How Strict Should I Be?: The Parents’ Dilemma
by Rev. Fr. Gabriel Lavery, CMRI
* Originally published in The Reign of Mary, Issue No. 133, Winter 2009
Parents of teenagers often find themselves asking this question. They find their teenage children drifting away, becoming hardened against religion or showing a careless attitude toward it. What should they do? They often adopt one of two strategies.
Some tighten the grip and lay down the law. The child by force of necessity externally fulfills his religious duties until he can get out of the house (which he will do at his first opportunity). The attitude of these parents towards their children could be put this way: “If you’re going to lose your soul it won’t be through my fault and not as long as you’re under my roof.”
Other parents point out the sad results of strategy number one and say: “If I push my kids too hard I will drive them away, like So-and-So’s kids. It would be better if I just let them go so I don’t harden them any more toward religion.”
So which should it be? Neither. It is unfortunate that parents do not ask this question earlier, before their children become teenagers. By the time they ask it, in many cases the damage has already been done. The parents have already been, for a long time, unconsciously destroying their children by the use of one of these two policies. I say unconsciously, because the effects do not become very noticeable until the children are older. Then the parents stare in disbelief at what appears to them a sudden change in their children. It is easy to make mistakes in the education of children which have far-reaching consequences.
Unfortunately, many parents do not take the time to read what good Catholic educators of the past have said about the proper way to train children in virtue. They do not seem to realize that since they have chosen the married state, they have also voluntarily undertaken the obligation to render themselves fit for the duties of that calling. Such parents seem to think that their neglects will not do any serious damage as long as they are not doing anything to positively harm their children. I have only one thing to reply to such an attitude; it is the words of Fr. Faber: “You cannot really neglect your children; you can destroy them.”
We can leave such parents to their sad state; there is nothing more to say to them. You can be a different kind of parent. Perhaps you are one of those who at the time of their marriage did not think seriously about what it means to be a father or mother. Your thoughts were on the one you were taking as your spouse. Now you have several children. You see them, souls redeemed at a great price, the price of the Blood of Jesus. These souls you brought to the baptismal font and their godparents promised on their behalf to renounce Satan, his works, and his pomps. You brought them away from the baptismal font knowing that their souls were pure white, clothed with the robe of baptismal innocence. Yet, you were reminded as they got older that they were beings gifted with intelligence and free will. You saw how they would be capable of the greatest good or the greatest evil, and you became aware that so much depended upon you. You saw that your words and your example had an amazing power to lead them to God or to harden them and drive them away from Him. You now see your vocation in the clearest light. You are a father, a mother. Your children, a small portion of Christ’s flock, will become under your guidance either saints or sinners. You want to learn the right way to educate them to be good and faithful so that they will save their souls.
On the other hand, perhaps you are one of those young men or women who look upon marriage from the very beginning as a sacred obligation. You have had an edifying courtship and wish to have a holy marriage, a holy family. Conscious of your own inability for such a task, you want to know what methods of educating have been used in the Catholic Church to produce saints among the youth.
To such parents as you, I hope these words will be a help. However, before I tell you the right way, there are some ground rules that must be discussed.
First, do not expect a one-minute answer, a sort of crash course in parenting which will solve all your problems. Many parents, when they ask, “What must I do?” expect an easy answer, a sort of mathematical equation that they just have to plug numbers into without much thought or effort. If they are told the truth, i.e. that the solution to their difficulties with their children lies in a complete change in their way of thinking and in their manner of living, they turn away and look for some easier way. They are like the Jews who were scandalized at Christ’s words: “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life in you.” They said, “This is a hard saying, and who can take it?” and they walked no longer with Christ. If your children are falling away and you want me to tell you a method which will correct them without much effort on your part or without requiring you to change your manner of living, I cannot help you.
