In this think aloud chat, I continue thinking through my experience of handling motherhood and unwieldy moods. This is about some practical considerations that have helped. And books. During this episode I referred to:

Home Education, Charlotte Mason (you can buy hard copies here)

‘ "Lose this day loitering, and 'twill be the same story

To-morrow; and the next, more dilatory:

The indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost, lamenting o'er lost days,"

says Marlowe, who, like many of us, knew the misery of the intellectual indolence which cannot brace itself to "Do ye next thinge." No question concerning the bringing up of children can, conceivably, be trivial, but this, of dilatoriness, is very important. The effort of decision, we have seen, is the greatest effort of life; not the doing of the thing, but the making up of one's mind as to which thing to do first. It is commonly this sort of mental indolence, born of indecision, which leads to dawdling habits. How is the dilatory child to be cured? Time? She will know better as she grows older? Not a bit of it: "And the next, more dilatory" will be the story of her days, except for occasional spurts. Punishments? No; your dilatory person is a fatalist. 'What can't be cured must be endured,' he says, but he will endure without any effort to cure. Rewards? No; to him a reward is a punishment presented under another aspect: the possible reward he realises as actual; there it is, within his grasp, so to say; in foregoing the reward he is punished; and he bears the punishment. What remains to be tried when neither time, reward, nor punishment is effectual? That panacea of the educationist: 'One custom overcometh another.' This inveterate dawdling is a habit to be supplanted ‘ (Home Education p.119 ff)

The Horse and His Boy, C.S Lewis

The Fisherman’s Lady, George Macdonald