Touchdown: Mom

A mom told me a story a few weeks back. Her son—let’s call him Josh—was being bullied at school by another boy. Josh was not the boy’s only target, but he was one of his regular victims. Josh’s mom also knew that the bully, like many of his kind, was living his own version of agony at home.

Josh would come home from school and complain to his parents that this kid was making his life miserable.

Put yourself in this parent’s shoes. Imagine for a moment your own anger on hearing about your son getting picked on, threatened, made fun of, and then think of all the things you could say.

“Next time he threatens you, punch him in the nose. Just don’t let the teacher see you.”

“That little $%&*! Wait till I see his parents, I’ll give them a piece of my mind!”

“Let’s sign you up for some karate lessons pronto.”

“I’ll go talk to the teacher and find out what the heck she’s doing over there!”

“Get all your friends to give him the silent treatment.”

“Let me get my lawyer on the phone!”

Here’s what this mom said: “Is there one thing you like about this kid?”

Thank you for not smothering, part two

Three ways to guide children without smothering:

1. Use encouragement more than praise. Parents who use encouragement to help children develop a greater internal focus contribute to the development of a strong, healthy self-esteem, according to Bill Corbett, author of Love, Limits, and Lessons: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Cooperative Kids (Cooperative Kids). Corbett defines encouragement as the action an adult takes to guide children to look inside themselves for an answer. He says it is encouragement—rather than praise—that “sharpens one’s ability to hear a true, inner voice, something we sometimes call intuition. For those of faith, it’s also considered the true voice of God.”

Thank you for not smothering

When I was pregnant with our first child, Jacob, more than 15 years ago, I came upon this quote by author and mother Elizabeth Stone: “Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Overly dramatic, I thought at the time. Surely Stone is exaggerating. While I didn’t doubt that having a child would change my life, a heart walking around outside of my body was a ridiculous idea. My child would have his identity, I would have mine, and while I would certainly care and be concerned about what happened to him, there was no way I would feel like my own heart was walking around.

Then I had Jacob.

Got givers’ remorse about kids’ tech gifts?

If you’re experiencing post-purchase anxiety because the Christmas gift you bought for your child has taken over his or her life, you are not alone. Help your child use your electronic gift as you intended—in moderation.

Keep the handheld in your hands. Decide what level of use seems reasonable—perhaps three times a week for a half hour at a time—and have your child ask to use the device. Keep a record on the fridge of when he plays; when he uses up his time, he has to wait until the next week.

Tame the texting. Perhaps your cell phone gift has confirmed why you were reluctant to buy one for your daughter. The average teen sends more than 3,000 texts per month—about six per hour. While a good communication tool, texting can also interfere with your teen having time alone, concentrating on homework, or being present to the people she is with at the time. Discuss with your teen what place she wants texting to play in her life and what your concerns are, and then develop a plan to have phone-free times of the day.

Get filters and check the history. While you may believe you can trust your son not to go to inappropriate sites on his iPhone or laptop, installing strong filters will protect him in a moment of weakness or from a buddy who wants to show him a porn site when they’re in a hotspot after school.

—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 and 2011 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.

Follow Homefaith on Twitter.

Peace on earth begins at the kitchen table, part two

Peace in the marriage: If the path to peace in oneself is spending some time in silence each day, the key to peace in a marriage is just the opposite—communication is vital. Spouses who talk well with each other will be effective co-leaders of their family and are more equipped to help the rest of the family communicate peacefully as well. The Handbook for Today’s Catholic Family (Liguori) recommends that married couples spend two hours a week in true dialogue. “My husband and I don’t spend anything close to two hours a week in real dialogue,” says Amy, mother of three school-age children. “But I do notice that when we take even 15 minutes to talk about anything beyond the immediate schedule—our future plans, or our faith, or something else that’s serious—I feel taken care of. And when I feel taken care of, I am better able to take care of our children. The whole family benefits when we talk more.”

Peace in the family: “Pockets of peace” are most likely to occur when everyone in the family is present to the same event. Arguments are most likely to break out during times of transition—as some members of a family move from one activity to another. Building more small events into family life is one way of making room for peace. “We recently had a fire together on a Friday night,” says Anne, mother of three. “Everyone just enjoyed roasting marshmallows and talking outside. It was so simple—and everyone was so happy—as I was sitting there I wondered why we didn’t do more of this.”

—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 and 2011 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.

Follow Homefaith on Twitter.

Peace on earth begins at the kitchen table

Beth, a mother of four children ages 5 to 12, admits that her children may see her as June Cleaver. “I don’t know that they’ve ever seen me in my pajamas in the morning,” Beth says. “By the time they get up, I’m showered and dressed, with my makeup on.” Far from being an aspiring 1950s housewife, however, Beth explains that getting up an hour before her children is something she does for herself—not her kids.

“Once they get up, my life is crazy,” she says. “Taking the time in the quiet, before that first kid wakes up, gives me the peace I need to start the day.”

For parents, peace can be elusive. New parents struggle to have a thought or sleep for more than three hours without a baby interrupting. Parents with toddlers and preschool-age children can feel life has become a test of wills—from putting on shoes to getting in the car, suddenly nothing is easy anymore.

The more the merrier: Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas

This year, hand on heart, I saw Christmas decorations for sale on October 1. When I was little, we didn’t even start thinking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving.

My family would spend most of Advent getting ready. We’d shop for a tree, pull decorations down out of the attic, stock up on wrapping paper, and make lists for Santa. Most years the grownups would gather for a Christmas Eve party, and we kids would struggle to stay awake late into the night.

At the end of the evening, we’d bundle up against the cold and drive over to the church for Midnight Mass. Early the next morning my brothers and I would clatter down the stairs to the living room to tear into our presents. And then Christmas was over. For the next week or so, we played with our new toys and waited for school to begin again.

In the church calendar, however, Christmas does not end on Christmas Day. It is only the beginning. In an earlier time Christmas lasted for 12 days-a tradition from which we get the famous Christmas song.

Three reasons to extend yourself

Drew, my brother-in-law, understands my son Liam in a way that I cannot. I first realized this about three years ago when Liam was 7. We were sitting at the kitchen table at my sister’s house, and Liam came in seething about his older brother scoring eight goals to his one in the backyard soccer game. I was about to send Liam away from the table until he calmed down, but Drew stepped in. He started a conversation about how when he was younger, it seemed to him that his big brother was better at everything—faster, stronger, smarter.

Your Christmas presence

Presents are a dime a dozen this time of year. But presence—that’s another matter entirely. The ability of family members to be truly present to one another is under siege—from kids’ over-the-top sports schedules, extracurriculars, sometimes even too-abundant homework. The other culprits sucking up family time, however, are devices we’ve bought and introduced into our children’s lives, often heedless of what we are unleashing. Some true stories:

My friend takes her adolescent daughter and her classmate, Susie, out to breakfast after they served at early Mass one Sunday. Susie slumps throughout the meal, head down, hair drooping over her face. “Wow, she’s so shy,” thinks my friend. Finally she realizes the girl has been texting all during breakfast.

Lighting more than Advent candles

The celebration of Advent took on a whole new level of seriousness and meaning for me a few years after I became a father, as my kids reached the age where they could understand what was going on around them. The observation of these days, the colder weather, and the early darkness encouraged a slowing down in my family’s life, and conspired to create tender, quiet evenings.

When my kids were still little, just around the time they had started to walk and talk, we began our Advent tradition. Each evening we’d send the kids off to their bedrooms, then silently stroll through the house, turning off each and every light, eliminating anything that could steal away their attention.