in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit St John chrum one of the church fathers from the 4th Century said that the husband who lives in harmony with his wife Rivals the most severe desert aesthetic dwelling in the wilderness why is this because it is so hard in the Christian Life to raise your children and to bestow on them these principles and this life that is not just of the head or of the culture but sinks down into the heart so I want to present to you today some
of the guidelines the philosophies that I use in raising my own five sons that have helped us to nourish a relationship with them and God willing impart something deeper to them than simply behavior modification I start with shared Vision this is because you and your wife or your husband have to be on the same page in terms of the vision of raising your children it is not the husband who's a good parent or the wife who's a good parent it's the two of you together that make the perfect parent and so although you'll have different
roles one will naturally be more of a nurturer one will naturally be more of an authoritarian uh one will have you know schedules and and expectations and one will be more focused on the big picture it's fine as long as it's complimentary what you never want in a marriage is husband and wife who can become undermined by undermining each other in front of the children it creates confusion in the family so if there is one thing to focus on as you begin your path and parenting your children it's laying out what the philosophy is that
the two of you are going to adopt and Implement in a variety of situations because you never know what you're going to face secondly you have to find a balanced way to approach your parenting so many times in conf profession I find this that people will have something that was traumatic for them in their own childhood for instance maybe they had a parent who over shared with them the parent told them everything that was going wrong with their job or wrong with their marriage etc etc and they felt this emotional burden from their parent and
so they begin to overcompensate by of these things then the irony is then they create a child who is like my parent never shares with me when I become an adult I'm going to share everything with my CH children and so you end up kind of leapfrogging through the generations pending him one to the other I see this a lot in terms of discipline in particular somebody who has a very strict or disciplined parent will often go to the extreme where they won't have very much discipline at all and you'll see it in the children
because they'll be like like the children are out of control yes because there's a lack of discipline there there's healthy balance with everything and what you don't want to do is take one extreme from your parent and swing to the other side you want to have enough self-evaluation and evaluation with your spiritual father to know where the middle ground is and to live that creativity creativity cannot be overstressed the reality is is that you are going to find yourself in absolutely the weirdest most bizarre situations with your kids and the things that they're doing in
my own house one of the children peed in the towel closet today I don't even want to get into how that ended up happening but the reality is is that you're going to face things with your kids that are going to baffle your mind uh they will put their brother in a box and they will stab it with scissors in order to create breathe holes so the brother can be in the Box this is not a joke you have to have the ability to look at each one of them their personalities their inclinations their propensity
for virtue and their propensity for sin and really try to mold your parenting to the most effective way for that child what works with one child simply will not work with another child one child you have to snap your fingers to get their attention the other child you just have to touch and say hey can you listen to me it doesn't mean that that there's a right or wrong uh overall way of parenting what it means is that you are tempering yourself in order to meet the particular needs that your child has and to cultivate
what they're like in their natural inclination and the next the fact is your children just like you and I just like my children are sinners there's two important points to realize about this number one children so often reflect the passions or the sins that their parents have cultivated I can tell you for a fact and numerous priests will tell you the same when you have a family lined up to go to confession the dad goes to confession the mom goes to confession the teenagers go to confession whatever the parents are confessing is pretty much what
the kids are going to end up confessing because we are noetic uh bonded together meaning that we are all you know driven by our souls by our noose the eye of our heart we are in this kind of noetic Union within the house we live not just within proximity to each other but unfortunately our sins they rub off on the people around us the people around us are affected by the sins that we do they're also affected by the virtues so there is a harmonious relationship there where when we try to cultivate the virtues when
we put the effort in into living the spiritual life our children 100% are blessed by this but we have to understand the shortcomings of the parents the failures of the parents are so often transmitted to the children and so when you see a child who continues to do the same thing over and over again you have to ask yourself am I doing this thing I'll have an adult and they'll come to me and they'll say father my child is driving me crazy he keeps picking on his brother he keeps driving his brother crazy and I'm
sitting there in confession and I say okay how many weeks have you been confessing the same sins and they're like every week I'm confessing the same thing my pride my anger my frustration my lack of P exactly just like you and I as adults struggle with our sins we should not have the expectation that our children are going to be perfect so many times people put this burden an unrealistic burden in an unrealistic strictness on their children and it suffocates them remember when you push something down it has a propensity to shoot back up this
is why I believe in a lot of families that are overly emphasizing Behavior or behaviorism that you find that the stricter the family the more rebellious the children are so when the children have the decision to make their own choices they've not been cultivated to be mature they've just been taught that if they do the wrong things they'll get disciplined but it doesn't mean that they have an inclination for the good it doesn't mean that they have real virtue they just have an understanding that when they do something wrong it's linked to punishment and so
so many times the more conservative family the more strict family is the family with ends up being the worst kids in their 20s because they go off to college and what you find is they had a home ID they had a home identity that every saw them as because that was the mask the face that they were putting on so that they wouldn't get in trouble and they wouldn't get EX in trouble from their parents but then when they walk out of the house and it's gone the real ID comes out who they really are
what they're really like and so often the reality of who they are their sins their Temptations their kind of inner self their inner thoughts that they are unsecure about that they're unsure about they didn't share those because they were afraid of rejection or afraid of punishment or something else like this and so then when they get rid of the home ID all they have is this real identity and sometimes it's absolutely catastrophic to the point that they end up leaving the faith they sto going to church we never want to have this because we put
a pressure or an onus on our children that they are supposed to be something that we are not our childrens's are not going to be Saints neither are are we If we're honest with ourselves which leads to the last point you want to cultivate and you want to capture the heart of your children yes it is true and the holy fathers talk about this there is a period of emphasizing obedience where you need to instill in your children a very strict understanding of obedience but this only lasts until they're maybe 10 or 12 years old
after that they have to begin the phase of growing away from you and setting out on their own life journey and so if you have a child let's say at 30 you're going to know that child maybe for 40 years 10% of it is instilling obedience the last 30 years is cultivating and nurturing the love and the relationship that you have if all you do is instill obedience without love you end up with Rebellion because it doesn't mean anything all of our obedience to God means something because Jesus Christ died for us and showed us
the absolute degree of his sacrificial love for us and so with our children we're always trying to capture the heart not just the behavior we don't want them to not just hit their brother or irritate their brother we also want them to do good to their brother to share to be kind to give a compliment to give a hug to give an encouragement so it's not just the squashing of sin which is what I see so much Western uh uh Christian books regarding parenting emphasize kind of squashing sin we actually have the model in the
Church of no we want to cultivate virtue we want to cultivate a good temperament and a good disposition within the heart and on top of that we want to make that heart connection with our children so that they're able to know us connect with us as people and as they transition into adulthood we kind of modify that role as being a parent to being more of a co- struggle with them where we come alongside them and we're encouraging and picking them up it is important to be a parent in a strict sense of the word
for you know maybe the first 20 years or so and really for the first 10 but as they're kind of moving along now we're more of a coach we're more of a co-run we're we're we're more of a teammate to them but it has to be on the Heart level that they know that we love them that they can trust us that we're willing to lay down our life for them and that we always have their best intention in mind and we're not just trying to make them subservient creatures that is not how God treats
us God treats us and wants to elevate us and deify us so that we will be like Christ and so our vision for the children must be the same to elevate them into this spiritual role may God bless you and keep you in this most awesome struggle of raising your children I hope these philosophical guidelines will give you the wisdom and discernment as you tackle this awesome task amen
