You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher – Catholic Family Handbook, Rev. George Kelly

The Catholic Family Handbook
It cannot be repeated too often that you are your child’s most important teacher. As an adult, he will reflect your influence to a greater extent than you probably imagine–just as you reflect the personality of your own mother and father.

Even if you refused to exercise your God-given responsibility to train him,you would leave your imprint upon his personality nevertheless.

For instance, a father who deserts his family while his child is still an infant leaves an impression upon the youngster that will never be eradicated; he says, in effect, that parenthood is not worth the trouble and that a father’s obligations are more than a man should carry.

The storekeeper who calls it “good business” when he cheats his customers by selling inferior merchandise teaches his child that honesty is unimportant.

The mother who tells smutty stories need not deliver a speech downgrading purity; her actions, more effectively than words, teach this principle to her child.

And against such influences of the home, it is highly unlikely that the corrective teaching of church or school can prevail.

You have an awesome responsibility, therefore, but also a challenge–a challenge to which you will rise magnificently if you realize the benefits to humanity that can be achieved if you live by true Christian principles.

As we have noted, your influence as parent will extend not only to your children but to your children’s children and down to many other generations yet unborn.

Your simple acts of devoted motherhood or fatherhood may assist untold numbers to heaven–or your bad example may be the force which may lead them to hell. What your child needs.

In order to become an adult who will honor God and serve his fellow man in the way God intended, your child needs the sense of security that can come only from your unquestioned love and kindness.

When a baby is born, he enters a strange environment–one newer and more different to him than Mars might be to the first space traveler.

Before birth, your child was sheltered, warmed and fed in an automatic process. Then his world abruptly changed: he became an individual thrust from his warm, protecting shelter and forced to encounter cold, hunger and suffering.

Never again on earth will he enjoy the sense of peace and well-being that he experienced in the womb.

The newborn babe needs food and shelter, of course. But even more, he needs a substitute for the security he has lost. This need can be satisfied in a physical way at first–for instance, when he is held close to his mother’s body. Later, as he develops a sense of physical freedom as an individual, it must be supplied psychologically through love.

In his book “Your Child’s World,” Dr. Robert Odenwald, the psychiatrist, states that your child’s need for security will be the most important part of your relationship with him.

His behavior in later life will reflect whether you have provided or denied it, and how much maturity he acquires as an adult will depend directly upon how much security you give him in his early years.

“You can best foster a feeling of security in your infant or young child by giving him uniform, sympathetic care,” Dr. Odenwald states.  “Paying loving attention to his needs, like holding him and rocking him, creates a steadfast continuity which makes him feel secure.

One of the first things you will discover about your child is his urgent demand for consistency.

Take him from the crib to which he has become accustomed, change some characteristic of his feedings, misplace his favorite toy, get someone new to care for him for a short period, and he may wail for hours.

Is this an early evidence of perverseness on his part? No. It is evidence of his desire for security and his deep unhappiness when it is not provided for him.”

As your child develops, you can make him secure by constantly letting him know that you are interested in him as a person, and that you want him and love him.

Few parents would openly admit that they do not love their child; yet many reject their offspring by their actions.

Some couples find that a young child interferes with their pursuit of pleasure: they cannot go to many dancing parties or stay out until early morning when an infant demands their attention around the clock.

Others may subconsciously resent the fact that they no longer can spend as much as they would like on liquor, clothes or automobiles; they must tighten their purse strings to support their baby.

Other couples are immature and see the infant as a threat to their hold upon the affections of the partner.

When these resentments exist, the parents may not express them openly; it is not the “polite” thing to do. But they may develop attitudes which express their true feelings. One such attitude is perfectionism.

Those who would not dare reject their child in an obvious way–such as by leaving him upon a doorstep–can set up standards of behavior with which any human being would find it impossible to comply.

Typical perfectionist parents usually have only one or two children; they often are more concerned about what other people will think of them than about what is truly right, and they tend to be unable to give freely of themselves emotionally.

They upbraid their child for disturbing the sterile neatness of the living room, for  houting or singing in the house, or for returning dirty after playing outdoors.

These parents are really saying that what their child does naturally–and what  any normal child would do–is not suitable behavior. By setting up artificial standards, they do not allow him to develop in a normal way and thus they undermine his confidence in himself as a worth-while individual–the very basis of his security.

Other parents stifle their child through over protectiveness. Such parents also are saying that their child cannot be trusted to handle by himself the normal situations of everyday living which others of his age tackle with their own resources.

Visit a public park on a Sunday and you will see over protectiveness at its most appalling.  A young child wishes to run on the grass, but his mother holds him back because she fears he might fall and hurt himself.

Eight-year-olds playing a game are constantly warned not to throw the ball too far, lest they run out of the parents’ sight and thus risk getting lost.

These are extreme examples–the kind which often bring the child involved into a psychiatrist’s office years later, as an adult, when he lacks the initiative to perform even common tasks on his own.

Fortunately, few parents are guilty of such extreme behavior, yet lesser varieties of overprotectiveness–the kind summed up in the word “Momism”– are more common than most persons suspect.

You are overprotective when you implore your young child to eat his dinner every night for fear that he will not get proper nourishment.

If you withheld food between meals and let him hunger for a few days if necessary, he soon would eat what is offered at mealtime.

You are overprotective if you constantly warn him of dangers such as falling which are a normal risk in children’s games.

Likewise, you are overprotective if you repeatedly beseech your teenager  to wear his rubbers when it rains; after a few urgings on your part, it would be better for his full development as a self-reliant individual if he contracted a cold as a result of his failure to wear them and thus learned from his own experience.

For by constantly reminding your child to do what is a reasonable responsibility of his age, you indicate that you lack confidence in him and thus undermine his security.

It is obvious that a necessary chore when done for a young child may be sheer overprotectiveness when done for an older one.

When your two-year-old plays in front of your house, common prudence dictates that you remain close by, because he lacks the experience to know that he must not run into the street and possibly into the path of an oncoming car.

