by Father Daniel A. Lord, Questions People Ask About Their Children

Should a father or a mother be the one to say yes or no to where the children go and how late they stay out?  

Why not a decision based on consultation between both parents? The direction will come with more authority if it is backed by an agreement of both parents.

America tends to give parental authority more and more to the mother. Yet often enough it is the father who most probably knows more about the situation and can judge it more objectively and more realistically.

I suggest that the parents talk the decision over together. Then when they give their decision, it will stand without the kind of division between father and mother that can result in a child’s confusion, delusion, and inevitable insubordination.

So many modern children seem to be vandals. They recklessly destroy property or deface it. What is to be done about this?  

There again I’d ask: Are the children so much different from their elders? We have done a lot of wholesale destroying in the past few years. The war was a masterpiece of destruction accomplished with scientific thoroughness.

But in general . . . . have you noticed how supposedly grown-up people deal with the property of others? Their careless use of books from the public library? The way they set wet glasses on the top of your apartment grand piano? Their destruction of hotel property when the party gets a little loud?

The way apparently adult men act at, let’s say, some of the American Legion conventions, ex-servicemen’s associations or on New Year’s Eve?

Their wholesale theft of silver, linen, knickknacks from hotels and restaurants? Their utter thoughtlessness in the way they put their feet on the seats of public conveyances? Their use of linen towels in train washrooms to wipe their shoes?

We should give a lot of thought to that phase of the seventh commandment that regards proper care for the belongings of others . . . . including, I might add, the property we share together in parks and public buildings . . . . , and the property of large corporations, who according to some people have no rights at all.

The approach to youth — here as always — is first of all good adult example.   I then suggest a re-teaching of that seventh commandment and a stressing of its importance for the whole of decent living.

Manners have a great bearing on conduct of this kind. Children who from infancy are taught not to handle things that do not belong to them are likely to develop respect for the property of others.

A quite justified if slightly selfish convenience may be appealed to: We in turn have to use things that are used by others. If a boy vandal cuts up a chair in the movie house, it may be our bad luck to sit on it afterward. If the washbowl is clogged up because someone carelessly tossed a towel down the drain, we may not be able to use the washbowl.

Vandalism hurts everybody. Everybody pays tribute in annoyance to the vandal.   Example and education — use both in your teaching.   And of course this is all tied in with God’s basic commands, which remain sound common sense and good pedagogy.

Do you believe that children should be spanked? Or should parents reason with their children?  

I find it hard to see how even the most skillful parent could reason with a child under the age of three. He would have to be a child prodigy.   Reasoning is, almost by definition, possible only when the child has reached the age of reason.

A swift little spank on the sector that nature seems to have designed for that purpose — a nerve center padded against any real harm to nerves or muscles — is often the one convincing argument.

Irresponsible spankings are of course usually the sign of an inadequate, nervous, or already beaten parent. A swift little crack (“Not on the head, Morris!”) need not be a manifestation of parental petulance or of the failure of parental psychology. It may be the most reasonable thing in the world.

The baby hand continues to grab after the parent has spoken; a swift little slap on the hand serves as a deterrent to the baby. He would have had the same lesson from a fire into which he might have thrust his hand — without however the saving fact that the pain of the slap is soon over (the pain of the burn would have been of longer duration).

Spankings should be very rare . . . . though there are situations in which spankings are emphatically called for.   Spankings should not be the common form of discipline. They should not be so recurrent that the child begins to regard his parents as tireless whipping machines. They should be almost a last resort.

Some children can early be shown what is right and what is wrong, and they accept reasonably parental commands.   Some children need the fear of a sharp but not lingering physical pain to hold them back from evil and harm to themselves.

But if the right discipline is given early, the spanking can later disappear completely from the discipline.

It is very bad to spank adolescent children, who dread the pain not nearly as much as they hate the humiliation and resent the fact that there is no way for them to strike back.

How should a parent deal with teenage impertinence?

Head it off  before the children reach their teens. The correct training in good manners, self-control, and morals during the formative days of infancy and childhood will mean few outbursts of temper or temperament in adolescence.

Parents and elders in general must be sure that what they regard as impertinence really is impertinence.

Boys of adolescent age often have voices that slip strangely out of control. So they become embarrassed, and do and say strange things. They are crude with their hands and clumsy with their feet. Since they deal all day long with boys of their own gangling and juvenile age, they find it hard to change completely to good manners at the family dinner table.   Besides they are often preoccupied with temptation and troubled by physical problems to such an extent that they are snappish and short and rude. Such seeming impertinence rises sometimes to answer a fierce struggle that is raging in their own natures. A wise parent is aware of this and not too quick to be resentful of it.

Then too all young people tend to develop a language of their own. It sounds flip, crisp, cryptic, sometimes a little vulgar, and frequently quite unintelligible to their elders.

If they use the language around the house, it is because like most human beings they follow the fashion of their peers. Yet slang is not always impertinence, and the cryptic jive talk of youngsters may indicate merely that they are demonstrating that they are in the know.

