In every session of Charlotte Mason Boot Camp, we spend time reflecting on the importance of how we relate to our children in the second half of childhood. The default in our culture is to manipulate. Do I want my child to do his chores? I set up a sticker chart and have him earn rewards for doing them. We are very inspired by behaviorism. It’s a throwback to Pavlov’s dogs where stimulus can train the dog to give the response we want. Children in this view (though we rarely admit it) are sophisticated dogs, and with the right stimulus, we get what we’re looking for.
We could easily get distracted at this point by the idea of rewards. Surely everyone works for rewards of some sort. Let’s degenerate into a debate about what kinds of rewards are appropriate. Or let’s spend time explaining exceptions where some kids had sticker charts and still turned out okay.
Let’s not.
I’m more interested in getting a bigger view, a bird’s eye view. When we are training a child how to behave, what are we actually doing? We are teaching him ethics, a form of moral philosophy. Ideally, we are not just teaching a child how to act; we are also teaching him why he is obligated to act in such a way.
We are teaching him his duty.
In a manipulative, behaviorist system, the why is ignored. It is enough that I want the child to do whatever it is I want him to do. I may have selected the behavior because I believe it is the right way for him to act, or I fear the consequences if he does the wrong thing, or I may simply find it convenient to me that he act in such a way. The point is that I get him to do it with the least amount of resistance.
As I get to know the child, I discover the chinks in his character and what makes him tick. I figure out how to get him to do what I want. One child may respond to threats, another to praise. One child may respond to rewards, another to taking things away. All I have to do is put on the pressure in the way that resonates with the deficiencies in the child’s character and I should get the behavior I’m looking for.
In the third chapter of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue, he discusses moral philosophy. He takes the aerial view in precisely the way I prefer and looks at human relationships. What is the essence of moral dealing with another human being?
[T]he difference between a human relationship uninformed by morality and one so informed is precisely the difference between one in which each person treats the other primarily as means to his or her ends and one in which each treats the other as an end. (p. 23)
MacIntyre tells us exactly what this looks like:
[T]o treat someone else as a means is to seek to make him or her an instrument of my purposes by adducing whatever influences or considerations will in fact be effective on this or that occasion. (p. 24)
Does that sound familiar? Hmmm.
Is it possible that manipulating my children (to get good, even Christian, behaviors out of them) is a symptom of a larger problem of viewing my children as an extension of myself? That, consequently, I feel my child ought to accomplish my goals, my will out in the world? That, ultimately, I view my child as something less than human? As a means to my ends?
If we view children as ends in themselves — if the goal is not for them to show well at church or do what I personally want them to do, but rather to grow up and become mature humans in their own right — then everything Charlotte Mason writes about giving children freedom (with accountability, of course), about letting them choose (even when that choice results in uncomfortable consequences for both them as well as us), makes sense.
MacIntyre describes it this way:
To treat someone as an end is to offer them what I take to be good reasons for acting in one way rather than another but to leave it to them to evaluate those reasons. (p. 23)
This is a description of how to properly relate in an adult-to-adult relationship. It’s not a description of training up a child. It does, however, illuminate why Miss Mason believed it important to allow children to fail. It’s not just that the children will learn from their mistakes (they will), but that when children have the freedom to fail there is a larger context, a human context. We are relating to them as humans and not as means to our personal ends.
As mothers, we teach the children directly. We train them in what we expect. We anticipate their great success in meeting these expectations. But also, we are ready to walk them through their failures. We are even ready to bring consequences when necessary (not as a form of manipulation, but as a faithful teacher of reality).
Why?
Because my child isn’t actually a piece of my heart walking around outside of my body. That type of sentimentality is disrespectful to his humanity, though (I speak from experience) it can be so easy to fall into. My child is himself, growing more so by the day. Any time I spend manipulating him, I am actually spending undermining his growth as a person. Much better to expend my energies teaching him what is right, catechizing him into the faith, training him in how to do whatever tasks he needs equipping for, and holding him accountable for the results.
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