[00:00:00] Sonya Shafer: Character is formed by habits. Setting up these habits and encouraging these habits in our children’s lives as they’re going through our homeschool years together. It sets them up for success in life.

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[00:00:22] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for the Demme Learning Show, and I am so excited to welcome Sonya Shafer back to talk more about Charlotte Mason, to talk more about living books, and to focus today our activities on having a conversation about what an amazing outgrowth this kind of educational process is for teenagers, how it gets them to be independent and really to develop that lifelong love of learning that we want our kids to have. Sonya, I’m going to let you introduce yourself, and then we’ll get to the meat of our conversation.

[00:01:06] Sonya: It’s great to be back with you, Gretchen. I have four kids, and they are all grown. My youngest is 28 now, up to 36, and we homeschooled them all the way through with the Charlotte Mason Method, and now we are having too much fun with Simply Charlotte Mason, our company that’s designed to minister to others who are using this same approach.

[00:01:36] Gretchen: Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you, and I think we addressed this in our last conversation, but I want to come back to it again in case someone’s listening to us and they didn’t hear part one. That is why Charlotte Mason? What was attractive to you about her philosophy that made you want to use that philosophy with your children and then go so far as to develop a curricula around that?

[00:02:07] Sonya: There were several things. How much time do we have today? We could–

[00:02:10] Gretchen: As long as you want.

[00:02:11] Sonya: Oh, cool.

[00:02:13] Gretchen: [laughs]

[00:02:13] Sonya: [laughs] Well, one thing that attracted me was her use of what we call living books, more literary-style books rather than textbooks. Because when I thought back on my own life, I remembered it was the living books that I remembered and that had shaped how I thought about life. I didn’t remember the textbooks other than as a point of trauma, but [chuckles] it was the living books that had affected me, and so I was very intrigued by her idea of using that type of book to learn about history, geography, Bible, literature, and science. That was interesting to me. Another thing was she viewed the whole person. When we talk about education–

[00:03:05] Gretchen: She was so far ahead of her time. Viewing children as people.

[00:03:11] Sonya: Yes

[00:03:12] Gretchen: It was remarkable.

[00:03:12] Sonya: That was revolutionary in her time because that was the era of Charles Dickens, and just memorise and recite, or you’re going to get hit. Viewing this child as a whole person, and that we are educating and shaping who this person will become. She had a good emphasis on habits as well, and that was a big thing, helping to instil good habits that would smooth the way for that child as they go through life and, in the meantime, made our house run smoother too. That was a win-win situation.

Then another thing was that it was such a broad and generous education because it included, yes, the living books, but it also included art and music and Shakespeare and poetry and some guy named Plutarch that I’d never heard of before and handcrafts and just such a wide variety. That really appealed to me also because I knew that, I’m going to assume you’re in the same boat as I am, my four kids are not cookie cutters. They are all different from each other and different from me in many ways.

We have similarities, of course, but they’re each their own person, and so by offering this wide variety of studies, each one can take what really appeals to them and what they are ready for at the time as they are going through life. [crosstalk] It was a variety of stuff.

[00:04:54] Gretchen: When you say that, I think it’s really important for us as parents to recognise– Where I got in trouble parenting was where I made the assumption that one would respond the way their sibling responded, and it was really only in retrospect that I was like, “Well, that didn’t work.”

[00:05:19] Sonya: I know. I’ll tell you what, the Lord gave me a little correction, gentle, loving correction in that respect because I got through my first three and I was doing good. We were clear up to the age of eight, and this was going well. We’ve got this parenting thing figured out. We’re good with this. Then he gives me a special needs child, and that’s when it’s like, no, just because it worked with one doesn’t mean it’s going to work with all of them in the same way. Yes, there are principles that remain the same, but you’ve got to respect each child as an individual person. Yes.

[00:06:04] Gretchen: I think one of the hardest things is when they notice those differences and they are maybe troubled or, “Oh, he’s really smart, and I’m not smart like that.” That was dialogue that we had to be very sensitive to and to sort of interrupt before it could take root. I loved the way that Charlotte Mason talked about thinking of the whole child and teaching to that child’s strengths instead of identifying where they were weak, which I think that in and of itself was revolutionary as an educator.

I can’t imagine. I would just love to sit on a park bench with her for an hour to figure out, not necessarily how she developed her philosophy because we understand that well. I want to know what it was like to have that philosophy in an environment where she was espousing points of view that society didn’t hold at that point.

[00:07:23] Sonya: Yes. She got a lot of pushback. She had to hold her ground. Even in the group that she formed, the association of parents that said they agreed with her philosophy, there would be a lot of push and pull within there because what one person thinks they’re agreeing with, they might actually have little nuances and tweaks to it that, “No, we can’t go that far in this area. We have to come back here.” It was a very fluid dynamic conversation, and it was hard for her to, I’ll say, toe the line, but that sounds more harsh than it was.

She was a very gracious person, and what I love most is that she had a sense of humour, and you’ve got to keep a sense of humour as you go through these different things, as you go through life, no matter if you’re a parent, if you’re a teacher, if you’re a business owner, all of those things, she had a sense of humour.

[00:08:27] Gretchen: Tell me a little bit more about that. Where did you see the sense of humour come through that made it compelling for you to pursue this kind of an educational experience?

