Wednesday, 09. July 2008 by Renee Ellison
A child with an undisciplined mind learns internal discipline by gobs and gobs of experiences of EXTERNAL discipline. That is to say, lots of attentive time with Mom/Dad or tutor. (Discipline here is not used in the punitive sense but rather as the ability to apply consistent, well-ordered thought to a project or line of study).
A child’s immaturity to discipline himself, i.e. do that which he would rather NOT do either mentally (with studies) or physically (with chores) might be renamed “lack of internalizing ENOUGH external experience WITH someone”...i.e. being very unsure, fearful, overwhelmed (from THEIR perspective). These children cover it up by laughter, antics, wandering thoughts, resistance, “I don’t care.”
The traditional response from parents to laziness or undiscipline in a child is anger and/or upping the TIME spent on task or upping unpleasant consequences. But all the child really needs is more attention, for a while, beyond what the parent was predicting they would need. They need more close time in a RELATIONSHIP with SOMEONE with whom they feel secure. They desperately need lots of time with an uncritical person who will splinter the task into bite-sized pieces of success for them. Sitting with the child doing EVERY problem with him for awhile, telling them WHAT to think for awhile, exposing them to how it is done over and over and OVER again…with encouragement, and patience is what will eventually diffuse his emotional resistance and feeling of overload to life. This kind of time, even for an older child who hasn’t matured as quickly as others, is what will eventually build his own stamina with his own internal discipline.
That is why it is OK for parents to do science projects WITH their children. The child has never been down that road before and doesn’t know where he is headed or how to get there. The poorly done projects of children who had no parental help nail the point. Children learn by doing, and even just by observing. They pass through the experience as a larger person, BECAUSE of the hand-holding.
When Susanna Wesley’s husband asked, “Why do you tell that child that [math principle] sixteen times?” She answered, “Because, sir, if I do not go onto the seventeenth time, when he finally gets it, I shall lose all my beginning energy.” The great surprise to parents is how MUCH focus the majority of children actually need. But the great reward down the road is that they “GET IT” thoroughly and become far more disciplined than a child who is pushed to be on his own too soon…before his own maturity kicks in.
That is why the Suzuki method of teaching music to 3-year-olds is so successful. Mom or Dad is with him in executing EVERY measure, in the beginning. Finally the child takes off like a rocket, needing no help at all!!! It is the CHILD who pushes the parent away when they are ready, not vice versa. Our modern culture leaves a child at day care (the baby dump) at an outrageously early age when the chid is still clinging to the apron strings for a REASON.
A child left to himself with a worksheet over in a corner will never become the tenaciously aggressively disciplined, confident adult that he could have been. Approching life (in its minutiae) WITH Mom and Dad or a one-on-one tutor, incident by incident, builds a VERY mature and “can-do” adult. Maturity happens when you aren’t going after the ( i.e. looking for) maturity but instead focusing upon providing a voluminous experience-base WITHIN a supportive relationship.
By the way, the marvel with the ACE homeschool curriculum is that you can sit with an older child (one who is past phonics) to just get him launched and for many it is only three days, or merely a week before “maturity” sets in!!!
Just more thoughts for your hopper!
Much love,
Renee
Wednesday, 02. July 2008 by Renee Ellison
We received the following from a mom, who wrote: “Hello, first let me just say thank you for all God is doing through you to minister to others. I have many questions, but for today I was wondering if you could help me with motivating my two boys, 9 & 11, with getting ready in the mornings before homeschooling. I try to make sure they get enough sleep and they are to get up at 7:00 during the school year and have their morning chores done by 8:15 (easy stuff - empty dishwasher or take out trash and feed the dog). I even have incentives if they’re done on time, but they still come downstairs goofing around with the dog or each other, hair nappy, crusty eyes, ugh! We’ve practiced our morning routine for years! I even have a check off chart. HELPPP! My boys get x-tra chores if they’re not done on time (pull weeds,or etc.) but they don’t care! Thank you. Weary Sheri”
Surely, this mother’s situation is not unique to her home. In hopes of encouraging other moms whose children need motivation to get through the day, this is what I shared with her:
Dear Sheri:
Your boys are fortunate to have parents who care about them! Here are some thoughts to consider:
First of all, if your boys are getting to bed early (i.e. not partying til midnight) they perhaps need more sleep. Adolescents especially need more sleep…their hormones are changing, their cells are growing to produce height and weight and they need TIME to do this reorganizing and growing. The public school routine makes allowance for none of this. Our daughter often needs 10 hours of sleep. She is easier to live with when we let her get what her body needs! But once UP, that’s a different matter.
