- As you're looking at this school year,
let's talk about a balance between willpower,
making things happen, and giving yourself grace.
(gentle music)
Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast.
I'm Sonya Shafer.
You probably have your year all planned out,
all of the activities in place,
and you're going to make this happen.
Let's talk about how you can balance that idea
of powering through
with trying to reduce the friction in your home.
Joining me for this discussion is Laura Pitney.
Laura, good to have you back.
- Thanks for having me.
- As we're thinking about the year ahead,
we make a lot of plans and we get geared up
and enthusiastic for the year
but recently I read a quote that was about,
instead of trying to increase your willpower
and force things to happen, try decreasing the friction.
I think that might be a good idea
as we look to the year ahead, what are your thoughts?
- I definitely like the idea of that.
I think there's a lot of wisdom in that statement
of trying to reduce our friction in our home.
I think friction naturally happens,
whether we plan for it or not.
I just think situations and circumstances arise
in our home that maybe we didn't plan for.
So when I think about that statement
of trying to reduce friction,
I think one of the first things that comes to mind
is I've got to be aware
and be observant of my home atmosphere
so that I can take notice of those friction points.
If you're doing that then you can take the opportunity
to try to fix them.
(laughs)
- Yes, yes.
- So a lot of times I know we want to,
like you're saying, push through and have that willpower
just to make the day go good, get the things done.
But a lot of times you get more kickback I think,
than trying to resolve it in other ways.
So think about like your habits in your home,
if there's constant friction
about cleaning up after yourself after breakfast
or putting your school things away
and that's a constant friction point,
then you should stop and think
about, "What can we do to fix that or do better?"
That kind of thing.
- Yeah, and instead of saying we are going to attack this
and we're going to obliterate this wall
that we have come up against,
we can think about how can we maybe
reduce the amount of willpower that's needed to do it.
So for example, cleaning up after breakfast.
Well, maybe if we have different items for breakfast
or if we use paper plates for breakfast,
just to start the habit going.
I think of it a lot like short lessons, okay.
We want the child eventually to develop the willpower
to make himself pay attention for a long lesson,
but rather than saying right from the get go,
"You have got to pay attention for this hour-long lesson
and just willpower through it,"
we reduce the friction by saying,
let's just set up that habit of pay attention
for the whole lesson
with a short thing, with a small thing.
And once that habit's in place, then we can elongate it.
So with the dishes, maybe we're going to just get in place
the habit of clean up after breakfast,
but we're going to make the cleanup itself reduced friction,
pretty easy, like a small thing,
a short lesson if you will.
And once that habit is back in place,
then we can go ahead and elongate the chore as needed
or make it bigger as needed.
Does that make sense?
- It does, it does.
And I think the ages of your kids
really come into play with this.
It's one thing if you have littles,
usually at that point, you're really focusing on training
and just first time obedience
and having a joyful heart behind it.
And a lot of times that is,
"Do what I say," or "Don't talk,"
a lot of times that is expecting your child
just to do what you asked them to do.
And then as the kids are older,
I think that's a lot of times
when a lot more friction happens
because they are their own person
and they want to know the why behind what we're doing.
And so having good conversations about that friction point
I think is important with the older kids.
- With the younger kids
I was thinking, you can reduce the friction,
it's more up to you to do the reducing.
Where with the older ones, you're talking to them
about how they can reduce it.
- Here is the Cheerios,
I'm going to go to my room, I'll see y'all in 20 minutes.
- I remember when Karen Smith and I,
when we both had preschoolers,
she was talking to an older, wiser mom in her church
and that mom said.
"You know, some days I just grab the box of raisins
and sprinkle it on the floor and just let them go at it,
so I can go do something else."
- Sometimes that helps with the friction.
- But even with young ones,
I think some of the friction points we can reduce
is not putting demands on them when they're hangry.
- Yeah.
- You know?
- Yes.