[00:08:42] Sonya: I didn’t learn about her sense of humour until after I had started using her methods, and we were enjoying how well they worked in our family. We were making progress, and that made me very curious about Charlotte as a person, and so I got ahold of her– There are a couple of biographies today. The one that was available back then was the one by Essex Cholmondeley called The Story of Charlotte Mason. We sell that one on our website at Simply Charlotte Mason, if you’re curious about it.

In there, it’s like her girl Friday, her right-hand person who was by her side for so many of these years, just revealed her sense of humour as part of the story as you go through her life and gave examples of it. As one example, it’s British sense of humour, all right? Very subtle. She has a wonderful saying, “No one is made up of just one fault. Everyone is much more than all of his faults.” Then the author said, “And then she would get a twinkle in her eye and say, ‘But personally, I find it easier to put up with someone’s faults than with their virtues.'”

[00:10:08] Gretchen: Love that.

[laughter]

[00:10:12] Sonya: It’s just little, little jabs, and you can find them in her original writings too, her six-volume set. If you’re reading in there, you can tell she’s being a little, not sarcastic, but poking a little fun at this, or she’ll say something as like, “Oh, yes, right, you know.” By the way, if you’re ever searching through her volumes and using some AI assistant for doing the research, they don’t get her sense of humor. That–

[00:10:42] Gretchen: That’s funny that you should say that because we have a mission here. We’ve been tasked to figure out a little bit of AI, and sometimes it really is helpful. I will admit I never start there, but I do like to end there. I had some questions this morning, so I asked it a couple of questions, and I’m sitting here arguing with it, going, “That’s not her philosophy. You’re wrong.” [laughs]

[00:11:13] Sonya: Yes. I don’t think it’s figured humor out for one thing, but all those nuances and things. You can read it in her 6-volume set if you’re looking between the lines, if you know that one of her favorite magazines was Punch.

[00:11:30] Gretchen: Oh, [chuckles] really?

[00:11:32] Sonya: Now, that was a satire British magazine, way back in the Victorian era. You never think of it. You envision her sitting there reading Sir Walter Scott, which was another favorite author. She loved Walter Scott and would go through his volumes, his novels on a rotation basis, just always had a Scott novel going. You think of her as reading that meaty stuff, but she also liked Punch.

[00:12:01] Gretchen: That’s so fascinating.

[00:12:02] Sonya: [crosstalk] Oh, here’s another one of hers.

[00:12:03] Gretchen: I’m just trying to envision that.

[00:12:05] Sonya: She would ask her student teachers who lived with her in this big house where they were training; she would ask them, “What is the most important thing to have in a house?” They would offer different ideas. Then she would get a little grin, and she would say, “I think space.” Think about that in light of the Victorian architecture, how it was little rooms and doors. Anyway, all of that to say, yes, she had a sense of humor.

[00:12:39] Gretchen: Oh my goodness. When you and your husband decided to home-educate your children from the very get-go, which is very different from my experience. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the homeschool-

[00:12:53] Sonya: [crosstalk] Oh, so was I.

[00:12:55] Gretchen: -experience. I didn’t want to do it [laughs].

[00:12:56] Sonya: [crosstalk] I wasn’t going to homeschool. No. My husband talked me into it. We have that in common.

[00:13:02] Gretchen: My husband said, “You have at that, and let me know how it goes.’ It took him about–

[00:13:08] Sonya: [crosstalk] I’ll support you. I’ll cheer you on.

[00:13:09] Gretchen: [crosstalk] It took him about three years to get on board with it. Did you look at a variety of different curricula and this was compelling to you, or was this– Did you know from the get-go this is where you were going to go?

[00:13:29] Sonya: I did not know from the get-go. I had not ever heard of Charlotte Mason, and I got a teaching degree at college.

[00:13:38] Gretchen: Had never heard of Charlotte Mason?

[00:13:40] Sonya: Never heard of Charlotte Mason. Most-

[00:13:42] Gretchen: [crosstalk] Interesting.

[00:13:42] Sonya: -people I talk to today who have teaching degrees have never been told about Charlotte Mason’s approach. That’s not uncommon. With that, all I knew about at that point then was you could either do the textbooks or you could do unit studies. Those were about the only two approaches that I was informed of. Then when I went to my first homeschool convention, someone gave a workshop and said, “Okay, there’s a couple other things you could do. You can do a classical approach, you can do an unschooling approach, and you can do a Charlotte Mason approach.”

Then she just gave a paragraph or two about each of those. What she said about Charlotte Mason, that’s what started my curiosity. Then I just went and found as many books as I could about it to read more and learn more, and said, “Yes, let’s go.” I didn’t know of any curriculum that followed it, not a set curriculum. We just pretty much made it up as we went along.

[00:14:47] Gretchen: Then you all decided that you would create Simply Charlotte Mason as well.

[00:14:53] Sonya: Yes. It was, more and more people were asking me questions about Charlotte Mason as I got a little farther ahead in the journey, and they were coming in, you know how that goes. You ask the people who are a little bit ahead of you. Some of them were wanting to know what I had used with my kids. I would take the stuff that I had used and made up with my kids, and we made that available to other people.

