Cultivating Character: It Takes Time

One of the benefits of having my children home with me is that it affords the time to train them. These early years are times of heavy character training.  Charlotte Mason writes about how laying down the rails of good habits that will make for smooth days ahead… That is so true. Obedience, patience, self-control, responsibility, attentiveness, honor, cooperation etc will help them so much throughout the rest of their lives.

But I’ve found that the busier I am running to and from activities, the fewer opportunities we have  for character development.

Why?

…because character training takes TIME. When opportunities arise, we need to be ready and willing to make time for it.

I firmly believe in doing this, but sometimes it is often easier spoken of than lived out…

Case in point: last Friday morning.

It started better than the average morning. Lesson plans had been reviewed the night before. I had a plan and was ready for the day. After a sweet time with the Lord that morning, I was confident, excited and expectant. It was going to be a wonderful, peaceful day. I just knew it!

After reading a few books about bakers and baking during our Circle Time, we embarked on our KONOS activity of having the kids design their own baker’s hats. I was freshly inspired on the importance of discovery learning and warned of the time it might take, but I still found myself painfully trying to refrain from telling them how to do it and instead encourage my children to figure it out on their own.

This is what my oldest (detail oriented,perfectionist) thought of the activity:

Lessons in patience for me and a discussion on perseverance for him.

Next up on the docket was donning the newly created hats (that still ended up with more of mommy’s help than I had hoped) and making cookies.

...with 3 very eager cooks.

...who were having a hard time being patient and waiting turns to participate.

Our curriculum is character based and the trait we’ve been focusing on for the last two months has been patience.

This was a huge exercise in patience for everyone – myself included. (Have I mentioned that by this point we were almost an hour into the baking process and still didn’t have the dough quite ready?

What was taking so long, you might ask?

X - “It’s my turn now.” “No, Keegan, put that down.” {followed by shrieks}

K – {jaw clenched and fist holding tightly to the measuring spoon}

T - :wailing: “No. Me next, me next.”

…and so on and so forth.

I’m starting to wonder where my wonderful day is going when I realize that we need to step back and pow-wow. We huddle in the living room and review the character trait we are working on. I ask them how they might exhibit patience in this situation. We brainstorm, pray and head back to the cookie dough making process all a lot calmer.

By this time it is almost 11.

After lunch and a couple of cookies everyone heads up for rest time/naps. I just sit and wonder about my day. Doubts creep in about the time ‘wasted’ baking cookies and making hats that will be thrown out the next week when the math book and spelling words were untouched for the day.

My neat and tidy plans for the day were turned upside down. Before I let discouragement drag me down too far, the Lord reminded me that these important and often impromptu lessons in character are vital and deserve recognition as an accomplishment for the day, even if some of my other lesson plans don’t get completed.

They learned the importance of perseverance, patience and cooperation. They learned that we all need God’s help in our day to day activities and to cry out for His help.  Even mommy. And then they experienced the benefits of His direction in our day.

…and all of this took TIME. Thankfully, it was time I had to give.