Category: Catholic Family
How to Make Your Family Holy
The Feast of the Holy Family celebrates the holiness and joy of the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus of Nazareth. It’s place on the liturgical calendar is the Sunday following Christmas, unless Christmas falls on a Sunday. When that occurs, as it did last year, the feast is celebrated on Friday, December 30th. [...]
Rediscovering Integrity for our Children
How do we teach “integrity” to children and help them to become fully integrated persons? by Sister Maureen, O.C.D., Supervisor of Education Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles What is integrity? Integrity is a word that continues to fascinate me, and over the years the depth of its meaning grows within [...]
Raising Independent Catholic Kids in an Age of Conformity
Sexting, drugs, alcohol, cyber-bullying, teen suicide, rampant materialism, technology addiction, and me-first mindsets – the list of challenges to young people today can seem overwhelming. As parents of two boys under the age of 16, I feel like my wife and I are on the front lines of a never-ending war for the very souls of [...]
Seven Family-Building Strategies for Nurturing Sibling Bonds
I was invited to talk to a mother’s group last week and the subject of brother and sister relationships came up. How do you get your children to get along? What do you do about building sibling bonds? Well…. No family is perfect. We all try, and sometimes fail and then simply get up and [...]
Our Children: Just Another Statistic?
Maybe it was Pope Benedict XVI’s declaration of the “Year of Faith” that got us thinking. Or perhaps it was a knee-jerk reaction to the frequent attacks upon our faith from an increasingly post-Christian society that put the idea into our heads. Whatever it was, my husband, Dan, and I recently came to the conclusion [...]
Islands of Joy
I recently had coffee with a fellow Catholic who gloomily shared his ongoing struggles with overtly living out his faith in the real world and reluctance to discuss his faith with others. He made it clear that going to Mass on Sunday was all he could or should be doing. Unfortunately, this is a very [...]
Letting Our Kids Struggle and Fail
One of the defining moments in my youngest son’s life occurred on a Saturday a few years ago. He had been working hard for over two years to earn his black belt in Taekwondo and was participating in an all-city testing event to determine if he was ready. He executed his kicks and moves flawlessly [...]
Leadership Lessons from a Child with Autism
I have been leading people since I was a 16 year old in high school working at a restaurant in the town where I grew up. Leadership has always been a passion for me and after years of study, reading dozens of leadership books, listening to mentors and accumulating great experience on the way to [...]
Nagging or ‘This is the last ten times I’m going to tell you’
Continually mouthing the same appeal or threat, whether changing your words a little or a lot, does little to gain a child’s attention or cooperation. If I had to award a prize for the most futile parenting practice, I would surely present it to nagging. Indeed, nagging may be the single most pervasive masquerade of [...]
To Yoga or not to Yoga?
I consider myself flexible. But if you are talking about physical flexibility and the ability to cross my legs and the wrap them around my head, well, that’s not going to happen! Yoga is not my sport. But my aversion to it is not a matter of disdain for the lean and limber who stretch [...]
Recent Comments