Even as we were doing that, I was continuing to learn more and more about Charlotte Mason because, at that point then, the digital archives became available where you could see her actual lesson outlines, her programs, and read her parents’ review articles and things like this behind the scenes that we had never had access to before. That helped us fine-tune and expand. It’s been a process, but it’s always: we either publish what we used with our kids or what we wish we had had to use with our kids.

[00:16:04] Gretchen: Yes, absolutely. I ask you specifically today to give me some insight into the questions we didn’t get to the last time around. Where would you like to begin with those questions? Because they were all fascinating to me.

[00:16:25] Sonya: They were very good, yes. I’m looking at the list here. A few of them had to do with helping an older student. A lot of people think of Charlotte Mason as just for little kids.

[00:16:42] Gretchen: Yes.

[00:16:43] Sonya: It is full-blown all the way through 12th grade and beyond. I think we talked last time how it becomes a lifestyle. You just keep doing it. I think a lot of parents who bail out of the Charlotte Mason method partway through are missing out on the harvest because what you’re doing in those younger grades is planting the seeds. You are preparing the ground and planting the seeds, and everything builds on top of those foundational years. If you bail out in the middle of it, you’re not going to see the results as much of what you were working on those first few years.

[00:17:33] Gretchen: It is like filling a cup with an eyedropper. It takes time. You have to have a degree of patience. The overflow is really remarkable. I know with your kids, each one of them chose to pursue their high school pursuits differently. I think I remember you saying this when we were in Richmond together two years ago. Tell me a little bit about that, because it gave you the confidence to allow them to pursue what would be beneficial for them.

I think there’s a lot of parents who feel from a homeschool perspective, we have to orchestrate everything; otherwise, it’s a reflection on us. We don’t, but you have to have a degree of longevity in the process to recognize that you don’t have to orchestrate everything.

[00:18:36] Sonya: I think there’s a balance there. When high school comes, you can’t swing all the way to just let the kid decide everything because if they did, half of the kids or three-fourths of the kids would never study algebra or go beyond algebra, you know? You have to, I think; I would agree with what you said there. The main key is knowing what are the non-negotiables. Some things you’ve got to do, whether it’s legally, I’ve got to do this. You just have to do this study because it’s required.

Or, in preparation for what does the student want to go on to study after high school, there may be certain– If further education is required for that, there will be certain admission requirements. You’ve got to take all of that into consideration, as well as then what is the student really interested in and what is their personal bent, as you mentioned. It’s a teamwork. It’s in the younger years, it’s you are leading the way; you’re guiding them; you are setting the courses to study, as you should but with the Charlotte Mason method, they’re all allowed to give their personal thoughts about all of those studies as they go, in a respectful way, of course.

That’s a habit we work on. Then as they get into those, especially in the older years, I’m going to say 7th and up maybe, or 9th and up, definitely 9th and up, now you’re starting to shift from more of a “I’m leading the way, and you’re following me,” more to a, “Okay, let’s do this together, and we will go together in that direction.” To make that transition, it’s not always smooth, but to make that transition, we start sitting down when we’re doing our planning, and we say, “Okay, these are the non-negotiables. These we have to do. Let’s say, where do you want to head? Where do you want to be? Where do you see yourself in five years?”

Maybe you have no clue at this point. That’s fine. Then let’s lay out a plan that will allow you to go in a variety of directions when you do decide what direction you want to go. We don’t want to close any of those doors yet, but we need to get their input so that it is, “Okay, I respect that you want to go that direction. Let me help you get there.” Together we’re going to research what’s it going to take to get there, and we’re going to lay out these are the things that need to be done, that need to happen in order to get you where you want to be.

Then I’m just going to help encourage you to stay on the path. Just as with all of Charlotte Mason, it is the student’s responsibility to do the learning. It is not up to the teacher to try and somehow hammer this into your head and heart. It is the student’s responsibility. Especially when you get up into those older years, even more. I’m going to cheer you on. I’m going to encourage you. I’m going to hold your feet to the fire when I need to. It’s your path. This is where you said you wanted to go, and so let’s do that together.

[00:22:18] Gretchen: One of my children, I’m vividly remembering, he determined his path and got all the way to college with a major and came home 3/4 of the way through his first semester and said, “I hate this.” I said, “Then why are you continuing?” He said, “Because I know I can make money doing this.” I said, “Whoa, that is really the wrong reason to go major in what you’re majoring in.” I said, “Whether you realize it or not, eventually you’re going to develop resentment.” You can’t let that go. It’s going to consume you.

I said, “If you weren’t looking at, ‘I need a salary X, Y, Z,’ what would you do?” He had an entirely different direction. I said, “Why aren’t you doing that?” He said, “Because there’s a whole bunch of people doing that.” I said, “Would you be any good?” He said, “Yes, I think I would.” I said, “Then why aren’t you doing that?” He has been in his professional career now for 15 years. He’s like, “I’m so glad I didn’t do what I thought I should be doing because I would have been miserable.”

Now, here, 15 years in, he’s like, “I think I want to change careers.” A Charlotte Mason approach gave him the wherewithal to be able to explore different things. He is deep in the explorational process now. It never really leaves you.

