The Language of Habit Building
This series of blogs is taken from articles by Charles Debelak in the Birchwood School of Hawken's Clipboard during the 2013-14 school year. The purpose of Mr. Debelak's Clipboard articles is to provide parents with information about sound educational principles and child development issues gleaned from history, contemporary research, and Mr. Debelak's 40+ years educating, coaching, and counseling children, young adults, and parents.
Sometimes language builds habits incrementally, little-by-little, like when we teach children to say “good morning” or “please and thank you.” We repeat the admonition countless times despite our doubts about its effectiveness.
Other times an event occurs that brings to life the language a child has heard many times before. But it is only at a particular point in time, under just the right circumstances, that the language takes on meaning. Upon this experience, the language becomes real to the hearer and sets the stage for deliberate practice that forms habits.
Here is an amusing story that illustrates the point. It is about my eldest daughter who gave her permission to relay it...
After completing her Ph.D. in English (while she was raising four children) she reminded me of an experience she had in the eighth grade that confirmed and solidified a lesson my wife and I had been teaching her for a few years. That experience of connecting language to real life became the basis for her to practice two attributes of thriving – hard work and persistence – which enabled her to reach her goal.
Actually, I did not remember the incident, but it was indelibly inscribed in her young heart. Like all good, often obsessive parents, my wife and I frequently admonished our children with cultural and moral proverbs. One favorite was, “If you start something, you should finish it; and finish it well.”
Unfortunately, our children, like most, regularly ignored us. My wife and I, undaunted, persisted, hoping for a pay-off one day.
During the spring of my daughter’s eighth-grade year, she decided to join the middle school track team. She discovered to her chagrin that she did not like track and looked forward to the end of the season. One afternoon in mid-May she was home from school at 4 p.m. My wife asked, “Why are you home so early? Don’t you have track practice?”
“Season’s over,” she smiled.
The following weekend we had guests for dinner. They also had a daughter on the middle school track team who was not able to come to dinner. I asked, “Where is Sarah?”
“Track meet,” her father answered, “last week of the season.” The panic at our dinner table was palpable. My daughter stared at her plate. My wife and I stared at her. Acting as calmly as I could I inquired, “So, Sarah has been practicing all week?”
“Sure has,” her father bragged, “she’s not the best on the team, but that girl just doesn’t quit.” More panic. More stares. Well, it turned out, this agonizing conversation stuck with my daughter for the rest of her educational career. In recent years she told my wife and me, that after the embarrassing dinner conversation, she vowed never to quit.
“Don’t quit” became her mantra through high school, college, and graduate school. She taught herself hard lessons. When work was difficult, she persevered. She learned the meaning of dedication and commitment.
Over the next 15 years, this language forged habits, and these habits drove her to excel in school and finally to complete her Ph.D. Often she found herself working on her dissertation late into the night after her four children and husband were fast asleep. The doctoral dissertation took seven years to complete, but she did it, and she did it because she learned how to “finish something, and finish it well.”
What is important to note, is the particular role that language played. It created a framework for my daughter to interpret her experience of quitting. In addition, it informed her future practice, “I’m not going to quit.” Eventually, it framed her habit – “I don’t quit.”
It may take a long time for language to sink into the heart of a young person, but parents and educators must persist, because language, eventually, will be the springboard for practice, and through practice, behaviors become a habit.
From February 2014 Birchwood Clipboard
