Protect Your Kids’ Souls – Every Catholic Parent Must Know This! (Ken & Janelle)

Raising children in today’s world is not easy, but as Catholic parents, we are called to raise holy, virtuous kids who are prepared to stand firm in their faith. In this episode, we share insights from Saint Theophan the Recluse and Dr. Leonard Sax on parenting with purpose, discipline, and faith.

As parents of eight children (including our newborn, Louis! 👶), we’ve seen firsthand the challenges of parenting while homeschooling and keeping our faith at the center of our family life. In this discussion, we cover:

✅ The #1 influence on your child’s faith and character
✅ Why self-control is crucial for your child’s future success
✅ How authoritative parenting (not too harsh, not too soft) forms strong, faith-filled kids
✅ The battle for virtue in a world that promotes comfort over discipline
✅ The importance of surrounding kids with faith-filled role models

This podcast is a must for every Catholic parent who wants to raise children that love God and live virtuously in today’s culture.

📖 Books Mentioned:
Raising Them Right – Saint Theophan the Recluse
https://www.amazon.ca/Raising-Them-Right-Saints-Children/dp/0962271306

The Collapse of Parenting – Dr. Leonard Sax
https://www.amazon.ca/Collapse-Parenting-Hurt-Treat-Grown-Ups/dp/0465094287

Transcript

okay welcome back it's so great to see you we are happy to have you here today we are honored to be able to share with you a little bit about