When, however, a teenager first shows signs of real impertinence, he or she should be clipped immediately. Once more: No scenes and emotional displays. None of this appeal to parental dignity and rights — “How dare you talk like that to your mother?”

Rather the quiet and final answer: “I consider that distinctly impertinent and the sort of thing that is not to happen around here again — ever.”

If elders take such a stand early — the stand based on a well-planned course of childhood and early-youth training in good manners and right conduct — the single reproof may be enough.

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From Questions People Ask About Their Children, Fr. Daniel A. Lord, 1950’s

If the home is such a powerful factor in the future of the children of a nation, why are such powerful groups in the nation arrayed against the home?  

Precisely because the home is powerful. If it were not an important institution, the enemies of God and of man would leave it alone.

Because the people who control the home control the future, because parents are the first representatives of God on earth, because within the home is the hope of morality . . . . for these reasons the men who wish to control the future, who hate God, and who would for their own selfish purposes wipe out morality attack the home openly or subtly.

I am thinking of adopting a child. What about the risks of heredity?  

Nowadays,  if you are considering the adoption of a child from any reputable orphanage, you won’t find it too difficult to make some check on the ancestry of the child. You can learn a good deal without ever discovering the name of the parents.

You run a risk with any child. You would run risks with children of your own. There are strange things that crop up in the best-bred boys and girls. Science is a long way from having mastered all the details and facts involved in heredity.

But environment is the more powerful factor in the shaping of a human being.   If you will give this adopted baby love and affection and a good home and careful training and wholesome food . . . . if you will lead it into the faith and see that it comes to know God and distinguish right from wrong . . . . if you will be a careful and devoted parent, neither spoiling it with kindness nor warping it with neglect . . . . you will have a first-class chance of seeing the baby grow into an adult of whom you will be proud and who will give you real happiness.

Did not the poverty-stricken environment of Abraham Lincoln help make him a success?

Both the environment and the heredity of Lincoln seem to have been somewhat in the nature of mixed blessings (to put it gently).   No rules, I’ll admit, normally cover the development of genius, at least none that are yet adequately understood.

Extreme poverty and extreme wealth are normally notable handicaps to a child. The best environment is the one that offers enough, but not too much, with the need to struggle — without starvation.

The genius is not always however a happy man. He may do a wonderful job along one line or another. He may become a great musician. He may leave immortal poetry when he dies — in his garret. He may prove to be a one-sided wizard who knows all about electricity and nothing much about anything else.

I do not recall that heredity and environment collaborated to make Abraham Lincoln personally a happy man. It seems to me that he was our American Hamlet — except that, unlike Hamlet, he did great things for all of us.

He was troubled, confused, often terrifyingly tragic, usually lonesome, and apparently always a little sad as he questioned his own soul.

Do you approve of children’s attending a convent school from nine to five o’clock? Very little time remains for parental supervision of the children.

Correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t think the convent schools started this system. As I recall, some of the secular fashionable schools of our cities initiated the system.

They took the children off the parents’ hands from rosy dawn to dewy eventide.

Several factors may have inspired this:

1. A desire to relieve the parents of as much responsibility for their children as possible and to give the parents more time to do the really important work of the world — make money, attend clubs, become bridge experts, and maintain adult life and contacts.
2. A sneaking conviction on the part of many an educator that children should be separated from their parents’ pernicious and untutored influence — to the children’s ultimate and probably immediate good.

There are many educators who think the child vastly better if he is taken from his parents early and kept late. Socialism and communism had some such ideas.   So the situation of an all-day school arose.

What to do? Catholic children were being taken into these secular schools. The convent authorities saw the trend, knew that some children would be so parked or checked for the day, and, preferring the lesser of two evils, offered to take the children into a Catholic educational atmosphere — on the same time basis that the secular schools offered.

I suppose all schools are an admission that parents cannot properly educate.   The all-day-long school seems to proclaim that parents cannot educate at all.

But since the trend existed, I’m glad that the sisters stepped in to give the youngsters Catholic education and training . . . . and a Catholic atmosphere throughout their day’s absence from home and parents.

In this time of turmoil in our Holy Mother Church, we remain firm and hold fast to our Faith. We cling to the Ark, the Church, as it gets tossed about in the waves, bruised and battle-weary. We pray for a return to the days of former glory, when the Church was a beacon of light, a comfort to us sinners, who could find refuge in its steadfastness. St. Joseph, pray for us! www.finerfem.com

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When my children were young I loved to read to them stories, poems and nursery rhymes! They knew those rhymes inside and out and it was such a happy pastime! I did yearn, at times, for little ditties that had more meaning…….So I decided to write a book myself for the generation after me….especially thinking of my grandchildren, but for all Catholic children everywhere!

Who can resist those little ditties, those lovely little sing-song verses called Nursery Rhymes!? Songs and rhymes for young children have been passed down from generation to generation. They are fun, children love them, and they provide a warm, nurturing experience for the whole family.

Nursery Rhymes can be very valuable in a child’s reading development. They are short and easy to repeat and they become some of the child’s first sentences. They also help the child practice the rhythm of language….pitch, volume and voice inflection.

