Hi! I have to ask a parenting question. With our oldest, after reading a few of your blogs, we did time-outs. The “two’s” were a breeze! However, he (and now our second child who is almost 3), went through a challenging stage at age three. There’s a ton of STRONG emotion, and, when being babysat, the three-year-old kiddo won’t stay in a time-out. They get into a certain “mode” where they are not listening and there’s no getting through to them.

This makes our kids sound wild, but it was an all-of-a-sudden behavior that happened with our oldest right before we had another baby, and now our daughter who will be 3 in November seems to be starting this same behavior. And we’ll be adding another baby to our family in February.

I guess my question is do you have advice for this behavior? They clearly just need to snap out of it and calm down, but she won’t stay in a time-out. I’m worried about when we are in the hospital having our 4th.

We truly have lovely children! Just a stage. – Kathleen

Hi Kathleen,

Thank you for your question!

Three years old is a CHALLENGE to say the least. 

When parenting children of any age and especially young children there are three things that are really important to remember: first, to always mean what you say, second, to be consistent, and third, to discern why the behavior is occurring.

Meaning what we say as parents is important because it builds a foundation of trust with our child. They know that when we say something we mean it, whether that’s dessert after dinner or a specific consequence that we’ve warned them about. Following through on what you say lets your child know they can take you at your word.

Being consistent builds a habit in both you and your child that certain bad behaviors always get the same dispassionate response. This helps you to respond without reacting when your toddler is throwing a tantrum and allows your child to know what’s going to happen when they choose to act in a certain way.

Discerning the underlying reason that behavior might be occurring helps you help your child in the quickest way possible. Do they always lose it while you’re making lunch? Maybe they’re just hungry and need to eat a bit earlier. Are they upset especially when you get home from appointments or work? Maybe they need a little more one on one time to make it to bedtime without a meltdown.

When your toddler won’t stay in timeout stay consistent and continue to bring her back, let her know that she is free to join the family again once she is calm. If she’s able to talk to you then asking if she needs a hug or a snack can help you get to the bottom of what might really be causing the tantrum. But usually, when toddlers are this worked up it’s something that just needs to be waited out.

Please count on our prayers!
The CAY Team

Looking for more from Kendra about parenting? Here are some posts from the archives with some more tips: Why I Love the Terrible Twos, Mailbag: Please Stop the Screaming, Our One Parenting Rule for a Less Hectic Home

The post CAY Mailbag: Parenting Three-Year-Olds appeared first on Catholic All Year.

In case you prefer watching/listening to reading . . . this post is also available as a video.

by Jack Tierney

Creating a faith-filled Catholic home can seem overwhelming and impossible. It did to me as a young mother of four in 2008. Let me take you through how newbie me finally decided to give liturgical living in the home a try, and the resources we’ve successfully used for almost 15 years to keep it going strong. 

Wondering what IS liturgical living in the home? See that post here and that video here.

Today, let’s talk about WHAT Catholic All Year IS, how we got here, and how we can help you make your Catholic faith a priority in your home.

To do that, I want to introduce you to 2008 me. She was 31 years old, a brunette, had four kids 5 and under, and if her Amazon order history is any indication, she was in kind of a self-help place. A lot of parenting books, a lot of Catholic classics. 

But, as crazy as life was with many small children, bringing home baby number four hadn’t been as chaotic as bringing home the first three. I had achieved my ten thousand hours of baby parenting, so I knew what to expect with this one. I was trying to get out of survival mode and make my home life more meaningful.

The husband and I had both been raised Catholic, but without much formation beyond Mass and the sacraments. We knew we wanted our home and our children’s upbringing to be authentically Catholic, but we really didn’t even know what that would look like. My oldest son asked a LOT of questions. I often didn’t know how to answer them. 

That’s where I was in January 2008 when I read The Year & Our Children, the OG liturgical living in the home book, written in 1956 by Mary Reed Newland. I have a very clear memory of finishing the book, being convinced that it was a beautiful and meaningful way to make the Catholic faith tangible for children in the home . . . and that there was NO WAY I could do it for MY children in MY home.

I recognized that liturgical living in the home is, more than anything, a lifestyle. It’s not just a way of thinking about our faith, it’s a way of living and doing our faith. It’s so good and so worth it, but it requires real change. It’s a scary proposition. I didn’t see how I could manage it.

But it somehow really stuck with me and I couldn’t quite shake it. I kept peeking at the liturgical year wall calendar I had put up in our kitchen and thinking about things I might possibly do sometime.

So after nine months of thinking it was too overwhelming, I finally decided to just go for it. I threw a backyard Michaelmas dinner party, complete with giant devil piñata that my dad made for us out of cardboard boxes. (We still have it, by the way. You just replace the tummy candy pouch each year, and he’s ready for another vanquishing.)

After that it was a slow and steady ramping up over the next few years. We had a family Mardi Gras party before Lent. We came up with family Lenten disciplines. We did a puppet show for the Annunciation. We hosted backyard Stations of the Cross and a fish fry on Good Friday. We did a May Crowning. We ate with our hands for the Feast of St. Joseph. We dressed up for All Saints’ Day. 

My earliest forays into liturgical living were mostly parties, because hospitality and entertaining was something the husband and I already liked to do, and something we had both grown up watching our parents do. It was an obvious place to take something we were already doing and make it more Catholic and more meaningful. Your liturgical living in the home should be an adaptation of the things YOU’RE already doing.

We added one thing at a time, as our family schedules and new babies allowed, until it really became that lifestyle I always suspected it was going to be. We established family traditions for foods and activities we could look forward to each year, like spooky mac and cheese for All Hallow’s Eve, and braids for Our Lady of Guadalupe, and cookie chairs for the Chair of St. Peter. We got to know our patron saints. We learned about the life of the Holy Family and the Early Church, we learned Catholic doctrine, all in little manageable bite-sized chunks spread throughout the year.

