My Little Robins

Loving and Learning in the Nest

Maybe We’ve Taken This “Teach My Kids Not To Need Me” Thing Too Far

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Earlier this evening, I helped my daughter (almost 7) clean her room. As I hung up a getting-too-small dress in her closet, an adage that I've heard dozens of times popped into my head: Don't do anything for your kids that they can do for themselves. I was uncomfortable the first time I read those words, and have been uncomfortable with them every time an older mother, as well-adjusted as her children are, tells me this. Since when do we not help each other?

In our community, there is a teen suicide every few weeks. The sadness and "if onlys" reverberate through the town until the next sad event occurs. Nearly 50% of people who participated in Cigna's loneliness index in 2018 felt lonely always or sometimes. The former surgeon general of the United States said that isolation is the most prevalent threat to health in our nation. 

This makes me wonder: are we taking this "Teach my kids not to need me" thing too far?


Our culture is slightly obsessed with the idea of independence. When I taught full time and had an infant at home, people told me how good it was for her to learn independence from me. When she got older and we decided not to put her on that big yellow bus, but to homeschool instead, the obvious concerns about her ability to be independent were written all over the furrowed brows of strangers.

But, I need people, and my children need me. This is not wrong or weak. This is human nature.

A few weeks ago, I went to the grocery store and saw a mom that I know from my MOPS group. Her child had broken a glass container, and she ran to grab paper towels and was wiping up the mess when I saw her. I went to help. She was fully capable of cleaning it up on her own, but I wanted her to know that I had been in that sticky situation too. At the same MOPS group, just a week earlier, a mom of grown children (Laurie Wildenberg) spoke to the crowd of  tired young moms, and said, "I don't want my adult children to not need me. I want them to call me when they need help.  I want them to come home for dinner and to still have a relationship with them." 

Related: Your Secret Weapon for Forming Positive Habits

Physically Independent

Is it possible to teach our children to not need us physically, but to still learn to rely on others? Yes. We were created for community. We first see our need for others, for helpers, in Genesis. "It is not good for man to be alone."

I can teach my children how to do the laundry and tie their shoes, and allow them to do these things on their own. But what if the simple act of offering to help in physical ways like these is valuable for our relationship or our child's mental health? Why do we sacrifice relationship and mental health for that little golden statue called "independence"? 


Growing Up

As my little girl hurdles closer to her seventh birthday, her responsibilities at home will increase. But when she accidentally spills the eggs that she's mixing in the bowl, I'll help her clean it up. When she can't find the pencil she needs to do her work, I'll help her find it. I want her to know that she can come to me and ask me for help as her life problems shift from missing pencils to navigating relationships or making major mistakes. In the distant future, I want her to call me up and tell me about the tough situation she's facing, not to run away and try to face something difficult entirely alone. 


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Educating the Emotions, Building Character

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When I taught third grade in a public school, I learned that many children didn’t understand their own emotions. I saw this play out every day in the classroom, and read research to support it. At a staff meeting, I learned that the majority of third-graders could only identify happy and sad emotions. Children need to be able to identify their emotions in order to deal with them properly. A child’s mental health can affect their social and cognitive development, which is why educating children about their emotions during the early years is so important.

Related: The Complete Charlotte Mason Preschool Guide

Why Teaching About Emotions is Important

When we can identify our emotions, then we know how to better deal with them. For example, some people eat out of boredom. Identifying that the feeling you’re experiencing is boredom and not physical hunger can prevent emotional eating and preserve your health.

Charlotte Mason said:

In Educating the Feelings we Modify the Character– But our feelings, as our thoughts, depend upon what we are; we feel in all things as ’tis our nature to,’ and the point to be noticed is that our feelings are educable, and that in educating the feelings we modify the character. A pressing danger of our day is that the delicate task of educating shall be exchanged for the much simpler one of blunting the feelings.”  (Parents and Children)

We all feel emotions differently, and that is in our nature.  How we handle them builds our character. It might be easier to teach children to distract themselves from uncomfortable feelings, but it’s important to teach them how to appropriately manage them.

