Are you interested in raising holy, happy, and respectful children?
Try incorporating these ideas into your family life.

Number One:

Share the gift of faith with your children. Faith allows us to believe in God. Make sure that your house and life is filled with knowledge of the Triune God. Read bible stories with your child. Take your children to mass each week. Pray together at meals and bedtime. Pray the rosary (or let them see you praying the rosary.) Participate in the seasons of the Church and apply what you learn at home.

Number Two:

Share the gift of hope with your children. Hope helps us desire happiness in God. Dream with your child. Help fill them with the joy of aspirations. Let them see you find joy in even the most mundane tasks. This will show them that there definitely are reasons to live and love – the greatest reason of all is entering the kingdom of God!

Number Three:

Share the gift of charity with your children. Charity help us love God above all else. Teach your children that God is in all people, even those that are difficult to be around. When you discipline your children, make sure that you are preserving God in them while you correct the behavior. Do random acts of kindness. Teach service to others before service to self.

Number Four:

Share the gift of prudence with your children. Prudence is knowing what is right. In order to know what is right, you have to give your children standards to live by. There are standards that are already set by the Catholic Church; ten commandments, beatitudes, two great commandments. Know them, live them, teach them.

Number Five:

Share the gift of justice with your children. Justice is choosing what is right. Children learn justice through discipline and through the practice of obedience to fair requests. Your job is to hold them accountable for what they do. Justice is the application of prudence.

Number Six:

Share the gift of fortitude with your children. Fortitude is moral courage. Choosing to do what is right according to God’s will is not easy. When you live according to God’s will, you may encounter teasing, criticism, loneliness, etc. Instead of giving in, stand firm. Support and love your family. Listen to them. Be available to them. Be proud of them. Pray with and for them.

Number Seven:

Share the gift of temperance with your children. Temperance is self-control. Assist your children with temperance through guidance and appropriate structured use of their time. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” has merit here. Train your kids (and yourself) to be moderate with technology. Make sure that your children’s life is filled with opportunities to do good for others rather than with activities for personal gain. They should be responsible for chores around the house. Activities should increase your children’s sense of interdependence, dedication, perseverance, and concern for your family and for others.

Number Eight:

When your children enter puberty and emerge physically mature, share the gift of chastity with them. Chastity is sexual self-control. It is a gift of vital importance in today’s world. Children need to know that reserving sexual activity until marriage is both prudent and just. Be aware that sexual temptations are widespread because of technology and that sexual predators and the creators of porn are out to trap your children as early as 12.

Number Nine:

Share yourself with your children. Give them the gift of your attention, time, companionship, humor, eye contact, physical security. Become a family; be with them. Let them know what you dream about, care about, hope for, pray for. You are your children’s connection to God. If you act in loving and kind ways, they will believe that God is loving and kind. They will aspire to know God if you do the same.

Summary:

What are these gifts? These are the virtues that we are called to live. A virtue is a firm attitude to do what is right. Its direct opposite is a vice. A vice is a habit to do what is wrong.

Faith, hope, and charity are theological virtues that come directly from God. They spring from divine nature. Prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are cardinal virtues and they are moral virtues. These four habits assist us in forming our conscience according to the will of God. “They grow through education, deliberate acts and perseverance in struggle. Divine grace (God’s special help) purifies and elevates them in our lives.” CCC1839