[00:24:14] Sonya: That’s right. That’s right. I think that’s one of the seeds that was planted with that wide variety of subjects. There’s a great book called Range, and it’s about how the people who succeed in life are not the specialists. They are the ones who can think broadly and bring insights from a variety of different perspectives and different subject matters and occupations, even if, as it were, to bring all of those into the problem at hand. He gives lots of examples about it. David, I want to say Epstein is his last name. Excellent book. That is the case. I just did a whole series of podcast episodes on the modern research that backs up Charlotte’s methods, and one of them is on–

[00:25:11] Gretchen: [crosstalk] In preparation for this conversation, I listened to two or three of them, and they’re marvelous.

[00:25:18] Sonya: It’s been-

[00:25:18] Gretchen: We really will make-

[00:25:18] Sonya: -fascinating.

[00:25:19] Gretchen: -sure that the show notes have a link back to your podcast because you have such insight and you make this a doable lifestyle for families.

[00:25:34] Sonya: That’s the goal. That’s what we want to do. I’m encouraged to hear you say that in some way we are reaching that goal. We are on the right-

[00:25:42] Gretchen: [crosstalk] I got a kick out-

[00:25:42] Sonya: -track, at least

[00:25:43] Gretchen: -of it because I was like, “I’m not in–” My youngest is 21. There were things that I was like, “Oh, I wish I had done this. Oh, I wish I had done that,” which, if wishes were horses, we would all ride. It was neat to listen to your perspective because it changed for me how parents can approach this. I want to come back around a little bit. You mentioned the habit of cooperation. Can you talk to me about Charlotte Mason’s approach to habit creation? Because I think this is a piece that a lot of parents maybe miss, and it is such a game changer for the peace in your family-

[00:26:39] Sonya: It is.

[00:26:39] Gretchen: -to be able to understand this.

[00:26:41] Sonya: It is. For the peace in your family, as well as for preparing your child to have a smooth path ahead of them in life. I’ll come out and tell you there were 60 different habits that Charlotte mentioned in her writings. I didn’t know that when I started working on habit training.

[00:27:02] Gretchen: I might have run for the hills-

[00:27:04] Sonya: Exactly.

[00:27:04] Gretchen: -if I’d known that many. [laughs]

[00:27:07] Sonya: Silly me. It was like, “I’m curious how many she talked about, and what did she talk about?” I did a research project, and it turned into a 250-page book called Laying Down the Rails. It’s everything she said about all those habits. The main thing is the more habits we can instill– Let me back up. Most of us live our lives every single day doing probably 60% or 70% of what we do and what we think out of habit. We go through the same routines. We think the same thoughts. We do that. God has given us that as a gift. That’s the way our brains are wired.

The more often we repeat a certain action or think a certain thought, the more deeply ingrained it becomes in our brain’s neuron path until we do it “without thinking.” Because if we had to think about all of those 60% or 70% of our actions every day, life would be unbearable. Now we can stand there, as you and I, I’m sure, have done many times, brushing our teeth at the bathroom sink, and we’re not thinking about, “How do I brush my teeth?” We’re thinking about, “It’s too quiet out there. What are the kids up to?” Right?

[00:28:33] Gretchen: Yes.

[00:28:34] Sonya: Or we’re thinking about, “What am I going to do today? What do I have left?” We can think about other things because our brain is not occupied with doing this. That concept can be used to help encourage our children to develop habits in all aspects of life. Many of the habits that Charlotte recommended are what we would call character traits: a habit of kindness, a habit of diligence, a habit of truthfulness. The thing that we often miss, Gretchen, is that character is formed by habits.

If we know a person who has the character, let’s say a truthful character, it’s because they are truthful habitually, not just once in a while. That’s their habit, to be truthful. Or a person who has a diligent character, that’s their habit. Setting up these habits and encouraging these habits in our children’s lives as they’re going through our homeschool years together, it sets them up for success in life and frees up their brain to think about other things because the rest of them, that’s just part of who they are now.

There are many ways to go about instilling the habits. What I really appreciated about Charlotte Mason is that her top three habits, attention, obedience, and truthfulness. Those were the top three, but we don’t work on 12 different habits at once or 15 habits at once. Because have you ever seen someone try to take one step in 15 directions?

[00:30:36] Gretchen: You might have described my week earlier this week. It’s been kind of one of those weeks.

[00:30:42] Sonya: Have you had other weeks that you took 15 steps in one direction?

[00:30:47] Gretchen: Yes. Then-

[00:30:48] Sonya: You saw so much more progress.

[00:30:48] Gretchen: -you feel a little bit more productive that way.

[00:30:51] Sonya: Yes, yes. You see much more progress. We work on one habit at a time, always keeping an eye on the other habits that have formed, but each new habit, now we’re going to take our 15 steps in that one direction. We’re going to work on it for six or eight weeks until we get that neuron path established in our brains. She was good too about start little. The book Atomic Habits by James Clear. Fabulous book-

[00:31:22] Gretchen: [crosstalk] Yes. It’s-

[00:31:23] Sonya: -and so much of what he said–

[00:31:23] Gretchen: -sitting up here on my bookshelf, and I’ve read it now twice. I’ve yelled at it a lot because I find I have a brain that, at a lower level, is habit-driven. I have a brain that thrives on new, different. Let me do this differently. In some ways, that book was frustrating to me because I was like, “No, I don’t want to do it the same way every time.” [laughs]

[00:31:59] Sonya: You don’t have to. Character habits lend themselves well to something like that. It’s like the principle: the habit is kindness. How you’re going to show kindness. You can be as novel as you want to and come up with new ways to show kindness. Paying attention, full attention, that’s a constant. What you’re going to pay attention to can change, and how long you’re going to pay attention to it. You’re going to level yourself up little by little. There are many ways to take each of these habits and customize them for, we’re coming back to it again, the individual child.