But to sit by for the same reason while your nine-year-old playsis sheer overprotectiveness.

Thus, to function effectively as a parent, try to understand what may reasonably be expected of your child at various stages of his development.

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Let Fr. Lovasik strengthen your marriage and family as you discover:

• Three things you can learn from the Holy Family about living as a family today
• The secret of gaining God’s blessing and peace upon your family: do you know it?
• Four crucial lessons no school can teach to your children (only you can!)
• Why marital happiness is not automatic, but must be earned (and how to earn it)
• Common mistakes fathers make that can damage their families irrevocably
• The primary requirement for family happiness: does your family measure up?
• The secret of overcoming the anger that can disrupt any relationship
• Eleven simple steps you can take to bring harmony to your marriage right now
• Are you selfish? Sixteen searching questions to ask yourself in order to find out
• Four qualities that every good parent has: can you name them? Do you have them?
• Sex education: how to navigate this minefield in a way that is good for your kids
• Plus much more that will help you imbue your family with Catholic values!

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Foster Good Taste in Your Child

Painting by Maurice Marlier

From How to Raise Good Catholic Children by Mary Reed Newland

Follow-up from the post Help Your Child to Discover and Develop His Gifts

This does not mean that children shouldn’t be exposed to good art, but the motive should be to stimulate and inspire them and to spark their own ideas, push back a bit farther their own horizons.

Unless parents know good art, however, they cannot know to what to expose their children.

So far, in the struggle between the “knows” and the “know-nots” (the one side deploring, the other defending), I don’t think that there’s yet a bridge over which the know-nots may cross.

It isn’t enough to realize that there’s such a thing as good art. It has also to be comprehended somehow, or it can’t be loved.

Byzantine mosaics I love dearly, yet it’s entirely understandable to me that someone who has never seen them before may protest, “But they’re childish, and unreal, and like dolls — cold and stiff.”

I believe that the know-nots secretly want to know, and I wish someone would start writing books for them: books with good illustration and texts that would do for good Christian art what good biographies have done for the saints.

Until then, the best they can do is visit museums, comb through bookstores in the hope of finding something that will explain rather than merely illustrate, search out magazines, and ask for help.

This “best” is, of course, excellent enough. Unless, however, they’re helped to see what’s great about, for instance, a Giotto, they are quite apt to end up standing in front of all the tonnage in a Rubens and deciding that this must be good, because it’s in a museum and painted by a famous painter and shows the descent from the Cross.

Children don’t come equipped with instinctively good taste. The things they draw themselves are usually good because they’re free of sophistication, but usually the things they admire are atrocious (unless they’ve been surrounded by good art from infancy) because they love all that is gaudy and sentimental and they’ve been exposed to so much sentimental rubbish that their taste has already been corrupted.

We should also encourage children to draw from models and landscapes and nature.

They won’t draw what we see, but they will enjoy drawing what they see, looking at a brother or sister or street or field and putting it down on paper, and it’s important that we save examples of the works they create, for reference and encouragement.

If we let them alone to create in their own way, they will reveal many things that we’re too old and sour to see ever again with our own eyes, and will recapture only now and then, when we see them through the eyes of children.

After living in the country for a long time and seeing many hayfields cut, I saw an entirely new pattern of a hayfield at a local exhibit of children’s art.

One little girl did a lovely thing with the pattern a baler makes as it goes round and round, dropping bales like the checkpoints in a labyrinth. It was exactly as a hayfield looks, but I was no longer simple enough to see it that way.

I’ve seen many pictures of shepherds receiving with joy the news of the angels at Bethlehem, but never one that explored the glory of the Gloria so gloriously as a four-year-old’s shepherds staggering down the hills with staves giddily swinging over their heads under rays of starlight that fell from the top of the sky to pierce the very stones, and at their heels laughing lambs.

It is this ability to make concrete their own vision that is the divine part of the gift of creating.

We help our children become articulate early in life when we encourage them to create. If we help them discover their abilities, we’re helping them to know what to do with their lives in maturity. If we teach them further that these things come from God and have a purpose, their early years’ creating will discover for them not only what works and skills and arts are theirs, but especially how they best speak and serve and praise God.

One child started with drawing, and discovered she had talent not for drawing but for drawing pictures, and drawing designs. She felt her way through modeling and decorating what she modeled, then to making doll clothes with lots of ribbons and beads for ornamentation, then to decorating cookies, and this led to cooking. When asked why she liked cooking best of all the creative arts, she answered, “Because it makes me feel like a woman.”

There could be no better end for creative activity for a girl than that it discover for her what womanliness is, and the arts and works that are womanly.

She may become a lawyer, a nurse, a teacher, a religious, or a mother, but whatever God wants her to be, if she is to serve well in it, she must be womanly.

Our society is by no means lacking in women who are unwomanly, to whom woman is synonymous with sexiness, not with womanliness.

It’s the quality of womanliness in a girl, manliness in a boy, governing the talents and expressed through their talents with tenderness, strength, humor, compassion, purity, and so many other ways, that will help these children discover whom God made when He made them.

The more they discover the things they can do with their heads and hands, with their eyes and ears and minds and bodies, and know that it is by grace they do them — grace freely given with the gift — the less they will be driven to imitate others, go where the crowd goes, do what the crowd does.

This is the only alternative for people who never discover the gifts God put in them or how to use them. Alone, they have no feeling of wholeness; they’re not someone, but anyone; and in a frantic effort to identify themselves as someone, they imitate what seems to be integrity in others, in tastes, attitudes, likes, dislikes, opinions, behavior — with nowhere a clue as to what they were meant to be themselves.

“The thought of the importance of your position as a Catholic mother should be a source of joy to you, but your battle will often be hard and your spiritual consolations few. It is good sometimes to know that although you have sacrificed many of the things modern ’emancipated’ women value so highly, your humble position is still the proudest in society. You are the possessor of the hand that rocks the cradle and rules the world. You are to be the comforter, the unchanging inspiration, and the educator of souls.” – Fr. Lovasik, Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2rpzfu0 (afflink)

 

 

 

To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?

