Parenting Smarts

Boredom seems to be more common than sunburns in the summer. I remember clearly telling my children that boredom is not an illness. It is okay to let your kids be bored! There are actual benefits of boredom. Balance is key. If you want to help them continue to grow in divergent thinking, creativity, and cognitive functioning when bored, you can't take a completely hands-off approach. Some periods of boredom are okay, but generally, extended periods of boredom are not good for children’s cognition. Letting your children be bored for a little while, is not the same thing as simply checking out and disengaging from them all day long.  

Lent is a sacred time in the liturgical calendar, a season set aside for intentional spiritual growth. With its emphasis on prayer, almsgiving, and fasting, Lent invites Catholics to adopt practices that challenge us to step outside our everyday routines and grow closer to Christ. These practices, when embraced authentically, provide repeated opportunities to deny ourselves in order to live more fully in Him.

The family, the heart of evangelization, has been called the Domestic Church (“Lumen Gentium,” 11), the first place where we encounter God. It is within the family that we begin to learn who God is and how to prayerfully seek His will for our lives. It is the primary and perhaps singular place for many of us to evangelize and spread the message of God’s love. 

As parents, one of the most important tasks we can undertake is helping our children discover their purpose in life. This is not only about guiding them toward a specific career path or success but about nurturing their understanding of who they are and how their unique gifts fit into God's plan. Helping children find their purpose involves helping them discern God's will, recognize their natural gifts and understand that their purpose might be found in both the big and the small things of life.

Everyone needs a grandparent. When my son started college in a distant state, he prioritized finding “his people.” He found them, or maybe I should say her, at the church. She was a kind older woman, sitting in the pew, who smiled at him with quiet encouragement. Over the coming year, she became a surrogate grandmother, and when I visited at the end of the year, she was one of the people he was most excited for me to meet. My children have the rare blessing of knowing all of their grandparents, and a few honorary ones as well. They’ve benefited greatly from what researchers now refer to as “The Grandparenting Effect.”