[00:32:44] Gretchen: Did you find that as your children approached their teenage years, they were able to keep each other accountable for their habits?

[00:32:53] Sonya: In some respects, yes. Like chores around the house. By the time they were in high school, I was traveling to conventions, and so they would run the house while I was gone. I’m sure they helped keep each other accountable for those chores. Hopefully, they also remembered the habit of respect and kindness as they did that. So much of the habit training that Charlotte talked about, she emphasized it was motivated from within. All these great ideas that you got from the living books and from the wide variety of subjects would spur you on to a habit.

You have to have that inspiring idea in order to help you form a good habit. Well, I wanted to be calm and sweet, even temper, that habit, with my kids. It was a struggle sometimes because that’s not my natural personality.

[00:34:06] Gretchen: I’m shocked to hear you say that because I find you so steady.

[00:34:14] Sonya: Oh, girl.

[00:34:14] Gretchen: Every time we’re together, you are so steady that I’m amazed to hear you say that.

[00:34:22] Sonya: I’ve had many years to work on it, so thank you for that encouragement, too. Now I forgot where I was going. You distracted me. What was I saying?

[00:34:32] Gretchen: I’m sorry. That was not my intent.

[00:34:34] Sonya: I know what it was. No, no, we’re good. We’re good. When we moved down here to Georgia, and I joined a different homeschool group, I met a lady who had the temper I wanted. She just exhibited it, and it was like, “That’s what I want.” Especially when I found out that she had 15 children.

[00:34:55] Gretchen: Oh, my goodness.

[00:34:57] Sonya: Nothing rattled this woman. It was like, “Okay. Now I have the picture. I’ve got the inspiring idea. This is why I’m going this direction. This is why I’m working on this.” A lot of habit training needs to be inspiration, not external motivation. Keeping each other on track can work in some circumstances. Other circumstances, it turns into tattletailing.

[00:35:28] Gretchen: Sure. Sure. Yes, I can see that in both directions. I’m going to have to sit here and ponder for a second because I find you to be one of the steadiest people I know. I am not. I am a whirling dervish. Most of the time, people just get pulled along in my wake. I find that to be just really fascinating.

[00:35:57] Sonya: It’s not that I blow up and lose my temper and yell and shout and scream and all that. It is more cold shoulder. Snippy. If something frustrates me, then I just start snippy, cold-shouldering. That’s not what I wanted to be to my kids. You don’t want a mom who is cold and holding you at arm’s length and snippy. Yes, anyway.

[00:36:28] Gretchen: I can’t even imagine that, but here we are.

[00:36:32] Sonya: I’ll give you my kids. They probably have some good memories for you. I’ll give you their number.

[00:36:38] Gretchen: Yes, my kids would have plenty of stories. In fact, you’re talking about character. My husband always said, “Look, we want you to have character. We don’t want you to be characters.”

[laughter]

[00:36:49] Sonya: Now, the interesting thing, well, I don’t know if we want to get off on this rabbit trail, but I was doing more modern research on habit training. This is not one of the episodes I did. It’s a workshop that I do. This person discovered that there are about four different types when it comes to what kind of inspiring idea is really going to inspire you and make you want to become your why I am going to put forth this effort. This is for adults.

I don’t know if it’s the same for kids, but in the adult world, some people are just, “Well, I’m going to put forth the effort because that’s the right thing to do, so I will do it.” Then you’ve got some people who are, “It’s important to someone else.” Like a friend of mine who lost 120 pounds because she wanted to be around for her grandkids. It was related to another person. That’s what inspired her was how it affected another person. For some people, that’s not an inspiring idea. How it affects you, I don’t really care.

Third type of person is, I got questions, girl. If you can answer all of my questions about why I should do this and why it’s the best thing to do right now, and how I should go about it, why that’s the best way to go about it, if you can answer all my questions to my satisfaction, then I’m going to put forth the effort. Fourth type of person is the type that says, “I was thinking about doing that, but now that you told me I should, I’m not going to anymore.”

[00:38:33] Gretchen: [laughs] You know what it sounds like you’re describing is Gretchen Rubin’s–

[00:38:38] Sonya: It is better than before. Yes, Gretchen Rubin.

[00:38:42] Gretchen: Absolutely. Most of the time, I see myself as an upholder, that person who does it just because-

[00:38:49] Sonya: Because it’s right.

[00:38:49] Gretchen: -it’s the right thing to do. Often I will, “I don’t really want to do this. Hey, will you do this with me? Oh, okay. Then I’m willing to do it.”

[00:39:01] Sonya: The accountability, someone else doing it with me drives me crazy. I can’t. That’s not my personality. It’s just, leave me alone, and I’ll do it because I have my reasons for doing it, and so I’ll go about it. I don’t want somebody else-

[00:39:18] Gretchen: Isn’t that funny?

[00:39:18] Sonya: -in my space.