The renowned spiritual writer Dubay gives surprising replies to these questions. He explains how material things are like extensions of our persons and thus of our love. If everyone lived this love there would be no destitution.

After presenting the richness of the Gospel message, more beautiful than any other world view, he explains how Gospel frugality is lived in each state of life.

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A Mother to Her Son

From: Christ in the Home by Father Raoul Plus, S.J.

At twenty years of age Leon Thomas fell into a crisis not uncommon in youth whose friends have loose morals. He stopped being a Catholic. He was wretchedly unhappy not only because of the very direction he was taking but because willful pride and involuntary confusion prevented him from breaking with doubt to return to the path of light.

His mother saw her son’s soul clearly and wrote to him:
“How is it, my dear child, that you do not write to us? I feel heavy-hearted because of it for I am sure that you do not realize what is taking place in your poor soul; all kinds of things are conflicting within it—it is ardent, but lacks the nourishment proper to it; you turn from one side to the other and you cannot tell what really bothers you.

“Ah! poor child, be calm, reflect. It is not that you feel your future lost or compromised; at your age one cannot have established his future or despaired of it. Do you think your work or studies do not show sufficient progress? Why? Perhaps because you want to do too many things at once; you are too impatient. No, it is not that? Your mind is willing enough but your heart and your soul are suffering; they have so many yearnings that you are scarcely aware of, and their unease and suffering react upon your mind sapping from it the necessary strength and attention.

“You are suffering, you are unhappy. I feel all that you experience and yet I am powerless to console or encourage you. Ah! That we might have the same convictions! Why have you rejected the faith of your childhood without a profound examination of your reason for and against it?

“The statements of those whom faith irritates or who have no religion for lack of instruction have made an impression on your young imagination; but nevertheless your heart needs a center that it will never find on earth.

“It is God, it is the Infinite you need and all your yearnings are driving you there. You belong to that select number of elect to whom God communicates Himself and in whose regard He is prodigal of his love once they have consented to humble themselves by submitting to the obscurities of faith.”

What a frightening duty mothers have! To bring forth the bodies of their children is a beautiful mission; to rear their souls is an even greater mission. What anguish for a mother when a grown child, a son in early manhood or a daughter in early womanhood cuts loose from faith, and considers God lightly!

If ever she feels that she has lost her hold over her son or daughter, it is when she sees them follow the paths of doubt or fall under the spell of the intoxicating enchantments of flirtation.

A mother must continue to bring forth her children all her life. In this sense they are always her little ones. Not that she makes them feel their bonds of dependence any longer but that she watches over them. And she prays!

Except for a brief reminder from time to time, the clear statement of her hopes joined to the definite but loving message of the father, an occasional letter in which true religious principles are recalled, the chief role of a mother whose adult child has strayed is prayer, patient waiting and sacrifice—the persevering effort to become a saint.

What if she were to die before she sees the return of her prodigal? What if the child were to die before she has seen him “return”?

She should not be discouraged. Can we know what will take place in the last moments of the child’s life? Can we know the value of a mother’s tears?

Saint Monica prayed and her son Augustine converted; but Monica had to first become a saint.

There flows a rule of conduct that is very important to keep in mind when we should happen to commit a fault. We certainly must feel sorry for having sinned, ask God for pardon, humbly beg Him to accord us the grace not to offend Him again in this way, and resolve to go to confession at an opportune moment.

Without making ourselves sad or discouraged, we should recover our peace as quickly as possible thanks to graces from on high, and resume our normal spiritual life as if nothing had happened. The more quickly we recover our peace, the better it will be! We make much more progress in this way than by becoming irritated with ourselves! -Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace https://amzn.to/2R31uNq (afflink)

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The Coming of the Monster: A Tale of the Masterful Monk

Review: A study of economic and political events focusing on Communist efforts to gain a foot hold in England.  There is an officer in the French Intelligence Service, as well as a brief look at Hollywood—but the English lady resists its vulgar allure to the obvious satisfaction of the author!  A discussion of the working class, and an economic analysis that certainly sounds like Distributism (Chesterton, Belloc, and others). There is a lot of humor, and a very sober discussion of Lourdes. -Steve Benedict

Come Rack! Come Rope! is a historical novel by the English priest and writer Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914), a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. Set in Derbyshire at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, when being or harbouring a priest was considered treason and was punishable with death, it tells the story of two young lovers who give up their chance of happiness together, choosing instead to face imprisonment and martyrdom, so that “God’s will” may be done. It is perhaps the best known of Benson’s novels, and has been reprinted several times.

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Character Training in Early Adolescence

Painting by Harold N. Anderson

This is an excerpt taken from a treasure of a book published in 1924 called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A Book of Inspiration and Self-Help.

It was originally written for teaching Sisters….

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How beautiful is youth! how bright if gleams

With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!

Book of Beginnings, Story without End,

Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!

-LONGFELLOW.

No phase of character training is more interesting or more important than the education of the adolescent. Adolescence has always appealed to the heart of the true teacher. At least one biographer of Our Lord is of the opinion that many, if not most, of the disciples chosen by Christ were adolescents.

Socrates knew that there was no more fertile source for inspiration than the companionship of adolescents. Plato is at his best in those dialogues in which adolescents play the chief role. G. Stanley Hall confesses of himself: “As for years an almost passionate lover of childhood and a teacher of youth, the adolescent stage of life has long seemed to me one of the most fascinating of all themes, more worthy, perhaps, than anything else in the world of reverence, most inviting study, and in most crying need of a service we do not yet understand how to render aright.”

Adolescence is, indeed, a fascinating period in life; it is the second birth of the child, and the morning hour of life when the whole world turns to gold.

Question Parents Ask About Their Children – Teenagers, Spanking, etc.

Should a father or a mother be the one to say yes or no to where the children go and how late they stay out?  