Our own children grew up learning and repeating Nursery Rhymes. It was very enjoyable and it was an easy way to teach the children the use of rhythm and rhyme. How much more meaningful those little poems would have been if there had been more depth in the considerations behind each little verse!

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From Questions Parents Ask About Their Children, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

Should the child be protected from adverse influences? Or should he be allowed to meet them and be trained to overcome them?  

He should be protected against those adverse influences that his strength and wisdom are as yet insufficient to handle.   He should be trained and prepared for the difficulties that are bound to arise in his life.   He should be watched and guided through his small problems so that little by little he will learn to master the larger problems.

What he needs is warning, training, supervised development, and a constantly increasing measure of guided independence.

Do you believe there is a black sheep in every family?  

I certainly do not. I recall the funeral sermon preached years ago over the father of a large and splendid family, and the priest made a point of the fact that it was a family without a black sheep.

Since then I have been watching, and I am delighted to report that I know many, many families in which all the children grow up to happy and virtuous adulthood.

Sometimes people use the words black sheep rather carelessly.   They may mean the words to refer to a perfectly good man who seems never to make much money or who has a series of notably hard-luck adventures.   They may even mean a person who through an early accident has suffered some psychic setback that resulted in later aberrations or failures.   These are not morally and willfully bad sheep, and we cannot blame them for their wanderings.

In a notably good family, where the children are outstandingly good and whitely virtuous, one boy who is a little wild or one girl who whistles around the house (sad crime in some strait-laced families) is the one over whom heads are shaken gloomily.

A slight sin in one child of a good family may show up startlingly. But one sin, one fall, does not make a black sheep.

Are parents to be held responsible for the actions of a married daughter, twenty-five years old, who, though she is a Catholic, is seeking to divorce her husband, also a Catholic, and to marry a non-Catholic?  

I don’t know either the parents or the daughter. It happens that good parents who have given their children the right training and good example will on occasion see their children do or want to do the wrong things.

This daughter is sadly turning to the wrong . . . . and it may be that her parents are good.   If that is the case, the parents need not blame themselves.

If however the training they gave her was defective, lacking in Catholic example and standards and education, the story is quite different.

But in either case the fact that the daughter is twenty-five years old is no reason for the parents not giving her the advice called for by her immoral and stupid intentions. They cannot wash their hands of concern and responsibility for their children just because the children are married and are independent.

Someone must talk to this particular girl.   Railing and abuse and indignation and wrath aren’t the right approach. A cool and objective discussion of her obligations as a woman and as a Catholic, the presentation of the position of the Church (a position that she probably knows well enough), and a plea to her to take her time and not do something so fatal as this — these actions can well be within the simple duty of the parents.

The parents of this girl may be able to handle the situation. It may be though that it would be better handled through some priest whose interest they enlist. Or an outsider, a good friend, often a professional man or woman — any of these may be the one to make the approach.

But the parents cannot sit back helplessly and on the basis of their training of their daughter act as if all were right when all is surely not right. They cannot let their grown daughter plunge into a life that Catholics regard — with Christ — as adulterous.

They should at least let her know clearly that they do not approve, why they cannot approve, and what they think will be the consequences of her heedless and pagan selfishness.

How do you explain the good children of bad parents?  

They are sadly infrequent. Sometimes what is meant by “good” children is merely “successful” children, children who make money, who rise high in the world. They are not always good in the sense that a Christian understands good.

But the good children of bad parents can be found.   After all, children have free will and the grace of God.   Sometimes because of a variety of circumstances they escape the evil influence of their parents.

Sometimes the very characteristics of their parents turn them against evil. They hate the sins of their parents; they are driven to virtue by their distaste for vice.   But such children are always the happy exceptions to the unfortunate rule.

Have nervous parents an emotional influence on their children?  

Nervous parents, like all other nervous people in places of influence, should do their best to control their nervousness . . . . . or cure it completely.

Nervous mothers are often nagging mothers.   Nervous fathers can prove to be irritable and temperamental fathers.   Nerves are manifested in fears, a sad thing to pass on to children; in quick flashes of temper and sometimes rage, resulting in frightened or resentful children; in commands given and forgotten, issued without thought and seldom enforced.

Yet I have known naturally nervous people who did wonderful jobs protecting others against the penalties of nerves. They argued that it was unfair to make others suffer for their illness.

Should a sinful daughter — an unmarried daughter — be turned out? Or should the family stand by her?  

May the situation never happen to any of you good Catholic parents. But let’s suppose it does happen. Let’s suppose that a daughter of the family is about to have a baby without benefit of wedlock.

The first impulse of the modern pagan is to resort to an abortion. This is of course murder, and the Catholic parents cannot permit it — much less encourage or arrange it. Excommunication for the guilty persons in such an action is part of the temporal punishment.

