A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

Parents must correct Tendency by New Habit of Temper.––It is by force of habit that a tendency becomes a temper; and it rests with the mother to hinder the formation of ill tempers, to force that of good tempers. Nor is it difficult to do this while the child’s countenance is as an open book to his mother, and she reads the thoughts of his heart before he is aware of them himself. Remembering that every envious, murmuring, discontented thought leaves a track in the very substance of the child’s brain for such thoughts to run in again and again––that this track, this rut, so to speak, is ever widening and deepening with the traffic in ugly thoughts––the mother’s care is to hinder at the outset the formation of any such track. She sees into her child’s soul––sees the evil temper in the act of rising: now is her opportunity.