Why not a decision based on consultation between both parents? The direction will come with more authority if it is backed by an agreement of both parents.

America tends to give parental authority more and more to the mother. Yet often enough it is the father who most probably knows more about the situation and can judge it more objectively and more realistically.

I suggest that the parents talk the decision over together. Then when they give their decision, it will stand without the kind of division between father and mother that can result in a child’s confusion, delusion, and inevitable insubordination.

So many modern children seem to be vandals. They recklessly destroy property or deface it. What is to be done about this?  

There again I’d ask: Are the children so much different from their elders? We have done a lot of wholesale destroying in the past few years. The war was a masterpiece of destruction accomplished with scientific thoroughness.

But in general . . . . have you noticed how supposedly grown-up people deal with the property of others? Their careless use of books from the public library? The way they set wet glasses on the top of your apartment grand piano? Their destruction of hotel property when the party gets a little loud?

The way apparently adult men act at, let’s say, some of the American Legion conventions, ex-servicemen’s associations or on New Year’s Eve?

Their wholesale theft of silver, linen, knickknacks from hotels and restaurants? Their utter thoughtlessness in the way they put their feet on the seats of public conveyances? Their use of linen towels in train washrooms to wipe their shoes?

We should give a lot of thought to that phase of the seventh commandment that regards proper care for the belongings of others . . . . including, I might add, the property we share together in parks and public buildings . . . . , and the property of large corporations, who according to some people have no rights at all.

The approach to youth — here as always — is first of all good adult example.   I then suggest a re-teaching of that seventh commandment and a stressing of its importance for the whole of decent living.

Manners have a great bearing on conduct of this kind. Children who from infancy are taught not to handle things that do not belong to them are likely to develop respect for the property of others.

A quite justified if slightly selfish convenience may be appealed to: We in turn have to use things that are used by others. If a boy vandal cuts up a chair in the movie house, it may be our bad luck to sit on it afterward. If the washbowl is clogged up because someone carelessly tossed a towel down the drain, we may not be able to use the washbowl.

Vandalism hurts everybody. Everybody pays tribute in annoyance to the vandal.   Example and education — use both in your teaching.   And of course this is all tied in with God’s basic commands, which remain sound common sense and good pedagogy.

Do you believe that children should be spanked? Or should parents reason with their children?  

I find it hard to see how even the most skillful parent could reason with a child under the age of three. He would have to be a child prodigy.   Reasoning is, almost by definition, possible only when the child has reached the age of reason.

A swift little spank on the sector that nature seems to have designed for that purpose — a nerve center padded against any real harm to nerves or muscles — is often the one convincing argument.

Irresponsible spankings are of course usually the sign of an inadequate, nervous, or already beaten parent. A swift little crack (“Not on the head, Morris!”) need not be a manifestation of parental petulance or of the failure of parental psychology. It may be the most reasonable thing in the world.

The baby hand continues to grab after the parent has spoken; a swift little slap on the hand serves as a deterrent to the baby. He would have had the same lesson from a fire into which he might have thrust his hand — without however the saving fact that the pain of the slap is soon over (the pain of the burn would have been of longer duration).

Spankings should be very rare . . . . though there are situations in which spankings are emphatically called for.   Spankings should not be the common form of discipline. They should not be so recurrent that the child begins to regard his parents as tireless whipping machines. They should be almost a last resort.

Some children can early be shown what is right and what is wrong, and they accept reasonably parental commands.   Some children need the fear of a sharp but not lingering physical pain to hold them back from evil and harm to themselves.

But if the right discipline is given early, the spanking can later disappear completely from the discipline.

It is very bad to spank adolescent children, who dread the pain not nearly as much as they hate the humiliation and resent the fact that there is no way for them to strike back.

How should a parent deal with teenage impertinence?

Head it off  before the children reach their teens. The correct training in good manners, self-control, and morals during the formative days of infancy and childhood will mean few outbursts of temper or temperament in adolescence.

Parents and elders in general must be sure that what they regard as impertinence really is impertinence.

Boys of adolescent age often have voices that slip strangely out of control. So they become embarrassed, and do and say strange things. They are crude with their hands and clumsy with their feet. Since they deal all day long with boys of their own gangling and juvenile age, they find it hard to change completely to good manners at the family dinner table.   Besides they are often preoccupied with temptation and troubled by physical problems to such an extent that they are snappish and short and rude. Such seeming impertinence rises sometimes to answer a fierce struggle that is raging in their own natures. A wise parent is aware of this and not too quick to be resentful of it.

Then too all young people tend to develop a language of their own. It sounds flip, crisp, cryptic, sometimes a little vulgar, and frequently quite unintelligible to their elders.

If they use the language around the house, it is because like most human beings they follow the fashion of their peers. Yet slang is not always impertinence, and the cryptic jive talk of youngsters may indicate merely that they are demonstrating that they are in the know.

When, however, a teenager first shows signs of real impertinence, he or she should be clipped immediately. Once more: No scenes and emotional displays. None of this appeal to parental dignity and rights — “How dare you talk like that to your mother?”

Rather the quiet and final answer: “I consider that distinctly impertinent and the sort of thing that is not to happen around here again — ever.”

If elders take such a stand early — the stand based on a well-planned course of childhood and early-youth training in good manners and right conduct — the single reproof may be enough.

“Many times God allows it to be hard to pray, simply to school us in applying our wills, to teach us that the value of prayer does not depend on the amount of emotion we can whip up. Many times the saints had trouble getting excited about prayers, but they said them, because prayers were due and their value had nothing to do with how eagerly they went about saying them.” -Mary Reed Newland, http://amzn.to/2snNxN7 (afflink)

All 5 Maglets! Catholic Young Lady’s Maglet, Catholic Wife’s Maglet, Sunshiny Disposition, True Womanhood and Advent/Christmas Package of 5!

