Considering how to help a person to direct himself in a way that will bear good fruit.
In meditating on Principle 16, we explored the idea of "moral and intellectual self-management" as an end of a child's education. In other words, the objective of ultimate autonomy (not radical isolated autonomy, like someone in an Ayn Rand book, but autonomy in the sense of not needing your parents to tell you what to do all the time) as realized through the development of the moral imagination. If a person can imagine, in a given situation, what both right and wrong responses might look like, with their consequences, then he is better equipped to choose, for himself, the right way to respond. Again, this is really the large "why" behind a Charlotte Mason education for anybody. For a Catholic, the way to understand this is to understand the development of the moral imagination as a component in the development of a well-formed conscience.
As we all know, however, knowing the right thing to do and doing it are two different things. You can't do the right thing if you can't imagine what it is, but you won't do the right thing unless you decide that that's what you're going to do, then follow your decision with right action. That's the substance of Principle 17: discerning the difference between what you want to do and what's actually the right thing to do, and making yourself do it.
Here's what Charlotte Mason actually says:
The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to distinguish between 'I want' and 'I will.' (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may 'will' again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character, It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.) source
Let's unpack this a little. First of all, obviously, it's a development of the large idea of "self-management." It's the beginning of an answer to the question: Of what does self-management consist? On a basic level, self-management consists of self-awareness, which is to say, knowing your own impulses and, furthermore, knowing that they are impulses and that you can choose not to be ruled by them.
Some of this just naturally happens with maturity. A toddler is all impulse, and there's not much you can do about that, other than (as Charlotte Mason notes, actually) to redirect, on a very basic level. Helping a toddler, in fact, to eventual mastery over his own impulses – his continual I want – involves redirection first of all. You're not going to reason him out of wanting a particular toy, or the blue cup instead of the green one, or to go outside barefoot in the snow. The best you can do in the moment is to distract him before he gets too entrenched in whatever it is he's decided that he wants. Redirect his attention, preferably before the tantrum starts (sometimes not possible, I know, but you can try!).
The other thing you can do is to give him words for what's happening. "You were really upset a little while ago. You wanted X." Anybody who's ever had a toddler knows you won't get far with processing something in the middle of a tantrum, but even a really little child can be encouraged to reflect later on what happened, and to think about things like that in specific words: I wanted X, BUT . . .
The other thing you can do is to give him words for what's happening. "You were really upset a little while ago. You wanted X." Anybody who's ever had a toddler knows you won't get far with processing something in the middle of a tantrum, but even a really little child can be encouraged to reflect later on what happened, and to think about things like that in specific words: I wanted X, BUT . . .
You probably won't, for a long time, really habituate a very small child to impulse control. That's just a developmental fact. Boys may persist longer than girls in being very impulse-driven, which is one reason why statistically they, more than girls, tend to get expelled from preschool and referred for special education. You can, however, begin to inculcate the habit of redirection from the beginning – though it's probably not going to get thoroughly internalized for a long, long time – and introduce the language of want vs. will.
Even if you didn't introduce all this with your toddlers, though – even if, say, you have a fourth grader who's suddenly at home with you all the time, thanks to Covid – it's not too late to begin to establish these habits. Regardless of the age of your child, the best thing you can do is to model them yourself in some visible and explicit way. For example, you're in the store. You've gone there to buy milk and eggs and meat for dinner, and there's just enough money in the budget today for the milk and eggs and meat and maybe some produce. On the "whatever" aisle – if you shop at Aldi, you'll know what I mean by the "whatever" aisle, the aisle where in addition to groceries you might, on any given day, find a bird feeder, or a camping hammock, or a bath mat, or a clock, or a pair of shoes – you see, say, a DRESS in a color you really like, in a soft and comfy knit, at a price you could afford if you just ate eggs for dinner instead of buying the meat and produce. Again, if you shop at Aldi, this is a possibility, and in fact, I do own such a dress, bought on the "whatever" aisle around Christmas a couple of years ago. At the time, I totally surrendered to impulse and bought the dress, partly because I could, and partly because I didn't have any children with me at the time. In other words, nobody whose opinion I cared about was there to see me make this impulse purchase.