The next impulse is anger at the disgrace: The girl has betrayed the family honor; she is unfit for the family circle.   Sometimes the girl will brazen out her sin. She will be unrepentant and bitter and difficult to handle.   Usually however she is beaten, broken, bitterly tragic, and willing to do anything to get right again with God and with society.   Whatever her attitude, she is a pitiful case; and if at this time the family turns against her, she may be lost hopelessly. Now if ever she needs help and sympathy and the protection of those who are her natural and supernatural protectors.

Anger, upbraiding, bitter attacks, the cruelty of a slashing tongue, blows, rejection . . . . . what good do these do? They make the girl suspect or fear that even from God there is little hope of forgiveness.

In a way the parents should represent the mercy of God and His patient forgiveness of all sinners who repent, however durable and permanent the consequences of their sins.

The parents will do their best to hide her from the gossipy and giggling and slanderous world. While they make clear to her their grief and their conviction of her sin, they will be tender with the child and do what they can to rebuild and salvage their daughter’s life.

They will not by cruelty and vigorous if mistaken justice confirm her in her tragedy and blight the rest of her days.

“Do the things you don’t want to do. Do them cheerfully and well. E.Schaeffer wrote, ‘Somebody has to get up early, stay up late, do more than the others, if the human garden is to be a thing of beauty.’ At first glance it doesn’t seem fair, but there are hidden and precious rewards for dying to self and serving. Stomping and self-pity cancel the reward points.” 🙂 -Charlotte Siems

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Hands Free Mama is the digital society’s answer to finding balance in a media-saturated, perfection-obsessed world. It doesn’t mean giving up all technology forever. It doesn’t mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. It means looking our loved ones in the eye and giving them the gift of our undivided attention, living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions.

With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. https://amzn.to/2T06u28 (afflink)

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From Questions Parents Ask About Their Children, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

How much independence should a child be allowed?  

The independence he needs to become a self-reliant, fully developed adult able to meet and solve the problems of life with competence and correctness. . . . .   The independence that is, not license, but controlled and directed initiative . . . . .   The independence that has in it respect for law and a prompt obedience coupled with encouragement toward candor, honesty, and the ability — proportionate to his age — to handle the affairs of his life.

Mothers who in great fondness for their children bind them to their waists sometimes do the children irreparable wrong.   Parents who make of their children little parrots will have parrots and not people.

Independence may be a good thing . . . . , and it may be bad.

A child should be encouraged to manage his toys, keep his own room and belongings tidy without constant direction and supervision.

He should be trusted to the degree in which he has justified trust. He is trusted in small things. If he stands up to that trust, the trust is increased. If he fails, while the trust is not immediately removed, he is corrected and warned that the punishment for further failure will be the withdrawal of trust.

He is praised when he does things well and on his own. He is encouraged to think out his own problems and to bring his answers or solutions to his parents. If his solutions are correct, he is again praised. If they are not correct, he is sent to think his problems over again . . . . , or he discusses them with his parents until he is led — without too much emphasis on the leading — to the right answers or solutions.

It is important that children do their own thinking — guided and directed but their actual thinking not done for them. It is important that they learn to feel responsible for small obligations and duties where their possessions are concerned, their associates, their brothers and sisters, the house.

It is a mistake for an adult to do a child’s homework for him. Homework can be a fine training in independent thinking and acting. If the parent does the homework, the parent might as well pick up the books the next day and go to school, leaving the child at home.

But helping a child by pointing out the methods and then letting the child do the actual work is something quite different.

A child should learn early some independence in the control of money. A few unrestricted pennies given him can in the course of time be increased to his allowance, which he learns to use wisely by his actual, gradual wise use of it.

It seems that a large part of the failures in marriage can be traced to children who were childishly dependent upon their parents and who as adults cannot stand on their own feet.

Certainly many a failure in business and the professions is a person who never got the training that might have made him a fully developed, mature individual.

That safe attainment of the adult stage is most important, and it requires on the part of parents skill and planning.

Do you think that children should obey on the instant, as they did thirty and more years ago? Or should we allow them to act as individuals rather than as rebels?

The records show that the Army and Navy had a tough time in World War II with the youth who had learned to take his time to think over a command.   A lot of training and some rigid, blind discipline were demanded before these young men learned to obey a command first and think about it afterward.

“Gold braid” in the Navy is a patently clear symbol. The man who wears it gets instant obedience. The reason for that is obvious: In battle, with ships and airplanes moving at lightning speed, there is no time to thresh out the rightness or the wrongness of an order. There is time only for action, obedient instant action.

So in the training for battle there are only three recognized answers: “Yes, sir!” “No, sir!” and “No excuse, sir!”

It seems strange that the very young people who take time to sit down and think over a parental order, obey with the response of an electric light to a switch whenever on the gridiron football field the quarterback gives a command and shouts a signal. Believe me the athletic coach of the winning team would be amazed if the athletes practiced on him the weighing and appraising of orders that are actually encouraged by some parents.

Let’s go back however to the parents.   Parents have the God-given right to command.   If they give stupid or silly or wrong orders, they are abusing their rights. They should not expect their children to obey this type of order with other than reluctance or bad grace.