Finer Femininity is a small publication compiled to inspire Catholic women in their vocations. It consists of uplifting articles from authors with traditional values, with many of them from priests, written over 50 years ago. These anecdotes are timeless but, with the fast-paced “progress “of today’s world, the pearls within the articles are rarely meditated upon. This little magazine offers Catholic womankind support and inspiration as they travel that oftentimes lonely trail….the narrow road to heaven. The thoughts within the pages will enlighten us to regard the frequently monotonous path of our “daily duties” as the beautiful road to sanctity. Feminine souls need this kind of information to continue to “fight the good fight” in a world that has opposing values and seldom offers any kind of support to these courageous women. Inside the pages you will find inspiration for your roles as single women, as wives and as mothers. In between the thought-provoking articles, the pages are sprinkled with pictures, quotes and maybe even a recipe or two.

Available here.

 

 

 

How To Be a Good Mother – Rev. George A. Kelly

Tags

domestic happiness, domineering mother, good mother, martyr mom, overindulgent mother, raising children

Close to Mother’s Day is a good time to think about motherhood.

Timeless advice from a very smart priest!

The Catholic Family Handbook – Father George Kelly

In view of the many social evils resulting from the decline in the father’s influence, one of the most important functions the modern mother should perform is to help maintain or restore the father’s position of authority in the family. In doing so, you will fulfill your own role as a wife and mother to a greater extent than is possible when you permit your husband to be the lesser figure.

This was the secret of the success of olden fathers. Even though they worked twelve hours a day, their dominant role in the home was guaranteed and protected by the mother.

You can make your greatest contribution to your family as the heart of your home–not its head. From you, your children should learn to love others and to give of themselves unstintingly in the spirit of sacrifice. Never underestimate the importance of your role. For upon you depends the emotional growth of your children, and such growth will better prepare them to live happy and holy lives than any amount of intellectual training they may receive.

Most of us know persons who have received the finest educations which universities can bestow, who yet lead miserable lives because they have never achieved a capacity to love.

On the other hand, we also know of men and women whose intellectual achievements are below normal but whose lives are filled with happiness because their mothers showed them how to love other human beings.

It follows that in helping your child to satisfy his basic emotional needs to love and be loved, you give something as necessary as food for his full development. So do not be beguiled by aspirations for a worldly career or by the desire to prove yourself as intelligent as men or as capable in affairs of the world as they.

The father must always remain a public figure. The mother is the domestic figure par excellence. In teaching your child the meaning of unselfish love you will achieve a greater good than almost any other accomplishment of which human beings are capable.

You are the most important person your child will ever know. Your relationship with him will transcend, in depth of feeling, any other relationship he probably will ever have–even the one with his marriage partner.

As noted above, from you he will learn what true love really is. From the tenderness you show and the security you give, you will develop his attitudes toward other human beings which will always remain with him.

However, his dependence on you begins to wane soon after birth–and continues to wane for the rest of your life. In his first years, naturally, he will rely upon you almost entirely–not only for food, but also to help him perform his most elementary acts.

But soon he learns to walk and to do other things for himself; when he goes to school he can dress himself; when he reaches adolescence and strives for the freedom that adults know, he will try to throw off his dependence so violently that you may fear that you have lost all hold upon him.

Your job is to help him reach this state of full and complete independence in a gradual fashion. And your success as a mother will depend to a great extent upon the amount of emancipation you permit him as he steps progressively toward adulthood. Therefore you should try to judge realistically when your child truly needs your help and when he does not.

If you can reach the happy medium wherein you do for your child only what he cannot do for himself, you will avoid dominating him or overindulging him.

The dominant mother makes all decisions for Johnny and treats him as though he had no mind of his own; the overindulgent mother will never permit her Mary to be frustrated in any wish, or to be forbidden any pleasure her little heart desires.

The overindulgent mother may do without the shoes she needs to buy a doll for her Annie; she may stop what she is doing to help Johnny find the comic book he has misplaced; she may eat the leftovers in the refrigerator while she gives the freshly prepared food to her children.

The overindulgent mother is a common character in literature. Probably every American woman has seen movies and television programs, and has read stories in magazines and newspapers, in which these defects were pointed out.

Yet every new generation of mothers seems to practice the same extreme of behavior. Some excuse themselves by saying that they want to give their children every advantage in life.

Such an intention is laudable, perhaps, but the method is impractical. If you want to do the best for your child, let him develop so that he can face life on his own feet. Overindulging him denies him his right to develop his own resources and thus defeats the purpose of your mission as a mother.

Someone once remarked in jest that as part of her education for motherhood, every woman should visit the psychiatric ward of an army hospital. If you could see the countless examples of mental disorders caused largely by the failure of mothers to sever the apron strings to their child, you could easily understand why–for the sake of your child’s emotional self–you must make it a primary aim to help him to develop as an independent person.

Priests and psychiatrists often see problems from different angles, yet they display striking agreement in pinpointing other kinds of maternal conduct which do great harm to the child. Their advice might be summarized as follows:

Don’t be an autocrat who always knows best. Your child may have his own way of doing things, which may seem to be inefficient or time-consuming. Have patience and let him do things his way, thus giving him the opportunity to learn by trial and error.

Don’t be a martyr. Naturally, you must make sacrifices. But do not go to such extremes that your child feels guilty when you deny yourself something which rightfully should be yours, in order to give him what rightfully should not be his.

A typical martyr worked at night in a laundry to pay her son’s way through college. Before his graduation, he asked her not to appear at the ceremony–he said she would be dressed so poorly that he would be embarrassed.

Don’t think you have the perfect child. Some mothers, when their child receives low grades, appear at school to determine, not what is wrong with him, but what is wrong with the teachers.

When such a mother learns that her son has been punished for disobedience, she descends upon the school officials and demands an apology. By her actions she undermines the child’s respect for all authority–including her own.

You will probably be on safe ground, until your child is canonized at St. Peter’s, if you conclude that he has the same human faults and weaknesses that you see in your neighbors’ children.

