When I was a graduate teaching assistant, I had to be observed by a senior faculty member each semester. One of my first observers left me with a lasting piece of advice. “You have lots of great stuff to give them – great ideas and information,” he said gently, “but you need to let them do more of the work. That might mean you have to settle for less good ideas. But they will learn more.”

I’ve reflected on that often, and I find myself mulling it once again as I conclude my first year of homeschooling. I suffer from a very strong case of “Do it myself” that continually lurks in the wings and threatens to short-circuit learning on the part of my young students the minute my guard is down. It’s not that I step in and do the math worksheets, or give the answers to spelling questions, or do the handwriting exercises. It’s more of an impatience that surfaces in other ways: picking up messes I didn’t make, straightening a bed sloppily made, feeding the dog rather than calling the child to do it, giving verbal correction without the supporting backbone of discipline.

All of this falls under the heading of directing character development. I’m not sure why it is, but the things I care most about, I’m very ambivalent about taking a purposeful approach with. (It’s the same with teaching my daughter to play the piano. I really don’t want to blow any potential love for music… so I don’t push her at all. We’ve had maybe 3 lessons in a year.) When it comes to character, I’m not always sure how to shape and educate my children. They both have wonderful minds and a natural sweetness and generosity, but they can also be self-centered. They can be prideful about what they know, or can do well. They like to help out when it’s their idea, but not so much when asked by someone else. 

In short, they’re human beings. 

So how do I address these “heart issues” without labeling them or nagging them or guaranteeing years of therapy for OMI (Overbearing Mother Issues) later in life? How do I “let them do the work” and be shaped by it? What follows is a loose, baggy monster of a post consolidating some of my answers to that question… and I’m hoping for more good suggestions and feedback! (Edited to add: It’s a given that modelling is the most powerful teaching. These are attempts to think through the ways I might make a more conscious effort in addition to that.)

House Rules:

I keep a simple framework of five house rules, and refer to them often so that we envision our life together in these terms:

1. In our house we share and that’s that. (Leave it in your room if you don’t want to share it.)
2. Keep your hands to yourself.
3. Respect each other. (We have lots of discussions about what this means in different contexts.)
4. Have good manners at the table. [I've found it necessary to spell these out separately... :-)]
5. Do your chores. (Chores are spelled out separately.)

Biblical Training:

As a Christian, another way to let them do the work is to acquaint them with the biblical source of my view of people, arming them to think about it. It’s hard to imagine a greater respect for human life than is modelled in this story of an infinite God becoming one of his creatures. Not only that, but he becomes a servant, washing the feet of his disciples. Respect, humility, and helpfulness are all primary here. So are the fruits of the Spirit listed in the Bible: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

However, the Christian life was never intended to be lived from the outside in; it’s not a system of ethics and rules that you can implement on your own. I’ve heard other mothers complain that their children aren’t kind enough to each other, a problem they address with lectures. But kindness, and the other fruits, are by-products of a genuine and growing relationship with God. This means I need to be very careful not to give my children the impression that it works the other way around by setting up the rewards and punishments according to their successful performance of a set of “religious” rules. That would be the worst thing I could do for them, and would set them up not just for a self-righteous mode of living, but a lifetime of doubt and uncertainty about what they themselves believe. Faith, if it’s real, is activated through choice; it isn’t superimposed from without. It’s theirs, not mine.

To me this means that my biblical instruction has to confine itself to the limited goal of informing them, and then leaving them free to recognize their own fallenness, free to feel sorrow or need without defensiveness, free to choose. I need to keep the context of rule-bound behavior as simple and spacious as possible. For me that means sticking to the 5 house rules.

Good Books:

I can “let them do the work” better if I have a clear vision of what “the work” is. I’m not very good at reading self-help books, but they can really clarify the issues. My ever-so-brief bibliography of parenting books needs expansion, so this is basically a call for suggestions. So far my favorite ones are:

• Boundaries With Kids, a very practical treatise on taking the long view of a child’s character. (Here’s a link to my review of this book.) 
• The Well-Trained Mind, a book outlining a classical method of homeschooling but one that includes lots of helpful and realistic information about children’s development. It’s more a book for my educator persona than my motherly one, but these days they can be hard to separate.
• Shepherding a Child’s Heart. It’s been awhile since I read this book, but it’s one I have mixed feelings about. I appreciated its focus on the heart rather than just its outward manifestation in behavior, as well as its exposition of the ways we can go off-track disciplining our kids and end up aiming for control instead. But I disliked the discussion of spanking. It seemed complicated, impractical, and in some ways worrisome (parents reiterating that they get their authority from God every time they administer punishment, for instance).

Lavish Praise:

Last but not least, if I want my kids to repeat their best impulses till they become a habit, I need to offer lavish praise when they rise to the occasion. Letting them do the work means valuing their efforts as they are. “Let me see those hands!” exclaims my mother-in-law whenever one of my daughters helps. “Those are helping hands!!” I’ve been struck lately by how easy it is to miss such opportunities due to:

• Perfectionism, with its grudging, snobby attitude toward elevating effort over result. Their character isn’t being formed as much in their grasp of math concepts, or their sense of the sweep of human history, or their love for reading, as in their eager use of those helping hands. It really doesn’t matter as much that the bed be wrinkle-free as that they make it without being asked and without complaining.
• Impatience; often the best moments are small and easy to miss. Last night I was vacuuming. I was in a hurry to get it done while supper was in the oven, but just as I was about to switch on the cleaner, my 4-year-old said authoritatively, “Mommy, I have something to say to you.” I looked up, and I’m sure “what now” and “hurry up” were written all over my face. “Mommy, I’m thankful you clean this place up,” she said, spreading her arms to encompass the whole house. Wow. I almost missed that little explosion of encouragement from a sweet heart. More importantly, I almost missed my chance to reinforce it with a hug and a smile.
• Forgetting their uniqueness. A friend reminded me recently that our greatest giftedness often lies in those areas that frustrate others while we’re growing up. I joke with my daughter about Templeton in Charlotte’s Web when I look under bed that provides safe haven for so many things that should be thrown away… But she who leaves an endless trail of drawings, of saddles and bridles made out of everything from pipe cleaners to playdough to yarn to discarded (and hoarded) toilet paper tubes, is surely destined to be a creator of something big!  I catch myself so often shushing my other daughter, who speaks with such boldness and animation and effervescence to strangers, and who simply cannot be awake and be silent, but she is surely destined to be a great communicator, a great channel between people. I need to let them be.

I’m thankful for the good advice of a faculty observer years ago whose insight reaches far beyond the bounds of a freshman comp class, and into the very different world of my household incubator of minds and hearts. As I look back over this post, I see that “letting them” is one part of the equation — letting them be themselves, letting them fail, letting them know what’s expected of them — and ”do the work” is the other part — household chores, trial and error in relating, thinking and searching for truth. Maybe the better image of them is not containers to be “instilled” with character, but tumbling rivers that flow between the guiding banks of their parents on the way to a much larger and more complex sea of human life.