In 2013, I decided to jump on the mommy blog bandwagon and create Catholic All Year, so I could share these traditions and how our family was adapting Catholic liturgical living traditions from the last couple thousand years and all over the world to work for our family’s modern life. The response to the blog was really amazing. I loved how it allowed me to get to know other moms from all walks of life all over the world, all trying to get our families to heaven, and hopefully have some fun and make some memories in the process.

In 2018, it became a book, The Catholic All Year Compendium.

Liturgical living in the home was having a moment. Albeit a very niche moment. But I was part of it. For the first time since Mary Reed Newland in the 50s, there was a renaissance of interest in Catholic traditions. More families were recognizing that our Catholic faith wasn’t meant to be just for Sundays, just for Christmas and Easter. It wasn’t meant to be a quiet, personal practice. It was meant to be a loud and involved part of our everyday lives, part of our home and family life, part of our communities.

But with that interest in making a big life change, came the associated fear. I knew other moms were reading my book and feeling the same overwhelm I’d felt reading The Year & Our Children ten years prior.

I wanted to help. I felt, and still do feel, so strongly that this approach is a good one for families, and that it’s doable for ALL families, in their own ways. It just takes getting over that hump of figuring out how to adapt it for your circumstances and get started.

The first step for me when I started liturgical living in the home was reading a book and hanging up a wall calendar. So, Catholic All Year offers you both of those things. The Catholic All Year Compendium, and the wall calendar which contains all the feast days on the universal liturgical calendar, plus the other feast days I mention in the book, and historical but still recommended practices like ember and rogation days. Also, meat Fridays!

I recommend prayers and Bible readings and hymns and foods for particular feast days in The Compendium, but I know from personal experience that wading through the internet to find approved versions of prayers and a Catholic translation of the Bible and family-friendly hymns and recipes is a real challenge. 

So, I created the Catholic All Year Membership Library. In addition to all the free resources available on the blog, and all the content available in the book, if you want to streamline the process of assembling content to use with your family, you can get access to all these resources that I use with my family each month in easy print and go form. All the prayers and devotions and Bible readings, and all the hymns and recipes, plus some printable decor and activities. It also includes a calendar for the month that highlights each feast day with fun symbols associated with the day, and a little summary of the saint or historical event we are celebrating, in case you—like 2008 me—don’t always have the answers to your kids’ questions.

These are the resources I use with my homeschool kids as part of our school day, the hymns we sing together, the recipes I cook for us, the prayers and readings, and devotions I use with my whole family around the dinner table, and the printable decor I use to decorate our home for the seasons and days of the liturgical year.

THEN, I started thinking about all the stuff I had found and created and adapted over the years to help us observe the liturgical year in our home. Candles, and decor, and banners, and rosaries, and scapulars, and stations of the cross, and crucifixes, and images of Our Lady, and the saints. We do projects and activities and eat foods related to the feast days. But if, like me, you didn’t grow up with this stuff in your home, it can be intimidating to know how to collect it all now. 

So we created the Catholic All Year Liturgical Living Subscription Boxes, as a set of training wheels for families new to liturgical living in the home, or for people of any experience level who just don’t have the time or inclination to put these things together for themselves. Each monthly box covers three feast days. Right in the box you’ll find exactly what my family will be using to celebrate these days in our home. This is a lifestyle, right? It’s a habit we are cultivating in our homes. To create a habit, we need to practice it regularly. If you’ve got the box, you’ve got three feast days delivered to your door. You’re creating that habit. From there you can add your own feast day traditions, you can change things up, but you’ve got the basics covered. There are consumable things in each box, but also things that last and can be used year after year, or put out to beautify your home year round.

More recently, there are also a couple more books, The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion, which is a compilation of all those prayers and readings and devotions from the membership library, in book form, and The Catholic All Year Liturgical Year Meal Planner, which includes undated write-on pages and a section in the back with meal suggestions for feast days.

Over on the website, in addition to the blog and the boxes and the library, we have the Catholic All Year Marketplace that has individual items from various boxes, posters, items from some of our favorite Catholic makers, and laser-cut wooden Catholic devotional products designed and cut in our woodshop. Things like a Jesse Tree, and Stations of the Cross.

So, yeah, we’ve got a lot going on. But it’s all just here to help, in case you need it. There are a ton of free resources and blog posts available to all. At its heart, Catholic All Year really is still that blog, and the associated social media accounts, where I give the world a peek at what liturgical living and this counter-cultural Catholic-style family life looks like in one particular home.

Get my books here

Get the wall calendar here, and grab the NEW Academic Calendar and monthly sticker sheets here!

Get free emails here.

Join to get access to the membership library here.

Prep for Candlemas and Lent at the same time!

Use the code CANDLEMAS20 for 20% off candles* up to the feast of Candlemas!

Grab our Memento Mori Lent Countdown Candle here.

Browse our entire candle collection here.

*20% discount is good for one candle product per customer.

The post How To Start Liturgical Living in the Home (with help from me in 2008) appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Note: Since drafting this post, the husband is embarking on another round of tests and treatments. Backstory here. We’d be grateful for your prayers.

Today, I’m sharing a question from the mailbag. Have a question about liturgical living or Catholic life? Send it to me at helpdesk@catholicallyear.com.

Dear Kendra,

Really quickly . . . I attended the Catholic Homeschool Conference online this past year and like many of the listeners LOVED your morning prayer routine. Would you consider sharing it in a blog post? I jotted parts of it down on a misplaced piece of paper (argh!) but would love to use it as an inspiration/template for our own domestic church. I have two little boys so I definitely remembered the “run around outside first” bit.

Happy Feast Day of St. Matthew! I made silver dollar pancakes and they were a big hit with the littles. We also turned on Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew.

Thank you for all that you do. I’m a big fan of Maria von Trapp (Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family) and I have The Year and Our Children on my shelf, but I turn to you for the updated inspiration for liturgical living TODAY, in the 21st century, with cell phones and laptops and all.