- Making sure they've got their rest times,
making sure that they get to bed at a decent hour,
not overwhelming them with directives
when they're not ready to handle that.
- I think the flip side of that
is we need to do that for ourselves as well.
- Oh, good point.
- Am I getting enough sleep, am I eating good?
Am I allowing rest time,
I think it goes both ways
for littles and moms, especially with those friction points.
- Yeah, because how you feel physically
can be a huge friction point.
- Yeah, and the days that we don't feel good
does take the willpower.
- Yeah.
- So on those days where you don't feel good
or are having the bad time,
that is when willpower comes into play.
And I think that's important to know
about ourselves and realize about the home atmosphere.
And I think with littles, there's a lot of grace given,
as far as routine and trying to figure out
what those friction points are.
With the older kids, they have their own willpower
that they have to show up with
when they're having a bad day.
So I think there's really good life lessons for the olders,
especially when we're all trying to work
through those friction points in our home.
- And let's be clear, we're not saying
you should not have to exert any willpower at all.
- Right.
- This is part of training the will,
strengthening it, feeding it, and exercising it
as Charlotte Mason put it, that you don't overwhelm it
but you do need to give it small choices first.
It's just like exercising a muscle,
you don't start by lifting the 300 pounds.
- Yeah, which we do that all the time.
- We get up there eventually, you know,
but you start with the two pounds or the one pound.
So it's the same idea.
We are not saying, don't exert any willpower.
We're just saying, rather than blaming yourself,
"I have such lack of willpower
and I'm not forcing my way through to make this happen,"
you might want to take a look around
and see where you can reduce some friction points.
- Yeah, and I think there's wisdom
in maybe asking your husband
maybe what he sees or a close friend.
And then also if you have older teenagers,
ask their opinion about it too.
What's most frustrating about our homeschool day
or our Saturdays or whatever the situation is,
value their opinion from their perspective.
I think there's wisdom in that too.
- Yeah, especially when it comes to their schedule.
Because so much of teenager's work is done independently.
- Yeah.
- But then you also have things
you want to keep doing as a family
and maybe the schedule you laid out, is like, "Okay,
you will do your independent work from here to here,
and then we will do our family work here.
Maybe that's not working for them.
Maybe the family work is interrupting
in the middle of a lesson and they're getting frustrated.
So asking their opinion and their input
and working together to form a schedule
that will work for everyone is a good idea.
And as we're talking about planning
for the school year, be flexible.
Things are going to change, just because you say,
we're going to try this schedule,
keep the word experiment in your vocabulary, you know?
- [Laura] Yeah.
- Let's make an experiment and try this
for a couple of weeks and see how it happens.
- Yeah, I think that's a great point
because I mean, things I feel like in my experience
are always changing, as much as I like to plan and schedule,
I think even like a monthly review,
if not more frequently, but at least that often
I think is important.
When the interruptions happen
and when the friction points show themselves,
it's also beneficial to have those routines
and schedule in place
because it helps balance when things are difficult
and hard and out of routine too.
So I just feel like they compliment each other.
And I think to be aware of both sides of that is important.
- Yeah, it is, making sure, like you said,
you have those routines that actually do work for you.
I guess all of this is about finding
what fits best during this season of life.
- Yeah, and understanding that that atmosphere
of your home and the relationships
are really what helps create
a successful homeschool day or life as a family
or field trip to the zoo, that atmosphere, that culture
of your home is really what you're cultivating and growing.
- Yes, atmosphere of your home,
as well as the discipline of the good habits.
- Yep.
- And the life giving ideas
as we inspire our children to strengthen their own wills
by watching us and by listening to the living ideas
and practicing.
- Yeah, and I think that understanding
that even if we want to push through
and show that willpower, that it's balanced
with grace too for ourselves, because I think
we try to claim guilt that isn't ours
when things don't go right.
- Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
That's a good way to put it, thank you.
- You're welcome.
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