Don’t use a sickbed as your throne. The “whining” mother feigns illness to attract sympathy and to force her children to do as she wills. Who would deny the last wish of a dying person? In this vein she often gets what she wants–for a while. The usual, final result, however, is that her children lose both sympathy and respect for her.

Don’t be a “glamor girl.” Motherhood is not a task for a woman who thinks that ordinary housework–preparing meals, making beds, washing clothes–is beneath her.

Of course, mothers should strive to maintain a pleasing appearance, but they should also realize that they are most attractive when they are fulfilling the duties of their noble vocation.

You would embarrass your family if you insisted on acting and dressing like a teenager; and, if you adopted a demeaning attitude toward household tasks, you would teach your children that motherhood and its responsibilities are unworthy of respect.

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“In the Catholic home there is that modern rarity–fidelity between husband and wife. There is great reverence for parents by the children, great protection of weaker members by the stronger, and a great awareness of the dignity and rights of every member of the family. The Catholic woman has attained a height of respect and authority which cannot be found anywhere else, and the chief factor in her improvement has been the Church’s teaching on chastity, conjugal equality, the sacredness of motherhood, and the supernatural end of the family, in imitation of the Holy Family of Nazareth.” – Rev. George A. Kelly, The Catholic Family Handbook

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🌸🌺These Handcrafted Vintaj necklaces are perfect for the Catholic woman! Get them blessed and they are Sacramentals! Available at www.meadowsofgrace.com

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The Mirror of True Womanhood

A very beautiful book, worthy of our attention. In it, you will find many pearls of wisdom for a woman striving to be the heart of the home, an inspiration to all who cross her path. You will be inspired to reconsider the importance of your role of wife and mother! Written by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly in 1894, the treasures found within its pages ring true and remain timeless…

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To Spank or Not to Spank?

Mary Reed Newland gives us her take on what is definitely a controversial subject in this day and age….

Norman Rockwell – “Child Psychology or Spanking?”

from Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children

Resort to spanking only when necessary

In these days of debating over whether to spank or not to spank, it’s an intrepid soul who comes right out and says, “Spank.” That’s me.

I’ve heard all the arguments pro and con, and I still believe there are some misdemeanors that are never so well disposed of as with a good spank.

No doubt the term corporal punishment was invented by people who disapprove of it, for it sounds worse than it usually is. It sounds like beating, which is far different from spanking, and it bullies people into thinking they ought not “believe in it” even when they do.

The most violent opposition I’ve ever encountered on the score of spanking has come from people who eventually admit that they have no children.

I suppose there are some parents who have never spanked, but I’ve met but one — and what her child needed most of all was a good spanking. A child in a temper tantrum will find that his pointless fury is shattered by a spank when nothing else will touch it, and a good cry about the spanking will gradually relax him, and his anger will drain off.

Spanking is dangerous when your own temper is so out of control that you don’t trust yourself, and in that case, I personally have to resort to the “sit on a chair” technique and go off to the other end of the house to groan and pray.

We have found that spankings are more quickly forgotten than any other kind of punishment. They suffice at the moment (assuming they’re administered with some control) as a punishment for the crime of the moment, and a child forgets them.

A child who does something he knows is extremely naughty, after having been taught, warned, and reasoned with, actually expects to be punished for it, or his parents lose stature in his eyes.

It isn’t uncommon to discover that the insecurity of children whose parents’ indifference was their only reaction to their bad behavior lies in their desire to have some limits set beyond which they’re not permitted to go.

Continued coolness between me and a punished child has come more often after some calculated deprivation than after a spanking which, once over, is over.

If we try hard not to spank unless it is really due, and never to spank in public (or chastise in any way, if possible, because humiliation leaves more scars on children than anything else), almost every time, when the tears are dry and the sting gone from the blushing bottom, they’ll come and put their arms around you and say, “I’m sorry.”

Then it’s easy to have a cozy chat and explain that mothers and fathers really don’t like to spank, and only have to when boys insist on being naughty even though they know enough not to.

Maybe it doesn’t prove anything, but I know I was spanked in my childhood, yet I can’t remember a single instance of it.

I can remember other punishments, being sent to my room, not being allowed to go with the others, being kept in the yard, but never one spanking comes back to haunt me.

There will be lives only if there are mothers, mothers who respond to their essential and divine vocation. “Give me, O my God, the grace through respect for You and for Your work, always to have a devotion to and a respect for life.. Grant me also the grace to be in Your Hands a not too unworthy instrument of Your creative power. Let me be ‘up-to-date’ whenever it is a question of enrolling a new name in the Book of Life.” – Christ in the Home, Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., 1950’s

Coloring pages for your children….

 

Review: Love these!! So far I’m only on the Spring edition but I love it! Short little inspiring blips here and there that a busy mom and wife can pick up and put down and receive encouragement and inspiration for the day to live out her Catholic faith and vocation! Thank you so much for putting these maglets together! The seller is wonderful with communication and didn’t hesitate to fix the problem when I hadn’t received my order. Meadows of Grace is a wonderful, personable, and professional shop that I will definitely return to!

All 5 Maglets! Finer Femininity is a small publication compiled to inspire Catholic women in their vocations. It consists of uplifting articles from authors with traditional values, with many of them from priests, written over 50 years ago. These anecdotes are timeless but, with the fast-paced “progress “of today’s world, the pearls within the articles are rarely meditated upon. This little magazine offers Catholic womankind support and inspiration as they travel that oftentimes lonely trail….the narrow road to heaven. The thoughts within the pages will enlighten us to regard the frequently monotonous path of our “daily duties” as the beautiful road to sanctity. Feminine souls need this kind of information to continue to “fight the good fight” in a world that has opposing values and seldom offers any kind of support to these courageous women. Inside the pages you will find inspiration for your roles as single women, as wives and as mothers. In between the thought-provoking articles, the pages are sprinkled with pictures, quotes and maybe even a recipe or two…Available here.