If the commands are correct, valuable, helpful, and important, the parents have every right in the world to be obeyed — and promptly. There can be good reasons for the parents’ explaining, if there is plenty of time, why they have given a certain hard command. But parents have no slightest obligation to submit to the judgment of a child a command that is right and correct.

However parents may possibly have, even in their own way of thinking, a way of lumping under the head of commands directions that are not by any means entirely commands.

A parent may make a request: “Son, will you please go to the corner and pick up a package of biscuits for me?”

She may make a suggestion: “It looks as if it’s going to be a little chilly. It might be a good idea for you to wear your sweater.”

He may open a discussion: “Son, what do you think about your taking a turn wiping dishes for mother?”

He may issue a command: “Hereafter you will be in by eleven o’clock on Friday nights.”

To call all these very different things commands is to use language carelessly. The request for the biscuits is like any request that one civilized and well-mannered person makes to another.

Adults do not ask unreasonable favors of adults. A decent adult does not greet a polite request with a rude “No!”

Since parents are training their children for participation in social living, they try to make reasonable — and only reasonable — requests; they expect civil and courteous answers.   But a request is not a command.

The suggestion that the child wear a sweater remained in the realm of suggestion. It was not a command; hence to punish the boy if he did not wear his sweater would be to blame him for a not incorrect use of logic. He might answer the suggestion thus: “I’ll be too hot if I wear my sweater. I was out, and I found that it isn’t nearly so cold as it looks.” Reasonable enough, with the whole matter balanced by fact and argument.

If the parent turns this into a command, the whole matter is changed. But that parent is not too wise who constantly offers suggestions that are not suggestions at all but commands couched in delicate language.

A discussion is a discussion, whether between adult and adult or between adult and child. “What do you think about . . . .” was the form that the opening gambit about the dishes took. If his answer is, “I can’t, dad; I have homework . . . . .” or “At that time mother wants me to empty the scrap baskets,” he is only following an adult lead.

An appeal to his love of his mother should naturally lead to a generous response. But here too it is a suggestion calling for a free and reasonable response, not for obedience to a command.

The last statement — the hour at which the son or daughter is to be in on Friday nights is a command. I am taking it for granted that the reasons for the command are obvious or have been sufficiently clarified. The order is not given, I hope, out of the blue, with no reasons back of it, a command based merely on adult caprice.

The father is a reasonable adult and commands something that he knows is for the good of the boy or girl or the common good of the household. He may even have permitted a discussion on the matter prior to the command.

When the command comes however, the command is a command. A parent is simply failing in his duty to the boy if, once the command is given, he sits back until the youngster has decided that he will or will not accept the order.

It is wise to make not too many requests. Children should not be servants or slaves.   Most often only suggestions are needed.   A discussion should not be started if the adults do not intend to be swayed by reason and argument.

It is unfair for an adult who has decided to give a command, no matter how the arguments go, apparently to lead the child into a discussion of the pros and cons of the command.   Real commands are most effective if they are given not too frequently, if they are concerned with things of real moment, if they are reasonable in content, if they are given once and for all, and if they are held as the law until circumstances change and the need for the commands disappear.

“Think of the Queen of Heaven and Lady of the World as humble housewife at the same time that she is mother and caretaker of God’s Son. It makes me sigh of tenderness, fills me with goodwill and love for the small and great chores of the home. How fragrant would be the robes that this pure lily washed. How tasty would be the food her delicate hands prepared. From her holy lips, not a whisper, no complaint or claim, only praise and sweet words. A life of worship and continuous obedience, in the freedom of those who choose to love – were she to kneel in prayer or clean the floor.” -Veronica Mendes, A Mulher Forte

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From Questions Parents Ask About Their Children, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

At what age should a child be taught the facts of life?  

The boy or girl should be taught the facts of life from the dawn of reason on. Not all at once of course, but gradually, as interest awakens, questions are asked, and the child’s physical development calls for preparation through knowledge and information.

The trouble with most parental explanations of sex — if such explanation is given at all — is that it is usually given all at one time; and it is given either too early (this is rarely the case) or too late (this is too frequently the case).

The correct procedure is to allow the instruction to grow with and out of the child’s development. When he is approaching a physical crisis in his life, the crisis should be explained in advance. When he comes up with a question about these facts, the question should be answered in a way suited to his age.

The big developments in his life should be explained as they arise and in a casual and informal manner.

Sex instruction should be in other words matter of fact, gradual, suited to the development of the child, designed to meet and satisfy and allay his curiosities, and be presented as naturally and as simply as God intended all life to be.

I intend to instruct and train my boy, but I don’t want to nag him.  

Instructing is an art. Nagging is an abuse. Instructing is crisp, brief, pointed, personal, effective. Nagging is slow, iterated, querulous, dull, ineffective.

Correction should be given all at once — and then dropped quickly.   Nagging goes on and on.

Right correction distinguishes between things that are important and that need amending. Nagging is constantly to dog the child, to make little distinction between what is really important and what merely annoys the parent.

Correction should make a sharp impact upon the guilty.   Nagging is like the slow madness of the Chinese water torture — drip, drip, drip, until the victim thinks he is going mad.