[00:39:19] Gretchen: I’m experiencing that right now. I decided this in the spring that I needed to lose weight and take on a pretty ambitious strength training program because I had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. I thought, “Okay, I’m going to do that.” Well, four months in, I have made a lot of changes. It has been terrific. I feel 15 years younger. My husband finally was like, “Well, I think I want to do what you’re doing.” He’s driving me crazy, bless his heart. Because he’s like, “Did you count the calories for this?” I’m like, “No, I didn’t. I don’t care.”

[laughter]

[00:40:07] Sonya: Yes.

[00:40:07] Gretchen: I understand exactly what you’re saying, because I’m glad that he’s now seeing success in what he’s choosing, and he’s choosing a slightly different path than I took.

[00:40:18] Sonya: Right. Right.

[00:40:20] Gretchen: I’m not going to stand in the kitchen and go, “Okay, that’s 12 calories, and that’s 24 calories, and together that’s 30– No, I’m not going to count.” [laughs] I totally understand where you’re coming from. Yes, and it is very true. I never realized that, until I had read Gretchen Rubin’s book. One of my kids had said, “Mom, you’ve got to read this book because it’s going to give you insight into you.”

[00:40:52] Sonya: Yes. As an adult. Again, I’m not sure how it relates to especially younger kids, but as they’re getting up into their teen years, it’s very helpful for them to discover and for you to walk with them in how they can form their own habits, because you’re not always going to be around to initiate, “Hey, I think you need to work on this.” They need to have those skills to do it themselves.

[00:41:18] Gretchen: Yes. Sometimes the better part of valor as a parent of a teenager is to wait until they come to a conclusion. I remember my youngest son was earnestly pursuing swimming at the college level, and we were at a conference. We were in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I came back in the room from running an errand, and he’s sitting on the bed, and he looks like he’s lost his best friend. I said, “What’s wrong?” He burst into tears and said, “I don’t want to swim in college.” I said, “I know.” He said, “What do you mean you know?” I said, “Oh, I figured that out back in December.” This was April.

He said, “Why didn’t you say something?” Because he is that fourth personality type, that if I had said, “I don’t think you really want to do this,” he’d have gone forward with it just to prove me wrong. I needed to wait until he was to the point where he could go, “Yes, you’re right. [laughs] I don’t want to do this.”

[00:42:31] Sonya: Yes. Asking the good questions.

[00:42:34] Gretchen: Yes.

[00:42:34] Sonya: That’s some of the hardest, most challenging.

[00:42:35] Gretchen: That’s one of the things that is amazing, that Charlotte gives us the opportunity to understand is, what are the good questions? Just to let them be, once you’ve asked them.

[00:42:49] Sonya: Yes, that it’s not, there is a right answer and a wrong answer to everything. That’s not it. That’s one reason I love the narration. The practice of narration all the way through, because Karen Glass, in her book, talks about how narration is a relational activity. It turns your hearts toward each other and keeps that communication open. Teaches you as you go along, and they improve and grow in narration.

Teaches you how to both grow together in your communication skills and be able to discuss things you might not agree on. To respect each other’s opinions and go back and say, “Oh, I see how you got that, I see how you got that, and we’re moving on.” That’s not to say there is no right and wrong, but most of the studies, you narrate, and you’re invited to give your opinion. What did you form a relation with? What do you think about it? It’s quite interesting.

[00:43:57] Gretchen: Talk to me a little bit more what narration looks like for a high schooler. Because I know that’s different than what it looks like for maybe a middle schooler or an elementary school student.

[00:44:09] Sonya: It depends on if the student, the high school student, has been doing Charlotte Mason all along, or if they’re just jumping into it now. Those who are just jumping into it now, you’re going to start with oral narration, so that they can have a immediate feedback with your expression on your face and, “Mm-hmm,” and as they’re trying to capture their thoughts and express them. You want to give them the practice, as you will, with the oral first, but you’re going to be able to transition to written much quicker than 4th grade. Three years of only oral before you start introducing some written, in 4th grade, but you keep an oral component all the way through, even through high school.

Gives them practice in expressing their thoughts off the cuff. How you can express your thoughts. Most of their narrations are going to be written in the high school years. Now, depending on the student’s strengths and weaknesses. If they struggle with handwriting, that has become a block for them to expressing their thoughts, teach them to type. Let them type their narrations. If that still does not help them, then do the voice-to-text. Use some of that software to help them, because you’ve got to narrow it down.

Narration is all about– Well, any narration in written form is a rough draft. Treat it as a rough draft, not a finished product. You don’t go back and check all of the grammar and spelling and sentence structure and the whole thing. That’s done in composition lessons. Karen Glass’s composition lessons are fabulous because they just say, “Pick one of your written narrations from the last week or two, and let’s walk through polishing it together.” That’s fabulous for that. The written narration, that’s just gathering their thoughts and getting it down.

This is so precious. Your high school student, and some of them are very reticent to share their thoughts with you in life in general. In narration, you have a privilege of they are going to give you an invitation to peek inside their brain and see what connected with them in that reading. Reading their narrations is such a privilege for a parent. It gives you an insight into what was important to them, what really struck a chord with them. I love, too, that Charlotte always said that your children are going to each put a little bit of their own personality into each narration.

I remember my high school student, one of them, my third daughter, wrote one of her narrations from the standpoint of the Star Wars characters, just because she could. It was just something that was in her brain. She wanted to do it. I think it was a Middle Ages subject, but it was from a Star Wars perspective theme.