God bless you and your family!

Respectfully,

Elaine S.

Our Morning Prayer Routine

Thanks Elaine!

​Here’s what our morning prayer routine looks like:

Days sometimes get away from us, right? It happens. So whatever we choose to do FIRST in the day, that’s the thing that we are giving the highest priority, the thing that is least likely to get skipped or glossed over. For us that’s prayer and catechesis. That’s what we do first.

Because even though, yes, math and science and grammar are important, my children’s faith formation is the MOST important.

They aren’t going to get it from the world. Who else are they going to get that from but me? So THAT comes first, every day.

1. Run Around Outside

The pregame is to run the kids around outside for a few minutes for exercise. This makes what comes next more successful.

2. Say “Good Morning” to Your Guardian Angel

Then we come into our schoolroom and we begin our day with morning prayers. We kneel down and pray the Morning Offering and the Guardian Angel Prayer.

Then we stand up and we say “good morning” to our Guardian Angels, then we say “good morning” to everybody else’s Guardian Angel, and then everyone hugs each other, usually in a big “group hug” while we also shout “group hug.”

This is a little thing, and it feels like a fun, silly thing, but, really, it gets to the heart of practicing what we preach, which is so meaningful to children. If we believe what we say we believe about our guardian angels, wouldn’t we acknowledge and interact with them?

We would. So we do.

3. Read a Bible story

Then we sit down. The kids each get a lit candle in front of them, which really does seem to help them stay quieter and more focused for this part, and we read a section from a children’s Bible. We begin at the beginning and just keep reading it cover to cover over the years. This allows us to be familiar with the stories and characters and promises of the Old Testament, which helps us to understand how they are fulfilled in the New Testament.

4. Goals and intentions for the day

Then we go around the room and each of us says a goal for the day (something we hope to accomplish this day with God’s help, if it is God’s will) and an intention for the day (someone or something that we are praying for). I think this process helps create a feeling of community. Sharing our prayers and goals with other members of the family helps make us accountable for those goals and lets us pray for each other.

5. Two Minutes of “Silent” Mental Prayer

Then we attempt two minutes of silent mental prayer. Sometimes this might be a guided meditation, in which I try to help us envision ourselves in the scene of the Bible story we read, other times it’s just two minutes of (relative) quiet. Some days are quieter than others, but we keep at it.

Then we blow out our candles. And because everything is a competition, they like to see whose candle smokes the longest and therefore “wins” at lifting our prayers to heaven. 

6. Feast Days

At that point we switch to the liturgical calendar. We’ve got a wall calendar, and a more interactive daily calendar with a cute sticker for each day and a little summary of the feast days (available as part of the CAY Membership here), and we take the sticker off the calendar for the day and read the little summary.

And, usually, that’s it, we move on to the rest of our lessons, which include singing liturgically relevant hymns and memorizing catechism, but . . .

That’s what we do together each morning. It takes 10 or 15 minutes.

7. Liturgical Year Bonus Stuff

But if it’s a feast day that’s of particular importance to our family or the Church, we spend some more time. I’ve got The Catholic All Year Compendium that tells the history and backstory of a lot of feast days, and I’ve got The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion that includes prayers and devotions and Bible readings that are associated with those days, so it’s all right there compiled already and I don’t have to be fiddling around on my phone looking for information or the version or translation of the prayer I want.

And I also have my liturgical year meal planner that has ideas of feast day meals, and I use that too, for planning. 

8. All Feasts are Movable Feasts

Now, WHEN we do this part varies depending on the feast day and our family schedule. It’s usually my preference to involve as many people as possible in our more important feast day observations, so if we can throw a party and invite the neighborhood, I’ll do that. If we can have the whole family together at dinner and do our prayers and readings and discussions all together, I’ll do that. But sometimes better is the enemy of good enough, so if that doesn’t seem likely to happen, I’ll do our feast day readings and prayers and devotions with my school kids. We can always do them again with the family if things change. Sometimes we even move the day we celebrate the feast as needed. We are in charge.

9. Feast Day Activities

Especially for younger kids, I sometimes plan a little activity for them, which makes a feast day feel more special. Honestly, it’s usually as simple as a saint coloring page which I can hand to them as I get started on the school day with the older kids. There are lots of great Catholic artists with coloring pages on Etsy, and Shining Light Dolls puts out a coloring book for each month, which is very convenient.

Catholic All Year Subscription Boxes also come with fun feast day activities for the family . . . that we use in our family!

I also think it’s important to remember to mentally “count” non-desk time as school when applicable. I like to associate family outings with particular feast days whenever I can. So we’ll go to the zoo on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, and we’ll go for a hike on the feast of Pope St. John Paul II because he enjoyed hiking, and we do a little Marian pilgrimage on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and those are all learning activities!

We read picture books about the saint or the day at storytime. (Find those books here.)

I also do a lot of cooking with my homeschooled kids and I think that’s really educational. There is so much that goes into getting a meal on the table. As a person who didn’t learn to cook until I was a newlywed, I remember vividly how challenging it is to cook before one has learned about planning ahead, and measuring properly, and doing things in the right order, and getting the math right when you need to triple or quadruple all recipes all the time. There’s a lot of learning to be had in cooking, not to mention an example of service to others, so I count that as part of “school” and as part of our liturgical living in the home.

Hope that helps! You can do it!

AMDG, Kendra

Posts with links to books we use

How to Raise Good Little Catholics

The Ultimate Liturgical Library Post: Saint Books for All Year Long

And posts with Father’s Day resources

Twelve Free Father’s Day Printables

Movies for Father’s Day That Don’t Hate Dad

Some products for Father’s Day:

All-Natural Sacred Heart Lotion Bar

St. Benedict Medal Car Magnet

St. Augustine Coasters

The post Our Catholic Morning Prayer Routine with Kids appeared first on Catholic All Year.

First, thank you for your blog. I’ve been reading it for a while now and it’s been a big help [to] me as a convert of a few years ago . . . .

