Relaxing Habits
Note to self: Habits are themselves relaxing; but if you relax them, you break them:
Acquiring a habit takes some effort, but once the habit is in place, it is rewarding because a habit is pleasant in and of itself. It’s easy to do something on auto-pilot, something that doesn’t take a lot of thought or will power. This is what mothers often forget. They forget that habits, even the good ones, are a pleasure. When the child has formed a habit, the mother thinks that continuing to act out of habit is as tedious as it was at first when the child was having to make a conscious effort to form the habit. So she admires his effort and starts to think that he deserves some relaxation from doing the habit, a sort of reward. So she lets him break the habit every now and then to give him a rest, and then he can continue on keeping the habit. What she doesn’t realize is that, after a break, he isn’t continuing on, he has to start all over, only now it’s harder because he has both habits and must make a decision each time about which one to follow. The little relaxation she thought would be a treat turns out to form a new bad habit that now has to be broken. In fact, the mother’s misguided sympathy is the one thing that makes it so hard to train children in good habits.
-Charlotte Mason
I am much more likely to give myself a break from a habit after a span of being good. And my experience testifies that this excerpt is accurate and insightful.
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
