What lifestyle changes should I make?

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Ceil-1

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I am hoping some of you have had similar experiences and can give me some advice. :o

I had a conversion experience eleven years ago. Since then, I have tried to raise my children up in the Faith, and even my husband came on board with me. We even homeschooled for part of that time b/c of the wholesome and Catholic worldview
it promotes.

Yet, in spite of my efforts, my, now teenage, sons show signs of inculturation into the general mainstream. This has manifested itself in attraction to people (specifically, girls) who do not have the same committment to God. Also in choices of music, in rebellious attitudes at times, etc. One of them believes the government has the responsibility to get him educated, take care of him, etc. In addition, some character issues I tried to instill don’t seem to have stuck. (Consideration for others, love of family, a work ethic). It turns out I may not have done enough.

Did we err in allowing some of these worldly infulences sneak in from time to time? I always thought they would be able to strike a balance b/w the “ways of the world” and theirs. I want holy consecrated men, but they just want to be well thought of among their peers. Should we get rid of all cultural influences? Or should I let them be who they are and just try to do damage control along the way? I am feeling like an utter failure. Help. :gopray:
 
If you want the best chance possible for them to turn around, I would posit that you need to cut out TV, video games, and using the computer without supervision.

And, by supervision, I would mean being in the room WITH them at all times. No leaving them alone for 5 minutes. It doesn’t work.

TV and video games are pretty much an ‘open sewer’.

I am seeing the exact same problems with my little brother (he’s 13 this year), and having just graduated from university, I too know the potential lure of all these distractions.

By the way, your sons will HATE you for the first few weeks, but unless you cut out all forms of contact with secular society then they will feed off what little contact they do have with it.

Its tough being that age, because society is telling you what ‘cool’ is, and it seems like your parents just want everything opposite.

What you need to do is stop letting them know what society (and their peers) think of them, and start telling them what you think (and expect) of them, and what God expects of them.

But, although these things can take a long time to work, and it will be difficult in the meantime, your kids have to learn why they are on this earth, and that they are not owed anything by the world.

Sorry I rambled, but I see my little brother going the same way, and being only his sibling I’m not allowed to put any of this into effect.

I hope you have more success 🙂
 
Teenage boys and girls are like peanut butter and jelly, not gonna be able to keep them apart m’am.

It looks like you did all you could do. Let’s face it, being a good Catholic ain’t easy. It is not natural, but supernatural. They are acting naturally in many ways.

I think it important to keep practicing your Faith as seriously as ever. Let them see how important it is to you. Live it and breathe it.

I’d keep enforcing the rules no matter how much they protested, and by all means be conistent.

Whether or not they straighten out, who knows. But you must remain strong. Their straying off is not Go’d Will, but their’s. He will give them doors to walk through to come back, but they must choose it. Pehaps you are one of those doors? And that is why you must hold the Faith, even when there is no evidence what you are praying for is ever gonna happen.
 
BamaRider said:
Teenage boys and girls are like peanut butter and jelly, not gonna be able to keep them apart m’am.
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However, my parents managed it fine :hmmm:

Although it depends if we’re talking 13/14 or 17/18.
 
I am not a parent, but have 11 nieces and nephews. My sister-in-law highly recommends a book called “Lifeline: the Religious Upbringing of Your children” by James B Stenson. I found it on Amazon for $3.30 used.

She is currently re-reading it and is getting alot from it. Such as “parents are the first people that children see God and religion through.”

Don’t give up. Remember how long St. Monica prayed for St. Augustin. Read her biography or watch Bob and Penny Lord’s video on Monica and Augustin.
 
Thanks for the advice. The one good thing in all of this is that they respect God and have no problem with attending religious events. Even family prayer is pretty much participated in.

They can no longer log on to the computer without one of us logging them in. I do allow them to text message their friends, most of whom are children whom I know well, at least their parents. Could it just be a phase?
 
Magicsilence, at what age did your parent allow you to date and what limits did they place on your “outings”?

Thanks!
 
Even the Amish, who no one could fault for indulgent attitudes towards TV, radio, internet, etc., experience a time of certain rebelliousness in their children. They call it rumspringa, and you can read about it here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa

If your children are still willingly taking part in religious devotions, you’re in a better place than many parents. Take care to limit their exposure to the junk in society, but don’t be too hard on them- attraction to “the wrong girl” may be a necessary (though unpleasant) step in finding out who they aren’t.

(now someone kindly remind me of all this when my children are teenagers)
 
Ceil-1 said:
…I had a conversion experience eleven years ago. Since then, I have tried to raise my children up in the Faith…Yet, in spite of my efforts, my, now teenage, sons show signs of inculturation into the general mainstream.
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“Train up a child in the way he should grow and he will not turn from it when he is old.” Proverbs 22:6

Your son isn’t old yet.😉 Don’t give up hope.

