Replacing Old Habits With New Ones

I have a son who, when he started school a few years ago, was very diligent in completing his work.  Regretfully, somewhere along the way those good habits have been replaced by bad habits. 

He has a very negative outlook on his schoolwork.  If he’s told he needs to complete the days work that day he’ll say, "Well I’ll be here till 11 o’clock.  What should take him about 4 1/2 hours to complete will take him 10.  No, I’m not kidding here.  Just last night he was up till 11 p.m.  I’ve seen him spend 6 hours on one math lesson.  He has no complaints on any of the books he needs to read.  It’s just when he’s required to make effort that he stalls and procrastinates.  In case you’re wondering, he doesn’t care for written narration which I have him do once per week and only require 5 sentences.

I was encouraged and challenged by these words of Charlotte Mason written in School Education pg.39-40. 

"Children must Stand or Fall by their own Efforts.––In another way, more within our present control, we do not let children alone enough in their work. We prod them continually and do not let them stand or fall by their own efforts. One of the features, and one of the disastrous features, of modern society, is that, in our laziness, we depend upon prodders and encourage a vast system of prodding. We are prodded to our social duties, to our charitable duties, and to our religious duties. If we pay a subscription to a charity, we expect the secretary to prod us when it becomes due. If we attend a meeting, do we often do so of our own spontaneous will, or because somebody asks us to go and reminds us half a dozen times of the day and the hour? Perhaps it is a result of the hurry of the age that there is a curious division of labour, and society falls into those who prod and those who are prodded. Not that anybody prods in all directions, nor that anybody else offers himself entirely as a pincushion. It is more true, perhaps, to say that we all prod, and that we are all prodded. Now, an occasional prick is stimulating and wholesome, but the vis inertiae of human nature is such that we would rather lean up against a wall of spikes than not lean at all. What we must guard against in the training of children is the danger of their getting into the habit of being prodded to every duty and every effort. Our whole system of school policy is largely a system of prods. Marks, prizes, exhibitions, are all prods; and a system of prodding is apt to obscure the meaning of must and ought for the boy or girl who gets into the habit of mental and moral lolling up against his prods.

 It would be better for boys and girls to suffer the consequences of not doing their work, now and then, than to do it because they are so urged and prodded on all hands they have no volition in the matter. The more we are prodded the lazier we get, and the less capable of the effort of will which should carry us to, and nearly carry us through, our tasks."

 In another book I’m reading on the Charlotte Mason method they write:

"Seeing that behavior stems from the heart, educators need not take on the role of a behaviorist, modifying and conditioning pupils to act accordingly through elaborate systems of rewards and punishments.  There is another way, the way to the heart."

Education is a Discipline 

The key to supplanting the weakness of will in forming character is the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully, both of mind and body.  To a great degree education is the formation of habits, while trusting divine grace.

I’m really trying to help my son firm up this weakness in his character. I trust that this habit can be broken and replaced with a much better one.  I quote the following to him quite a bit.

I must be patient and in due season he (and I) will reap.   I can hardly wait!