I wanted to ask how you guys handle sick kids, as we move into our umpteenth minor illness of the year so far. I want to be sympathetic but also, I feel like crud myself and stuff still needs to get done. Those minor things like feeding the kids, clothing the kids, educating some of them. . . . And our kids are little enough that we have a zero screens policy with them, so no cartoons here.

Particularly, how do you handle:

• Sick kids who usually share a room with currently well kids
• Kids who are definitely under the weather but not exactly bedridden
• Kids who have clearly been praying strenuously to Our Lady of Lourdes all morning based on their miraculous recovery once the thing they didn’t want to do is over

I grew up with parents who had to send me to school unless I had an actual fever or D&V because they had to work, and it was miserable. My husband grew up able to stay off school whenever he wanted, even if he was just kinda tired. We both did fine at school and fine handling sickness in ourselves as adults, but I can’t seem to figure out a reasonable sickness policy for our kids that’s somewhere in the middle – not making my kids slog on for the sake of it, but discouraging malingering and laziness.

Suzanne

Hi Suzanne,

Yes, it’s hard to know exactly how to handle it! As moms we want to be loving and sympathetic, but we also don’t want to get scammed, er, let our kids wallow in sickness for longer than they need to. We’ve ended up needing to limit screens on sick days, to keep kids from doing that rather than sleeping or trying to catch up on homework. We allow audiobooks and if, in my determination, someone really can’t read or listen or sleep, I’ll allow a movie in the afternoon when homeschooled kids are done with schoolwork and they could watch together.

There’s always the “Newton’s first law effect” to contend with. A child having sick days tends to stay having sick days. If they’re over quantifiable symptoms I have them get up and get dressed in the morning, then if they STILL say they feel sick, I’ll let them stay home. But it’s too easy to decide you couldn’t possibly go to school from under your warm covers.

The flip side of that, of course, is what you mentioned, being too sick to do school or morning chores, then miraculously better when it’s time to go to the park. So if, in the morning, you’ve declared that you need a sick day, you don’t get to change your mind and participate in out-of-the-house activities later in the day. And you have to take a nap, which is very discouraging to my older kids. But I do encourage the kids to go out in the yard and get some fresh air if they’re home sick. We’ve got a swinging couch outside that is the preferred napping spot of sick kids around here.

We haven’t ever changed up beds. My babies are light sleepers, so the current youngest gets her own little room, then the rest of the girls have one room, and all the boys have another. They sleep like rocks and don’t seem to notice if one is up sick.

Different families have different policies on this, but our policy is that kids sleep in their own beds. Kids who barf at night come to our room to tell us and I get them cleaned up and back to their beds. My kids are usually one-and-done on the barfing. But we’ve got an old crib mattress we keep under the bed in our room for night bedwetting training, and I’ll put a kid on that if it seems like it’s going to be a long night.

We are fortunate now to have big kids old enough to pick up the slack for me if I’m sick, and we don’t ever seem to all be sick at once. But back when we were on zone defense, we just did our best on sick days and things like laundry and homeschool can wait a couple days until mom is feeling better. I remember being sick and setting little kids up with coloring pages and play-dough and an audiobook while I slept on the couch in the same room, and we all survived!

Anyway, I don’t feel like there’s any one right way to do it, but that’s what we do!

AMDG,

Kendra

The post Big Families and Sick Kids: Catholic All Year Mailbag Is Back! appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Question:

Dear Kendra,

I have followed you for over a year now and it has been wonderful adding more liturgical traditions to our year!

I’m pregnant and it’s a big shock. We have always been generally open to life, and in fact, my husband gets more excited each time, which is such a blessing! It is me who gets to doubting that I will be able to handle months of illness and another challenging delivery.

Looking for a helpful perspective,

Teresa

Answer:

Dear Teresa,

First off: Congratulations on your pregnancy!

Second: It sounds like you have real and legitimate concerns, and I hope you’ll be able to enlist the help of your husband and family and friends to lighten the load for you a bit over the next few months.

But third: It’s so easy for us to get caught up in the beginning stuff . . . difficult pregnancies, difficult births, those first few weeks and months of maybe reduced sleep and almost certainly reduced productivity. Even financial challenges.

But I think it’s important to remember that when you’re open to life you’re not open to “a pregnancy” or “a baby.”

You’re open to a PERSON.

You’re open to a sibling for your children. You’re open to an aunt or uncle to your grandchildren. You’re open to another loved one at your deathbed. This tiny new person will, God willing, be in your life until you die. Who knows the comfort and support one more child, one more sibling might be to you and your existing kids?

I have done difficult pregnancies, I have done uncertain futures, but it has always felt so SO worth it, when viewed with that long-term lens.

Hang in there, mama,

Kendra

P.S. My friend Monica makes this important addition . . .

Just to add: Even more than a just person for this life, it’s a person for eternal life. What an amazing thing that we, as Mothers, can do like changing eternity! We can bring souls with us to eternity. There’s nothing else on earth that we can bring with us to heaven—not all the wealth or possessions in the world. But we can bring our children. It’s such a gift God has given us.

Note: This particular reader message is an amalgamation of a few similar emails I’ve received.

_________

P.P.S. for all the dads in your life, for Father’s Day coming up, I wanted to remind you of a couple things we’ve got in the CAY Shop.

Coasters!

Available in full-color reusable coaster board in two sets: St. Augustine Quotes and Catholic Beer Quotes

Plan of Life Notepad

Based on the recommendations of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, this notepad can be used by men, women, and kids to keep track of daily spiritual practices and goals. 6×4 inches. 100 single-sided sheets per pad. Printed on 70 lb. premium stationery paper with a cardboard back. See it here.

The post Being Open to Life Is Being Open to a Person appeared first on Catholic All Year.

QUESTION

Hi Kendra,

Thank you for all that you do. I enjoy reading your blog. The articles are thoughtfully written and also very helpful.

