Home Education
Training and Educating Children Under Nine
Pg. 2 & 3
Mother's Owe a 'Thinking Love' to their Children. --
"The mother is qualified," says Pestalozzi, "and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; ... and what is demanded of her is --- a thinking love... God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided -- how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall the be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education."
We are waking up to our duties, and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession -- that is, with the diligence regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours.
That the mother may know what she is about, may come thoroughly furnished to her work, she should have something more than a hearsay acquaintance with the theory of education, and with those conditions of the child's nature upon which such theory rests.
Read this passage and more here on Ambleside Online.
I know for myself, personally, I have allowed myself to get far too lax in my own personal schedule. There's many reasons for this, but I think sometimes we get into a rut and find ourselves slipping. I often reflected and wondered why I could efficiently run a store and employees under me in my professional life, but then found so much difficulty when I came home trying to run a household?
I wasn't treating my children like they were in training, I suppose. I wasn't acting as their Governor in that my responsibility is personal as well. I should have a bedtime, a wake up time, & a regularity that they can depend on and become accustomed to living in. I myself have never been great at consistency. I was only as consistent as I was at work because there was already a system set up for me, I knew exactly what was expected of me.
"That the mother may know what she is about..."
Perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I did not realize until now digging into education and trying to discover what I am about and what this education is about that I have had my eyes opened. Charlotte's words sometimes seem harsh, but I find so much comfort in them because it is the direction I have long desired.
And I read this and asked myself, What is a 'thinking love' exactly? Is it the fact that we should love them so much that we consider these things? That we consider the role we play as a mother and owe them an education that we have carefully considered?
What is your take on it? I'd love to know.
God Bless,
Julie
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