But what might I have done if I had had children with me? I might have said, "Wow, I like that dress," in which case at least one of my children would have been sure to say, "Well, then, why don't you buy it?" In which case I might have said, "I really want to. I love the color. It's just the kind of thing I like. But it's not what I came in here to buy today, and it's really not in the budget. I want it, but I'm going to say no to it today, because I'm going to buy the milk, eggs, meat, and produce instead."
But what might I have done if I had had children with me? I might have said, "Wow, I like that dress," in which case at least one of my children would have been sure to say, "Well, then, why don't you buy it?" In which case I might have said, "I really want to. I love the color. It's just the kind of thing I like. But it's not what I came in here to buy today, and it's really not in the budget. I want it, but I'm going to say no to it today, because I'm going to buy the milk, eggs, meat, and produce instead."
Mind you, none of this really happened, except that I did see a dress I liked on the "whatever" aisle at Aldi. Again, I bought it, and nobody really questioned me about it, and I still wear it, so in the final analysis, I'm not sorry I bought it. I also had enough money at the time that I didn't have to choose between a dress and dinner. But I might, had the scenario been a little different, have modeled for my children the difference between "I want" and "I will," in such a way that I didn't communicate any shame about wanting something – because it's not wrong to want things; that's not the point – but simply that something else was the right thing to do at that moment, and that I had the power to choose to do that right thing. What's more, I had the power to want the right thing more than I wanted the other thing – a thing which was not wrong or bad, just less right than the really right thing.
Whether or not we shop at Aldi, it's important that we do this kind of thing in our daily lives, one way or another. It's no good to impose impulse control on our children when we don't demonstrate any ourselves. All our talk about habits and want and will becomes so much wind if it's not something we're willing to live by as adults, and our children will see right through it. What they will learn is that while being a child stinks, because you don't get what you want, all you have to do is wait it out until you grow up, at which time the world magically and automatically becomes your red velvet cake.
I hope I don't have to observe that this lesson is the antithesis of "moral and intellectual self-management." If we want our children to aspire to that level of self-management, then we have to live it ourselves – in their line of vision, anyway, and as a reasonable principle that doesn't necessarily always and everywhere forbid you from treating yourself, or deny you the very things you do want. It does seem to me that just as a successful diet, for example, has to be a sustainable way to eat over the course of your life, so the Way of the Will has to be a sustainable way. As Charlotte Mason notes, often enough the way to accomplish what you need to accomplish is to allow yourself a little diversion or recreation, then return to your necessary task with renewed vigor and determination. I think it's also worth saying that most of the time, the choice isn't between a bad thing and a good thing – the things of this world, being made by God, are essentially good. The trick really is in being able to see what, among many competing goods, is the best and most desirable good under the circumstances – the thing most likely to culminate in knowledge of and closeness to God.
This leads to that last part: that "suggestion" is stultifying, that "spontaneity is a condition of development," and that "human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success." What does all that mean?
I think it means that our children, as born persons, have free will, and that discipline, as a way to ultimate self-management, can't and shouldn't endeavor to take that away from them. To cajole or bribe or punish might get you the results you want right now: the child either does or doesn't do what you want him to do or not do. But has he actually learned to manage himself? Or has he simply learned a series of responses to positive or negative stimuli? Absent those stimuli – as on the first day of college, after you have gone home – left to his own devices, will he know what to do? Or will he be lost without the external stimuli which your discipline has been providing at every turn, relieving him of the freedom and responsibility of making his own choices?
In other words, behavioral micromanagement may work in the short term, but in the long term, Charlotte Mason suggests, it stunts his moral growth. This does stand to reason. Any muscle you don't use will atrophy. If, because you're afraid he'll fall and get hurt, you don't let your baby try to walk, then he won't learn to walk at all. You've protected him in the short term, but in the long term, you've inflicted actual damage and disability. So, I believe, it goes in the moral life. A child needs to exercise his capacity for making moral decisions – even if he sometimes makes the wrong ones. Of course, the more he comes to know that wrong decisions can result in disastrous consequences, the more likely it is that better decisions will appeal to him – but sometimes the only way to learn, so that the lesson sticks, is to mess up – or to experience, at close range, someone else's messing up.
