Obedience

One of the many books I purchased at the Homeschool Store on Friday is one called Achieving True Success. How to Build Character as a Family. I have tried a couple other character building books before, but with little to no success. I think this is one I can work with.

You are asked to spend one month on each character trait, but you can lengthen or shorten the time as needed to build that trait in your family. It requires some memory work and a great deal of thought and looking for teachable moments on my part, but I'm excited. (It makes much more sense to me than memorizing and going over piles and piles of scripture to point out that God's Word reveals particular character traits as important. Fine and dandy, but how do we put that into action)?

The best part is, each character trait is compared with an animal that we find in creation. Eg. the beaver = diligence. So, instead of embarassing your child in public for forgetting to use a particular trait, you can remind them gently by saying, "remember the beaver."

The first one we are studying, is obedience. I figure that obedience is really the cornerstone to developing all the other traits that we need to develop as Christians, so much to the children's chagrin, we are starting somewhere near the middle of the book.

The animal to model is the wood duck. Did you know they listen to their parents' voices even before they hatch? Twenty four hours after they hatch they need to obey their Mama in jumping from their high nest or they will perish. (They nest in the holes of tree trunks). Now that's what I call obedience!