Related: Why my Kids are Out of Control

Identifying Emotions

With young children, modeling this art of identifying our emotions is the best place to start. I often say, “I’m feeling overwhelmed. I need to go have some quiet for a little bit.” When one of my children is experiencing a strong emotions, I say, “It seems like you’re feeling overwhelmed. What are you feeling?” They begin to learn the names for different emotions that they might experience.

While reading books, we often stop and identify how the main character might be feeling. Not only does this teach them how to identify emotions, but it teaches empathy, too.

Setting Boundaries

I think the best way to teach children how to manage their emotions is to set boundaries. Forcing them to stop feeling or stop reacting only teaches them to blunt their emotions. Instead, we can give them parameters. Here are some examples:

  • It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hit. How else can you use your body when you’re angry?
  • I understand that your frustrated, but your toy did nothing wrong. How can we solve this problem together?
  • You are in a super silly mood right now! Let’s go get our wiggles out so we can sit nicely.
  • I’m so sorry that you’re feeling sad. You’re welcome to cry, but it is not going to change my decision.

Building Character

Once we understand our own emotions, how we react to them is what will build our character. Charlotte Mason said that,

The habits of the child produce the character of the man.”

Over time, how we learn to react to our emotions becomes habit. We learn to explode when we’re angry or zone out when we’re sad. OR, we learn to take a walk when we’re angry and talk about it when we’re sad. When we seem to be swimming in our children’s big emotions, we need to remember to stick with them and help them navigate through whatever it is, rather than grabbing the iPad and running to the closet (it’s tempting.)

Stoicism in the Victorian Era

What surprises me the most about the passage above is that stoicism was a dominating virtue in the Victorian Era, when Charlotte Mason lived. People were taught to not react emotionally. The Poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling is a good example of this attitude. Throughout Charlotte Mason’s volumes, we see reflections of Victorian Era stoicism. In Home Education, she urges mothers or nurses not to react when children are hurt:

A baby falls, gets a bad bump, and cries piteously. The experienced nurse does not “kiss the place to make it well,” or show any pity for the child’s trouble- that would make matters worse; the more she pities, the more the child sobs. She hastens to ‘change his thoughts’, so she says; she carries him to the window to see the horses, gives him his pet picture-book, his dearest toy, and the child pulls himself up in the middle of a sob, though he is really badly hurt.”

To me, this seems like it is “blunting the emotions,” by withholding emotional support when it is needed. When reading her volumes, I think it’s important to understand that we might see traces of stoicism, but with what we know now, sticking to the advice of “educating the emotions” is the healthiest modern approach.

Related: Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles

 

Charlotte Mason on emotion. Even though the Victorian era was marked by stoicism, she said that to educate the emotions is to build character.

I Won’t Make Christmas Magical For My Kids

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Christmas comes with the added pressure to create special, magical memories with our children. We have all sorts of schemes in place to convince children that magic exists. There are apps and elves and letter services to help children believe so they can carry the wonder of a magical Christmas with them for the rest of their lives. But my children will have none of these magical memories; I won’t make Christmas magical for my kids.

Hear me out- I’m no scrooge.

I love celebrating Christmas, both the celebration of Jesus’s birth, and the more secular idea of “Christmas spirit.” But there is so much pressure on moms today to make a Pinterest-perfect holiday. These magical memories should be the highlight of childhood, we’re told. Not only should we buy all the gifts, clean the whole house, and make the meal before getting everyone ready for Christmas Eve service, but we should get home to bake cookies for Santa, and to fake the appearance of reindeer hooves on the roof. Just the thought of it all makes me tired.

I won’t make Christmas magical because I’m too tired. 

To me, this picture of Miss H’s second Christmas is magical.

This post contains affiliate links. 

