Habit Training for Ourselves and Our Children – Part I

Habits. When I think about them I usually am reminded of all the things I do that I don’t want to do and of course there are all the things that I want to do that I don’t do,  like exercise (groan), eating less sweets and saying positive things to those around me.

But I have also seen the benefit of good habits in my life.  Habits that were instilled in me as a child. They are such a part of me that I don’t have to think, I just do.  It requires no mental effort on my part because they are so engrained in my brain to do such and such. We all have those kinds of habits. If we had to think about everything we did and how to go about completing it, how wearisome that would be! So let’s be thankful for the good habits we do have.

Charlotte Mason realized the importance of habits.  She felt that habits, once engrained in a person, was stronger than 10 natures. What she meant by this was that no matter the nature of a child or its “bent” whether they were stubborn, selfish or forgetful, if you helped them form a habit and keep it, it would become stronger than any nature the child was born with.

Think about it for a moment.  What do you do that is so engrained in you that you cannot imagine not doing it?  Brushing your teeth? Flossing? Changing your bed sheets once a week? Exercising?

Now can you think of someone who does not have this habit?  Someone who would like to but just never seems to be able to get it together?

The reason we cannot get it together is because we have followed a different action for so long that our brain has developed pathways and according to this article  “while parts of those worn-in pathways can weaken without use, they never go away.”  And it is for this reason that you must guard yourself when forming a new habit.  You must never slip, not even once, or you’ve lost all the ground you had started to gain and you start falling back into those old pathways and therefore into the bad habit.

Then on the other hand everybody has habits that they don’t have to think twice about and it makes their lives simpler because there is no effort in the doing of them. And I’m thankful for that.  I’m thankful for the habits that were instilled in me as a child (well, okay, not ALL of them) because if some of these habits were not there, I would be overwhelmed with things I needed to learn.

But there are habits I have that I would like to change.

There are habits I would like to have that I don’t.  And the same goes for my children. There are habits I would like to form in them for their schooldays, their relationships, their health, etc.  But how do I go about it?

That, my friend, we’ll discuss in Part II.

What habits are you thankful for or what habits would you like to change?