Parenting and Family Life: January 2004 Archives

While it is always fun to get together with extended family over the holidays, these holidays brought a rally of strange comments such as "so, it looks like you are joining a cult...""well, you cannot possibly want anymore children, you can't afford it...""you have to be moderate...""those poor kids, they cannot even watch Charlie Brown's Christmas because you don't have cable...those poor kids...""why does your wife like to wear long skirts? This is 2003..." Many of the same family remarked and were stunned at how well behaved and non-materialistic our children are, yet pity our children for being forced to endure a crazy extreme lifestyle that teaches them to appreciate family and cooperation over material things and self-indulgence(although you may not know it if you were a fly on the wall here).

So, I left the last family get together wondering what exactly is "moderate" or "too extreme"?I suppose moderate means first of all, how much of the secular world are you willing to allow your children exposed too. My husband and I thought we were rather "moderate" because we do not believe in cutting something secular out, for no other reason than it is secular.

Over at Summa Mamas, SmockMomma blogs about discipline at Mass.

I have absulutely nothing to add because I am truly brain dead on the subject. When I was a mother of two very well behaved children, I thought I knew all the answers. As the kids keep coming and as they get older, the more I realise I have even less answers. I also know I haven't even hit the tip of the iceberg because I have not raised teenagers yet. For this reason, I offer little advice, but prefer to listen. I can share what worked for me in certain sitiuations,but it varies in my own family from child to child.

It amazes me the older I get, how little I knew. I think I should have been a parent when I was 16. I knew everything then.