Instruction, training, correction are blessed arts.   Nagging is a nasty nuisance.

If a sixteen-year-old daughter has never brought up the subject of sex, never asked questions about it, is it advisable for a parent to bring the subject up first?

Not answering the question right now . . . . I am reminded of the mother whose little girl, five, came to her and said: “Mommy, where did I come from?” The mother sighed. Now was the time, she felt, to answer honestly the question she had been asked.

So she said, solemnly, “Since you want to know, sit down and mummy will tell you.” And she did, in considerable detail.

At the end the child looked very bored and said, “Well I just wanted to know. The little girl next door said she came from Pittsburgh.”

As for the question . . . . . I’m afraid once more that sixteen is too, too late for the start of much intelligent instruction.

It may be that the girl is totally incurious. That is rare.   It may be that she had got instructions from other sources. These may have been very bad . . . . imperfect and incomplete . . . . . totally misleading . . . . , or correct.

Even if the last eventuality is true, the parents come with their explanations very tardily. If the other eventualities are true, the situation is worse.

A wise mother seeing a situation like this and realizing that up to the present she has not been wise at all might frankly ask the girl if she had any questions about birth and children that she wanted answered. If the mother is careful and observant, the daughter’s answer may be the mother’s lead.

She will know from the child’s apathy, embarrassment, quick flight, or frank interest what her assignment is.

It seems to me totally unnatural for children to discuss marriage with their parents.

A prolonged and detailed discussion of the sex relation by parents and adolescent children . . . . , that would be difficult.

A careful preparation by the parents of the children for the children’s physical development and future sex experiences . . . . . what could be more right and natural?

A discussion of the joys and obligations, the possibilities, the difficulties and delights of parenthood and home management, the happy associations of a good man and a virtuous wife . . . . these seem to me charming and gracious and wonderfully helpful.

To Mothers: “Instead of setting yourself up as a model of wisdom, it is much wiser for you to act the role of guide and confidante. This gives your child a much better feeling of security and fulfills your destiny of mother as well, because your children then find you a real individual in your own right. Personal success and happiness in life come only in the knowledge of our usefulness to others; as a mother, you have this opportunity in your own home at all times. You need not look elsewhere where for it.” – Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2ChxzZA (afflink)

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To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?

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Should a father or a mother be the one to say yes or no to where the children go and how late they stay out?  

Why not a decision based on consultation between both parents? The direction will come with more authority if it is backed by an agreement of both parents.

America tends to give parental authority more and more to the mother. Yet often enough it is the father who most probably knows more about the situation and can judge it more objectively and more realistically.

I suggest that the parents talk the decision over together. Then when they give their decision, it will stand without the kind of division between father and mother that can result in a child’s confusion, delusion, and inevitable insubordination.

So many modern children seem to be vandals. They recklessly destroy property or deface it. What is to be done about this?  

There again I’d ask: Are the children so much different from their elders? We have done a lot of wholesale destroying in the past few years. The war was a masterpiece of destruction accomplished with scientific thoroughness.

But in general . . . . have you noticed how supposedly grown-up people deal with the property of others? Their careless use of books from the public library? The way they set wet glasses on the top of your apartment grand piano? Their destruction of hotel property when the party gets a little loud?

The way apparently adult men act at, let’s say, some of the American Legion conventions, ex-servicemen’s associations or on New Year’s Eve?

Their wholesale theft of silver, linen, knickknacks from hotels and restaurants? Their utter thoughtlessness in the way they put their feet on the seats of public conveyances? Their use of linen towels in train washrooms to wipe their shoes?

We should give a lot of thought to that phase of the seventh commandment that regards proper care for the belongings of others . . . . including, I might add, the property we share together in parks and public buildings . . . . , and the property of large corporations, who according to some people have no rights at all.

The approach to youth — here as always — is first of all good adult example.   I then suggest a re-teaching of that seventh commandment and a stressing of its importance for the whole of decent living.

Manners have a great bearing on conduct of this kind. Children who from infancy are taught not to handle things that do not belong to them are likely to develop respect for the property of others.

A quite justified if slightly selfish convenience may be appealed to: We in turn have to use things that are used by others. If a boy vandal cuts up a chair in the movie house, it may be our bad luck to sit on it afterward. If the washbowl is clogged up because someone carelessly tossed a towel down the drain, we may not be able to use the washbowl.

Vandalism hurts everybody. Everybody pays tribute in annoyance to the vandal.   Example and education — use both in your teaching.   And of course this is all tied in with God’s basic commands, which remain sound common sense and good pedagogy.

Do you believe that children should be spanked? Or should parents reason with their children?  

I find it hard to see how even the most skillful parent could reason with a child under the age of three. He would have to be a child prodigy.   Reasoning is, almost by definition, possible only when the child has reached the age of reason.

A swift little spank on the sector that nature seems to have designed for that purpose — a nerve center padded against any real harm to nerves or muscles — is often the one convincing argument.