Going through all that effort to pull the wool over my kids’ eyes seems so sneaky. When I read fairy tales with my children, we talk about what is real and what isn’t. They know that animals don’t fly and that people don’t get into houses through chimneys. I value the relationship I’m building with my little ones, and creating magical Christmas memories ends in me being caught in a lie. One day, they’d realize that Dad ate Santa’s cookies and the phone calls to the North Pole were part of an elaborate, universal trick. I would be complicit.

My children are amazed by the wonders around them every single day. They see plenty of magic in the world. We’ve spent hours looking through a magnifying glass at the sharp, crystal edges of a snowflake. They once spent the good part of a morning picking cattails and hitting them against rocks to reveal the cottony wisps inside. They squeal with delight when they see a rainbow stretched from east to west. These things are magical in the eyes of a child. I don’t want to divert their attention to untrue things and say, “No actually, this is magic.”

But beyond weariness and a desire to be honest, I worry about the ideas of God that my children get from Santa. 

He sees you when you’re sleeping,

he knows when you’re awake,

he knows if you’ve been bad or good,

so be good for goodness sake.”

This is the opposite of grace. This is working hard for rewards and trying to dodge punishments.  And it’s hard for children to separate this “be good for goodness sake” idea, from obeying God out of our love for him.

Charlotte Mason very wisely said that we should be careful about the ideas of God that we present to our children-

Parents who recognize that their great work is to be done by the instrumentality of the ideas they are able to introduce into the minds of their children, will take anxious thought as to those ideas of God which are most fitting for children, and as to how those ideas may best be conveyed.” Parents and Children), page 51

 

I worry that if they get that idea of someone watching and waiting for them to “mess up,” it will be hard to erase. It took me until my late 20’s to get right ideas of God, and I want to help my children avoid that. If that means not leaving gifts from Santa under the tree on Christmas morning, I’m okay with that.

This Christmas, we will hang stockings and watch Polar Express. I’ll watch my daughter’s eyes light up on Christmas Eve as she holds a candle and sings Silent Night as loud as she can. My son is going to be so excited to rip through the wrapping paper and see what’s inside! I can almost hear the squeals of delight as we take a nighttime ride to look at Christmas lights. Our Christmas will contain plenty of magic. But I won’t make a magical Christmas for my children.

(To learn more about what Charlotte Mason said about ideas, see my mini eBook in the shop!)

I won't make #Christmas #magical for my children, because it already is.

Love and Logic Parenting in the Charlotte Mason Home

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The Charlotte Mason philosophy is full of riches for any parent. But, it is an educational philosophy, not a parenting philosophy. There are some areas that Charlotte Mason does not address, like how to handle all of those toddler temper tantrums! Finding a parenting philosophy that aligns perfectly with Charlotte Mason’s beliefs is probably close to impossible. When I taught in a Charlotte Mason school, I learned about Love and Logic parenting. This is a parenting philosophy that uses natural consequences, no lecturing, and gives children the power to make decisions.

Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting From Birth to Six Years is the book to read during your child’s early years. This has helped us tame toddler temper tantrums, and establish boundaries for our children- and for us as parents.  Parenting With Love And Logic focuses on older children, but there is value in reading it even when your children are young.

love and logic parenting

Main Ideas of Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood

Choices

Young children don’t feel like they have any control, so they’ll fight for it any way that they can. Letting them choose between two options that you’re okay with is a good way to let them have some control. You might say, “Do you want oatmeal or cereal for breakfast?” “Do you want to play outside or read a book?” The authors say that you should make sure to give options that don’t inconvenience anyone!

In the Charlotte Mason Early Learning Facebook group, someone asked a wonderful question: Doesn’t giving children choices between two different things exhaust them?

