From summer into school: easing the transition

Welcome to guest blogger Ginny Kubitz Moyer

It’s that time of year again. Teachers are decorating their classrooms, brand-new lunchboxes wait to be filled, and kids who have savored the delights of vacation are looking downright glum. If you’re a hardcore summer fan, you too may find it tough to get excited about the return of school. It’s not easy to exchange the relative leisure of vacation for the tyranny of the alarm clock, the inflexibility of pickup times, and the challenge of shepherding your family through another academic year while (hopefully) keeping your own life in balance.

 Luckily, the start of school does not have to mean the end of sanity. Here are a few ways to ease the transition, making back-to-school a positive, fun, and even spiritually enriching time for you and your family. 

Mass: Write it on your calendar

Ways to help your family get to Mass every week:

Is it on the calendar? For many families the weekly calendar of soccer games and school meetings is sacrosanct. Find a Saturday evening or Sunday Mass time that fits; write it in early in the week. Make other activities fit around the Mass time you’ve chosen.

Make a family commitment: Talk about your goal of weekly Mass attendance with your kids. Challenge each other to hold to it.

Stay matter-of-fact: Faith development is as important as learning reading or math. Approach going to Mass with kids as you do going to school: This is what we do. It’s nonnegotiable.

by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2010 General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

Can I have a Word with you?

I’m sitting in the pew. The first reading ends; the song leader begins the psalm. “What shall I return to the Lord?” she sings, “for all the bounty he has given?”

I see my daughter, a tall 14-year-old, in her alb up in the sacristy. She has come a long way from the days of getting stomachaches worrying whether she’d remember what to do while serving Mass. My husband of 24 years sits next to me; through the endless grace of God and much hard work, we love each other more today than we did the day we got married.

On the other side sits my son, back in one piece from another year at college. Today it seems like a minor miracle for a 20-year-old to be at Mass, let alone with his parents. I don’t take it for granted.

The psalm goes to my heart; each time we sing it at Mass, it never fails to bring tears of gratitude to my eyes. What shall I return to the Lord for all the bounty he has given?

Don’t skip meals, especially Sunday Mass

Most nights, our family of six eats dinner together. It’s rarely a Norman Rockwell scene. Jamie, 6, sometimes chews with her mouth open just to get a rise out of her sister Teenasia, 7. Fourteen-year-old Jacob too often acts as the fact-checker for 11-year-old Liam’s stories.

Almost once a week we run out of salad dressing, and lately I’ve been forgetting to set the timer for the dinner rolls, and we’ve had to cut off the blackened, Frisbee-like bottoms.

Despite our nonperfect dinners, we come together each night anyway. While I may routinely ruin dinner rolls, I’m pretty good at spinach fettuccini. And when Jacob can hold back from correcting Liam, he finds his brother tells an entertaining tale. Bill and I recognize that a meal doesn’t need to be perfect to be nourishing.

So it is with Sunday Mass. The Eucharist is a family meal. And even when the Mass isn’t perfect, it still nourishes us. Like the family meals around our own kitchen table, we go to church because we know it’s good for us—we come because it will fill us and keep us spiritually healthy.

Take a look at the common excuses we may find not to attend Sunday Mass regularly, and watch what happens when we apply them to family dinners.

Advice to my son

Welcome to guest blogger Brian Doyle.

Don’t eat that! Do ask questions. Do not use that tone of voice with me, young man. Do pick up the wet towel from the floor and hang it either on the closet door or on the back of your bedroom door or in the bathroom as you have been asked to do since the beginning of recorded history. Do not play my old records at 78 revolutions per minute and sing along like you are a squirrel on major recreational medicine. Do ask the girl out even if you are absolutely sure she will say no and your friends will berate you and her friends will point you out in the hallway and whisper the words doofus and geek.

How to scout worthwhile movies for your kids

With summer in full swing , perhaps like me you’d like to watch a few good movies with your kids.  But with all the hair-raising stuff appearing onscreen, parents can use some good advance reporting on movie content.