Irresponsible spankings are of course usually the sign of an inadequate, nervous, or already beaten parent. A swift little crack (“Not on the head, Morris!”) need not be a manifestation of parental petulance or of the failure of parental psychology. It may be the most reasonable thing in the world.

The baby hand continues to grab after the parent has spoken; a swift little slap on the hand serves as a deterrent to the baby. He would have had the same lesson from a fire into which he might have thrust his hand — without however the saving fact that the pain of the slap is soon over (the pain of the burn would have been of longer duration).

Spankings should be very rare . . . . though there are situations in which spankings are emphatically called for.   Spankings should not be the common form of discipline. They should not be so recurrent that the child begins to regard his parents as tireless whipping machines. They should be almost a last resort.

Some children can early be shown what is right and what is wrong, and they accept reasonably parental commands.   Some children need the fear of a sharp but not lingering physical pain to hold them back from evil and harm to themselves.

But if the right discipline is given early, the spanking can later disappear completely from the discipline.

It is very bad to spank adolescent children, who dread the pain not nearly as much as they hate the humiliation and resent the fact that there is no way for them to strike back.

How should a parent deal with teenage impertinence?

Head it off  before the children reach their teens. The correct training in good manners, self-control, and morals during the formative days of infancy and childhood will mean few outbursts of temper or temperament in adolescence.

Parents and elders in general must be sure that what they regard as impertinence really is impertinence.

Boys of adolescent age often have voices that slip strangely out of control. So they become embarrassed, and do and say strange things. They are crude with their hands and clumsy with their feet. Since they deal all day long with boys of their own gangling and juvenile age, they find it hard to change completely to good manners at the family dinner table.   Besides they are often preoccupied with temptation and troubled by physical problems to such an extent that they are snappish and short and rude. Such seeming impertinence rises sometimes to answer a fierce struggle that is raging in their own natures. A wise parent is aware of this and not too quick to be resentful of it.

Then too all young people tend to develop a language of their own. It sounds flip, crisp, cryptic, sometimes a little vulgar, and frequently quite unintelligible to their elders.

If they use the language around the house, it is because like most human beings they follow the fashion of their peers. Yet slang is not always impertinence, and the cryptic jive talk of youngsters may indicate merely that they are demonstrating that they are in the know.

When, however, a teenager first shows signs of real impertinence, he or she should be clipped immediately. Once more: No scenes and emotional displays. None of this appeal to parental dignity and rights — “How dare you talk like that to your mother?”

Rather the quiet and final answer: “I consider that distinctly impertinent and the sort of thing that is not to happen around here again — ever.”

If elders take such a stand early — the stand based on a well-planned course of childhood and early-youth training in good manners and right conduct — the single reproof may be enough.

“Many times God allows it to be hard to pray, simply to school us in applying our wills, to teach us that the value of prayer does not depend on the amount of emotion we can whip up. Many times the saints had trouble getting excited about prayers, but they said them, because prayers were due and their value had nothing to do with how eagerly they went about saying them.” -Mary Reed Newland, http://amzn.to/2snNxN7 (afflink)

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From Questions Parents Ask About Their Children, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

How much independence should a child be allowed?  

The independence he needs to become a self-reliant, fully developed adult able to meet and solve the problems of life with competence and correctness. . . . .   The independence that is, not license, but controlled and directed initiative . . . . .   The independence that has in it respect for law and a prompt obedience coupled with encouragement toward candor, honesty, and the ability — proportionate to his age — to handle the affairs of his life.

Mothers who in great fondness for their children bind them to their waists sometimes do the children irreparable wrong.   Parents who make of their children little parrots will have parrots and not people.

Independence may be a good thing . . . . , and it may be bad.

A child should be encouraged to manage his toys, keep his own room and belongings tidy without constant direction and supervision.

He should be trusted to the degree in which he has justified trust. He is trusted in small things. If he stands up to that trust, the trust is increased. If he fails, while the trust is not immediately removed, he is corrected and warned that the punishment for further failure will be the withdrawal of trust.

He is praised when he does things well and on his own. He is encouraged to think out his own problems and to bring his answers or solutions to his parents. If his solutions are correct, he is again praised. If they are not correct, he is sent to think his problems over again . . . . , or he discusses them with his parents until he is led — without too much emphasis on the leading — to the right answers or solutions.

It is important that children do their own thinking — guided and directed but their actual thinking not done for them. It is important that they learn to feel responsible for small obligations and duties where their possessions are concerned, their associates, their brothers and sisters, the house.

It is a mistake for an adult to do a child’s homework for him. Homework can be a fine training in independent thinking and acting. If the parent does the homework, the parent might as well pick up the books the next day and go to school, leaving the child at home.

But helping a child by pointing out the methods and then letting the child do the actual work is something quite different.

A child should learn early some independence in the control of money. A few unrestricted pennies given him can in the course of time be increased to his allowance, which he learns to use wisely by his actual, gradual wise use of it.

It seems that a large part of the failures in marriage can be traced to children who were childishly dependent upon their parents and who as adults cannot stand on their own feet.