If you are able, I would love your insight on another matter: tattoos and piercings. Our oldest is 20 and recently got a tattoo. Initially I was hurt that he didn’t share until afterward, but was happy to learn he did research what the Church taught. He understood that getting a tattoo is not a moral issue, but what you get as the tattoo is a moral issue.

He is our oldest and we had never really discussed our rules around getting a tattoo. He has two younger sisters (16 and 14) and realize we may need to talk about this. The 16 year old talks about getting one someday. While I have many family members and friends with tattoos, personally, I do not like them and feel like it is clouding my judgement going forward. I would rather they wait until they get their first job outside of college. They would be older and outside of the college/campus atmosphere and having to think about this permanent decision within in a professional atmosphere. Some say I would only be inviting rebellious behavior as they can do it on their own at 18.

As a Catholic mom whose insight I respect, I would love your take on the issue.

In Christ,
Jennifer

ANSWER

Dear Jennifer,

Thanks for your kind words. I appreciate your support! My oldest son is almost nineteen, and doesn’t have any tattoos or piercings (of which I am aware). But I don’t feel like I have the secret to getting kids to not get them. I do, however, have some personal insight into what might tempt an otherwise very loving and relatively well-adjusted teenager from a supportive home to flout her parents’ reasonable rules against getting tattoos.

Yes, this is a challenging issue for parents. I feel like it’s a particularly challenging for me because I was that rebellious kid. I had (have) SUPER loving and supportive parents who were REALLY against tattoos and piercings. I remember my dad basically telling me in high school that if I got a tattoo he would withdraw his financial support from me completely.

And so, in my slightly warped teenage brain, I think I saw it as the ultimate test. Would he still love me if I did the ONE thing he said not to do? So I got a tattoo in high school, and kept it hidden (because it turns out I was a pretty cowardly rebel) and I got two more and some piercings in college. And they were dumb and it was dumb and finally one Christmas break my mom saw one of them and it was a whole to do around the Christmas tree, but . . . it turned out that they DID still love and support me. So, in that way I won. But also I really regretted them pretty quickly, and went through the very painful process of having them removed, so overall my parents won. ​

Anyway, coming from that perspective, now as a parent, I have tried to frame tattoos as something one should be smart about, not as a moral issue or a line in the sand. I’ve shared with my kids that I had them, that it was about me trying to be a rebel, that mine were dumb, and that there’s a terrible burning smell when you get them removed. Since kids always want to be cooler than their parents, I assume kids of parents with tattoos probably want them less.​

I agree with your son’s assessment of the morality of tattoos. I think they can be cool, and Catholic, and a tool for evangelization. I think that the New Covenant means that as Christians we are not prohibited from having tattoos. I love that there is a 700-year-old tattoo shop in Jerusalem that caters specifically to Christian pilgrims. But I think, as it seems you do, that it’s a big decision that should be undertaken only by persons with fully-formed brains. Which is, apparently about 25. (But I got married at 24, so . . . )

Overall, it’s probably not something you have much control over. You can advise, but I wouldn’t draw a line in the sand. And I’m sure you, like my parents, will love your kids anyway, even if they get tattoos. And maybe, like my parents, you’ll help them pay to get them removed if they change their minds.

God Bless,

Kendra

P.S. My mom and dad are still amazingly supportive. Case in point: The husband and I were away for a couple days this week and my parents came up to watch the kids, and this is what that looked like yesterday.

P.S.S. Speaking of dads . . . (I’m all about that segue), The newest limited-edition wooden set in the shop is here! These engraved wooden coasters feature Catholic beer quotes and quotes from St. Augustine, a patron saint of beer. They are generously sized to fit under a beer stein, and come with a holder. Maybe you know a dad who might enjoy these for Father’s Day? Swipe through to see more photos. Get the details and order here.

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Most of these practices developed naturally for us over the years. They are certainly not unique to our family, but they aren’t things *I* grew up doing . . . so often the kids are the ones to remind me about them! And while I don’t think I’ll give up grumbling about driving any time soon, I’ve come to really appreciate the car as a great place to pray together as a family. If we’re going to be trapped there every day, we can use that time for good!

Here are five simple practices that work for us for being more Catholic in the car.

1. Make the Sign of the Cross when Passing a Catholic Church

As Catholics, we believe that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist in every tabernacle of every Catholic Church in the world. That means every time I drive past a Catholic Church . . . JESUS IS IN THERE! It’s a big deal! A simple yet powerful way to acknowledge that Truth is to pause the conversation, turn down the radio, and make the Sign of the Cross, focusing for a brief moment on Our Lord, as we drive past. In our family we also usually add a quick Act of Spiritual Communion prayer.

The kids are so used to it that they just naturally interrupt themselves mid-sentence to say the prayer, then roll right back into the conversation. If we have a couple minutes to spare, we’ll stop in front of the church to pray for a moment, or run inside to make a quick visit to the Blessed Sacrament. But even when it’s just that brief act of making the Sign of the Cross, I really cannot say enough for this beautiful way to witness the Truth of what we believe as Catholics to our children, our friends in the car with us, people waiting at the bus stop, etc. 

From the archives: Being Weird Catholics: Seven Ways We Help Our Family Believe in the Real Presence

2. Say the Eternal Rest Prayer when Passing a Cemetery

Another one that’s second nature to us these days is to say the Eternal Rest Prayer when passing a cemetery. 

Each year, in observance of the Holy Souls Indulgence in the first week of November, we make a point to drive past a cemetery each day, out of our way if necessary, to be able to pray for the dead on each of the eight days of the plenary indulgence. From that practice, developed our family habit of saying the Eternal Rest Prayer any time we pass a cemetery year-round (for which there is always a partial indulgence!).

This is another example of actions speaking loudly. As Catholics, we believe that prayers for the dead are important and efficacious. What better way to prove that we believe it, than to make a habit of actually doing it?!