Allow me to introduce you to one of my favorite voices on all things movie, Sister Rose Pacatte, F.S. P.,  director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Culver City, California. With a masters in media studies from the University of London, Pacatte does media literacy education for parents and teachers. We interviewed her a few years back at U.S. Catholic  magazine, and her down-to-earth wisdom about movies and TV and kids was refreshing. 

Pacatte’s website contains not only current reviews of some movies in theaters and recently on DVD, but also a list of movies chosen for her “Meeting Jesus at the Movies Program for Kids 2010.”   She also lists movies that embody the sacraments  as well as “Movie Bible Nights: The Ten Commandments for 2010″ (many movies in these last two categories are for adults).

Pacatte is a wise, down to earth guide to Hollywood’s offerings.

Other movie resources: screenit.com, which offers exhaustive content analysis for movies (language, nudity, violence, drugs, even “jump scenes”).  Free access to info about most movies; you can pay to subscribe to see reviews of new movies as soon as they come out.

The Office for Film and Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also reviews movies in theaters and coming to DVD (you can find the list of the Vatican’s top 45 films at this site, too). And Nell Minow’s Movie Mom blog also reviews movies with a reliable parent’s eye.

Making the most of summer with your kids?

Welcome to guest blogger Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Summer has been in full swing for a few weeks now, and if you’re like me, you’re savoring it.  If you’re like me, though, you also get a shock every time you glance at a calendar and realize it’s July.  Time is passing, a truth that is only magnified when you spy overly zealous retailers stacking school supplies on shelves.  At moments like this, you just might start to wonder whether you’re making the most of your summer, emotionally and spiritually. 

Fear not.  Here at the mid-summer mark, I’m happy to offer a few ways that we parents can embrace the season, using it to strengthen our family ties and recharge our spiritual batteries. 

1.  Learn from your kids and how they play. Remember when you were a child, and those warm summer evenings seemed endless? 

Hear your kids out

If communication seems awkward with your kids, maybe it’s because they feel you’re too judgmental. Try using one of the following phrases when you feel a judgmental comment coming on:

• ”Tell me more about that.” Children who are invited to explain further feel that they are being heard.

• “You’ve sure had a difficult day.” While the two of you might not agree as to whose fault it is that the day was bad, you can find common ground in this statement.

• “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” This covers friendship issues, impossible tests, and missing the bus. It allows you to be sympathetic.

• “Is there any way I can help?” You may be able to think of three things you can do right off the bat, but they may not be the things your child needs.  

–by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, winner of the General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association.                    

Take a look at At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home—read a sample issue.   We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out  monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

Good judgment or being judgmental? The fine line.

The day after Teenasia entered our home as a foster child for the third time in five years, I brought her to our local public school to register her for kindergarten. As we walked in the office, the first thing the secretary said to Teenasia—even before hello—was, “Honey, you don’t need that thumb in your mouth. Take it out.”  

The comment was made in a sweet voice; Teenasia obliged, and I didn’t say anything, but inside I was seething. With all Teenasia had just gone through, her thumb was about the only stable thing in her life at the moment. The secretary, of course, had no idea of all of this and did not mean any harm. But every time we choose to judge a situation we know little about, we take a risk.  

While sexual sins are often given the most press by those who like to point out sins, Jesus rarely spoke of them. Instead, the sin Jesus mentioned the most was judging others.  

Parents walk the line between using good judgment and being judgmental.

Wonder how your kids are really doing? Try this.

Each evening at dinner have a different member of the family lead the grace, then follow it with a “plus and minus” statement—that person’s opportunity to tell one positive and one negative aspect of his or her day. Each family member then takes a turn with the plus and minus statement. Only after each person has said his or her two items does free-flowing conversation begin. David M. Thomas, father of seven children and 74 foster children, and author of A Community of Love: Spirituality of Family Life (ACTA), has been doing this with his family for almost 30 years. “As a parent, I have found this ritual a remarkably painless way to find out what is going on in the lives of our children.”       

—by Annemarie Scobey, from At Home with Our Faith newsletter, which just won the 2010 award for General Excellence from the Catholic Press Association.

 Take a look at At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home—read a sample issue.   We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out  monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.