Be More than just a Parent & Become a Catholic Parent

7 principles to help us arrive with our children at our eternal destination

In a recent essay, I argued that many Catholic schools have lost track of the core purposes of education. In their desire to compete with secular, government-run schools, too many Catholic institutions have placed their greatest emphasis on preparing students for college and careers and sidelined their primary goal of helping kids get to heaven. 

But Catholic parents, too, have adopted too many assumptions from the secular culture about their role and responsibilities relative to their children. The clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church is that parents are first and foremost teachers (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2223). Schools and professional educators are there to help families educate their children, not to replace them.

What would it look like for parents to fully embrace their responsibility as educators, to embed their vocation as teachers into every aspect of their family’s life? The following are touchstones for parents to consider as they carry out this eternally-important mission.

These ideas are rooted in Church teaching and the principles of classical learning. As a real-life parent, my own family struggles to consistently live them out, but what follows is a vision that is meant to inspire prayerful reflection, communication, planning, and change. No family is going to be a champion at every element of this framework, so feeling guilty or defensive when we know our families are struggling in a particular area is not helpful. The point is to use this framework to pray, plan, set goals, and grow.

The three purposes of education - and parenting

First, because the role of parent is the role of teacher, it is important to remember that a truly Catholic education has three goals of primary, secondary, and tertiary importance. My previous essay explored these goals in depth, but briefly they are as follows:

1. Getting kids to heaven. This is the whole point of education, the goal toward which all other educational priorities support. Children can master the entire body of human knowledge, but if they lose their souls, their schooling was a massive, tragic waste

2. Helping kids figure out their vocation. This does not mean answering the question, “What are you going to be when you grow up,’ but rather, “How are you going to serve the Lord?” Parents have a critical role in helping children discern their unique gifts and dispositions and how God is calling them to serve Him throughout their lives.

3. Helping kids master the knowledge and skill they need to carry out their vocation. This is the part that concerns learning various academic subjects and skills.

These three goals have to be pursued in the above order of importance. Most educational endeavors get these priorities exactly backward, overemphasizing learning academic subjects and preparing for colleges and careers to the neglect or outright exclusion of the most important goal: forming children into saints, men and women of virtue with the capacity for self-mastery and with properly ordered affections.

These goals should be parents’ most important priorities. Their homes and all their family activities should align with and support these objectives.

A 7-part roadmap for Catholic parents

How can busy, distracted families successfully pursue these goals in a culture that is hostile to our faith? The following seven principles offer a roadmap for Catholic parenting that helps us arrive with our children at our eternal destination.

1. Prayer and Worship: This is the foundation of all family life. Weekly Mass attendance, reception of the sacraments, and a rich daily prayer life involving the entire family are the core from which all the other principles arise and around which they rotate. Children need to see their parents - and especially their fathers - regularly engage in prayer and lead family devotions like the rosary or the Divine Mercy chaplet. Families can use the liturgical calendar to help their children learn about saints on their feast days and observe traditional ways of celebrating Solemnities and other special occasions. Above all, parents should try to show their children that prayer and worship is about growing in a personal relationship with Jesus Himself so that they can, by His grace, be strengthened in faith, hope, and charity.

2. Communication: As their children’s primary teachers, parents must engage in continuous, rich conversation with their children: teaching them what they need to know but also listening to them; asking questions to understand each child’s unique needs and talents, explaining everything to the best of their abilities, and making each child feel affirmed. Abundant research shows this is best done around the family dinner table as many nights as possible, but in my own family a lot of our best conversation happens in the car on our way to soccer practice, school, or church. Teach your kids about the world, about God, and about how to live a life of virtue. Kids need to feel free and eager to ask their parents questions, and when we don’t know the answer, let’s make sure to follow up and find out, even if that means an internet search together or approaching our priest after Mass if the question is religious or theological in nature.

3. Routines: Just as liturgy gives structure to our prayer and worship, routines for family life are essential to the work of teaching children discipline and self control. Children need to know “how we do things” in our family and feel security in the structure those routines provide. My experiences as a classroom teacher taught me how much kids value order, even if they protest about it at first. Routines for going to bed, preparing for school, getting ready for Church, making meals, and addressing problems reassure children that there is an order to the universe and that we avoid a lot of suffering by keeping our own lives in order.

4. Clear expectations: Based on the virtues we aspire to as a family, we can establish the expectations for each child relative to behavior, routines, privileges, and duties/obligations. This includes age-appropriate chores and other responsibilities, but also the rules for how we communicate and treat each other. The focus here should always be on the virtues we want children to learn, rather than simply prohibitions on unvirtuous behaviors. My own family has a mission statement that begins, “We are a family that…” and goes on to express what we believe and value, how we treat each other, and how we meet our obligations and duties outside of our family. We use this as a way to remind our children (and sometimes the adults in the family) why we do the things we do, and how that sometimes makes us different from other families.

5. Modeling: Parents have to show their kids how to complete tasks, deal with problems, and manage temptations to misbehave, both through explicit instruction and by their own example. This is difficult because as adults we don’t always realize that kids don’t know how to do certain things. As a teacher I taught sixth graders how to organize their books and prepare their desks to learn, something I didn’t expect to teach. As a parent, I had to teach my kids how to wash dishes, do laundry, and a thousand other tasks I took for granted that everyone knows. Of course modeling also applies to moral behaviors too, and as fallen humans we can’t always do that consistently. When we fail as parents to live up to our professed ideals, it is particularly powerful when our children see us humble ourselves to ask forgiveness.

6. Consistent consequences: Having clear expectations and modeling behaviors and skills is of limited value if we don’t also have a system of consequences to reinforce those standards. Kids need to know what will happen when they miss the mark. Modern culture tends to frown on parents instilling fear in their children, but there is a proper and necessary way to make sure children want to please and honor their parents. Ideally, we want to have such a strong and loving relationship with our kids that they don’t want to disappoint us. But again human nature means they inevitably must learn certain lessons the hard way. How will we handle these failures when they happen? The consequences of misbehavior shouldn’t come as a surprise to our kids. On the other hand, consequences also mean intentionally establishing ways to celebrate when kids overcome obstacles to display great virtue and self-control.

7. Growing in sanctity: All of these parenting principles help us keep our focus on the number one goal of parenting, and the number one goal of life: helping our kids grow in virtue, become saints, and share in eternal life. Every activity, from school work to sports to setting the table, becomes an opportunity to consciously live our lives, as St. Ignatius of Loyola put it, “to the greater glory of God” (Ad majorem Dei gloriam).

Again, this roadmap is not a tool with which to beat ourselves up because our families don’t consistently live out these principles. If we did there would be no need for this essay! Rather, these touchstones are reminders to all of us, my family included, of the meaning and purpose of our lives and our parental vocation as teachers of our children.

One final note: no family can live by this roadmap in isolation from others. We need to seek out other families who share our values and our eternal commitments and intentionally build community with them. We can find these families especially in our parishes but also in our neighborhoods, youth sports clubs, schools, and elsewhere. 

They may not even be Catholic, but if you find other parents who share a commitment to these seven principles, they can be your allies and a great source of mutual support. And don’t neglect the value of being part of a faith-filled, extended, multi-generational family. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins can all help with the formation of healthy, happy children who want to know, love, and serve the Lord.

May this roadmap be a blessing to your family and mine.