How Do You Do That??

In our email discussion of possible topics for my guest post, Calah said: I’m so fascinated by the way you seem to be able to incorporate spirituality into every aspect of your children’s lives (here I’m thinking of all the times that they play at being nuns, Mary, etc.). My kids never do that. I would love to know how you do that.

So I thought I’d write a bit about how I “do that.” And because I have a serious problem with brevity, it turned into a small book. And Calah, desperate for blog filler while she moves across the country with her family, has graciously agreed to let me to do a whole series of guests posts in which I blather about how I get my kids to pretend to be the Blessed Mother.

First, though, let’s be clear that this is not meant to be a how-to advice column. I don’t think I can give a list of instructions for how you too can “do that”. Instead, I think of this more like a detective story, me trying to backtrack and trace: How did—how do—we do that?

Second, I know I’m no expert in anything—except maybe the poetry of T.S. Eliot—certainly not in parenting or in catechesis or in theology. But Calah seems to think I’ve got something to offer, so I’ll tell you what I’ve done and you can take it or leave it.

Third, Bella, my oldest, has just turned five so I have no experience parenting older children. I have no idea how my educational and catechetical theories will play out through the school age years much less through the teen years, college, young adulthood.

So in case you couldn’t tell from all the disclaimers, I’m a little uncomfortable about writing this because I don’t think of myself as any kind of a parenting guru. In fact, the only reason I’m writing this is because Calah asked me about it. Ok, that’s not exactly true. I’ve actually been itching to write on this topic for a long time—thus the small book. Because while there are some wonderful materials such as Catechesis of the Good Shepherd—I really love the book The Religious Potential of the Child by Sofia Cavaletti—they all really begins at age three and focus on formal group settings whereas no one that I can find has written in the same kind of detail about the catechesis of children younger than three or about informal catechesis in the home. I’m fascinated about the subject and itching to share my observations and insights.

So in this here series of blog posts for Calah I’m going to try to document the steps I’ve consciously taken as I’ve striven to fulfill the promises I made at each of my children’s baptisms: to make it my constant care to bring them up in the practice of the faith. And I’ll try not to ramble too, too much.

The second secret to my success (and I’ll get into this in much greater depth later) has been recognizing that if my children are really God’s children then they already have a relationship with God independent of me. One of the things that has been most surprising to me as a mother was seeing how even the tiniest promptings on my part seemed to arouse a deep response in Bella as if she was full of religious longing that she was yearning to be able to express. It has been also been such a surprise to me how much she had to teach me about God, how often she led me to new insights, to new experiences of God’s love. Where I expected to be the teacher, I found myself a student. I’ve started noticing all the ways in which we underestimate our children’s potential to know God.