3. Say the Memorare when Hearing an Emergency Siren

My little kids ask a lot of questions. They want to know about ambulances and police cars and fire trucks and where they’re going and why. I tell them that these first responders are off in a hurry to help someone. Having had more than our fair share of ambulance rides in the past few years, I think it’s a fair assumption to make that, wherever that siren is headed . . . the people involved could use our prayers.

Any prayer will do, but I especially like the Memorare for petitionary prayer. Ask Mom, she’ll help.

I think it’s been effective over the years as a way to teach and model empathy. It can be tempting to focus on curiosity, on “rubbernecking” to try to see what’s going on at an accident site, or if someone is pulled over. Or to be frustrated by traffic and delay. But it’s always better to focus myself on charity and prayer instead. 

4. Say the Rosary

I’ve talked about this one many times on the blog, starting here, and here’s the video version . . . 

But I’ll say it again: over many years for our family, the car has proven to be the most effective, most predictable, most consistent way to get to a family Rosary. It’s not always perfect, but that’s okay!

We say a family Rosary together, especially on longer car rides, but we’ll also do one on the way to and from Mass. We share intentions, we take turns leading, people get reminded to speak up and quit spacing out. Sometimes it’s frustrating. But it happens, and that’s the most important thing.

5. Pray by the Clock

Liturgical living gives rhythm and order to the year, with particular devotions and ways to focus our prayer assigned to different days and seasons. But liturgical living can also give rhythm and order to each day!

Having a “Plan of Life” in which we commit to particular prayers and devotions at particular times of day is a VERY effective way to consistently weave prayer throughout the day. Especially for folks with a regular driving schedule, deciding to set some of those regular devotions at times when you know you’ll be in the car can be a great way to make sure they happen. After all, cars these days have clocks, which are precise, reliable, and, um, stout-hearted?

I always plan to say a Morning Offering and a Guardian Angel Prayer first thing when I wake up, but I *also* plan to say them again with the school kids in the car in the morning (and again with the homeschooled kids when we start our school day). So . . . odds are REALLY good that it’s actually going to happen for me.

I also keep an eye on the car clock for other devotions like the noon Angelus (or, during the Easter season, the Regina Caeli) or a 3pm Divine Mercy chaplet. As noted above, I try to work in a Visit to the Blessed Sacrament, even if it’s sometimes from the car because I love you, Jesus, but I’m not waking up this baby. And a Rosary. And Spiritual Reading can happen via podcast. And getting myself to Mass or Confession happens in the car. So, the car is really a whole Plan of Life facilitation machine, when you really think about it, right?

Anyway, these practices have made a big difference for my personal life of faith, and have been a help to my family. I hope some of them will work for you, too, and we’ll all be liturgical driving in no time!

The post Being Catholic in the Car: five ways to pray and live liturgically while driving appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Here goes . . .

Q: Do your kids have phones? Do they have smartphones and social media accounts? What kind of access do your younger kids have to devices? How do you manage peer pressure and kids’ desire for technology vs what you want for them as a parent?

A: The older kids do. Only the eighteen-year-old. None. What I think is right as a parent wins every time over what my kids think they should have and ESPECIALLY over what other people’s kids think my kids should have.

That’s the short version. The long version is that I know that this is a sensitive subject and I’m not here to cast aspersions on decisions that other people have made for their own families. If you are doing something that’s working for you, that’s good. Feel free to just scroll on down to read about how you guys crashed my IT guy’s server and how Emily and I are scrambling to try to make more box subscriptions available. But for those of you who maybe aren’t feeling great about decisions you’ve made, or those of you who are facing these decisions in the future, I’d like to share a little about what didn’t work for our family and what seems to be working now.

First off, I’ll say that I don’t think that the way we as a society are currently using technology—and specifically our phones—is the way that we always will. What society sees as a normal, healthy activity changes as we see its long-term consequences. Even very entrenched behavior patterns change with time. When I see photos of people in groups and at parties all holding their phones, I think of how in photos of previous generations everyone in groups and at parties was smoking. Then, eventually, we all decided that smoking wasn’t necessarily a great lifestyle choice and now, most group photos don’t feature everyone holding a cigarette.

We aren’t bound to make choices for ourselves and our kids based on what everyone else happens to think is a good idea at this particular moment in time. As Catholics, we have an eternal perspective. So, with that in mind, we’ve made some eternally-minded counter-cultural choices for our family.

None of our minor children have smartphones. Our older teenagers have flip phones. Our younger teenagers have Kindles. Our kids under thirteen don’t have access to cell phones or iPads. We have . . . a landline telephone. One. With a cord. On a wall in the living room. (It’s also a rotary dial, just to really commit to this thing. #notkidding)

Like most counter-cultural choices, these were a bit of a leap and a bit of a process for us. When my oldest kids were little, we had an iPad for them. We incorporated it into our homeschool day. The school-aged kids had some educational games they were allowed to play on it. The toddlers had some swipey Duplo games they were allowed to play while the older kids did school. It seemed like a good plan.

But it was not a success. My school-aged kids did not learn anything meaningful on the iPad. Full disclosure: they did win a presidential trivia competition at the Reagan Library based on knowledge gained from a game called Presidents vs Aliens, but that’s really the best we can claim. On the horrifying side, they were exposed to explicit cartoons that they accidentally happened upon. 

My toddlers were not made less distracting or troublesome by the iPad. In fact, the very existence of the iPad, and the possibility that one might be granted access to it, became foremost in their minds. They exhibited addictive behaviors around it. They would fiend for it. It was a source of unhappiness and conflict.

So, now, none of the kids under thirteen in my house have access to devices. We just went cold turkey on it about six years ago and never looked back. I never, ever hand my phone to my babies, toddlers, or kids. Ever. (It’s a standard, Always Mean What You Say, “not for babies” situation.) They have limited community-only access to TV and video games, but no access to personal screens. They get to be kids without the burden of the desire to be iPadding.

