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Striving for Balance: A Catholic Perspective
Advocates of Attachment Parenting agree on eight principles which together create the optimal environment for raising happy, healthy and holy children. These principles are the pillars which support...
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Clarification on Embracing Suffering
The Complete Spiritual Doctrine of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, by Rev. Francois Jamart, OCD, provides excellent clarification on the nature and value of embracing suffering. With regard to some of my...
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How Attachment Parenting Fosters Willing Obedience
Obedience springs from humility. Humility is the virtue whereby one is enabled to embrace suffering through the acceptance, even love, of one's "littleness," with the acknowledgment of one's...
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Attachment Parenting is Philosophical
The following excerpts are from "The Philosophical Act," the second lecture from Josef Peiper's classic (and Catholic!), Leisure, the Basis of Culture. The first essay, Leisure, pertains to being at...
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Re-Orientation Requires That We Stop What We've Been Doing
I have written elsewhere that the act of embracing suffering is, to a certain degree, experienced by us as quitting what we have been doing to become good. This is the act of faith whereby we...
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The Supernatural Motive for Loving Our Children
"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."~~GK ChestertonThere are a great many Christians who love God for love of...
View ArticleLet Go Of Your Catholic Kids!
Christ is the source of all true happiness, just as the mother is the source of all things good and needful to the baby. Everything we seek in this world as a means to happiness, every pleasure and the...
View ArticleAt the Service of Love--Cultivating Virtues in Our Children
Every sincere Catholic parent wants to raise saints, and we all know that in order to do that we have to raise our children in the school of virtue. When I was a very young mother I got a hold of a...
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A Secure Child, from Bishop Robert Vasa, Baker, Oregon
This is outstanding! Bishop Vasa and a team of priests and doctors have developed a program designed to teach parents the importance of attachment and how to cultivate it, in order to protect their...
View ArticleHeaven and Hell--Reward and Punishment?
In attempting to reconcile AP principles with Catholic doctrine one must address the concept of punishment and rewards. Naturally, the question arises, "Does God reward and punish sinners?"Catholic...
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Noticing vs. Praising
Praising a child usually involves passing judgement on him or something he's done, albeit favorable, usually in order to manipulate him into repeating a desired action. It creates expectations in the...
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Another method of so-called discipline that doesn't "work."
This article seems to have some good insights, and at first blush appears to be attachment conscious, but I'm afraid after all is said and done, it does rather miss the point.The problem isn't the...
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Patience--Obedience, Humility, Charity
All parents want their children to be obedient, after all, it certainly does make our lives a lot easier! But some of those parents even want their children to have the virtue of obedience. And that is...
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The Validity of Validation
The term and concept of "validation" has a wide range of meaning and is often understood to mean approval. In the sense in which we will be talking about it, it is an outward unconditional acceptance...
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Humility, ("And the things parents say that work against its instillation.")
When Christian parents use the fear of suffering to elevate their children to their standards, they inadvertently invert the value system to which we all need to adhere in order to live up to God's...
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Excerpts From Healthy Families: Safe Children Videos
On The Crisis of Culture"Humans are created for relationships. Moral growth and emotional growth can only occur within the context of these relationships. Babies hunger for connectedness and warmth. In...
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Returning to the Beginning for the Start of the New Liturgical Year
During this Advent season, the beginning of the Liturgical year, in meditating on the meaning of patient preparation and the birth of the Savior, I have found it necessary to go back in my mind to the...
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The Good Shepherd and Counterwill
"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.The...
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Odysseus and Attachment
George Moore wrote, "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."This reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton said, that "The young man who rings the bell at the...
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What is Attachment Parenting?
Recently someone asked me, "What, exactly, is Attachment Parenting?" For some reason I was completely flummoxed by her question and attempted a response that fast proved itself to be going no where. I...
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12 Steps to Re-Attachment
The 12 StepsStep 1 - Admit that you alone through the use of coercion, training tactics, behavior modification strategies, etc. are powerless to control your children's lives and that your own life has...
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The Neurology of the Spiritual Life
St. Augustine says, "The increase of charity is the decrease of passion,and the perfection of charity is the absence of passion."Neurologically speaking, the more charity a person experiences, the more...
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Fraternal Charity in the Home
The last few weeks of Divine Intimacy (starting around #250) have been amazing! All the meditations are on fraternal charity and are so inspiring, renewing my resolve to give my full presence to my...
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Visiting the Imprisoned, at home
Parents have daily opportunities to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in their homes. Some of the works of mercy are pretty straight forward, like feeding the hungry, giving drink to...
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Unschooling, Re-attachment and Spiritual Development
I think a lot of unschoolers are also re-attachers, and when you're re-attaching you simply cannot expect much at all from your children until you've regained their trust and affection and brought them...
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