parenting as many of you know or that have been following us we the parents of now eight children our last child Louie was just born how long ago about 3 weeks ago so you're pretty busy with Lou yeah I'm pretty busy with Lou but you know what we have a lot of help Ken's parents are still here helping us and um I'm realizing that like today I was doing like some reading some math nursing a baby changing diapers and I'm realizing okay this is a bit more like normal life cuz if I only have to focus on the baby that's not normal life yet I realize there's going to be a lot of different distractions coming my way and we're homeschooling well Janelle is doing most of the homeschooling amidst all this so you know it's like uh it's busy busy so in the midst of this business you've had some chance a chance to read okay so one of the nice things about being like postpartum I find like I sit in a rocking chair nurse a baby and then I can pick up a book and actually read it which doesn't always happen for me um and so I've actually I'm halfway through a book about the missionaries of the poor which is like really awesome and I finished this book called raising them right and it's a book that I've had for probably like 2 years and haven't even opened and I it was recommended by somebody that I was watching on Instagram and I thought okay that looks like a good book so it's actually written by an orthodox priest who then became a bishop and then he really felt a call to a life of seclusion um and became uh like a recluse and he honestly was by himself for like 28 years of his life and he only interacted with his spiritual director and I think the director of where he was living you know what I thought was really beautiful is that he had a a a large group of you know spiritual children who would write to him on a daily basis and he would get over like 40 letters a day and he would spend most of his day um corresponding with them and also in deep prayer and uh in fasting like he would hardly eat like I think he would drink tea and have a little bit of bread and then if it was like a special day he would have maybe some eggs and yeah so anyhow um I just found it interesting because this man who was living on his own for so much time can still impart great wisdom for parents so he's lots of insights on raising them right yeah okay okay so this is from like the 1800s as well so what I find interesting is like he wasn't aware of like the technologies that we currently have but I was thinking about this and how you know things that are Timeless like virtues vices things are the same whether you're in like the first century or you're in our current modern time and so I think that this is still applicable like Timeless teaching is applicable at any time in life the first main takeaway was that like the biggest um influencer on children are their parents and he said that a life of piety and virtue is really what's going to have the greatest impact on your child so for the parent to have a virtuous and holy life that is really important clearly we know Saints who maybe didn't come from you know strong faith-filled families and they still became Saints but I think for best case scenario you want to have strong holy parents and I was thinking about the life of St ter because we often know St teres and we don't know about her parents but her parents just recently became Saints St Louis Martin and St Z Martin and we have to remember and I heard someone say this that they were Saints like they were in their walk of Holiness before St even became a became a saint and what's beautiful is that a L of why she is the way she is is because she was raised by these these beautiful people okay first point so what I found really interesting about um the author so his name is Saint it's he's actually declared a saint in the Orthodox Church Theo theopen the recluse is his name and he talks about really basic things such as um you know providing for your child's physical needs so like food sleep um cleanliness physical activity and he talks about how all these things have to be very direct and specific in your directions to your children like you can't just kind of leave it up to them so basically and I and I see this in our own home you know kids always wanting snacks kids always saying I'm hungry and then I feel bad I'm like oh they're maybe they're going through a growth spur or maybe um oh yeah like he just ran he just played ball hockey of course he's going to be hungry he needs to eat something even though it's 30 minutes before supper you know but really that's not training them properly and he says that like if we don't allow these children to be trained and disciplined in these lower faculties they're really going to have a hard time saying no to things in the future and so we as parents we have to provide that clear Direction in terms of like when we eat what we eat and how we eat so this is what St Theo theopen says place them in proper bounds early in life to strengthen them with force of habit so that they are less of a disturbance later on and I see that like even I think you know maybe even in my own childhood where I didn't have any restraints in terms of food I remember like just buying all kinds of treats from the corner store and just like eating as much as I wanted and I can see how sometimes those same patterns that I had as a child still come up in my adult life because I didn't have any restraint and I think if we can develop children to have restraint and self-control as children that will be a huge um help to them in the future and I know you had mentioned that in a in a video not too long ago about um is this Dr saxs was that his name he said one of the predictors of like a successful child yeah so yeah Dr Leonard sxs I have the book actually I brought it here it's called the collapse of parenting which is really good and one of his chapters if you don't mind this compliments what you're saying is that there's a five Dimensions psychologists say of Personality um one of them he says is conscientious and the subcategory is self-control and one of the major points in his book is that children who develop self-control at an early age will have much better outcomes in their life later down the road and so it's very necessary according to him as well the parents be authoritative and limit the children's choices uh making their choices for them sometimes and he says that if you just give a child a whole bunch of choices thinking that they're going to make the best one it's not going to happen you you need to be the authoritative parent in their life and there was a number of studies that he's talked about in his book regarding self-control which really is what this this this man is talking about now here's a quote from St Leonard St Leonard here's a quote from Leonard Sachs conscientiousness individuals who are more conscientious earn and save more money even after researchers adjust for intelligence race ethnicity and education individuals who are more conscientious are also significantly happier than individuals who are less conscientious and they are substantially more satisfied with their lives other Studies have shown that conscientiousness predicts Better Health and longer life people who are more conscientious are less likely to become obese they are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease they are more likely to live longer and Happ your lives and as noted above more likely to be satisfied with their lives so here's one of the big points is that conscientiousness requires self-control that's one of the his points and guess what every virtue natural virtue requires self-control it it requires us to mediate between two extremes and this is what the recluse is talking I know yeah and I realized like even in our earlier days of parenting I I remember like being like oh so what do you guys want to have or how do you want Mommy to prepare that and like giving the kids exactly what they wanted but really what I should have been doing is just being like this is what we're eating and this is what you're going to have and everyone's going to have that yeah and I and I think sometimes but like retracting is more difficult than just starting the right way at the beginning so any of you new parents you know this might be a tip for you once the horses are out of the barn it's hard to get them back very much so that was one of the things that he touches on was food but then he also talks about sleep and I can see this like how it's easy for you know especially as we are getting some older children how they want to stay up later or they want to sleep in longer and you know the easy thing to do would be like sure go ahead do whatever you want but really that's not truly the loving thing and that's not going to be developing good habits for them in the future and