you remember last episode when I mentioned that children are given one command in the epistles? Ephesians 6:1, children obey your parents in the Lord, for it is right. There are two things to note here; first, obedience is the whole duty of a child, and second, the motivation for obedience is because it is right.
There are a lot of different ways we go about trying to get our kids to obey. We remind them. We talk about what’ll happen when Daddy gets home. We inform them of the consequences. We persuade them. We raise our voices. We offer rewards, we repeat ourselves, and we try to sway their emotions.
We...completely miss the point.
When we try to get obedience in these ways, we’re treating obedience like it’s just something to make our lives easier. Now, any mom knows that an obedient child does make your life easier. But obedience is about what’s right in God’s world; it’s a duty to which we’re all bound. Which means for us as moms, we don’t have the right to pick and choose when or what our children obey. We’re not permitted to shift the form or function of obedience or authority based on our moods or needs. We’re bound by God to treat obedience like he does, which is what the non-mom Charlotte Mason built her argument on.
She put it plainly: “The parent will see that the motive to the child’s obedience is not the arbitrary one of, ‘do this, or that, because I have said so,’ but the motive of the apostolic injunction, ‘For it is right.’”
There are so many minor reasons for obedience that pop into our heads in the moment, but the actual reason for obedience is always that it’s right.
You see, whatever you train a child towards, you train them to. If you continually make the reason for their obedience about the comfort of others, the fear of punishment, the hope of a special reward, or something else, you shape their love and loyalty to those things.
Is it pleasing to a mom when her children obey? Obviously. God designed obedience to bring harmony to a home. However, if your child is trained to obey in order to only please you, what happens when you’re no longer their primary authority? When they want to please the cool girl? The boy they like? A mob-like audience on social media?
You’ve inadvertently trained their wills towards something other than the standard of what is right, and this is CM’s point of concern in habit training.
We know that children are born persons, but they’re also immature born persons, meaning they have very weak wills. We’ve somehow believed that children who are enslaved by their own emotions and desires—you know, the stubborn, fit-prone, will not obey ones—are strong-willed, but in reality, they’re just weak-willed. Kids struggle to order themselves towards obedience because they lack the cultivated will to do so, and this is what causes friction between parents and children.
I wasn’t raised in a Christian home, so I was a bit late to the game on how Christians talk about obedience and discipline, but from what I’ve gathered over the last six years is that obedience, generally speaking, is usually talked about with the ideas of expectation and punishment, but it’s not usually talked about with the idea of partnership.
Broadly speaking, we know we want obedience to be quick and cheerful, but when it’s not, the only offered step is various forms of discipline measures.
Miss Mason offers a bridge to moms in the midst of obedience habit training. She is by no means allowing anything other than quick and cheerful obedience. A huge chunk of volume one speaks to a mother’s God-given authority, and the importance of moms never allowing anything other than obedience in their homes. She even includes the relationships between authority and obedience in her third and fourth principles of education. This lady was not playing around. But she also understood the way of a child.
On one level, all kids share certain characteristics: they’re sinful, yes, but they also experience joy and sadness, they want to be delighted in, they’re immature, they’re relational, they’re curious, and a bunch of other things. It doesn’t matter when or where you were born; these things are true for everyone. On another level, they’re impacted by their genetics. They may be exceptionally athletic, low-energy, or bent towards anger; but there are certain traits that run in families, and you probably already know the ones shaping your kids. And lastly, each kid has their own unique quirk; it’s the things that make them them. And those faculties are under the care of parents to be trained towards what’s good instead of what’s evil.
It’s important that moms consider these three angles when working with their kids on obedience. Because a child’s will is weak, Miss Mason says that, at the beginning of habit training, they can’t be left on their own to choose between right and wrong. If you just keep saying a command to a kid, and they just keep choosing what’s wrong, you’ve done nothing other than form a habit in that child towards what’s wrong. Even if you discipline after the fact, the habit has been laid down like a train track in the child’s brain; the more often the train runs on the track, the harder it is for a kid to choose differently.
This is true if your kid is 2 or 12. Habits run deep.
When you realize it’s your job as a mom to help your kids strengthen their wills, the atmosphere of obedience training changes. For me, I’ve noticed two big shifts: one, it requires way more work on my end but that no longer surprises me. And two, it’s no longer personal for me or the child at hand; it’s just about what’s right.
Before we get to a concrete example, I want to highlight one more of Miss Mason’s observations: you never give a command that you do not intend to see done.
I’ve heard this many times, but I used to think that meant that if I said a command, I had to follow through the whole discipline routine if a child didn’t obey. And that’s true, but I think it misses part of the point. What I’m learning is that if I say a command, I need to consider if my child is actually capable of doing it, by which I mean does he have the will and the established habit track to follow it. If the formed habit is to disobey, then when I tell my child to do anything, I know that to help him complete it means I will be stopping whatever it is I’m doing in order to...help him.
I’m officially everyone’s partner-in-habits.
But it is that important. If your child can’t obey a simple, direct command, how will they ever learn to obey the larger, abstract ideals? It starts with “come here,” but we’re aiming for “love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul, and mind.”
Okay, let’s draw up an example. Imagine I say to my two-year-old, “Go put on your shoes.” I know that because of his age and personality and, unfortunately, some habits we’ve formed over the last year, he is most likely not going to go and put his shoes on immediately. So it is unloving and unhelpful for me to say the command and then walk away to do something else; it’ll just end in him disobeying and it’ll reinforce the habit of disobedience.