This, incidentally, is the why behind all the literature we read. This is the why behind literature that often showcases the worst of human nature, as well as the best. To feed somebody a diet of all heroism and virtue isn't bad, but it is incomplete. The best way to experience the disastrous consequences of sin – pride, envy, wrath, and all the rest – is to experience them imaginatively, through literature. This is how you know not only what it looks like to be good, but what it looks like to be bad, and to set a chain of destructive events in motion which you are unable to stop, even if you wanted to. It's important to know this kind of experience: not merely to be warned about it, as in a parental lecture, but to enter into it imaginatively, so that you understand in your soul what it is that sin looks like, and what sin does not only to the sinner, but often enough to the people around him, including those whom he loves. When we talk about "intellectual and moral self-management," we're talking about an exercise of free will that entails being able to imagine those consequences and empowered by that imaginative knowledge, choose something else.
Ultimately, though, the upshot is that we do have a will, and that – as our tradition teaches us – it is free. We have the power to make choices, right or wrong. This is what sets us apart, as humans, from anything else in God's creation, besides the angels. It's both a tremendous gift and an awesome responsibility. The Way of the Will involves both knowing what the choices are – our impulse vs. what's right – and habituating ourselves to act on the latter.
This, incidentally, is the why behind all the literature we read. This is the why behind literature that often showcases the worst of human nature, as well as the best. To feed somebody a diet of all heroism and virtue isn't bad, but it is incomplete. The best way to experience the disastrous consequences of sin – pride, envy, wrath, and all the rest – is to experience them imaginatively, through literature. This is how you know not only what it looks like to be good, but what it looks like to be bad, and to set a chain of destructive events in motion which you are unable to stop, even if you wanted to. It's important to know this kind of experience: not merely to be warned about it, as in a parental lecture, but to enter into it imaginatively, so that you understand in your soul what it is that sin looks like, and what sin does not only to the sinner, but often enough to the people around him, including those whom he loves. When we talk about "intellectual and moral self-management," we're talking about an exercise of free will that entails being able to imagine those consequences and empowered by that imaginative knowledge, choose something else.
Ultimately, though, the upshot is that we do have a will, and that – as our tradition teaches us – it is free. We have the power to make choices, right or wrong. This is what sets us apart, as humans, from anything else in God's creation, besides the angels. It's both a tremendous gift and an awesome responsibility. The Way of the Will involves both knowing what the choices are – our impulse vs. what's right – and habituating ourselves to act on the latter.
As Catholics, of course we know that when we fail, in situations where our culpability is clear (i.e., we knew what was right, and we made a deliberate and conscious decision not to do it), God's mercy and grace are available to us in the Sacrament of Confession, and I would always urge my children old enough to do so to make frequent use of that Sacrament. I would NEVER make someone go to Confession as part of a punishment for a transgression, as in, "You were disobedient, and disobeying your parents is a sin, so get in the car, you're going to Confession." God is not a stick we whack our kids with, and to do so is to stunt their moral development in much the same way that micromanaging their behavior does. But this is really what I would add to that notion of failure as part of human growth: that God wants to wipe the slate clean, that He wants you to go out and choose to do right, with renewed purpose and the grace to choose more rightly next time. THAT is where the most profound growth happens, in the grace of the sacrament. As parents, I think we truly can't improve on that basic model. What God extends to us in Confession, we should endeavor to extend to our children, so that they can grow into people who both know right from wrong and – at least most of the time, and when it really matters – choose rightly.
More:
What the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about free will – which again is very much what this Principle is talking about
ALSO:
James Clear's blog is a great source of ideas for how to make yourself more productive, which is to say, how to make yourself choose the Way of the Will to accomplish what you need to accomplish in your day. I've used the Anthony Trollope strategy particularly to get writing done on deadline. He's also written a good deal about habits and how to establish them, about motivation and overcoming procrastination. His articles are written with adults in mind, not children, but the principles are applicable to just about anyone, and are relevant, I think, in the context of a Charlotte Mason education, because they do get beneath the skin of how to accomplish things she talks about.