what he says as parents we need to be giving the directions to these children until they are capable of you know sustaining that self control themselves and so that might be for a child who's 12 or maybe that's for a child who's 15 or 18 it really depends on the child at what stage they are capable of exercising proper virtuous living that's really interesting so Dr Leonard sxs has something about like authoritative parenting there's the too soft parent there's the one that's too harsh and he calls one the just right and again it's in the mean in the mean and the the parent gives guidelines to the child according to him uh that find the balance between the two where they know the boundaries but they also feel loved and the boundary Without Love Will Lead to Rebellion but the too soft they grow up not know not knowing how to act later as an adult but it's that just right discipline with love that a child needs right exactly and I think that's important to like articulate to your children is like we're doing this because this is good for you so like even like um St Theo theopen says that when we give our children food it's important not to like um get them to experience like activate like passions for like sweet things and you know Desiring always more pleasurable food but just giving them what will sustain them and give them strength yeah we could work on we can work on that we like treats in but I think probably what he would say would be like treats are appropriate at the proper time right just like he has eggs on special days well within the Catholic tradition we have times of feasting and Times of penance right yep um so another thing that he touches on is movement and I thought this was really interesting because as a homeschooling parent it's like we don't have um the the convenience of our children attending a 30 minute phed class every single day in their classroom and so uh for us it's something that you have to be really uh intentional about and I can I can see like some of our kids will be like oh I don't really want to go do that or I don't want to go skating or I don't want to you know play this sport or whatever and the easy thing would be like oh yeah that's okay don't worry about it you know but the right thing would be like it's important to exercise your body and it's not necessarily to always be doing organized sports but it's actually just disciplining your body making it do things that maybe itn't doesn't want to do like getting off your chair and going outside for a walk you know maybe that's something that's not necessarily pleasing to you but the fact that you've disciplined yourself and done something that your body doesn't want to do it does incite some virtue I think it's important to realize too it's always easier not to discipline children than to discipline children because then there's a resistance and naturally we don't like that so it's always easier when a child puts up an objection to go along with them it's always easier and to be mindful of that as parents and he says that when a child is left up to their own will what I found was interesting they could develop what that he says is hyperactivity inattentiveness and sometimes it could be slowness lifelessness and even laziness so I thought that was interesting like when we don't discipline the body it creates all these other problems that we don't necess necessarily want so it's important to restrain and to teach into discipline all right so now I need an action plan now that I read this book what are we going to do so another thing that he touched on was forming attitudes so maybe you feel like some of the kids in your house have certain types of attitudes or temperaments that need to be kind of trained in certain directions well what I thought was interesting is he basically said that parents we need to speak very clearly and plainly about matters of Faith about life and death about you know right and wrong good and bad and it's through our conversations that our children will glean that wisdom and he even talked about like the early Martyrs for example like they were so um open with what was happening the persecutions in the church and and the children of these people were listening to the parents have these conversations that when it came time to it these kids were ready to give their lives for Christ because it was just so ingrained in them they just knew the truth they knew the Life of Christ but I think often like sometimes as parents sometimes we just want to shelter our kids from some of the truth and clearly like we want to preserve their innocence um in certain matters but I think what he's saying is like we should not should not shy away from you know having even um to be proud of our Catholic faith to to be uh proud of the teachings of the church and what are they and not be afraid to be able to speak truth and bold and boldly Proclaim it among your friends or among you know at the shopping store or um you know wherever you're going and and I and that will then shape their attitude towards different things in life and I thought that was really interesting what do you think about that yeah I I think that's a great point I think there's Sometimes some might have a tendency to not talk about difficult things that are happening in the world for the sake of oh it might disturb their peace for example I there is a point where you have to guard a child's innocence as you mentioned that but I think it's good also to for children to realize hey like the majority of people aren't living the Catholic faith the majority of the people in the secular society don't agree with the Catholic mindset even the majority of people within the pews don't agree sometimes with the Catholic church and her chief just take for example contraception the majority of practicing Catholics don't agree with that uh they they think the church's teaching is wrong regarding natural Family Planning even the Eucharist for example many Catholics don't believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist there was that famous uh study that came out a number of years ago it was like a third or what would I can't remember Matthew will pop it up on the screen the number of people that don't believe but anyways kids should know that I think because if they get into the world and if it's never been talked to like oh that's a surprise what's what's going on here right right yeah so I think that's I think that's another area that we could work on and just share overtly you know the Beauties and the treasures of our church yeah even the things like did you know that there's some people that believe that there's many genders that's an appropriate conversation you don't have to get into the real fine details of exactly that but they there's people that don't believe that a that a man can they believe that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man and they should know that that's crazy right but I mean I wouldn't have that conversation with like our four-year-old not with our four-year-old but uh but they should know that's crazy yeah that people are confused and and with plain language like that they're confused they don't know the truth that's sad it's hurting people it's hurting their lives okay so the last point that I want to make from this this book is that he talks about worldly thinking does not satisfy but it ignites curiosity unhealthy curiosity and I think that's true like you can see like even when you're on social media there's like this unhealthy curiosity of things of the world and you just want to click on it and touch on it and how easy it is to get sucked into this like Vortex of like unhealthy curiosity the Dead Sea scroll I've never heard that one before was father Dan um so what he says is it's important to acquaint children with other people who are living their lives for God whose primary goal Chief concern is to please God and I think that's like one of the beautiful things in terms of homeschooling is you really can select your children's friends and you know bring people into your home that will you know ignite a desire for more faith desire for God and to see other people have great they have great examples of people who live their life in have a very active faith and active prayer life and so I think it's just normal for them to see that and I think it's beautiful so that's what the saint says he says that it's really important to you know surround your your children with with people like that and then he just quotes from Corinthians he says evil company corrupts good habits so we want good company to help us build these good habits okay so two good books this one raising them right and the claps of parenting uh one written by a recluse the other a psychologist so hey thanks for listening share with us below what's the do you and why and we'll see you soon