I’d be setting him up to fail, to sin against God. This is not small stuff here.
So, right now, when I tell him to go put on his shoes, I grab his hand cheerfully, walk with him to the door, and point out his shoes. Then I watch him put them on. When I tell him to put on his shoes, I fully expect that he will obey, because I’m fully aware that his will needs me to show him how. So I do.
And just like that, we’ve laid a single run on the right train track of obedience.
This is the bridge between giving a command and having to discipline for disobedience: it’s you wisely considering your child as a born person, thinking of how to help them, and ensuring that they are not allowed to disobey because you’re there to teach them what’s right.
Depending on your child’s needs and age, you may need to partner with them by reviewing expectations before a trying situation, offering reminders on a particular habit, creating a timetable, or allowing for natural consequences. Or, like me, it may be stop, drop, and help for the next month while you attend to your child’s habit need like a kid with the measles in 1893.
I know what you’re thinking: this requires a great deal of interruption in a mom’s life. And at the beginning of habit training, yes, yes, it does. But you won’t always be needed in such a heavy-handed way to train obedience if you’re willing to put the time and attention into strengthening your child’s will towards what’s right. It may mean getting up off the couch or pausing prepping dinner if a toddler runs away. It may mean being a few minutes late so your four-year-old can ‘try again’ and walk upstairs and downstairs the right way. It definitely means we have to wrap our heads around the fact that teaching the habit of obedience is not actually an interruption to our lives as moms, it’s foundational in the life of a mom.
Now lest you think I’m saying there are no consequences in this habit training; ha! Of course, there are. But I’m not here to dig into the specifics of discipline in your home. The only idea I want to leave you with is Miss Mason’s concern of using consequences in a way that manipulates a child into obeying. She said this type of behavior by parents meant, “there is no gradual training of a child in the habit of obedience; no gradual enlisting of his will on the side of sweet service and a free-will offering of submission to the highest law: the poor children are simply bullied into submission to the will, that is, the wilfulness, of another, not at all, ‘for it right’; only because it is convenient.” She’d argue that the manipulation of a child in any way doesn’t train a strong will towards a standard of right thinking and behavior, but instead manipulates them into the desired behavior by forming a bad habit. Like I’ve said before, you may get the right outward behavior, but you may not be cultivating a heart that loves what’s good.
Whenever possible, Miss Mason strongly encouraged moms to allow natural consequences to do their work. She uses this fun phrase “masterly inactivity,” and it might be our new favorite thing around here. Masterly inactivity is something for moms, not kids; it’s a wise, watching, waiting way of mothering. Rather than giving command after command, burdening your child with “do this” or “don’t do that,” give them a few directions which they know they must not disobey; and for the rest, let them learn even if it means risking small mishaps.
So let me just repeat: you allow small mishaps in a safe way to teach your children rather than micromanaging all the things. This isn’t inactivity, as in free time, for a mom, but a purposeful choosing to watch and wait.
Nature will teach a great many things, and I’ve noticed, while I may have to repeat myself all day long, Nature usually teaches the point in a single instance. For a totally random example that didn’t just happen over here: if you push the armchair too far from the side table and fail to launch your little body far enough when you jump from one to the other, one learns quickly not to do that again.
As we wrap up, I want to make sure that we all remember that obedience habit training is actually a wonderful thing, even if it seems like a mighty mountain at the start or like your whole day now revolves around following through on the things you say. First, habit training will become a habit for you; Yes, you will lay down your own tracks until training habits in your children becomes a pleasurable thing you just do. Second, habits are a gift from God; it means we can, through effort and respect for God’s natural law, learn to will ourselves towards what’s right. This is so encouraging! Your child can learn new habits! Life is not a tragedy, and you are not a victim of your child’s disobedience. You’re a partner in good work. And third, the habit of obedience will bear fruit in the life of your child. A strong will, ordered to what is right, is not easily swayed by trends, emotions, vice, or the like. It’s the beginning of ordering the whole person to God. This is the foundation of education.
Oh, and real quick. If you hadn’t guessed: Charlotte Mason’s hot tip on obedience training is to do it from the start. Allow only obedience and nip any disobedience in the bud as you see it. The sooner you lay the foundation, the smoother you’ll find the track. It won’t be a perfect ride, because we’re all sinners, but it will be smoother.
Okay, do you know the CM quote: Mothers work wonders once they are convinced wonders are demanded of them? It’s a beautiful quote, one of those just dying to be put on an Instagram square surrounded by flowers. It is, however, in need of its context. Right before this quote appears, Miss Mason was pretty clear that she wasn’t interested in telling mothers what was most convenient for them to do, but that she was dedicated to telling them what was best for children. Meaning, these wonders mothers are working are not effortless works just overflowing from your natural state. These are the result of a mother’s deep understanding of what God has called her to and a steady effort towards those ends. Friends, we can trust the great Habit Maker, the one who laid the tracks of his gracious work into his world. We can follow what he’s called good.
And giving our kids the gift of obedience? Well, it’s good, true, and beautiful, because it’s right.
I’ll see you guys in two weeks.
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Oh hey there. So you’re one of those who listen until the very end, which is exactly the type of listener I need for this ask. If you have a minute, would you mind leaving a rating and review of the podcast over on Apple? It’ll help new homeschool moms find The Commonplace and make it possible for them to get their bearings in the classical Charlotte Mason world. I’d be so grateful.
