Messy Parenting: Catholic conversations on marriage and family

The role of parents in the lives of their children cannot be underestimated. Of course we have a natural role - we are to protect and provide for our offspring- but we sometimes forget that we have an irreplaceable role in the spiritual and emotional lives of our children as well. There are many messages from the world telling us otherwise, but we need to stand firm in the truth that we have a dignity and responsibility as parents. When your children are young you cannot be your child’s friend, or companion, or buddy. You need to be the authority figure, the protector, the image of God the Father to them. This is a daunting task, but God will give you the grace you need.  What is your “irreplaceable role”? How can you take your rightful place in the life of your child in a way that no one else can? Show notes

Children today are less able to deal with failure, rejection, and pain than ever before. As parents, we hate to see our children suffer, but how do we prepare them for real life? How do we help to make them strong, but flexible at the same time? In this podcast, we discuss how hard it is to see our precious children struggle, and we point out the pitfalls that parents can easily fall into. We also give three principles you can implement in your parenting to help form resilient kids. Please take five minutes to complete the 2017 Listener Survey.

All throughout our children’s lives we are laying a foundation. A foundation upon which the rest of their lives will be built. How we relate to them, the consequences we provide, the teaching we give when they are teens (or even younger) will affect how we relate to them when they become adults. Parenting an adult child can be amazingly satisfying or heart-breaking depending on the decisions they make. In this podcast, we give 7 tips on how to parent your adult child and help them to launch into the world of adulthood.

We thought we were really nice people before we had kids. Our children can sometimes trigger anger in us that we didn’t even realize was there and we can even surprise ourselves with its violence. To overcome unrighteous anger, we need to understand why we get angry (sometimes its not unjustified!) and make a plan for how we are going to deal with it. This can be a difficult issue for many people because it takes humility to admit when we are wrong, and vulnerability to deal with our own brokenness.

Our world presents images of cartoon fairy godmothers and mob boss godfathers, but in actuality, being a godparent is a life-long commitment of spiritual significance. To be an effective godparent we need to be in relationship with our godchild as a Christian witness as we assist the parents in the faith formation of their child. In this episode we discuss how to choose a godparent, the importance of godparents in the life of the child, and how to be a godparent that actually makes an impact in the life of a young Catholic. Listen in to learn more about this important relationship.  This sponsored podcast is dedicated to Katie Stockermans.

“If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.” ~ Corrie TenBoom If we are too busy to pray, to eat with our family, to play with our kids, then we are too busy. When we look at our family’s schedule we need to make sure that we have the “big rocks” in place. We need to make sure that we invest time in those things that we say are our top priorities. Show me how you spend your time, and I will show you what you value. In this podcast we talk about families and our busy schedules. We look at how we can juggle it all and make wise choices for our children and ourselves. Really, most of our podcast ideas boil down to this – how do you make it all happen? Episode Sponsor: The Master Planner Related Episodes: * Kids and Activities * Raising confident kids who aren’t full of themselves * Overwhelmed * Family Board Meeting

Every Catholic is called to evangelize. No matter where you are in life, we are to spreading the gospel of Christ in all we do. Does that mean that we need to carry a bible in the diaper bag and preach on the street? Not necessarily (though a bible in your diaper bag is a good idea!), the first step in evangelization is to love. When we evangelize as a family, that means that we first love, serve, and preach the gospel to our own children as we create a home in which others can come to be served and cared for. Your family can be a witness to Christ as you show how to love as Jesus loved. This podcast was sponsored by Sean and Aine Ascough of Ireland!

“The more ready you are to give yourselves to God and to others, the more you will discover the authentic meaning of life.” ― Jason Evert, Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves Chastity is a Fruit of the Holy Spirit and a virtue that frees us to love others for who they are, not for what they do for us. The foundation of chastity should be intentionally laid when our children are young so this virtue can fully flower in the teen years and beyond. This podcast isn’t a “chastity talk”; its 50 minutes of practical advice on what this virtue looks like when a family of all different ages and stages of development is living it out. Thank you to the Piwnicki family from St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Crystal Lake, IL for sponsoring this podcast! Related Podcasts: * Importance of Friendships for your Kids * Preparing Your Tween and Yourself for Adolescence * Messy Parenting Guide to Dating Great Books: * Raising Pure Teens by Jason Evert and Chris Stefanick * Theology of His/Her Body  by Jason Evert

One blessing of having 10 kids is that we have matured and learned enough about kids to appreciate the toddler years of children #9 and 10 much more than those years with children #1 and 2. Our advice to parents of toddlers is to start by enjoying them. Its hard to do when they are destroying your house and embarrassing you in public, but with a few strategies and consistency on your part, you can begin to see that this little bundle of creative energy has been amazingly designed by the Divine Creator. It’s all part of His plan to get this child to adulthood and independence, and to get you to heaven!

