Notes from this Episode

The Problem

• Parenting experts have done a great job over the last 20-30 years of taking away our rightful role of leadership with our children
• What used to be unspeakable in morals and values is now blasted across all forms of social media
• What used to be psychological issues are now normalized so much so that you’re a freak or a bigot if you don’t buy into it and agree with the normalization

The Solution

• You, mom, are your children’s teacher.  You, mom, with your husband, are their leader
• It’s up to you to form them in virtues and morals and to help them form their conscience
  • Not just because you say it, but because you’ve explained it and educated them on the value of these virtues and morals

• You have to take time to create a plan for what you want your children to be in their adult life – what do you want your family to look like?
• What kinds of adults do you want to raise?  What human virtues do you want them to own?

Virtue Based Parenting

• What is discipline?  Discipline is control gained by enforcing obedience or order or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior, self-control, and training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
• Discipline is how children act all day long, not just when they make a poor choice
• What is your definition of discipline?
  • If it simply involves punishment and consequences (i.e., spanking, time-outs, grounding, etc.), I would encourage you to expand that idea so that you begin to see your whole life as disciplining your children
• What is virtue based parenting? 
  • Using specific virtues to educate our children in ways in which they made mistakes and what they could use to not make that mistake
  • Using virtues to encourage children in good choices – choices made in love and tenderness for each other and others
  • Teaching our children a skill set that becomes their toolbox in dealing with life
• With virtues, we give our children the tools to accomplish the tasks in life, the peace in life, and the joy in life
• Sincerity – teaching children to be truthful
  • Develop a friendship with each of your children
    • Not a peer friendship, but a friend in the mentor sense
    • The goal is for your children to come and talk to you when they need to, you want to be there to support them
  • In sincerity, we teach our children to be humble, to realize they don’t have all the answers and that’s okay
  • We teach our children sincerity in being simple, not complicating things or situations
• Respect – children must treat their parents with respect
  • It is a commandment – Honor your father and mother
    • They must honor us – it’s the right order of things
  • Since children cannot see God and have a more difficult time comprehending God, the way you demand that they treat you is the way they will treat God
    • If they are disrespectful to you (someone they can actually see and touch), they will be disrespectful to God
  • Children should also respect their siblings, and you should demand it
    • If they can’t be respectful, they could be isolated for a portion of time so that they can understand the importance of respect
• Responsibility – able to answer for one’s conduct and obligations
  • Do not be afraid to set guardrails for your children
    • Guardrails are so critical, and our society and “parenting experts” have taken away all the guardrails
      • For example, the notion of letting your children make their own decisions and choices
      • We, as parents are supposed to honor those decisions because it shows them respect, even when the decisions are ridiculous (i.e., flip flops and a tutu in freezing cold weather)
    • You are not respecting them with that attitude, you are not teaching them to make proper choices
    • We must be the ones to form our children in proper decision-making
  • By teaching them proper decision-making and how to make them responsibly, we are also teaching them obedience
  • We also teach our children industriousness, which means teaching our children to always work hard and always do their best
  • We also teach them moderation – setting limits on pleasures
    • By learning moderation, the children learn self-control
• Fortitude – persisting, even when it is difficult
  • We want to teach our children to have endurance, to keep persisting, even when something is difficult
  • We also want our children to have indifference to what others will think of them
    • If they’re not going to be indifferent about what other people think, they’re not going to have the fortitude to live the values and morals we are instilling in them
  • We want to teach our children patience – with each other and themselves
  • We want to teach generosity to give, fortitude in giving, but also not becoming people pleasers
  • The last place we teach fortitude is in orderliness
    • If you struggle with orderliness, how are you going to teach your children?
      • By learning yourself.  Are you going to be perfect? Nope.  Are you trying?  Yes.  And that’s what the children see

Conclusion

• We teach virtues, not just by talking about them, but by living them
• We start by working on our own virtue
  • If there is something we are struggling with, we need to ask God, in prayer, to give us the grace to grow in that particular virtue