[00:47:43] Gretchen: That’s so clever.

[00:47:45] Sonya: Just fun. Yes. It gives you that peek into what they are doing. That’s what narration looks like. You can still do, just retell what you read. That’s your basic narration. Retell what you read. There are ways to level that up, and by the time you get to high school, you should be using all four levels. Charlotte layered these in over the 12 years. 1st through 3rd grade was always, “Just tell the story. Tell what you read.” The narrative version. Then, in 4th through 6th grade, they added in expository, which is, “Explain how such and such worked.” Depending on what the chapter was about.

In those grades, you could either do a narrative, “Tell a story,” or an expository, “Explain how this worked.” 7th through 9th grade, you would add in the descriptive option. Trying to describe using words. Describe a sense using a different sense. Like, “Okay, use words to describe how a blueberry tastes.” That’s a challenge. That’s tricky. Okay? That’s 7th through 9th grade. Now you’ve got three options for narration. High school, you are also adding in a persuasive option. State your opinion and support it from the text that you read. You can use any of those four.

Now, any language arts teacher is going to recognize those four. Narrative, expository, descriptive, persuasive. Those are the four kinds of essays that you learn about and you practice with. Well, you’ve had practice with them all the way through just from doing narration. High school, you need to be doing all four types of those narrations.

[00:49:50] Gretchen: What else do we need to cover? Because there were some other questions I know that you wanted to elaborate on.

[00:50:00] Sonya: There’s a good one here about leveling up nature study and handcrafts in the teen years. One way to level up your nature study is, keep doing the regular nature study, which is you go observe nature friends, I’ll call them, in different locations, different seasons of the year, and you are recording your observations in your nature notebook. You’ve been doing that since 1st grade. Once you get into those upper grades, you can level up by adding in a calendar of firsts, which is just watching for firsts in nature throughout the year. Like, the first frost, the first hummingbird you see, the first daffodil that that you see, and just put those on the calendar.

You’re watching for firsts, but you want a calendar that covers several years. So as you go through now on the second calendar, you’re comparing, “Oh, it came later this year.” The next year, “Oh, okay. No, it averaged out, pretty much. This year it’s two weeks later? That’s really odd.” You’re comparing and contrasting that data that you have collected. Then the other thing that is helpful in this respect, too, is to start keeping a journal of different nature lists.

There’s three different kinds of lists, and Charlotte’s students did this. Students as in her governesses in training. They would keep a life list. For example, a bird life list. All the birds you have seen in your entire life. If you see a new one, put it on your list and put where and when.

[00:51:57] Gretchen: One of my closest friends for 40 years is a birder. I’m always, “Okay, what did you add to your list?” When we’re together. I’m not a birder, except when I’m with her, because I’m fascinated-

[00:52:12] Sonya: It’s fascinating.

[00:52:12] Gretchen: -to see the world through her eyes.

[00:52:15] Sonya: Yes. It doesn’t have to be just birds. It can be whatever the student’s interested in. It could be rocks, it could be lizards, it could be fish, it could be trees. Whatever, or you can keep all of the above. It’s up to the student. You keep a life list, you also keep then a year list. “These are the ones I saw this year, and here’s where they are.” Then you have a yard list. “These are the ones I saw in my yard.”

[00:52:49] Gretchen: Okay.

[00:52:50] Sonya: Now, what’s interesting is Charlotte’s students kept these lists. Now, people in Britain who are researching changes of migration patterns, and changes of weather patterns, and changes– All this scientific stuff, they’ve got all this data that they can go back and look at in these students’ little notebooks.

[00:53:16] Gretchen: Fascinating.

[00:53:16] Sonya: That they can see what was going on in which year. That just is a step up in helping them learn more observation and recording of that data. They can choose what types they want to record. That’s how you would level up your nature study. Handcrafts. Oh, high school, the possibilities are endless because now they can do stuff that is dangerous. You know what I mean? [laughs] To be quite blunt. You have to be careful teaching woodshop and woodworking to a younger student, because maybe they can use a handsaw but not the electric stuff.

Now you could pull out those power tools for your high schooler. Yes, supervise them, of course, but you can do the power tools, you can do the leather tooling, you can do machine sewing and quilting and all those type– Blacksmithing. A friend of mine, her son was really into blacksmithing in his high school years. You can do all those really interesting things, and then encourage that student. You’ve been doing this all along, but especially in high school, encourage them to use those skills and to create things that can be an opportunity to serve someone else.

Give it to someone else. Whether it’s to a charity, or to a person in your church whom you know loves this particular thing, or maybe this person needs such and such. “Hey, I can make it out of wood for you,” or a cloth or whatever it is. Then the other thing is just to include– Make sure that you are including life skills along with the handicrafts. They overlap a lot. Like sewing, is that a life skill or a handcraft? It’s both.

[00:55:17] Gretchen: It’s both.

[00:55:18] Sonya: Yes. Absolutely. Bread making, gardening, those types of things. While you’re at it, throw in car maintenance, please, and house maintenance. They need to know how to change– Not change their oil, but check their oil, and they do need to know how to change it.

[00:55:39] Gretchen: I’m laughing, as you say that, because my children were not allowed to go get their license until I stood in the driveway with them and watched them change a tire.

