An impromptu nature study... These cloud formations are called 'undulatus asperatus' and since it isn't known what causes them, they should serve as a reminder of how finite our knowledge of His creation actually is. They were remarkable to behold. 

 Obedience.

It's the one commandment that the Lord specifically lays out for children. We want our children to be obedient for a multitude of reasons, the most important of which is that if they learn now to put themselves under subjection to authority as children, the struggle to do so as an adult will be much easier and the Lord will find in them useful servants in His kingdom.

Much has been said on the topic. And I've read a great deal of it since I learned just under a decade ago that it was ok to ask my children to obey. Some of it has been good and some of it has been burdensome to me. It's so easy to fail enforcing obedience, more so when you simply can't follow through due to illness or caring for a string of babies.  It all almost seems like a bit of strategy is required where we have to recognize our highs and lows then are completely consistent during the highs and can ride the wave of fruit that comes of that during our lows. Too bad it's not always so easy to recognize when the lows will be coming. And it's so easy to be consumed by the ensuing guilt when they do.

I just don't know that you can write a "how-to" manual on such a topic when each and every child is an individual and responds so differently to various discipline techniques and training methods to enforce your word.  To ignore that ignores the unique personalities the Lord created them with, a risk I don't know if I want to take just because it's popular in our circles. 

I have one child with whom I've come to feel like a Pushmepullyou, the imaginary animal from Dr. Doolittle's tale that has an independently willed head at each end. And the firmer I become, the more stubborn and rigid the child becomes. I've gotten to the point where I feel like that "first-time obedience" isn't a light burden or easy yoke and that there can be very little love and grace in it. And I worry that in that rigidity, either one or both of us will break. All this talk of habits and I see so clearly the rut our relationship is driving in and I know that it is because I demand an obedience that isn't given and it angers me. And the rut is deep and I am trying to get out of it, difficult as it is and I pray that the Lord has completely blinded this one to my hard heart.

With another, to even-handidly discipline for disobedience would crush him, while with a sister of his nothing short of physically restraining her would bring her  under subjection. Our youngest  can barely handle a firm, "No-no" and it yields such crying and tears that it takes several many minutes after she calms down before she can stop hitching. And another obeys best when we suggest substitute words or behaviors to them, even if it needs to be done repeatedly.

I suppose I mention all these thoughts on this before I continue because I would hope that you will use discernment in rearing your children, recognize the gravity of helping your children fulfill the Lord's charge to them, and, although there is much food for thought, not overwhelm or burden yourself by anything you might read here or elsewhere outside of the word of God.


{Obedience}

All that has been already said about the cultivation of habit applies with the greatest possible force to each of these habits... first, and infinitely the most important, is the habit of obedience.

Obedience is the whole duty of the child- every other duty of the child is fulfilled as a matter of obedience to his parents- obedience is the whole duty of man

(The parent) is the appointed agent to train the child up to the intelligent obedience of the self-compelling, law-abiding human being, he will see that he has no right to forego the obedience of this child, and that every act of disobedience in the child is a direct condemnation of the parent

The motive of the child's obedience is not the arbitrary on of, 'Do this, or that, because I have said so,' but the motive of the apostolic injunction, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."

The mother has no more sacred duty than that of training her infant to instant obedience

And may I interject to say that speaking from personal experience how much easier it is to begin with your children while they are young! Study your babies, learn what they respond to, and then diligently train them.

There is no need to rate the child, or threaten him, or use any manner of violence, because the parent is invested with authority which the child intuitively recognizes. It is enough to say, 'Do this,' in a quiet, authoritative tone, and expect it to be done.

I saw it said in another way, "Talking with quiet confidence will always beat screaming with obvious insecurity." That really resonates with me for I've seen the fruitlessness of the latter.

Reading these words and I find myself wanting to dig in my heels over my Pushmepullyou child, do better, be firmer... I know foolishness is bound up in that heart and I don't want them doing what is right in their own eyes. Needing to go back and read my own advice. 

Let (the children) discover that they can do otherwise than obey, and a woeful struggle begins, which commonly ends in the children doing that which is right in their own eyes.

It is astonishing how clever the child is in finding ways of evading the spirit while he observes the letter

Yes it is.

To avoid these displays of willfulness,  the mother will insist from the first on an obedience which is prompt, cheerful, and lasting- save for lapses of memory on the child's part. Tardy, unwilling, occasional obedience is hardly worth the having.

When he is old enough, take the child into confidence; let him know what a noble thing it is to be able to make himself do, in a minute, and brightly, the very thing he would rather not do.

(The parent) must never give a command which they do not intend to see carried out to the full. And they must not lay upon their children burdens, grievous to be borne, of command heaped upon command.

The children who are trained to perfect obedience may be trusted with a good deal of liberty: they receive a few directions which they know they must not disobey; and for the rest, they are left to learn how to direct their own actions, even at the cost of some small mishaps; and are not pestered with a perpetual fire of 'Do this,' and 'Don't do that!'

{Truthfulness}

The vice of lying arises from three causes; carelessness in ascertaining the truth, carelessness in stating the truth, and a deliberate intention to deceive. Of the three kinds of lying, it is only, as a matter of fact, the third which is severely visited upon the child; the first and the second he is allowed in... on matters of such slight importance that the mother is apt to let them pass as the 'children's chatter'; but, indeed every such lapse is damaging to the child's sense of truth.

The mother who trains her child to strict accuracy of statement of statement about things small and great fortifies him against temptations to the grosser forms of lying; he will not readily color a tale to his own advantage, suppress facts, equivocate, when the statement of the simple fact has become a binding habit, and when he has not been allowed to form the contrary vicious habit of playing fast and loose with words.

{Temper vs. Tendency}

Do we call this "Nature vs. Nurture?"

Parents must correct tendency by new habit of temper- It is by force of habit that a tendency becomes a temper; and it rests with the mother to hinder the formation of ill tempers, to force that of good tempers. Nor is it difficult to do this while the child's countenance is as an open book to his mother, and she reads the thoughts of his heart before he is aware of them himself. Remembering that every envious, murmuring, discontented thought leaves a track in the very substance of the child's brain for such thoughts to run in again and again- that  this track, this rut, so to speak, is ever widening and deepening with the traffic in ugly thoughts- the mother's care is to hinder at the outset the formation of any such track. She sees into her child's soul- sees the evil temper in the act of rising: now is her opportunity.

Let her change the child's thoughts before ever the bad temper has had time to develop into conscious feeling, much less act; take him out of doors, send him to fetch or carry, tell him to show him something of interest- in a word, give him something else to think about; but all in a natural way, and without letting the child perceive that he is being treated.

The root of the evil is, not that these people were born sullen, or peevish, or envious- that might  have been mended; but that they were permitted to grow up in these dispositions... it rests with the parents to correct the original twist, all the more so if it is from them the child gets it  and to send their child into the world blest with an even, happy temper, inclined to make the best of things, to look on the bright side, to impute the best and kindest motives to others, and to make no extravagant claims on his own account- fertile source of ugly tempers. And this because the child is born with no more than certain tendencies. 

Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series