Under The Olive Tree

Teach Your Heritage

The Word

Academic skills

Manners

Social graces, self-control, discipline

Industriousness

Vocations

Moral Character & Virtues

2TI.3:14,15 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

You may think that the education and training of a child should be left for a later date – but the research and clinical evidence points to a greater success in starting early.

Parenting is a 24/7/365 job – and you can either invest early and reap early results – or you can delay in your responsibility as a parent – and wind up with a juvenile to care for for the rest of your life.

It is dangerous enough to abdicate your parental responsibilities in regards to education and discipline – but when you allow yourself – indulge yourself and your child – and you apply the same lassie fare attitude to the Word, prayer and moral training – I believe you are headed for trouble.

If you think that allowing your child to develop in all these areas is just too hard a training for him/her – or you? – and you are willing to let a nanny or daycare center, TV, advertisements, video games, movies, secular children’s programming, idleness, unrestricted playtime and some sort of “reasoning” with your child to be the basis of thier soul awakening and moral development – then don’t be surprised when your 4 year old threatens to kill, cut up and bury your 18 month old for touching his scooter.

Unfortunately, difficult individual experiences can taint our ability and resolve in raising our children – but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There are basics in raising children – and they do work – and with even greater dynamics when applied with love and care.

The ability to respond requires training.

A History Lesson
From a traditional point of view, the chief way to counter our lack of will and determination is through the development of good habits. An effective moral education would be devoted to encouraging habits of honesty, helpfulness, and self-control until such behaviors become second nature. The idea is that we could then respond to tempting situations in an automatic way, much as an expert tennis player responds automatically to a hard serve. If we become persons of a certain kind, we won’t need to debate our course of action, we will know “instinctively” how to act.
This is how the ancient Greeks and Romans understood moral education, except that instead of talking about “habits,” they used the word “virtues.” In its original sense, the word meant something like our word “strength.” If you had a virtue such as courage, you not only had an idea about what constitutes courageous behavior, you also had the strength to act accordingly. And like muscular strength, you could lose it if you didn’t keep in practice. Aristotle said that a man becomes virtuous by performing virtuous acts; he becomes kind by doing kind acts; he becomes brave by doing brave acts.
If Aristotle was right about this, it means, of course, that much of our modern talk about “choices” and “decision making” is rather shallow. An individual can’t choose to do something if he lacks the capacity for it. For example, running the Boston Marathon is not a choice for those who are out of shape. It only becomes a choice for those who are willing to put in many months of training. In similar fashion, a child’s freedom to choose altruistic behavior over self-centered behavior is severely limited if he has never formed a habit of helping others in need. Far from stifling our freedom to choose, habits actually enhance it. They give us command and control of ourselves.
How did the Greeks–and for that matter, all other civilized societies–go about teaching good habits of behavior? The best way for a young person to learn them was by identifying with and imitating someone who already practiced them.
But the Greeks, and the Romans, did not rely entirely on the power of good personal example. Worthy models, after all, are not always evenly distributed among the population; and some people have the bad luck to be born among thieves. In addition, even the best people are on occasion weak, fallible, and inconsistent. Traditional societies recognized this, and they compensated for it with a generous supply of models drawn from history and legend. A child might be surrounded by crass and uncaring adults, but he could always catch a glimpse of another vision from the storyteller in the marketplace or in the pages of a book.
This idea of molding or forming one’s character according to the example of outstanding men and women–whether from history or legend–prevailed until fairly recent times.

(Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong [#16]- I strongly suggest that you read the entire article – Christian Digest )

What we are talking about in failing to teach and train our children – our babes of love – our gifts from Heaven; – is abandoning our cultural and moral heritage – the moral currency of our homes and communities.

Experience has shown that if enough of us do so – then our ability to cooperate and work together will crumble – and we will succumb to the raging seas of the heathen that surround us.