It's Just Practicing Habits

"Habits are to life as rails are to a train." -Charlotte Mason

Our children attend a half day, Charlotte Mason model school that works in cooperation with home school families.  Seeing what and how they are learning in school makes me wish I could go back and get my education again--"do-over, please!"

For Jude & Kate, school is simply about learning and practicing new habits each and every day.  Everything is a habit and everything is simply learned through practicing.  There are character habits...

These are the character habits they are practicing at school:

OBEDIENCE |THINKING | CONCENTRATING | THOUGHTFULNESS

GOOD MANNERS | REMEMBERING | ALERTNESS | FORTITUDE

THOROUGHNESS | ATTENTION | TRUTHFULNESS | SELF DISCIPLINE | SELF CONTROL

And then there are academic habits, like learning to read, to do math, to study art, to comprehend...etc...

But this isn't a blog post to plug Poiema School or Charlotte Mason, though I do love both!  This is a blog post to talk about how this concept of habit forming has been changing the way I think.

Jude reads his card to his 95 year old great grandfather

It's Hard Work to Get Good At Something
I watch my seven-year-old struggle with his math homework. He's pretty good at adding and subtracting, but as soon as we put multiple columns and stack more than two numbers together, his brain freezes.  He knows 10 + 10 and he knows 20+5, but when you put 10+10+5 in front of him, he gets noticeably anxious.  It looks big and scary to him.

Should it scare him?  No.  It's simple, right?

But he hasn't mastered the simplicity of it yet.  Something hasn't clicked in his brain.  And in order for it to click, we need to practice those kinds of problems over and over again.  It's okay when he gets the answer wrong.  Dan and I don't make him feel stupid--because he's not.  He just needs more practice.  It's okay if he reaches a breaking point where his head hurts and he needs to take a break from it.  Take a break, but let's come back to it and keep trying.

Jude struggles to do math.  He struggles to read.  But he won't always struggle in this way.  One day he will look at 10+10+5 and, without even needing to think, know the answer is 25.  One day, he will read without having to sound out every word.  He will write like I am writing now...without thought for "how do I spell that?" or "how is that letter formed?"

I think Jude has a natural propensity toward rhythm and drumming.  Since he was a baby he has been drumming perfect beats to music.  What then shall we do?  Not give him drum lessons and say, "You don't need them, honey.  No one needs to teach you, because God has given you a gift."  Not have him practice?  "You don't need to practice, Jude.  This is the way you were born."  No...even the natural God-given gifts need practice to become good habits.  And...aren't practicing and learning great habits in and of themselves?

I think sometimes we look at healthy people and say, "They're just naturally healthy."  Or we see our own abilities and say, "That comes naturally to me, so I don't need to spend time on that."

Habits don't come "naturally"--even if people say they're a "natural" at something.  Everything requires practice.

Kate and her friend practice their letters

How Can I Adopt Habits of Health?
A habit is a propensity to respond to a given situation in a certain way.  The more deeply ingrained a habit, the more consistent the response.  Because it's habitual, I don't need to think about the response.  It happens automatically, because a neuromuscular habit has been formed in my brain.

For 20 years, I had some really terrible habits of health.

• I ate a lot of junk food and developed a love for it.
• I overate constantly
• I ate in secrecy, in darkness
• I hid wrappers so no one would know how much I ate (I lied)
• I finished every meal with a dessert
• I sat in front of the TV and stuffed my face
• I ate in the car--cramming cheeseburgers and french fries down the hatch in 5 minutes flat
• I didn't do any activity and spent my days sitting
• I got very little sleep, staying up as late as I could for "me time" and hitting the snooze for an hour every dreaded morning
• I didn't manage my stress and habitually had panic attacks

So, the last two years, I've set out to learn new habits.  And for awhile it was AWESOME because those habits were producing results I wanted to see in my life.  But when the results were no long enough motivation, the tenacity of those habits became strained.  The rails that my train had been running on hit a "switch" and I started running down some old familiar tracks again.

Did you know that when a habit is formed it actually changes the gray matter in your brain?

The more you repeat an activity, the network of brain cells (neurons) that work together to perform that activity fire more frequently and easily the next time.  Hebb's law.  Brain cells that fire together are wired together.  So, the more often I repeat an activity, the easier that activity becomes.  If I do something once (eat ice cream OR walk away from the dessert table), the neutrons want to do it a second time.  If I do it again, then it's easier to do it the third time.  We are in the process of getting a new brain every time we learn something.

Huh.  I didn't know that. I learned that through Charlotte Mason and Bill & Maryellen St. Cyr with Ambleside Schools International.

So, is it normal to think that I would return to old habits?  Yes.

In the past, I would have called this FAILURE.

But what IS failure?

I just need to get back on the right track.  And I can do that, because I've laid good track in the past, and I can lay good track again.  I just need to go back to PRACTICING the habits I want in my life.  The more I practice them, the easier they become.

I was told years ago that I have a "Compulsive Eating Disorder."  I found that helpful, when I wanted to find an explanation for why I ate so much.  But it didn't serve me when it came to wanting to change.

As Bill St. Cyr points out, "If I frame the poor behavior as a habit, then there is something I can do about it.  But if I frame is as a medical diagnosis or a disorder, then I am stuck.  I become a victim of my neurobiology.  We may have a brain that isn’t well-tooled for healthy habits, but if we practice habits…we can retrain our brain."

So, I will not lose heart.  I will be like the second grader learning to read.  I won't go stomping off angry and saying, "I can't do this!  I TOLD you I can't do this!  I will always be fat." (Well...some days I might!)

I will preserve.  I will do the homework assigned to me, even if it means I miss out on playtime.  I will struggle through it with the support of people who love me and can encourage me to keep going.  I will not speak poorly of myself and tell myself that I am stupid (or made-to-be-fat)--because I am not.

I will practice!

I will practice...

• Eating 6 small, healthy meals a day
• Drinking water
• Getting activity into my day
• Going to bed in time to get 8 hours of sleep
• Saying "no" so I am not overwhelmed and overly stressed
• Breathing
• Love

When I look at it this way, it doesn't matter how long it takes me to make these habits stick...I know I can keep practicing them and valuing their importance in my life.

For more information on "What is A Habit" by Bill St. Cyr--here is his 8 minute video: