Primary Educators

Primary Educators

At last Sunday's sermon I was reminded by my priest that the education of children is the primary duty of parents. I understood this fact some time ago and had taken steps to fulfill this obligation by homeschooling. 

Catechism I believe is the most important subject we can teach our children. Homeschooling parents always have that pressure over their head of worrying whether their kids are up to par with public school or other homeschooling peers. This is food for another post, but I like to keep the realization that we are training our children first for Heaven, secondarily Harvard. 

How do I teach Catechism? Because I have spent many hours reading Catholic theology, I felt it was my responsibility to teach my children this subject. Due to my work schedule, I usually do not have the opportunity to lecture a class during the daytime; therefore, when I get home in the evenings, if I'm not to worn out, I will spend about an hour lecturing to the kids. 

My goal is to spend about a half hour to 45 minutes with the older kids, and 10 -15 with the younger; but I don't set a strict window for that. 

What material do I use? Primarily, I use the Baltimore Catechism. This is a time tested cheap resource for children. I suppose when we get through this, we will advance to something a bit more weighty. Hopefully, in high-school years we can dip into Aquinas in the Summa. 

I ad-lib a fair portion with analogies to clarify some points, but we pretty  much just go through about one or two pages a day. I catch myself going on rabbit trails due to questions and expounding on certain points. The Baltimore Catechism however, is a great tool and is so well organized, so its easy to get back on track. 

The main point of this post is to encourage other homeschooling Dads out there to perhaps think about doing something similar. If you home-school and only one of you is teaching all the subjects, then I would imagine both the children and the other spouse are missing out on some great quality time. I would not take back a single lecture with my children; it is a great bonding experience. 

Fulfilling Your Sunday Obligation With A Large Family

Attending Mass this year has been a very interesting experience with my five kids. My oldest child is 7 years old and my youngest is 4 months. My wife is also pregnant with our sixth child, Wahoo! Our  2 older ones can sit through a Mass pretty well, my middle boy is just not quite there yet, but can sit through a low mass with about two breaks in between. Logan my 1 year old and Mary my infant obviously require constant attention. So this causes problems. With two kids that make loud noises, one that cant sit still and two that are pretty good, but still need correction every 10 minutes, attending Mass is next to impossible. So whats the solution.

Before Mary was born, my wife and i would alternate who took care of Logan out in the hallways and the cry room. This was fine and worked, because the other one would sit in the sanctuary with one of us. It was pretty tough, but it was doable. However, when Mary was born, that all changed. We each had to care for a baby and then that left the three older ones who needed someone to sit with them at Mass. Ok, were out of parents to help. I was thinking of how I was going to pull this off, but the only ideas we had, were to goto to a different parish that  had a daycare type room to help with the little ones. This option was doable, but very undesirable seeing the other parish celebrates the ordinary form of the Mass and we prefer to celebrate according the 1962 missal in the Extraordinary form. The Novus Ordo is great and all, but we just prefer the reverence and beauty of the TLM.
Our preist has been clear that you are satisfying your Sunday obligation if you need to remove a child from the sanctuary. If you have to do this, you are still present and have not missed Mass. I spoke with Father about our situation and what he said saved my life. 

He said "lets be realiatic here". It is unrealistic in this situation to attend Mass with all my children at that age. He recomended we leave the babies home and alternate services with the kids who can sit through Mass. I thought about this before, but i was very concerned about not fulfilling my obligation as a parent to take my children to Mass. The last thing i want is to break a precept of the church. On the other hand i cant help but think that im being a bit legalistic in regard to this. I try to avoid rationalizing things, especially to justify something morally questionable. I dont want to get into that habbit, that is why i consulted with Father. 

So long story short my wife and i dont go to Mass at the same time and we split the kids up between the services. This isnt the most desirable situation, but it works for us and it may work for you if you have a blessedly large Catholic family. 

So if your not one of those families whos children sit quietly at Mass and you have a number of small children, this option may be an option for you.

The Bang Bang

Robert Jastrow the head scientist at nasa said: 

When science discovered the big bang,"we scientists took a millennia to climb this mountain of knowledge, the discovery of the origin of the universe and then when we reached the summit of that mountain we found a bunch of theologians sitting there who had been there for years."