 

Questions/My Answers & A Gallery

I have had some ladies ask me questions that I have not had the time to answer. So I thought I would take this time to answer them here. Please forgive me for not getting right back to some of the questions. There are too many things to do and not enough time.…

Question:

I would like to ask for advice…. because my family also believes that daughters stay at home until marriage. Would postponing a career still be wise if you’re still single after your twenties, yet feel that God is not calling you to religious life? Also, what if you are the youngest or one of few siblings, how would you keep yourself busy at home without young brothers and sisters?

Answer:

I think one question to ask is…Does your daughter WANT a career instead of marriage? When you say a career, do you mean the time and money put into a college degree in order to pursue a particular field? Or do you mean a job for “something to do” or to earn some income until she finds Mr. Right?

We encourage our girls to find many things to keep them busy….in a more organic atmosphere. Helping the parish, volunteering (or being paid) at our little school, working for their siblings with the nieces and nephews all fall into the category of “organic”. They have also had jobs in our town close by, and this is a good chance for them to learn responsibility and how to handle the world…mind you, we are picky where they work. Once they get of age, though, this is their decision, but hopefully they will listen to our advice.

I do believe it is important, if they have a job, that they still live at home. They need our support….and I don’t think it is a valuable thing to live on their own (or with a friend) unless needed….(and there may be times when it is.) Too much independence is not necessarily a good thing. The world and its maxims pull and pull….

So back to your question…no, I don’t think college and a career are an answer to filling in time. There are so many fulfilling things that can help a young lady grow…spiritually and mentally….that she does not have to seek her fulfillment in a “career”.

As far as keeping busy at home….your daughter can learn a craft….and sell her wares. This is always exciting (well, not all the time…but when it’s not, then it’s called “character-building”). But to make something beautiful is therapy…and to sell it is satisfying!

Every girl has skills and talents that can be tapped into in order to fulfill her own life and bring joy to others. This must be cultivated! And then pray that the flowering of her vocation comes to fruition!

Charity is huge for the fulfillment of a young lady still at home. If she makes herself busy at the service for others, her inner happiness will grow. In turn, she will “turn heads” and Mr. Right may be just around the corner!

A beautiful balance of prayer, outside activity (whatever it may be…going to a community function, babysitting or cleaning house for someone, etc.), home chores, self-improvement (books, online classes, learning home-skills), and a fulfilling craft can fill up each day. When offered to God in the morning, it will serve her tremendously better than seeking a career.

On a side note – Yes, we need good nurses and good teachers. If your daughter wishes to pursue these noble careers, she should also be ready to leave it aside to raise her own children, should she get married.

Here’s a post to peruse that I wrote a while back.

If You Want to Find the Right Person…..You Must BE the Right Person

 

Question:

You mentioned in your second point (in the post, Raising Girls) that if the kids ever said no or struck you they would be swiftly punished. Can you elaborate on that?

Answer:

I am not against spanking used with discretion, balance and without anger. So…if my child said no to me or struck me they could see, first off, through my expression, that I was horrified…this was no little thing, it is not acceptable, I am your mom and you DO NOT step over the line!

Then I would spank their hand or their leg. Nothing terrible. If they began to cry and kept it up, they were sent to the office (right off the kitchen) to calm down. When they were done, they could come out. For the most part, this lasted 1 – 5 minutes. I was always checking on them….and never left them in there too long…though I found that generally wasn’t a problem.

Consistency is important. I know there are strong-willed children out there that are difficult. Keep it up….your own consistency will pay off.

Remember….this consistency is not all about spanking.

There are other areas to be consistent. Are you letting them get away with being controlling and pushy throughout each day? If you have a child that gets very angry when he doesn’t get his way, take away the object that is desired….or some other consequence. This won’t be perfect with so many littles but keep trying. (Believe me, my consistency wasn’t perfect!)

It is important, too, that you are surrounding them with joy and love in between times. Then they won’t want to break friendship with you and will want to get over the “bump” in order to have that mutual bond. This doesn’t mean you have to be continually saying encouraging things, doing stuff with them, etc.. No. Just a general atmosphere of love and joy. Not easy. Not perfect. But something to strive for.

Pray for guidance from the Holy Ghost…and strength from Our Lady who sees it all.

Question:

In your post of Raising Daughters you did not mention about boys. Any tips?

Answer:

Boys need men. When my boys were able to help their dad on his construction work, they were encouraged to work with him, in between schooling. In my estimation, the work becomes more important. Sitting in a desk for long periods of time as the boys hit puberty is not necessarily bad but they had better be wearing off some of that testosterone with some good, sweaty, self-fulfilling work!

Mom oftentimes has to take second fiddle as the boys learn to work. In other words, we begin to encourage them to take flight (in controlled circumstances) and don’t get personally offended when the men are their idols. They still love us, but they are learning to be men. And we have to let go of that control that we used to have, to a certain extent. Not that they don’t have to listen to us and do their daily duties, but it may become harder for them to listen to Mom. Insist on it, but don’t think that isn’t normal.

Encourage them in their hobbies…even if it means a mess. Oh boy! How many times have my boys made a mess in the yard working on something! It was irritating…but oh! so valuable!

Don’t let them spend time in their rooms besides sleeping and getting dressed. Technology? Well….pretty much nil! Boys are better off without it…unless highly monitored. Right now, my Angelo is working on painting a picture on the counter….watching a Bob Ross Youtube. But he is right here where we can see everything. He looks for airsoft guns on Amazon….but right in front of us. Never let them have at it with technology!

The hardest thing for me with my boys was letting go. As a homeschooling mom I had much control. With the girls, they still stuck pretty close by and listened, for the most part. The boys were much more independent and it was hard. Our oldest son was pretty much on his own by 17 years old and was building a wall for the monks in Wyoming by 18. He met his future wife there and ….well, that was it! Ouch! but it is what we have raised them, for, right?

So, my point in this is, encourage healthy and wholesome independence….not without respect for Mom and Dad, but just knowing that, when done the right way, it is a very good thing!