That the effort of decision is the most exhausting effort of life, has been well said from the pulpit; and if that remain true about ourselves, even when the decision is about trifling matters of going or coming, buying or not buying, it surely is not just to leave the children all the labour of an effort of will whenever they have to choose between the right and the wrong.” Home Education, page 100

But- I believe that Charlotte Mason was talking more about right an wrong here. A child shouldn’t constantly be faced with the decision between something that’s right and wrong, as this could lead to sin. Charlotte Mason also said: 

Consequences

If you do need your child to do something, but they don’t obey, they should experience consequences. The authors recommend sending a crying child to their room and staying behind the door until they calm down. Another example was temporarily taking away toys when a child doesn’t clean up after themselves. This lines up well with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, who said children should experience natural or relative consequences (both positive and negative!)

Enforceable Statements

While you can’t control other people’s behavior, you can control your own behavior. Enforceable statements replace direct commands like, “Stop crying!” with “When you’re quiet, feel free to come out of your room.” Some of these statements can sound like threats, so I’ve had to experiment with what works for us:

  • When my toddler hits me, I walk away and say, “Mommy doesn’t want to be hit by you.”
  • Or, when I’ve asked Miss H to clean her room and she doesn’t, I say, “I can clean it for you, if you want.” She knows that means I will gather everything into a basket and put it in my closet for a day or two.

Meeting Basic Needs

Meeting basic needs in the early years is mandatory for building a strong relationship with your child. As your child gets older, it’s important to strengthen the relationship through play, and paying attention to your child’s interests. Charlotte Mason wrote a lot about properly caring for children in Home Education, and stressed the importance of a positive relationship between parent and child.

 

Where it Doesn’t Align

There are a couple of things that don’t line up well. The Charlotte Mason philosophy works on improving habits, and if a negative behavior continues willfully, consequences are allowed (if natural) or applied (if relative). Love and Logic jumps right into consequences. I think that’s good sometimes (for example, scooping up a child who’s having a temper tantrum and putting them in their room), but in some cases, a child needs instruction and practice.

Some of the consequences mentioned in the book seem like shaming. There was an example of parents making the children pay for a babysitter (because they were causing lots of trouble and couldn’t go to an event) with their toys. The parents kept saying, “No, that’s not enough,” and had fun as their daughters brought them more and more toys. This seems somewhat disrespectful to a child’s personhood. 

What Works for Us

We’ve been using choices for awhile now, and it makes a huge difference in our day. I give options like, “Do you want me to put your brother in the car first, or you in the car first?” I also use enforceable statements in some cases. When I have trouble getting Miss H to eat her meal, I say things like, “Dinner is over in 10 minutes.” That feels less like bribery and more natural to me. The use of consequences (if I feel like we’ve worked on a habit or it is otherwise needed) is helpful too. I’ve noticed that it helps me feel less angry if I can just give a consequence rather than trying to lecture or punish when emotions are high.

Recently, we’ve started using this with E, who has some very strong temper tantrums! We put him in his crib when the tantrum starts, and tell him that he can come out when he’s quiet. It was amazing how quickly he picked up on this, and the 30 minute tantrums stopped almost immediately.

Do you have a parenting philosophy that you love? Tell me about it in the comments!

Moms, We Are the Home Atmosphere

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For the seven years I was a public school teacher, I spent much of the month of August preparing my classroom. I frantically painted walls, wrote names on desk tags, behavior charts, and baskets, and hung up brightly colored posters and signs. So much concern went into preparing the “best possible” learning environment, but not much effort went into preparing the learning atmosphere. At that point, I had never considered education as an atmosphere. During my first year at Ambleside School, that panicked August feeling rushed over me. But thankfully I was told, “Don’t worry too much about setting up your classroom. Spend your time praying, learning the philosophy, and preparing.” This was such a welcome relief! The ideas I put into the atmosphere, the peace that I emanated, were more important than the stuff I did. Now, I try to transfer that idea to my own home atmosphere.

When I wrote about Charlotte Mason’s 4th principle, I mentioned all of the things that we should not do to educate and discipline our children. But she said that what we should do is to view education as an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. Moms, much of the home atmosphere rests on our shoulders! I hope that this post encourages you as we set out to create a home atmosphere where children grow in character and wisdom.

