Charlotte Mason’s first ten principles cover a lot of ground. In a few sentences, she covers the nature of a person, the role and limitations of authority in education, and the tools of education that respect personhood. She asserts that children are not sacs to be filled, but have living minds. They cannot be produced…
In the previous post in this series, I addressed a lie prevalent in our culture: that knowledge is only valuable to us as far as we are able to make use of it. If you weren’t convinced, just consider the messages our culture sends: A mother who ‘just’ wants to stay at home is wasting…
‘Mom, where are my socks?’‘I can’t find my t-shirt.’‘Where did my screwdriver go?’‘Mommy, drink?’I always thought my mom’s ability to know the location of every missing item in our house was a superpower. Now that I have my own husband and kids, I know that’s not quite right. It’s not a superpower as much as…
Sometimes, I find motherhood is a bit mind-numbing. Maybe it’s particularly related to having young children: there is a lot of repetition. Repeating instructions, repeating tasks, repeating stories, repeating games. It is a special sort of exhaustion. It is hard to do the same thing, over and over again. It’s little wonder that when the…
If there is one false impression I took from the enormous stack of Christian marriage books that I read during my engagement, it’s that getting married puts you on the fast track to sanctification – and there is nothing else you need to do. Becoming more Christlike will happen as you and your spouse learn…
I am approaching my sixth year of motherhood, and if there is one thing that I’ve learned, it’s to recognize the rub of sanctification in my heart. I sit down with a book and a cup of tea, the toddler down for a nap, my eldest decides he needs three knots tied in a piece…
What do we do with the ideas we have been given through Charlotte Mason’s principles 1-4? We can accept that we were born – and still are – persons, that we are on a long journey of sanctification and that our character is still a work in progress. We feel the pull of both authority…
Most of us are familiar with the idea of self-care. “Mom, you need to take care of yourself. Set apart some me-time. Go out for coffee. Get a manicure. Eat a snack so that you don’t get hangry. Sleep when the baby sleeps (lovely idea, until you have more than one).” The underlying idea says,…
Throughout high school and university, I acquired more than enough ‘leadership experience’ to fill a resume. After all, teachers, professors, and counselors touted leadership as essential to any future success. But despite this emphasis on leading others, I did not find stepping into the leadership role of ‘motherhood’ natural. Before children, I worked with groups…
I concluded in the last post that as moms, we need to rise to the challenge of continuing our own education. Mother culture, loosely defined, is time we spend seeking out and taking in those ideas, usually through reading living books. But like most living things, our minds need a direction to grow in. If…