Certainly many a failure in business and the professions is a person who never got the training that might have made him a fully developed, mature individual.

That safe attainment of the adult stage is most important, and it requires on the part of parents skill and planning.

Do you think that children should obey on the instant, as they did thirty and more years ago? Or should we allow them to act as individuals rather than as rebels?

The records show that the Army and Navy had a tough time in World War II with the youth who had learned to take his time to think over a command.   A lot of training and some rigid, blind discipline were demanded before these young men learned to obey a command first and think about it afterward.

“Gold braid” in the Navy is a patently clear symbol. The man who wears it gets instant obedience. The reason for that is obvious: In battle, with ships and airplanes moving at lightning speed, there is no time to thresh out the rightness or the wrongness of an order. There is time only for action, obedient instant action.

So in the training for battle there are only three recognized answers: “Yes, sir!” “No, sir!” and “No excuse, sir!”

It seems strange that the very young people who take time to sit down and think over a parental order, obey with the response of an electric light to a switch whenever on the gridiron football field the quarterback gives a command and shouts a signal. Believe me the athletic coach of the winning team would be amazed if the athletes practiced on him the weighing and appraising of orders that are actually encouraged by some parents.

Let’s go back however to the parents.   Parents have the God-given right to command.   If they give stupid or silly or wrong orders, they are abusing their rights. They should not expect their children to obey this type of order with other than reluctance or bad grace.

If the commands are correct, valuable, helpful, and important, the parents have every right in the world to be obeyed — and promptly. There can be good reasons for the parents’ explaining, if there is plenty of time, why they have given a certain hard command. But parents have no slightest obligation to submit to the judgment of a child a command that is right and correct.

However parents may possibly have, even in their own way of thinking, a way of lumping under the head of commands directions that are not by any means entirely commands.

A parent may make a request: “Son, will you please go to the corner and pick up a package of biscuits for me?”

She may make a suggestion: “It looks as if it’s going to be a little chilly. It might be a good idea for you to wear your sweater.”

He may open a discussion: “Son, what do you think about your taking a turn wiping dishes for mother?”

He may issue a command: “Hereafter you will be in by eleven o’clock on Friday nights.”

To call all these very different things commands is to use language carelessly. The request for the biscuits is like any request that one civilized and well-mannered person makes to another.

Adults do not ask unreasonable favors of adults. A decent adult does not greet a polite request with a rude “No!”

Since parents are training their children for participation in social living, they try to make reasonable — and only reasonable — requests; they expect civil and courteous answers.   But a request is not a command.

The suggestion that the child wear a sweater remained in the realm of suggestion. It was not a command; hence to punish the boy if he did not wear his sweater would be to blame him for a not incorrect use of logic. He might answer the suggestion thus: “I’ll be too hot if I wear my sweater. I was out, and I found that it isn’t nearly so cold as it looks.” Reasonable enough, with the whole matter balanced by fact and argument.

If the parent turns this into a command, the whole matter is changed. But that parent is not too wise who constantly offers suggestions that are not suggestions at all but commands couched in delicate language.

A discussion is a discussion, whether between adult and adult or between adult and child. “What do you think about . . . .” was the form that the opening gambit about the dishes took. If his answer is, “I can’t, dad; I have homework . . . . .” or “At that time mother wants me to empty the scrap baskets,” he is only following an adult lead.

An appeal to his love of his mother should naturally lead to a generous response. But here too it is a suggestion calling for a free and reasonable response, not for obedience to a command.

The last statement — the hour at which the son or daughter is to be in on Friday nights is a command. I am taking it for granted that the reasons for the command are obvious or have been sufficiently clarified. The order is not given, I hope, out of the blue, with no reasons back of it, a command based merely on adult caprice.

The father is a reasonable adult and commands something that he knows is for the good of the boy or girl or the common good of the household. He may even have permitted a discussion on the matter prior to the command.

When the command comes however, the command is a command. A parent is simply failing in his duty to the boy if, once the command is given, he sits back until the youngster has decided that he will or will not accept the order.

It is wise to make not too many requests. Children should not be servants or slaves.   Most often only suggestions are needed.   A discussion should not be started if the adults do not intend to be swayed by reason and argument.

It is unfair for an adult who has decided to give a command, no matter how the arguments go, apparently to lead the child into a discussion of the pros and cons of the command.   Real commands are most effective if they are given not too frequently, if they are concerned with things of real moment, if they are reasonable in content, if they are given once and for all, and if they are held as the law until circumstances change and the need for the commands disappear.

“Think of the Queen of Heaven and Lady of the World as humble housewife at the same time that she is mother and caretaker of God’s Son. It makes me sigh of tenderness, fills me with goodwill and love for the small and great chores of the home. How fragrant would be the robes that this pure lily washed. How tasty would be the food her delicate hands prepared. From her holy lips, not a whisper, no complaint or claim, only praise and sweet words. A life of worship and continuous obedience, in the freedom of those who choose to love – were she to kneel in prayer or clean the floor.” -Veronica Mendes, A Mulher Forte

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