Told bad father on father's day?

[Giggly_Giraffe]

You need to evaluate YOUR spiritual strenghts and weaknesses & then determine if you want to spend more time cultivating your strenghts or your weaknesses. Invite your wife to this examination of spirituality. Often we focus on our weaknesses when we should be letting our strengths blossom and produce fruit.

For example, I am very passionate about story telling, teaching, and singing. I lack the patience and discipline to be a good writer (gramer & spelling). My husband proof reads thank-you cards we send out because I’m so horrible in this area … To which, I’m never pleased and a bit insulted at being proof read and redoing cards. However, I do well theatrically teaching children and spend my talents this way.

Now it’s your family’s turn. Each member can take inventory, and find ways to serve God and each other by examining your strenghts and weaknesses. I am kinda wondering how reading/listening to a book would serve God in your families situation. Is there something she has read/heard that she needs you to focus on specifically … Or is she going for a complete haul over … Which case usually doesn’t work … She gets what she gets and she shouldn’t throw a fit … Unless there is verbal/physical assaults.

 

[Xantippe]

Keep in mind, though, that she may have read something in a magazine about how important men other than a boy’s father are in forming him. There is a tendency at that age for a young man to idolize everyone except his dad or to idolize his dad but to despair of emulating him or pleasing him. Trying to emulate and please some other man can seem like a more attainable goal with more positive feedback likely to come from it.

**Exactly.

And the same goes for girls, too. At that age, it is really important to have role models outside the family. How many CAF posts do we see with parents crying that they can’t get their previously compliant 13 or 14 or 16-year-old to go to church?
**

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

OP is this true? Did your wife simply mean that OTHER strong Catholic influences are important in ADDITION to the wonderful and strong Father the boy already has?

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

**
You have the perfect built-in opportunity already! ** Why not take the time you are currently quietly spending with your son at bedtime, and pray a rosary. I remember when I had (and sometimes still have) trouble sleeping, it is often the repetitive prayers that can help me drift off to sleep, it is like a lullaby from Jesus!

Not only will you be helping your son relax; but you will find that a father-son prayer is extremely powerful spiritually. Your son will remember those rosaries prayed with you for the rest of his life I can promise you that.

Even if it may seem awkward or clumsy at first don’t give up. Pray together, even if you have never done it. Take the lead and tell your son this is what you ARE GOING to do together because it is important. Tell him you want to help to feel at peace and relax and believe that this is a good way. This is also a way to pray for your loved ones, your son’s friends, and other intentions of your family together.

Good idea.

 

[EasterJoy]

OP is this true? Did your wife simply mean that OTHER strong Catholic influences are important in ADDITION to the wonderful and strong Father the boy already has?

If she didn’t, suffice it to say that she should have. Since he isn’t sure, he would do best to read her comments in the best possible way, as the Catechism tells us to do. If she makes a similar comment in the future, he can ask for a clarification, if he thinks it is necessary.

***2478 **To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

“Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.” (St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 22)*

 

[whm]

Thanks for all of the responses.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

If she didn’t, suffice it to say that she should have. Since he isn’t sure, he would do best to read her comments in the best possible way, as the Catechism tells us to do. If she makes a similar comment in the future, he can ask for a clarification, if he thinks it is necessary.

***2478 ***To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

“Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.” (St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 22)

Yeah, I know all about charity. Though some can take that too far. I get the impression that if a guy broke into someones home and held them at gunpoint that Catholic “Charity” means we must assume they are asking us to clean their gun for them and they are putting it to our forehead in some attempt to have us see the dirt in the barrel.

Sometimes things are what they seem to be…

That being said, the OP certainly should have asked for clarification, but lets charitably assume he was too shocked to do so…

 

[EasterJoy]

Yeah, I know all about charity. Though some can take that too far. I get the impression that if a guy broke into someones home and held them at gunpoint that Catholic “Charity” means we must assume they are asking us to clean their gun for them and they are putting it to our forehead in some attempt to have us see the dirt in the barrel.

Sometimes things are what they seem to be…

That being said, the OP certainly should have asked for clarification, but lets charitably assume he was too shocked to do so…

To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way

Some of us are pretzel-like in the flexible interpretation department!
Others of us just try to act as if we are, “insofar as possible.”

Seriously, though, avoiding rash judgment does not mean that it is not wise, when one hears quacking, to take into account that one may indeed be in the presence of a duck!