Soooooo….we don’t run life by the get-up time but rather by the task. Once up, she has a chart with 15 minutes slots for virtually all of her schooling, practicing and domestic duties. We couldn’t care less the exact time of the day these things get done, just THAT they get done…and steadily until they ARE done. No computer, no free time, nothin til everything is checked off the list. Often this can be completely done by noon even with a later get up time. Now all that is just about gettin UP and the structure…lolligagging is another topic indeed.
In regard to not tending to business and playing with the dog and not washing face, etc., they need to be put on a SHORT LEASH. That means surveillance 24/7 by the mom for a while. Become omnipresent…like God…everywhere all the time. You do this by stopping whatever you’re doing and just cruising through their area. This is how I controlled high school basketball players twice my size when I taught English classes. I was constantly cruising between their desks. No one could be lazy or try any mischief because I would have seen the BEGINNING stages. So once they are up…
...you go stand in the hallway. And cross your arms and tap your foot. And glare at the bathroom. Put hand on your child’s shoulder and pivot him in the right direction…no words needed. You can do it all with your eyes. Children learn internal discipline over a long period of time by EXTERNAL vigilence. This seems like oceans of work for the mom in the beginning, but it means sooner TOTAL freedom. You spend a lot of time NOW, to spend almost no time later over these same areas.
Keep them on a SHORT LEASH. This means you aren’t waiting frustrated in the kitchen, you are drill sergeant in the hallway until they get to the kitchen. Take a book to read, and just stand there. If they don’t get a move on, come along behind them with a switch, then return to your book, with eyes peering over the top. Let them know you mean business. Hand on shoulder and on top of head…subduing their lazy flesh. After each accomplishment—no matter how basic—alternate exaggerated smiles and happiness: “Ohhhh, Lazarus looks so much more presentable now; I think I want him for my best friend.” Etc. Alternate fun and encouragement with “don’t mess with mom” and you’ll get the job done in a matter of days. Then you give them a little longer leash and see how they do. If they cave in, go back to the shorter leash, you get the point.
In and through it all, never lose sight of the SHORT LEASH!
Monday, 30. June 2008 by Renee Ellison
I read a superb treatise on marriage by a very wise old man on the Sabbath. He said we all go into marriage thinking we will get our needs met by the other—only to discover that the other person went into marriage hoping to get their needs met by us! We went into marriage to be takers, only to discover that God’s total design was to be made like Christ via the marriage. He designed and uses the marriage as the slow fire that burns away our dross. In other words, God put us into the supreme object lesson of how to be consummate givers, expecting nothing in return.
The verse doesn’t read “husbands tolerate your wives” or “wives tolerate your husbands” (Ephesians 5:25). That would be easy. It says, instead, to love them, to be devoted to them, praying for them, demonstrating Christ’s nature to them, exposing them to His likeness day in and day out, no matter how ornery they chose to be. Could it be that this is, in fact, why God added that additional obstacle of making a man and woman’s very wiring different—that women are more relational, and men are more career oriented—to force the issue? Will we even strive to “leap the mystery” because we desire Christ’s nature to be formed in us so desperately…hungering and thirsting for His righteousness…to be made like Him, whatever the route He designed to get us there?