“It is in the family that young people have their first experience of Gospel values and of the love which gives itself to God and to others.” ~ St. John Paul the Great As Catholic families, we want our children to be open to the call to priesthood or religious life, but how do we do that in a practical way? Where does this call come from? How can we support our children in responding to that call? Ultimately, the answer comes down to teaching our children to love and know Jesus, because the path ahead of them can only be walked with His help. In this podcast, Father Joe Doman, Alicia’s younger brother, shares his vocation story and insights into how the laity can foster vocations. We also discuss how to support the priests who care for us in our parishes.

“Wine is a constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” ~Ben Franklin God could have made food boring, dull, and simply to sustain us. But He didn’t. He made food good! Added with human creativity and work, food becomes a sign of love to our families. Parents work to buy food, prepare food, and serve food to nourish their children. It’s amazing how much work goes into just feeding people! In this podcast we talk about feeding babies, the kind of food we give our kids, our perspective on organic and non-GMO foods, and why we think its important to consider your philosophy of food that you are passing on to your kids. Additional Resources: * Grace Before Meals (Fr. Leo is awesome!) * The Catholic Table (great book and blog!) * Once a Month Cooking (Cook book)

“More than ever necessary in our times is preparation of young people for marriage and family life.” – St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio Preparing for a wedding can be a whirl of appointments, deposits, planning, decision-making, “Pintresting”, and, sometimes, drama. But the wedding is just a day, marriage is a life time. Preparing for marriage is a very serious and important task for any couple. Marriage is naturally fraught with difficulties, and in our culture today that is especially true. There is little support for faithful marriage and many of us come from families who have given us poor examples of what a healthy marriage should look like. In this podcast we give some topics that couples really need to discuss as well as some of our own insights of how to renew the sacrament of marriage in our church. Some Resources Mentioned: * Catholic Bishops on Marriage * Fr. John Riccardo – Biblical Vision for Marriage Pt 1(iTunes) * Beloved DVD Series

“The future of evangelization depends in great part on the Church of the home [the family].” – St. John Paul II The deepest desire for many of us as parents is to pass on the faith to our children. According to many statistics upwards of two-thirds of young people are leaving the faith. so its obvious that most parents are facing an uphill battle. Parents must be intentional about the evangelization of their children. What is the secret formula for success? What does it look like to be an evangelizing parent? In this podcast, we share the TOP FIVE WAYS to evangelize your kids. Gain some insight, spark a conversation, and go deeper in the work of evangelization. Listen in and share your ideas.

“Once you’re a parent, your relationship matters more, not less, because now other people are counting on you.” ~ TheDatingDivas.com Marriage is under attack, but many times the attack is not direct and aggressive. Instead, it is slow and subtle – couples simply drift apart. How do we keep this from happening in our marriages? In this podcast we give 5 ways to keep your love alive in your relationship. We must continue to pursue and discover our spouse, no matter how long you have been married or how well you know each other. During this episode we also share a new and exciting way that our listeners can help us spread this ministry of Messy Parenting. Listen in! Consider sponsoring the podcast

This is part two of our podcast on teenagers. There are few tasks in parenting that can be as rewarding but also as challenging as disciplining sons and daughters who are moving from childhood to adulthood – otherwise known as teenagers. This is an important time of transition for them, and it is a time of transition for parents as well. Old ways of communicating and protecting them will not be as effective as they were. Some families breeze through this time, while it takes a heavy toll on others. In this podcast, we would like to give some foundational principles that we have found very helpful in discipling, not just disciplining, children who are going through this amazing and critical transformation in their lives. This podcast had so much information in it, that we decided to break it up into 2 parts.