Catholic Online Forum

Someone showed me this verse this morning. I tried to add it to my signature, but the software tells me that makes my sig too long!

I think this verse ought to be the cornerstone of my parenting philosophy.

It's true, too.

Case in point, I know of a 14yo who gives her mother fits with all sorts of rudeness and meanness in private but is a wonderful child in public. Very well behaved. Also, as much as this child complains about church, she finds it to be the one faith she likes when compared to others. The mother in this case thinks the problems are typical teenaged ones and that the daughter will grow out of them.

That reminds me of an old Jesuit saying, or one attributed to them anyway. It was something along the lines of "give us a boy when he is 5, and he will be ours for the rest of his life."

JMJ

I know I posted this thread a while ago, and I know it didn't go very far, but I have been thinking about this a lot.

I go to this group at church called Elizabeth Ministry, which is sort-of a Mother's group/Bible study. The Deacon who is "our" Deacon, which I think means it's his job to check up on us , comes from time to time. Each time, he hammers home how important it is to educate our children in the faith, and how we're their first church, etc. Twice, he's said that if they don't get their faith from us, they're not going to get it anywhere.

Hm. I would like to believe that's true. Really, I would. But....

I know one family with two children, raised in the same home, same parents, same schooling, same CCD, same level of involvement in their faith formation, same parents, essentially same childhood. The younger has embraced the Catholicism they were raised with. The older is just this side of atheist, with a particular distate for Western Religions, especially Catholicism. He is more sympathetic of Eastern Religions, but he doesn't ascribe to any of them, either.

Also, I know a handful of priests who are converts.

So, though I would love to believe parents can influence how their children experience God, the evidence I have on hand contridicts that.

Thoughts?

JMJ

Jason, Rose

When I started that post, I fully intended to say I had read your posts and I had been mulling them over along with the Scripture verse, but somehow, that got lost when I started typing. Sorry. Thanks for your posts.

I'm going to blame my anemic, pregnant brain for that, and pretend like that's not a lousy excuse.

I heard it as "give us a boy until he is 7, and he will be ours for the rest of his life."

The meaning given was that we learn something like 80% of what we will use when we are adults, in the first seven years of life.

Elizabeth,

A lot depends on what else was going on in the neighborhood and in the family, when the child was young.

My brother turned out to be an atheist, too, but I didn't.

Our Dad quit going to Church when he was five years old. I was eight years old, at that time, and so for the first seven years of my life (the formative period), I had two parents who thought that Church was really important - but my brother did not, and in his case, it was the "role model" parent who left the Church, while he was still forming his personality.

So, even though my brother grew up in the same family that I did, he didn't have the same family experiences that I did. (Does that make any sense?)

He also had different experiences at school than I did - the class that I was in was very Christian - most of the kids were in Sunday School, and church was really important to them, as to me. Our teachers were also not openly anti-Christian, and when we were young, we used to recite the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of each school day.

My brother had several teachers, especially in Math and Science, who thought that Christianity was a form of misguided superstition. He also doesn't remember ever praying in school.

I never had those teachers - my teachers conveyed the impression that Jesus came to bring the world medicine, literacy, and technology - they often used the terms "Christian" and "civilized" interchangeably.

So, again - same neighborhood, but completely different experiences in the early years.

Another example for you - I have a young man who used to be Buddhist in my Inquiry group. He is the son of a single mother, who is also Buddhist (not practicing) - but guess who took care of her when she was pregnant and when he was very little? Yes - the Ursuline Sisters at Elizabeth House. So, he had a very early exposure to Catholicism, and when he found Jesus, his first impulse was to locate a Catholic Church, because it seemed like "home" to him.

PS: Later, there were openly anti-Christian teachers - right about the time that my brother was turning seven, actually - and those were the years when Bible study, etc. were forbidden; I have mentioned before that I and my classmates used to get detention so often for bringing Bibles to school that our parents were under the impression that school lasted about an hour longer than it actually did.

JMJ

JMJ

Hi Judith Teresa,

Well...see.... Your story about teachers really only fuels my suspicion that parents don't have the influence I wish we had.

BTW I hope I am wrong.

Elizabeth;

Parents have as much influence as they are willing to give. In this day and age, we can't expect kids to absorb their parents values by osmosis. They never did, even when we had a reasonably homogenous culture. For sure, they won't, today.

You've definitely got competition, though - television, the Internet, advertising of all kinds in the streets and in the supermarket, friends, teachers, and who knows what else - and you can't control what your child picks up on, either. Some magazine headline that just happens to be at her eye-level when you're checking out of the supermarket, or a children's story at the library, could change her life forever - and you'd never even know.

I think the best a parent can do is pray, and keep talking to their children, all the time, about what's important - never stop talking to your kids. Never assume that they know what you think.

JMJ

Personality (and heredity) can also play a part.

My two children are as different "as chalk and cheese", to use my English husband's phrase.

In personality, our daughter is her father all over again. And like her father, she has struggled all her life with issues of faith (long story there, but not the time or place for it now.)

Our son reminds me in personality mostly of my mother, and for him, as it was for her--and me--faith seems to come as naturally as breathing.

Both grew up in the same household, and started in the same Catholic school. Daugher remained there until graduation (she's now in 2nd year university), son transferred to a very secular private school at the end of Grade 5 (Because the Catholic school was girls-only from Grade 7 on).

All I can suggest is that you live your faith so that they can see how important it is for you, pray for them, and teach/answer questions as they arise. Years of prayer for my husband were answered in a quiet but wonderful way, shortly before he died, and in the last few months I've seen the Holy Spirit working on our daughter.

If you would, please say a prayer for her. There's still a long way to go.

JMJ

Catherine,


Certainly, I will!

Elizabeth,

While there are some exceptions (i.e. converts), I think that this is much more often the case; that if children don't receive any faith from their parents, then they don't end up believing anything.

AJ

I wanted to expand on this & add my thoughts. My mom didn't belive in anything, but yet as long as I can remember (as a child) I believed in God. I would go to the Chysler musuem after school and "look" at God; that was my church.

I didn't get to be doubtful until my college years...only because I thought I knew everything and I had a handful of professors who taught us that Christian beliefs were bigotry. But again, I was doubtful about organized religion, never about God Himself.

My only exposure with church growing up were infrequent visits to St. Terese w. my Abuela and my best friend in HS w. her family of 10 kids. I remeber how her mom used to smack her kids, myself included, in the back of the head if we walked past the Tabernacle with out kneeling.