Let us study our mates, apply to God for how to love them, to grow in flexibility, magnanimity, willing to die to self over and over, to be slighted, forgiving being treated badly because of what it makes of us, to even be willing to be stripped of preferences and inclinations. (Our spouse is God’s problem!!!) God after all designed marriage. We have found Him to be wise in His other designs…why not in this? If we determine to pick up the cross daily we shall be rewarded with the crown forever and ever without end. Not a bad exchange. A finite denial for an infinite glory. Let us apply ourselves to pass the test, incident by incident.
Wednesday, 04. June 2008 by Renee Ellison
If you, as a homeschooling mom, are too weary to play with your children (which may be always)!, have them play with you! Always rig up a little companion project NEXT TO YOU, even if the child does the work sloppily (because they are too young to do it better). The object is to be TOGETHER. Train your children by being WITH each other. The Lord’s sole strategy with his disciples was being WITH THEM, day in and day out, in every kind of situation. Much of life is caught, not taught. Attitudes, work habits, socialization. Job done by watchin’ mama day after day.
+ While you fold all of the laundry, have the children match socks.
+ While you do dishes, pull up a stool and have them splash in the rinse water.
+ While you paint the outside, give them a bucket of water and a clean paint brush to paint the front sidewalk.
You get the picture. Over time, they’ll end up being better workers than you could possibly imagine…but more importantly, you’ll bond, bond, bond with your children. “Love is what you’ve been through together.”
Wednesday, 04. June 2008 by Renee Ellison
Coat each leaf, (by mixin’ mixin’ mixin’, remember!?) and make the coating DELICIOUS and the salad will happily slip right down the throats of all your children. More GREENS mean fewer GHASTLY visits to the doctor’s office.
Use half of an orange, half of a lemon, 1/4 T olive oil, some dried cilantro, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and celtic salt. Add water to your mixture if your salad is huge and you need to stretch the dressing a bit. Slather it on gobs of tossed greens (include one cup of young spinach leaves), sliced cucumber and celery. Then dump a can or two of salmon on top! Presto, a quick nutritious, mostly raw lunch. (Especially quick if your greens were prewashed from the store.)
Tuesday, 03. June 2008 by Renee Ellison
“If we’re constantly thinking of the person we’re going to marry, we shouldn’t be an easy target for seduction.” {Source: Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven (Tyndale House, 2004). See his Heaven IQ Quiz online at www.heaveniq.com/books .} To overcome a besetting sin, increase your “constantly” with the Lord!
Thursday, 29. May 2008 by Renee Ellison
Raising children is “steady-at-it-exhausting-work”—there’s no getting around it. The enemy keeps saying “You’re having to do this for so long with no results”... but good results are ACCRUING, like putting investments in the bank— you’ll see it in the years to come.
The surprise to every new mother is the relentless WORK it takes. The enemy says, “You must be doing something wrong.” No, the victory is in the consistency. Every child is like a bird hitting the hard window of sin and falling to the ground. Some children get it immediately. But for others it takes YEARS of hitting that window of the parent’s constancy to get it. That is why you must keep it up, or else all your beginning work is wasted.
Discipline is punitive for the moment…a just punishment for a wayward act. But TRAINING is the preparation a mother gives BEFORE going into situations (how are we going to act in this restaurant, at this person’s house, in our own yard toward our eternal brother or sister) and the reinforcement she gives AFTER the situation…a vigilance over the conversion of the HEART in the matter for the FUTURE. Both discipline and training are needed to raise our little ones. So many mothers stop at discipline and have no idea that the other (training) exists.
Let’s take the case of a children’s mischief of smearing garden fruit-berries on a neighbor’s building. What should you do, once you discover it?
Discipline: administer it at the moment. Ask them WHAT they did (never WHY…it is, in every case, the sin nature in them) and WHAT SHOULD they have done? Make them confess it with their lips. If they can’t SAY it, you’re not there yet. You haven’t gotten to the heart.
