Laying Down Lines of Habit

So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit. Galatians 6:9

I'm having a hard time acclimating to the year-round schooling schedule. My subconscious repetitively whispers "summer break, summer break, summer break"—which sounds suspiciously like the resonance of the surf breaking on warm sand in the early morning hours.

I desire to retrain my inner brat in this matter—and in more still—and imbue it with discipline, habit, and self-control. I'm finding that it’s easier to be consistent with school when you pack them up and drop them off every day, left for someone else to toil over their daily pedagogy. But since I'm the one providing the steam to propel this freight liner—well, quite frankly, most days it seems like I'm using an oar—I figure we could all benefit from some good old-fashioned habit formation.

So, how to form a habit is the topic of my current reading. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts from http://amblesideonline.org/CM/1_3.html">The Original Homeschooling Series, Volume 1, Part III "Habit Is Ten Natures":

Habit runs on the Lines of Nature.—But habit runs on the lines of nature: the cowardly child habitually lies that he may escape blame; the loving child has a hundred endearing habits; the good-natured child has a habit of giving; the selfish child, a habit of keeping. Habit, working thus according to nature, is simply nature in action, growing strong by exercise.

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But Habit may be a Lever.—But habit, to be the lever to lift the child, must work contrary to nature, or at any rate, independently of her.

Directly we begin to look out for the working of habit on these lines, examples crowd upon us: there are the children trained in careful habits, who never soil their clothes; those trained in reticent habits, who never speak of what is done at home, and answer indiscreet questions with 'I don't know'; there are the children brought up in courteous habits, who make way for their elders with gentle grace, and more readily for the poor woman with the basket than for the well-dressed lady; and there are children trained in grudging habits, who never offer to yield, or go, or do.

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A Mother forms her Children's Habits involuntarily.—Such habits as these, good, bad, or indifferent, are they natural to the children? No, but they are what their others have brought them up to; and as a matter of fact, there is nothing which mother cannot bring her child up to, and there is hardly a mother anywhere who has not some two or three—crotchets sometimes, principles sometimes—which her children never violate. So that it comes to this—given, a mother with liberal views on the subject of education, and she simply cannot help working her own views into her children's habits; given, on the other hand, a mother whose final question is, 'What will people say? what will people think? how will it look?' and the children grow up with habits of seeming, and not of being; they are content to appear well-dressed, well-mannered, and well-intentioned to outsiders, with very little effort after beauty, order, and goodness at home, and in each other's eyes.

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. . . it rests with parents and teachers to lay down lines of habit on which the life of the child may run henceforth with little jolting or miscarriage, and may advance in the right direction with the minimum of effort.

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