Everyone has a favorite podcast, but few change the quality and direction of your life, like this Charlotte Mason-inspired resource (laying down the rails) that we listened to a few years back.
In it Lanaya Gore was talking about “taking pains.” The broader context was habit formation in young children. Part of it that was so challenging and good was the difference between nagging and asking…
Remember Pavlov’s dog? The whole experiment for conditioning animals that upon hearing a bell or whistle they’ll respond to the stimulus in some such way. Yeah well thats the same sort of affect that nagging has in the home.
When you nag and hound and beg your child to pick up the mess or do their chores, you’re not training them for their own autonomous internal voice, your training them to the sound of the nagging bell. (I know, kinda pricks the conscious right?)
It was in that context that they were talking about “taking pains,” where instead of nagging you simply ask the open ended question: ‘what were you supposed to be doing right now?’ or ‘what step comes next in this habit?’ Or ‘I’m looking at this room, is there anything you left out?’
It’s much harder to creatively pause and ask a question than it is to nag. What it feels like is “taking pains.”
This reinforces their own memory, their own instruction, their own internalized habit.
The author likened it to what happens, in our brain, when we use apple or google maps in the car driving to a new place. Try this next time you use maps on your phone to get to a new place: after arrival see if you can picture the turn by turn instructions to get back. Unless there were only 3 turns its rather difficult actually. Thats because your brain shuts off while the little Siri voice does the action.
It‘s the same thing in habit formation when we’re over-parenting.
We think the application for this “taking pains” principle is far more reaching than habit formation around chores.
Take discipline for example. You know I haven’t met a parent yet who doesn't believe one of their kids might have some kind of mental or developmental disability. Seriously! I know it’s kind of morbid, but we’re not kidding. As parents, especially with 1 or 2 really difficult children, you sincerely start to wonder if they’re ‘on the spectrum’ or something.
And you know what we’ve concluded? Very rarely are they. I mean its just a point of statistical fact: that would be more the exception than the rule.
So you know what you’re left with? The reality that they are just toddler or adolescent children. Yep. Plain, old American boys and girls. They’re hyper, they’re disobedient, they talk back, they don’t listen, they get easily distracted, they refuse food, they collapse on the floor, they kick and scream and shout.
And THAT my friends is the job of a young child, that’s why they were placed on this earth. And I do have to give “Dr. Becky” some credit here: it’s when they’re coming unglued that we have to at least appear, as the one solid rock in their lives.
Two quick spiritual principles here before we get back to “taking pains”…
1, kids are that way, partly because its their nature, but they’re also that way to test and push and prove us as parents. We believe this is the scriptural truth of psalm 127 “children are a blessing”
We have these long time friends from church who moved to Idaho some years ago, early middle aged, and the husband got his vasectomy some years ago. One day he was reading psalm 127 and the Lord kind of pricked his heart like, ‘could I be closing off potential blessing that the Lord otherwise would have for me?’ Months later his wife came to him, unbeknownst to him, and said we should get pregnant.
This fall they just welcomed their 4th child.
“Yes, sons are a gift from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Sons born during one’s youth are like arrows in a warrior’s hand. How blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! They will not be put to shame when they confront enemies at the city gate.” - Psalms 127:3-5 NET
Children challenge us, push us, drive us very nearly to the edge. And it is this precise process where the blessing lies. God is producing something in us, through the challenge of our children, that will be as malleable, pure and strong as sheer gold.
2, when kids are an emotional train wreck, when they turn into a puddle, we have to be the rock. This always makes me think of the re-naming of Peter (from Simon), I’ll never forget a Bible teacher explaining the significance of this to us. The name Simon means something like “mud” and the name Peter? You guessed it, “rock.”
“And Jesus answered him, “You are blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven! And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” - Matthew 16:17-18 NET
Now our mentors in ministry have always encouraged that the two great “institutions” of God on this planet are, 1, the church and 2, the family. Though this passage is explicitly talking about the church, I think its not strange irony that we might liken it to the family. If its true they are both institutions of God for partnering with him in redeeming the world, than why not refer to them both as rocks?
And the parents, as the heads of house, must be those rocks, those standing stones when our kids are a hot mess.
So one final word on “taking pains”… its really really difficult. I mean we’re not talking about once daily “taking pains” we’re talking about dozens and dozens of times a day holding the line in discipline, holding the line on “talk back,” holding the line on pausing for sharing feelings and reconciliation, holding the line on praising behavior and holding the line on rebuke, correction and teaching.
“Grammarphobia” (yes, whatever that is), according to the internet describes the etymology of the phrase this way:
“Painstaking” or “taking pains” showed up in English as a noun in the 16th century and as an adjective in the 17th. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) defines the noun, a combination of the plural “pains” plus the verbal noun “taking,” as the “taking of pains; the application of careful and attentive effort towards the accomplishment of something.”
We would encourage you as you strive toward careful and attentive effort in your households, to remember the phrase “taking pains,” it can be a wonderful way to affirm your spouse when you see them doubling down on the vision you hope to see realized in your homes. It has been a helpful and meaningful mantra for us, we hope it will be for you too!
Until next time,
Ben & Rylee