I know there is much more….purity (which is huge for a boy), work ethic, etc. It would make a long post and I am hoping that you are tuned in to this website because I do have lots of posts on this type of stuff. Look in the different categories (especially parenting) or put it in the search bar.

And now for the gallery that I wanted to put before you so you can see some progress in the Lenten Activities (and other stuff)….

 

Haha! Huckleberry (the dog) is making sure Ethan can’t go anywhere!

I just had to laugh when Z sent me this photo! What precious, pooped little people! haha

Grandpa and Toby…

Rosie has had a couple of better weeks. She has taken a downspin the last week but we are hoping it is very temporary.

Painting her trunk.

Mom lives in an apartment attached to our home. What a blessing she is to us! 💖Here is the little gazebo that Vincent built for her this year using an old picket fence. It is so quaint and pretty and will look beautiful once the vines start growing up the sides and all the flowers are in full array!!

Rosie is blocking and starching new doilies!

Rosie and Agnes happened to have the same pattern on their dresses!

Rosie and Margy…

Lots of new baby kids at Colin and Z’s.

New puppies over here!

Cottage cheese pancakes are one of our favorites! And you don’t feel all carbed out afterwards! 1 1/2 c. oats, ground in blender, 4 or 5 eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 1/2 cups cottage cheese.

Put in blender and you have batter for some lovely and delicious pancakes.

Slather with good butter (Kerry Gold) and organic 100% maple syrup. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Mike and Jeanette’s littles!

Helping in the garden…

Kansas is not Kansas without spring prairie fires.

It can be very beautiful.

Our neighbor farmers burning their field out our front door.

Lovely!

Unfortunately, during a burn, our son-in-law, Vinnie got badly burned.

The unfamiliar four-wheeler he was driving stalled amid the flames.

Here he is ….healing up.

Laetare Sunday…with Rosie’s lovely doily underneath the Infant of Prague.

Passion Sunday, the Infant of Prague is donned with the purple of Lent once again. And a purple doily created by Rosie.

Agnes is working on her Lenten pathway to the cross.

Our own Crown of Thorns is being filled up with the flowers of sacrifices.

Theresa’s Crown of Thorns is getting filled with flowers, too!

Agnes has her Resurrection Garden prepared!

Just had to share. Here men are kneeling in Poland, praying the Rosary, led by the priest.

The Black Sheep – Plain Talks on Marriage

by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1924, Plain Talks on Marriage

Lifeless Idols

There are parents who in regard to their children are very delinquent in the necessary vigilance. They are like the idols mentioned in the Bible: “They have mouths and speak not; they have eyes and see not; they have ears and hear not; they have noses and smell not; they have hands and feel not; they have feet and walk not” (Ps. 113, 6, 6, 7).

Their children practically do as they please, without let or hindrance of their parents. They go where and with whom they like. They stay out as long as they choose. They read whatever they fancy.

When, then, they become involved in some scandal, say the son or daughter becomes an unwedded father or mother, the parents throw up their hands in horror. They grow terribly indignant, and exclaim that they cannot understand why such a disgrace should ever have befallen their family.

But often they are more guilty than the child. They were mature in years and had the experience of life; had they watched properly and prudently over their children, their going and coming, and had they used kindness and firmness upon them according to their needs, the lapse would likely have been avoided. After it has taken place it is too late to wax indignant.

When the girl is in dire distress, and faces ostracism and disdain on the part of the cold and cruel world, and that from many apparently respectable people who in their private lives may be immensely worse than she has been, it is not the time for her parents to increase her mental tortures by apathy and severity, and thus perhaps to drive her to a worse crime than her first offense, namely to abortion and, possibly, suicide.

But then it is the part of sensible and conscientious parents to take her back to their hearts in warm and generous sympathy, forgiveness and love, and to tender her in her delicate condition every protection and assistance.

The Black Sheep

Of course, if without any recourse to sinful practices the matter can be kept secret, it must be done for the girl’s and the family’s sake. If it cannot be concealed, the girl and the family should bear the consequent disgrace with humble patience and resignation to God’s providence, and in the spirit of compunction and atonement for sin.

There are many worse sins done in public and in private, which the world does not visit with its scorn and excommunication, but which are nevertheless grosser and more damnable in the sight of God.

Whilst the parents are often as much or more at fault than the child that goes wrong, it must yet be admitted that sometimes the best parents, in spite of all their good efforts in the interest of their children’s education, are afflicted with a wayward child that brings shame upon the family and overwhelms the hearts of the parents with bitterness.

This is one of the mysteries of the inscrutable providence of God, which it is given us devotedly to adore, but never to fathom in this life.

Still it is good for all parents to remember that eternal vigilance is the price they are asked to pay for the welfare and felicity of their children.

In addition to this it is consoling for good parents of bad children to reflect that, even as the winter wheat that is covered with snow seems hopelessly dead and gone, but soon comes to view again under the sun’s glow, so, too, a boy or a girl that has grown bad, and appears to be desperately lost to virtue and to God, is of a sudden touched by God’s grace and the warmth of the parents’ love, and rises and thrives again unto goodness and holiness of life.

“I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” — John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Photo: Solemn Mass of Exposition for the Forty Hours’ Devotion on March 12, 2013 at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London.

Photo credit: Charles Cole

New items at Meadows of Grace! Stop by and take a peek!

 

 

Show Your Child How Nature Reveals God

Spring! What a beautiful time of the year to teach our children about Mother Nature and its workings in relationship to the Supernatural….

Illustration by Marcel Marlier (1930, Belgian)

by Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children

Sky, trees, sun, all of nature was created by God and serves Him perfectly, giving Him great glory. But nature study by itself teaches only an assortment of interesting facts. It can teach much more, if we would use it to teach as our Lord did and help our children to see the world as proof of God and His greatness and generosity.

For instance, one time our Lord said: Consider the ravens, for they sow not, neither do they reap, neither have they storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them. How much are you more valuable than they!

He was talking to grown-ups at the time, telling them to be so detached that the sight of a flock of crows would remind them to trust their Father in Heaven.