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🌿 Children Easily Form Habits from Those Around Them

Charlotte Mason writes with clear insight into how impressionable our children are.

They are always watching, always imitating.

And they will form habits—whether we’re aware or not.

✍🏼 “There are the children trained in careful habits, who never soil their clothes... in reticent habits, who never speak of what is done at home… in courteous habits... and there are children trained in grudging habits, who never offer to yield.”
(Vol. 1, pp. 105–106)

She’s telling us:

  • Habits of virtue (gentleness, discretion, self-control)

  • Habits of vice (stinginess, vanity, selfishness)
    ...these don’t just “happen.” They are modeled, repeated, and absorbed—often without a word.

💡 Habits Reflect the Home

Charlotte is strikingly honest:

✨ “These habits… are not natural to the children. No, but they are what their mothers have brought them up to.”

This isn’t said to blame you, Momma—but to encourage your power.

The world tells us we’re helpless, that "kids will be kids," and we just have to survive.
But Charlotte says: A mother forms the moral tone of her home—and her children will reflect it.

If you value:

  • Truthfulness, your children will learn to tell the truth.

  • Courtesy, they will yield with grace.

  • Prayer, they will bow their heads.

But if your concerns are worldly—“what will people say?”—then the children learn to appear virtuous without being virtuous.
Charlotte calls this the habit of seeming instead of being.

👀 Children Imitate What They See

🌱 “Nine times out of ten we begin to do a thing because we see someone else do it… it is tenfold as easy for the children.”
(Vol. 1, p. 118)

She is right: children copy.
They copy tone, posture, habits of speech, how to respond when irritated or tired, even how to pray (or skip prayer).

This is why your example matters more than all your words.

They will take on the attitudes and ways of:

  • You, Momma (most of all)

  • Their father

  • Their siblings

  • The helper, the neighbors, the other children in co-op

  • Books, TV, YouTube, even seemingly innocent cartoons

Charlotte warns: Be alert.

🛑 “The mother must be on the alert to nip in the bud the bad habit her children may be in the act of picking up.”

And how true this is.
A sarcastic tone. A mocking eye-roll. Lazy posture. Wasteful habits. Rudeness.
Often they are picked up from others before we even notice!

🧵 You Weave the Cloth of Their Days

Momma, you are the loom.
Every word, gesture, and attitude—yours and those around your children—weaves the threads of their character.

This isn’t meant to burden, but to inspire intentionality.

  • Your kindness teaches mercy.

  • Your patience teaches long-suffering.

  • Your prayerfulness teaches humility.

  • Your joy, even in struggle, teaches hope.

And when something slips in—a bad influence, a poor example—Charlotte says, nip it in the bud. Early, firm, but gentle.

💬 Let’s Reflect:

  • What habits are our children picking up, without us realizing it?

  • Are there influences in our home that need to be limited?

  • What good habit do I want to live out more consciously in front of my children this week?


Inspired by: LAYING DOWN THE RAILS by Sonya Shafer

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