Keep praying for him and encourage regular confession. Yes it may just be a phase, but teen years can also be a time when bad habits and sins take root. Just because sins take root doesn’t mean they won’t eventually be stomped out, but it’s easiest if sins don’t get established as habits. In anycase, keep praying and don’t give up hope. God is good.
 
Your kids actually sound pretty wonderful for teens 🙂

I wouldn’t really worry.

BTW, the Church doesn’t dictate the opinions we should have on what the government should or should not be allowed to organize. Your son is free to have a political opinion of his own, it is not at odds with the faith you taught him.
 
Good Catholic parents have stressed the moral law on sex before marriage.

Making it clear to teens from an early age that dating is for the purpose of finding a spouse, that it is not just a way to kill time on Saturday, is important.

Have you made clear what the Catholic laws on marriage are? What constitutes a valid marriage? What a sacramental marriage is?

It is amazing how many teens do not know that as Catholics, in order to have a valid marriage they are to marry a Catholic. That they many only marry a non-Catholic if they recieve a dispensation from the Bishop to do so (and while those are given most of the time, they are sometimes denied).

Have you made it clear that you expect them to enter valid marriages, and what your position will be should they decide to enter an invalid marriage?

First question out of your mouth when they talk about a girl… “is she Catholic?” It will help those teens see that dating is something to actually think about.
 
Ceil-1 said:
Thanks for the advice. The one good thing in all of this is that they respect God and have no problem with attending religious events. Even family prayer is pretty much participated in.

They can no longer log on to the computer without one of us logging them in. I do allow them to text message their friends, most of whom are children whom I know well, at least their parents. Could it just be a phase?
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I know something that has made the world of difference in the spiritual lives of millions of teenagers.
Youth group prayer meetings.

I highly recommend the Catholic Charasmatic Movement. It is FULL of teenagers who are standing up, praising and worshipping, praying reverenly, saying the Rosary together, attending Mass together, promoting Adoration of the Eucharist. They get together and praise God through the Power of the Holy Spirit. It is TOTALLY Catholic. It is lots of fun, and it is all centered on Christ Jesus.
These kids…my 15 year old daughter being one of them…are awesome!!! They are there to pray with each other, encourage each other in their walk with Christ, & goof off with each other.
They have lots of fun…but it is innocent fun. It isn’t listening to or watching or participating in sinful things. They listen to Christian Rock…mostly Catholic. Their conversations are centered on Christ, and what He is doing in their individual lives. Everything that is discussed…either in a prayer meeting, or where ever they choose to meet other than…involves Christ. And they promote Chastity.
They agree that there is nothing so exciting as living one’s life centered on Christ. Every day He has something new for us.

Another great thing about this group is that they don’t try to kick the parents out of it. Granted, it is run by young adults in their 20’s, but there is a parent of teenagers in every core group that I have seen…and there have been quite a few.
I attend a great group every Sunday night. It is 25 miles away from where we live, so I stay. I have always been welcomed to join in the praise and worship. And the last Sunday of every month they have Confession and Mass. My point was, I am never unwelcome, but I stand in the back and allow them to BE…without me. They do not need my (name removed by moderator)ut. I do not nead to lead them. I do not need to correct anything. The core team takes care of anything that might come up that needs attention from an adult. But I have only once seen any of them have to do anything…and that was when a few people left to go wander around outside. For legal purposes, they were not allowed to do so. And, once it was mentioned, it never happened again. That’s what I am saying. These kids want to make good choices. They want to be TRUE followers of Christ.

And they know, because of their own personal relationship with Christ, when they do something wrong. And they know how to discern whether something is right or wrong according to Christ. And they have a desire for Jesus to correct things in themselves. And they want everyone to be saved.

I wish that they had been a big thing when I was growing up. I could certainly have used that kind of help.
These are people who are friends with each other. They get together to hang out even when they are not at a prayer meeting. They are the friends that my daughter has.

I don’t know where you live, but if you let me know, I will find out what is available to your kids in your area. And if it isn’t, then get it going.

God bless you and yours,
Cherie
 
Magicsilence said:
By the way, your sons will HATE you for the first few weeks, but unless you **cut out all forms of contact with secular society **then they will feed off what little contact they do have with it.
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How on God’s green Earth would a person accomplish this? Even Jesus Christ was raised in contact with the society around him. What are we supposed to do… lock our children inside our homes?

My children need to know how to live in the world and negotiate its realities. I am teaching them to do this in Catholic ways, from a Catholic perspective, and with Catholic morality. But if we cut off all contact with larger society, how do those who are not home-schooled get educated? How do they get jobs, meet future spouses, learn about the issues so they can vote knowledgeably…

Never mind that if you try to cut them off from everything, they either will sneak out and go wild, or they will go wild as soon as they move out of your house. We have to balance protecting them with being reasonable.