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Charlotte Mason Home Atmosphere

Home Atmosphere and Home Environment

Our home environment affects the atmosphere, but “atmosphere” and “environment” are not one in the same. In the decades preceding Charlotte Mason’s work, people believed that setting up a pristine child-environment would teach them about conduct and beauty. But Charlotte Mason said that the home atmosphere is not only shaped by things, but by people and events. Through these, ideas fill the home and our children’s minds and hearts. Our physical homes, daily activities, and the words we speak teach our children what is valuable.

Education is an atmosphere–that is, the child breathes the atmosphere emanating from his parents; that of the ideas which rule their own lives” School Education, page 247

We are the home atmosphere.

Yes, the atmosphere strongly relies on us, Mamas. This is an idea that struck me as I read a Parent’s Review article by M.F. Jerrold:

There are many important aspects of home-life from first training to highest education; but there is nothing in the way of direct teaching that will ever have so wide and lasting an effect as the atmosphere of home. And the gravest thought concerning this is that in this instance there is nothing to learn and nothing to teach: the atmosphere emanates from ourselves–literally is ourselves; our children live in it and breathe it, and what we are is thus incorporated into them. There is no pretense here or possibility of evasion; we may deceive ourselves: in the long run, we never deceive our children. The spirit of home lives, and, what is more, is accentuated in them.” Volume 8, number 12, 1897.

I hope this idea doesn’t fall on you like a weight. There is already so much pressure on moms today, but maybe the pressure is firmly pressed in the wrong place. Instead of worrying about what activities to keep our children busy with, maybe we should instead worry about creating a home atmosphere that they want to be in. Let’s ignore the pressure to fabricate a picture-perfect childhood for our children, and instead teach them responsibility and give them ideas that will inspire them to grow in maturity and love.

Creating a positive home atmosphere has more to do with who we are than what we do.

If we want to teach our children to love Jesus, we fill our homes with hymns and prayer and Bible reading time. To teach children generosity, we drop change in the bucket and give without hesitation. For children to learn gentleness, we need to watch our tone and our reactions in situations that aren’t ideal. This learning atmosphere is created by how we go about our real lives, day in and day out.

Changing our Mom Habits

If we spew anger into the atmosphere with harsh words and outbursts, how do we shift to an atmosphere of gentleness and peace? Or how do we show our children delight in learning when we mostly take delight in our cell phones? How do we change our habits? This is a tough one! We focus on how to help our children form positive habits, but how do we form them ourselves? I think the process is somewhat the same as it is with children, but the challenge is that we are both the initiators and overseers of our own habits. Here’s what I think we need-

A friendly ally.

Maybe you are your own friendly ally- preparing the environment to help yourself succeed. This might be reminders written around the house, or physically changing things that cause problems in the home. Maybe keeping a journal helps you to hold yourself accountable. A friendly ally could be a real friend that you can meet with regularly to discuss how you are doing on your journey. There is also a Facebook group called Charlotte Mason Moms- Habit Training Ourselves that is a great place to seek out support and encouragement!

Inspiration.

We can inspire our children by putting them in the way of words of wisdom and beauty, and this is no different for ourselves.  Seek the wisdom of others.  Recently I was inspired to make some changes in our home after taking the eCourse Create an Atmosphere Where Children Thrive. (You can read more of my thoughts about it here.)

Another great resource is this free eBook from Simply Charlotte Mason, called Education Is.

Not JUST an Atmosphere

I think it’s important to note that education is not just an atmosphere.

Charlotte Mason said:

Meantime, we sometimes err, I think, in taking a part for the whole, and a part of a part for the whole of that part. Of the three clauses of our definition, that which declares that ‘education is an atmosphere’ pleases us most, perhaps, because it is the most inviting to the laissez aller principle of human nature.” School Education, page 148

Education is also a discipline and a life. Establishing a positive home atmosphere will not constitute an entire education, but it will be a part of the complete, beautiful process of learning.

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