Training: make sure that the children understand that EVERY disobedience will be costly to their OWN SELF-INTEREST. (They will end up with far more work, something denied them, burdensome consequences that shackle their life over the next several hours). This is very important, that the event stings THEM, and that their perception if not JUST that they have irritated YOU.
Immediately afterwards, find a Scripture verse that gets at the heart of WHAT was violated, and have the child write it. If they are very little, you can write it and then they just trace the letters. When a child is a wee bit older, you can write it by skipping every other line and then the child can copy it right underneath each word; older children can just copy it straight out of the Bible. Then, make the older ones memorize it and come say it to you. Or if it is a longer passage, just memorize one line, and then for the next infraction, recite two lines…etc.
Draw a picture of how your child invaded the circle of space around someone else’s domain, personhood, and property. Explain how invading that space FULLY would EVENTUALLY result in murder…a choice of “me and my wants” over “someone else’s right to exist or have property.” Always multiply the event ... what if everyone did this ...where does it LEAD? Do you want that?
Restitution: have them remove the berries with a toothbrush and water, or scrub brush. Write an “I’m sorry note.” Pay for new paint.
Emotional: go into your child’s room and say: “Now, how would you like it if I ruined something of YOURS? If I cut a big hole out of your skirt or pants?, tear up your book?” Don’t actually do it, but let them FEEL the emotion of thinking they will be violated themselves…what their neighbor will FEEL when they see it.
Talk about it later…out of the heat of the moment…when things are calm between you…that evening before bedtime. Talk about what guilt feels like for a long time afterwards. Talk about strategies for overcoming temptations to do wrong in the future.
Have them memorize and say: “Sin TAKES me further than I want to go, makes me PAY more than I wanted to pay, and makes me STAY longer than I wanted to stay.” Emphasize that all sin is spiritual leukemia. Only obedience brings blessing. Righteousness gives us a squeaky clean heart, bright eyes, and a clear conscience to carry to bed in one’s heart. A guilty heart is no way to go through life and remain happy. Bright, clear eyes are the final litmus test of whether the heart is clear or not.
Then make sure that you affirm your love to them. Communicate that the event is OVER with, forgiven; that even parents make wrong choices and have to pay for it in their hearts and lives; that we are ALL under the wing of God’s good grace; that we may be fully reinstated in the love relationship AFTER we confess it; that we ALL have the sin nature; that we are all in need of a savior. Emphasize that there is a way OUT of our every mess. There should never be a lingering coldness and rejection of your children because of some sinful deed. There is warmth within the Holy Trinity at ALL times.
Just a reminder that not all these training techniques should be used every time. They are just more tools to add to your parenting tool-box. For more tips, see No Monkey Business or better yet, our Child Training Bundle and save! http://www.homeschoolhowtos.com/store/child_training_tips_bundle/
Tuesday, 27. May 2008 by Renee Ellison
+ Watch over your most trifling faults…. He is jealous over your hidden life.
+ When you find your mind wandering from Him throughout the day, recall it quietly.
+ Abstain from any fault whenever you perceive that you are about to commit it. If you perceive the danger before committing it, beware of resisting God’s Holy Spirit, who is warning you.
+ Use your own faults for your own humiliation…to detach yourself from self-love.
/ Fenelon
Sunday, 25. May 2008 by Renee Ellison
+ God trains us in self-denial through troublesome acquaintances.
+ Bear humbly all the annoyances that arise from the many imperfections of our neighbors.
+ Sacrifice your inclinations by molding yourself to the needs of others, and loving them.
+ Absolute resignation to what God appoints around you results in patience and toleration for your neighbor’s faults.
/ from the writings of Francois Fenelon
Friday, 23. May 2008 by Renee Ellison
+ Absolute surrender to God gives deliverance from the world’s slavish maxims, treachery of friends, bitter remorse that follows sin or remorse that follows indulgences.
+ Those who give themselves unreservedly to God are always happy.
/ from the writings of Francois Fenelon