If these kids are willingly participating in their faith, then I think they should be allowed to learn to negotiate the world for themselves. Appropriate rules and parental support are obviously required here, but they have to grow up and learn to make their own choices sometime. Do you want it to be while you will still be there to guide them, or after they move out at 18 to get away from some insane regime of trying to isolate them from the “secular” world?
 
duskyjewel said:
How on God’s green Earth would a person accomplish this? Even Jesus Christ was raised in contact with the society around him. What are we supposed to do… lock our children inside our homes?

My children need to know how to live in the world and negotiate its realities. I am teaching them to do this in Catholic ways, from a Catholic perspective, and with Catholic morality. But if we cut off all contact with larger society, how do those who are not home-schooled get educated? How do they get jobs, meet future spouses, learn about the issues so they can vote knowledgeably…

Never mind that if you try to cut them off from everything, they either will sneak out and go wild, or they will go wild as soon as they move out of your house. We have to balance protecting them with being reasonable.

If these kids are willingly participating in their faith, then I think they should be allowed to learn to negotiate the world for themselves. Appropriate rules and parental support are obviously required here, but they have to grow up and learn to make their own choices sometime. Do you want it to be while you will still be there to guide them, or after they move out at 18 to get away from some insane regime of trying to isolate them from the “secular” world?
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What you are saying is all true, but… what I was referring to is the lifestyle that is promoted by most forms of secular media and ‘entertainment’.

If your kids grow up watching secular TV, playing secular video games, and visiting secular websites (and worse :(), it shouldn’t be a surprise when they don’t hold the values you had hoped they would.

It’s bad enough that their peers are likely to be holding the secular flame aloft, and at that age, kids don’t have the life experience to put God first, without them drowning in the secular filth that spews from the TV etc…

I am sure Jesus was raised within the Jewish community, and that contact with pagans was pretty much zero. NOT (of course) that Mary had to worry about her son, but that it was the custom for all Jewish families.

If my parents had had the strength to say NO to video games and TV for me, and instead forced me to come and study the faith with them, or pray together as a family, it wouldn’t have taken me until 16/17 to ask the question ‘What am I doing on this earth?’.

If your home doesn’t explicitly and clearly reject the sin promoted by the world, by shutting off the TV / video games etc…, how can you expect the people living in it to follow the Lord.

Sin is ‘glamorous’, and teenage boys (along with the influx of new hormones) are easily prone to stray from the right path.

I know it seems a little ‘puritan’, but IMHO, kids do not have the maturity to handle the stuff they see on TV / Internet, despite what you believe them capable of. Remember, intelligence and wisdom are 2 very different things, and we are often assumed to have one for the other, when in fact, we don’t!
Magicsilence, at what age did your parent allow you to date and what limits did they place on your “outings”?
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Thanks!
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Up until 15/16 the only place I was allowed contact was at the annual school ‘disco’ (I was at a male only school which linked up with the nearby female school).

I could visit my friends, but going out ‘at night’ to mixed sex parties was implicitly forbidden.

Being in the UK, people don’t tend to ‘date’ as much as you see in the USA, so the issue was really - ‘girls are for after 16’.

At age 16, I had necessary contact with girls through inter-school debates / discussions, outside interests (music, air cadets etc…). I was ONCE allowed to stay over at a girls house (with a another guy also staying) which turned out to be baaaad, but I guess my parents couldn’t have known what these kids were like behind closed doors. Luckily, I had my wits about me by then.

Apart from that, all contact was through the Church or school.

I was a normal teenage boy, just like every one else, but my parents kept me apart from the horde of teenage girls very well 👍
 
There have been some wise suggestions so far… 😃

I agree with Jesus N Cherie on the point about being involved in youth ministry. Growing up as a teen, I had the opportunity to be part of a wonderful youth ministry that incorporated the best parts of the more “traditionally-minded” and the more “charismatically-minded” groups in the faith. In this, I was able to keep that solid foundation of education and respect stressed by the former and the love and community stressed by the later. It was a truly profound blessing, now that I look back on it.

I also agree with Magicsilence in his assertion that TV and video games have some very negative aspects, and should be severely limited. However, I also believe that there are a few good things about each. Such channels as EWTN are positive and can be used. I realize that teenage boys are not particularly inclined to watch much of what is on there, but the point is there are some good programs on TV still. Similarly, considering video games, one need only be careful which ones are allowed in the house. Educational video games are perfectly fine and should even be encouraged. Essentially, all things that come to your children should be assessed in a Catholic light and, if they do not fit into our morals, should be cast out to be burned with the other chaff!

