“Mothers owe a ‘thinking love’ to their Children.––”The mother is qualified,” says Pestalozzi, “and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; … and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love … God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education.” ~Charlotte Mason (v. 1, p. 2)

“We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession––that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours. That the mother may know what she is about, may come thoroughly furnished to her work, she should have something more than a hearsay acquaintance with the theory of education, and with those conditions of the child’s nature upon which such theory rests.” ~Charlotte Mason (v. 1, p. 2)

Resources mentioned and others Annette has found helpful over the years:

• A Delectable Education (Check out podcast #57 on Charlotte Mason and Special Needs!!)
• Charlotte Mason Soiree Facebook and Instagram
• Life-Giving Motherhood Membership
• Early Intervention (search for your state’s agency)
• ADDitude Mag
• CHADD
• Child with ADHD- Now What? (Facebook support group for parents)
• For the Children’s Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
• Charlotte Mason’s six volume series on Home Education
• Different: The Story of an Outside-the-Box Kid and the Mom Who Loved Him by Sally Clarkson
• The Wholehearted Child by Clay Clarkson With Sally Clarkson
• The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder by Carol Stock Kranowitz
• Finally Focused: The Breakthrough Natural Treatment Plan for ADHD That Restores Attention, Minimizes Hyperactivity, and Helps Eliminate Drug Side Effects by James Greenblatt M.D. and Bill Gottlieb CHC