Are we accidentally teaching our children to pay too much attention to themselves—their comfort, preferences, feelings, and frustrations? In this episode, we explore Charlotte Mason’s idea of the “self-regardful child” and the often-forgotten virtue of fortitude. We’ll talk about how well-meaning parents can unintentionally magnify a child’s discomfort, why learning to tolerate small hardships matters, and how minor discomfort builds fortitude. The goal isn’t to raise tougher kids who ignore pain—it’s to raise children who discover that discomfort doesn’t have to occupy their whole field of vision. The excerpt from Vol. 2, Parents & Children by Charlotte Mason, read in this episode, is written below: Fortitude––Perhaps parents are less fully awake to the importance of regulating a child's sensations. We still kiss the place to make it well, make an obvious fuss if a string is uncomfortable or a crumpled rose-leaf is irritating the child's tender skin. We have forgotten the seven Christian virtues and the seven deadly sins of earlier ages, and do not much consider in the bringing up of our children whether the grace of fortitude is developing under our training. Now fortitude has its higher and its lower offices. It concerns itself with things of the mind and with things of the body, and, perhaps, it is safe to argue that fortitude on the higher plane is only possible when it has become the habit of the nature on the lower [the physical plane]. A baby may be trained in fortitude, and is much the happier for such training. A child should be taught that it is beneath him to take any notice of cold or heat, pain or discomfort. We do not perceive the sensations to which we do not attend, and it is quite possible to forget even a bad toothache in some new and vivid interest. Health and happiness depend largely upon the disregard of sensations, and the child who is encouraged to say, 'I am so cold,' 'I am so tired,' 'My vest pricks me,' vol 2 pg 287 and so on, is likely to develop into the hysterical girl or the hypochondriac man; for it is an immutable law, that, as with our appetites, so with our sensations, in proportion as we attend to them will they dominate us until a single sensation of slight pain or discomfort may occupy our whole field of vision, making us unaware that there is any joy in living, any beauty in the earth. The Self-regarding Child no longer Humble––But these are the least of the reasons why a child should be trained to put up with little discomforts and take no notice. The child who has been allowed to become self-regardful in the matter of sensations, as of appetites, has lost his child's estate, he is no longer humble; he is in the condition of thinking about himself; instead of that infinitely blessed condition of not being aware of himself at all. Nor must we permit ourselves to make an exception to this rule in the case of the poor little invalid. For him, far more than for the healthy child, it is important that he should be trained to take no account of his sensations; and many a brave little hero suffers anguish without conscious thought, and therefore, of course, suffers infinitely less than if he had been induced to dwell upon his pains. We say, induced, because, though a child may cry with sudden distress, he does not really think about his aches and pains unless his thoughts be turned to his ailments by those about him.