Attraction to many girls will happen on and off… this cannot be avoided. The advice that others have given about stressing the sanctity of marriage and the importance of a Catholic-Catholic wedding is key. I suggest that you do so, even making it a point to read the Catechism section on Marriage (page 446, or starting on paragraph 1601 of the CCC). In this way you can have the information fresh in your mind.

I hope this helps!

Yours in Christ,
Daniel
 
Ceil-1 said:
I want holy consecrated men, but they just want to be well thought of among their peers. Should we get rid of all cultural influences?
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No, no, no!

These are kids, not monks. If you want your sons to be faithful Christians in a secular world you must not teach them that the only way to live a holy life is to hide away from the world and pretend that it does not exist. If you do this, when they are finally and inevitably exposed to the wider world, how much more corrupting and alluring will it be!

See TV and Internet as a vaccination against evil. Only by teaching your kids self-discipline and discernment will they be able to consciously reject evil. A Christian whose faith is not tested will never appreciate his own relationship with God.

Think of the great work of Opus Dei, helping families to live holy lives in the midst of the secular world. Think of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to Jerusalem three times a year, Jerusalem which martyrs prophets and succumbs to the Romans; Jesus himself confronted the devil and worldly temptations in the desert. He did not run from temptation. He understood it and coolly rejected it.
 
I think a bit of what John Augustine says holds true, but I would not let them watch just any television. Vaccinations are supposed to inject the “bad” into the body, thereby introducing just enough to help the body adjust and build an immunization. The only way to treat evil is through prayer and the Sacraments.

Considering this, I do not think that the television and the internet are ways to introduce your children to evil so that they will know what is bad and be able to resist. Rather, I believe that their experiences outside of the home will be sufficient for the introduction of evil influences. Their peers are bound to bring undesirable things their way vocally, and I do not think that seeing it will do much in the “immunization” department.

The nature of temporal sin makes it extremely difficult to forget the things that are seen on television and the internet (as well as video games). Guys are even more visual, so seeing is often quite damaging if the material is negative. I remember having seen many things on television, and they are still stuck with me, in my mind. I was discussing this with my girlfriend yesterday just before we went to Holy Mass, and I sincerely wish that I had never seen those things. They attack me often, even if I do not actively try to think about them… it is God’s way of allowing me to grow in strength, yes, but I am sure that, had I not seen those things, He would have given me a different test.

Please, limit your sons’ exposure to the foul media present today and, instead, introduce them to positive programs, websites, and video games. They’ll get their dose of evil from their peers…

God bless!

Yours in Christ,
Daniel
 
I liked your post, John Augustine,

I had always allowed a little bit to slip in. For instance, when the Pokemon nonsense was all the rage, I allowed them to get cards. I did not, however, allow Majik cards, or whatever the heck
that stuff is. It seems all that type of thing starts out innocently and moves into darker, and darker stuff. Eventually, my lack of
support for it helped it to dwindle. But they got to play around with their buddies and not feel completely left out.

I remember when my parents heard the negative flack on the Dungeons and Dragons stuff. Being a girl, I didn’t get too into it, but my brother sure did. My parents put the kabosh on it, and my brother got mad and even tried to sneak out of the house with it to go and play. At the time I thought they were making a big fuss out of nothing. Were they? These games have become darker and darker over the years.

We have set specific parameters of behavior for our boys. My fifteen year old is far too young to “date”, and there is to be no physical contact. He has already violated this once. They are both well-versed in their catechism and in Theology of the Body.
 
Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night, folks. My son was surfing the music playlist on Facebook (where literally everybody is these days). It gives you the song you are interested along with a “package” of other songs, supposedly related to yours. You can choose to click onto the song to sample it.

Well, a song titled _________(a vulgar word equivalent to fornication, and I do mean theword) …the Pain Away, came onto the list. And guess what? You guessed it. He clicked onto it. It was literally verbal porn. Disgusting. And, this is what I came downstairs to in the morning. He had left it paused on the computer and hadn’t expected me to drop by so soon.

As you can guess, I have been beside myself. And yet, he tells me he didn’t understand why it was sooooo bad as all that. He said it just popped up and he clicked it on. No excuse whatsoever. He did not seek it out. It came to him. Now, we have filters for the computer, but when you are already in a program and it comes in as a package… that’s how it bypasses
the filters, folks.

We’ve got a problem on our hands. My child’s innocence just went down a huge notch. Perhaps it is gone altogether, and has been for a while. In my worst nightmares I never dreamed chastity would be such a struggle in my children.
I had hoped I had given them enough to choose to reject what looked bad. Now I know they do not have the wisdom to do so.

Pray for the children. Pray for their purity. 😦
 
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