[00:55:49] Sonya: Yes, exactly. So many people don’t know how to do that now.

[00:55:52] Gretchen: I wouldn’t make an appointment for them to go get their license until they could change a tire, until they could check their oil. I vividly remember, long before we had children, I had a friend whose car burnt up on the side of the road in Baltimore. Her husband said, “Well, didn’t you check the oil?” She said, “No, it had oil when I bought it.” She had never checked the oil.

[00:56:15] Sonya: They don’t have– Along with that, even yard maintenance. A friend of mine, no kidding, they sold their house to this young couple, and about six months later, they got a phone call from them. They said, “Would you please come over here? The bushes are growing too tall over the windows.” They expected the former owner to come fix that. Now, these are extreme examples, perhaps, but the point is, teach your kids life skills along with the handcrafts, especially in those high school years.

Do they know how to change a light bulb? Do they know how to change the furnace filter? Do they know how to check it? If the water starts pouring out of a pipe, do they know how to turn off the water to the house?

[00:57:05] Gretchen: Right.

[00:57:06] Sonya: I’m sitting here thinking, “Do I know how to turn off the water to the house?” It’s an important thing.

[00:57:13] Gretchen: We had a situation here where a pipe froze and broke, a number of years ago. Fortunately, the kid who was home was 15, but he knew where the shutoff was, because when we moved,-

[00:57:27] Sonya: Good girl.

[00:57:27] Gretchen: -my husband said, “You guys need to know where this thing is.” I remember him saying, at that point he was like 14, “Why would I ever need to know this?”

[00:57:38] Sonya: Because when you wake up in the middle of the night and you walk down the stairs and suddenly your foot steps into a puddle that wasn’t there before, you need to know it.

[00:57:49] Gretchen: Absolutely. Absolutely. Sonya, I have so enjoyed this conversation with you. What should I have asked you that I haven’t?

[00:58:00] Sonya: If I have any book recommendations for high schoolers with a Charlotte Mason approach.

[00:58:05] Gretchen: You went and fetched one.

[00:58:06] Sonya: I fetched. This is a fabulous book. Remember, we did a whole series of episodes about Charlotte Mason in the high school years on our podcast. I talk about this book in those series and in those episodes as well. Their Future Is Shining Bright by Rachel, excuse me, Kovac. Yes, Rachel Kovac. Fabulous book. Very encouraging. It includes a lot of practical help. She’s writing from the standpoint of, she walked two of her kids through the high school years and it was two complete experiences.

One of them, she was floundering her way through, but the second one, she knew what questions to ask, she knew what research to do. She gives you all of that here. I love, especially in the back, she’s got a list of 245 career paths that don’t require a four-year college degree.

[00:59:13] Gretchen: Oh, how wonderful.

[00:59:15] Sonya: You might have certification of some kind, or something like that, but they don’t require a four-year college, because not every student is geared that way. Not every student is going to thrive that way. It’s all about individualizing your student’s high school experience without losing that wide variety. Keep that wide variety because in today’s world, so many times you have to pivot as you go through adult life. It’s very important to keep that, but also individualizing it. Fabulous book. I recommend it very highly.

[00:59:50] Gretchen: Wonderful. That’s great. I might have to get my hands on that. I just am waiting anxiously for the return of a line edit for the book that I’ve written in the last year, and that’s what we– One of the things that I talked about extensively in that book is, what are the conversations you need to have with your children to teach them to navigate out in the world? One of the things I talked about is, you and I grew up in a household where our first interactions with people we didn’t know was when we answered the phone on the wall in the kitchen.

[01:00:28] Sonya: That’s true. Yes.

[01:00:29] Gretchen: Our children don’t do that.

[01:00:30] Sonya: They don’t.

[01:00:31] Gretchen: There is no phone to answer.

[01:00:33] Sonya: They don’t take messages.

[01:00:33] Gretchen: So we have to teach them how to navigate that world.

[01:00:37] Sonya: Yes.

[01:00:38] Gretchen: Absolutely.

[01:00:38] Sonya: Yes, that’s true. So true.

[01:00:40] Gretchen: Sonya, I want to say thank you for joining me. My enthusiasm for this subject remains so high. You launched me on a wonderful adventure in living books, and I have run myself down a wonderful rabbit trail. In our last episode, you read from Team of Rivals, which is by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and I’ve now read four of her books. They’re awesome. I’m-

[01:01:07] Sonya: [laughs] Yay.

[01:01:08] Gretchen: -waiting patiently for the fifth one. So it has been really terrific.

[01:01:13] Sonya: Now I just finished a book about that thick, same as Team of Rivals, on Beethoven. If you’re curious about going down the classical composer’s rabbit trail sometime,-

[01:01:24] Gretchen: Oh, that might be interesting.

[01:01:24] Sonya: -give me a holler and I’ll point you in that direction. Very living books. Fascinating.

[01:01:26] Gretchen: I have a classically trained pianist adult child who might enjoy that book for Christmas.

[01:01:33] Sonya: Absolutely. Yes, we’ll talk.

[01:01:36] Gretchen: Yes. I’ll have to get that from you. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time that you have spent. Of course, to our audience, thank you so much for joining us today. We don’t take it lightly that you allow us into your living rooms to give you stories and encouragement along the way.

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