Eventually, we start stair-stepping them up in supervised access to devices, in a way that we hope encourages their responsible use.

At about thirteen, our kids get access to an ad-free Kindle tablet. They can use it for ebooks, audiobooks, music, and email. We use parental controls to turn off the internet browser and app store, and we set a curfew on it, so it’s not accessible when they should be sleeping or doing school. There is a stated policy of no expectation of privacy on devices around here. They belong to mom and dad, and we have complete access to everything on them. We understand that the kids certainly could find inappropriate material on them, even with access to only the aforementioned platforms, so we talk to them about pornography and why it’s so devastating, we show them this video by Fight the New Drug, and we monitor their use as much as possible.

If Kindle-users around here misuse them or are unable to avoid temptation or if they need more time to focus on school or getting to their chores, the Kindle goes away for a time.

At about sixteen, our kids get an old-school flip phone. They can use it for phone calls and texts. The browser is disabled if possible, otherwise it’s just off-limits. (We have a freestanding GPS in the car for navigating.) They are required to be accessible by phone when away from home (which means remembering to keep it charged and bring it along and answer it when possible) and to respond to texts from mom and dad in a timely manner. They (and the younger teens) also have access to some computer-based google chats with classmates, also with the understanding that they are not private, and that access to them is dependent on appropriate and charitable use. But that’s it. They get to be teens without the burden of social media.

At about eighteen, our oldest got an iPhone and got to choose whether or not to join social media. He has a couple of accounts, but isn’t a big user of social media, which I think is a good choice for a college student. I first got on social media at thirty-seven, which seems about right to me, but we watched The Social Dilemma together, then left the decision up to him.

Of course, our parenting decisions change based on the needs of individual kids and particular circumstances. But this parenting decision that seemed crazy and unusual at the time, and—I guess—was, has turned out to feel like one of our all-time best. It’s really been a way to help safeguard our kids and their free time in an era when busyness reigns and bullies are faceless and childhood innocence is often lost early. Fortunately, Tierneys have a strong family culture and are not beholden to “everybody else is doing it.” And we are really blessed to have a great school and community around us in which our kids are NOT actually the only kids without access to smartphones. I mean, we’d still do what we think is right, but it IS nice to have that backup.

So, if you’re considering un-devicing your little kids, and taking it slow with older kids and phones, I say: Do it. Ten out of ten. Would recommend.

Best,

Kendra

The post Kids & Tech: What We Do and Why We Mostly Don’t appeared first on Catholic All Year.

The technology might be different, but human desires remain pretty constant, and the rules that guided decent behavior among people in the past, are still relevant today. And some old time common sense has got to be more reasonable than what we usually see like/sharing its way around social media. That “advice” runs the gamut from Twitter mob mom-shaming of someone caught checking emails and possessing a baby at the SAME TIME, to the impassioned 2000 characters of mommy influencers who are never going to put their phones above the every whim of their children ever again as soon as they finish this social media post about it.

Both are silly emotional approaches to a real issue that needs a real solution. How should we balance cell phone use with the real people around us, both adults and children?

Enter George Washington. As a teenager, he copied out by hand 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. The rules actually predate the Revolutionary Era quite a bit, having been composed by French Jesuits in 1595. Presumably they were written out as part of an exercise in penmanship assigned by young Washington’s schoolmaster. 

Let’s take a look at rule the 18th:

Read no Letters, Books, or Papers in Company but when there is a Necessity for the doing of it you must ask leave: come not near the Books or Writings of Another so as to read them unless desired or give your opinion of them unasked also look not nigh when another is writing a Letter.

That’s it. Everything is covered right there. It’s saying that when in Company, I shouldn’t be on my phone reading Letters, Books, or Cat Memes. So if I’m having dinner with the husband or I’m at the park with the homeschool group, my phone should stay in my pocket and I should be available for conversation. If a Necessity for the doing of it arises, I should apologize quickly to the IRLs and perhaps excuse myself for a moment.

But the goal is to be available to the people I’m with, and not transfer my attention to my phone, even if there’s a lull in the conversation and I feel that flash of boredom or curiosity.

But what if I’m in the company of my children, like, all the time?

via GIPHY

That’s where the second half of the rule comes in handy. Of course my children are “more important” than my phone. They are also more important than eating or bathing or sleeping. It doesn’t follow that in the normal course of a day a mom shouldn’t attend to those things. 

But then, one can’t help but remember all the mom shaming about being on phones as one is attempting to answer emails and a preschooler rushes in, desperate to tell me about a dog she saw last week. So what *I* do, is imagine I am a fancy Revolutionary Era lady sitting at a writing desk, engaged in correspondence, when said preschooler enters.

What would she do? I imagine she would pleasantly remind little Prudence that it’s impolite to interrupt. So that’s what I do. I tell my kids that if they see me typing, it means I am talking to someone. If it’s a dog-seeing emergency of some sort,* by all means let me know, but otherwise, it can wait until I’m done.

That come not near the Books or Writings of Another so as to read them part manifests as craning little necks wanting to put their faces between me and my phone. But as their opinions on my Facebook feed are not desired, I remind them to look not nigh. 

And that’s reasonable parenting in my book, as long as, when I’m done with a sensible amount of emailing/commenting/posting/scrolling, I put down my quill and go for a turn about the garden with the IRL people and give THEM my attention.

Because I think that’s where the actual problem lies. It’s not that I’m on my phone. It’s when I’m on my phone AND trying to do other important things at the same time. Quill Pen Lady, and George Washington, and sixteenth-century Jesuits would all have understood that Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation dictates that one must focus one’s attention on the task or the person at hand. 

Good manners means my kids should be respectful of my occupation at the moment if I’m on my phone. But good manners also means I should stay off my phone while we’re having lunch or doing schoolwork or having a conversation about dogs we once saw. 

Easier said than done, believe me, I know. I’m not saying I’m perfect at this, but I do try. And it really gives me comfort to know that, as much as we’d like to think we’re the only generation that’s ever dealt with distraction, it’s just not true. Every era has its own forms of the same old issues. And all we’ve ever been able to do is keep trying our best with what we’ve got.

* Dog-seeing emergency:

p.s. I really do love this little book. The rules are amusing to read, and the vast majority of them are very applicable to my life. You can see all the rules online here, or get a little hardback book here, or a copybook version here. My kids get to write lines from it if ever they slip into incivility or indecent behavior.

Fat Tuesday is TOMORROW, are you ready?!

See how we celebrate here:

Mardi Gras Madness and a Hoodoo Movie Review

Check out our video on making a SUPER EASY Cheater King Cake here. Baby Jesuses available here, or if you can’t get same-day shipping, you can use a ring, or a bean, or a LEGO guy . . . whatever you’ve got! Just stick anything meltable into the cake after it’s baked.

Orange bundt cake pan here. Fleur de lis bundt cake pan I got for Christmas this year, here.
CAY Printable Lent Set here. Want to cut them out the fast way? Use this 2.5 in circle punch for the medallions.

CAY Family Lent booklet here and a pdf. And here as a soft cover booklet.

And . . . speaking of those videos, all the discount codes for Ignatius books at Ignatius.com are good through the end of February. See this post for all the links. If you’re looking for great Lenten reads for middle-grade kids, the Vision Book Series of saint biographies has dozens of great choices (CAY919 for 25% off list price for those) or  The Life of Jesus According to St. Luke, and Who is Jesus? His Life, His Land, His Time are both really informative and well-done (use code CAY719 for those two).

The post George Washington’s Rules for Mannerly Cell Phone Use in Company and Around One’s Children appeared first on Catholic All Year.

I currently have four kids in “regular” school, three in homeschool (and three not-yet-school-age), so I often get asked why we transition our kids out of homeschooling, and how we make the decision when to do that. This post is my answer to that question. <note: all kids, and all families are different, your experience may vary>

I was a reluctant homeschooler to begin with, and I homeschooled for many years as a pragmatist rather than an apologist for homeschooling. For an introvert with many many children and a visceral aversion to waking a sleeping baby, homeschooling seemed like the only practical decision I could make. There were always things I loved about it, but I kinda always half figured I’d just put them all in a regular school if only we had a good option for that.

Then, one year, homeschooling my oldest went so very badly that we spent the next year driving him nearly an hour to a school every morning, and the school was so great that the next year we moved to be closer to it. And it was finding that really wonderful brick and mortar school, and discovering what a good fit it is for our family, that solidified my commitment to homeschooling.

via GIPHY

So here’s how I see it now . . .

I LOVE homeschooling in the early grades. I like the flexibility of setting our own schedule. I like being a part of all those early learning milestones. I really like have older kids around to help with little kids. Even more importantly, I like solidifying sibling relationships as my children’s primary friendships in their early years, and our family culture as their primary influence. It works really, really well for us.

See this post and this podcast for more on how we promote a family culture.

Then . . . around age ten or twelve, most notably for my boys, it stops working well for us. Very dramatically. More on this process here, but in those “tween” years I have noticed a very fundamental shift in the way my boys respond to being bossed around all day by their mom. It made me think about the fact that, historically, boys of this age would have been sent out to be apprenticed, or off to boarding school. And I was like,

via GIPHY

For our oldest four kids, we have used a classical Catholic homeschool curriculum through grade school, and then sometime between 6th and 8th grade (depending on the kid), we’ve transitioned them into a classical Catholic brick and mortar school. It’s been a really successful approach. I haven’t experienced the tween push-back to the same degree with our daughters so far (the eldest are currently 16 and 10), but I still think this approach is the right one for them as well.

It feels like concentric circles. Our kids’ lives and educations start out very family-focused. We mindfully shape their earliest worldview. We are picky about the curriculum we use, and the Mass we attend, and the books they read, and the shows they watch, and the music they listen to, and the friends they spend time with. We teach them not only to read and write, but also how to interact with other people, how to work hard, how to handle adversity and frustration and success. We are careful of the influences they get from entertainment, and we teach them how to be discerning in their entertainment choices.

Our family culture firmly established, they’re ready to make the jump into the next circle of influence, that of a carefully chosen community. The school to which we send our kids shares our faith, and our devout practice of it. The teachers and other parents share our primary goal for our children, although we don’t all approach parenting in exactly the same way, of course. And while no school is perfect, a school that is TRYING is so so important to us.

Because in the tween and teen years, it’s natural and appropriate that kids would start to look outside the family. It’s often characterized as “rebellion,” but it doesn’t have to be that. It’s just looking past mom and dad and asking, “What do other people think about stuff?” “Is my family’s way the only way?” “What do *I* believe about the world?” Having teachers and friends and other parents who share our same fundamental worldview is a huge blessing in this stage. My kids can have new mentors, new influences, new people who can share their own approach and their own experiences, but not undermine the foundation we’ve worked to establish.

via GIPHY

And then, at some point, we have to trust them to venture into the wide wide world. For some kids, they could be ready for this responsibility after high school, for others, a more nurturing college (or college alternative) environment is going to be beneficial for them. But then, we just have to hope (and pray) that we’ve prepared them to meet the challenges that they’ll inevitably face to their faith and morals and character. And to be there to help them dust themselves off if that becomes necessary. This part is all conjecture (well, and advice from trusted friends) at this point, as our oldest is a senior in high school this year.

But, I can say so far, so good for our kids on the circles of influence approach. This isn’t the only way to raise faithful adults, of course. But it’s *a* way. That you might want to consider for your family.

So, what do you think? Have you noticed these same stages in your homeschool kiddos? Have you expelled anyone? And for moms who are sticking it out with homeschooling, please share your wisdom with us in the comments!

The post When to Expel Your Kid From Homeschool: Circles of Influence and Homeschool vs Regular School appeared first on Catholic All Year.