Second, the following rules will be most helpful if they are used from the very beginning. If you wait until you are having trouble with your children, even the best and holiest teacher using the best methods would have a difficult time undoing the harm that has already been done. The harm may have been done by the parents, who used the wrong words or methods, or set the wrong example. It may also have been due to the company with whom they have been allowed to associate, or the schools they have attended, the books they have been allowed to read, movies, video games, etc. Whatever the cause, once a child has lost innocence and simplicity, it is difficult to draw him back. Often they will only come back after years of misery in sin, after they have tasted the bitterness of the forbidden fruit which appeared so attractive to them in their youth. I do not like to think that anything is impossible; the methods I will give should be used with these hardened youth also, but the results will often be slow and uncertain.
Now that we have discussed these basic remarks, we are prepared to lay out the proper method. It is a difficult task. We live in a world which has for a long time rejected Catholic life and principles. Even the best of parents and teachers are often far from practicing a Catholic ideal of education. They have often unconsciously been influenced by the aims, ideals, and principles of Protestantism and naturalism which they see in the public and private schools around them. Catholic education is something far different, with aims and means which Protestants and secular educators are incapable of having.
To explain the Catholic method I have decided upon a special plan. There was a famous carver who died not too many years ago. When asked how he could carve such intricate things as he did, he responded: “Carving is easy. You just imagine what you want, and you cut away all the rest.” This is my plan. Instead of describing what you should do, I will begin by cutting away all that you should not do. Only after doing that can we try to lay down some rules for Catholic parents to lead their children on to sanctity. To do this I will quote from good Catholic educators of the past. The method, then, will be theirs, not mine. One of my principal sources is the book The Child by Bishop Felix Dupanloup, written in 1873 (Kate Anderson, Trans., Boston: Thomas B. Noonan). He was perhaps the most famous educator in France at that time, and the book is the fruit of his 25 years of experience in the education of children. Pope Pius XII quotes from the book in one of his addresses. He in turn relies much upon Fenelon, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Augustine for his methods.
I have already said there are two extremes parents fall into: laxity and excessive strictness. It should be evident to any parent that laxity will destroy a child. I have only one thing to say about it, in the words of Bishop Dupanloup: “In the laborious functions of public education, I have never found anything more sorrowful to see, more painful to bring up, than spoiled children; and I should acknowledge that all my cares, all my efforts, for them, nearly always failed” (The Child, p. 51). The words I have italicized are frightening, and it would be well if all parents would read the whole chapter: “The Spoiled Child.”
What about excessive severity? It would be difficult to determine which would do more harm to a child: laxity or severity. Both are so harmful, but it seems to me that severity would do the most harm. My reason is this: A child who has been carelessly brought up may still turn back to practicing the Catholic Faith once he has found how bitter his worldly life has been. On the other hand, one who has been brought up with excessive strictness only knows the cold and forced religion which he had in childhood. The practice of the Faith becomes for him just a routine to avoid trouble, not acts of virtue motivated by the love of God. As soon as he can he will give up the practice of religion and throw himself into a worldly life which promises him the happiness that his cold and hypocritical religion did not. When he has grown tired of the world and looks for happiness, will he turn to religion? He may very well not, since to him religion has never been anything but a burden. The child brought up in laxity has not known religion; the child raised in severity has known it only as a sad and gloomy thing. This does not mean that laxity is the better route; both are disastrous to the souls of children.
What does excessive strictness do to a child? His parents are really more lax than are careless parents. They are strict for their own convenience. They do not want to take the time to patiently instruct and encourage their children, to teach them the motives for being good, to inspire them with a love for the Faith. They only want perfect order, to be obeyed like drill sergeants. Harsh words and punishments are the easy way for them to fix everything. The children learn to regard something as bad, not because of what it is in itself, but only because their parents will be upset. They become secretive; they will do things behind their parents’ backs. When they have troubles and questions they will hardly think of turning to their parents for kind advice and sympathetic understanding. The noble and generous desires which always have a place in young hearts will be stifled by the fear of displeasing the parents. The fear of rebuke will make them clam up in the presence of their parents. Authority will always appear a frightful thing to them which makes them give up their natural way of acting, even if they were doing nothing wrong. They do not learn to love, only to fear. As they get older they rebel as soon as they think they have the power to do so. When they finally free themselves from this yoke, they will have a discouraging struggle to gain that joy, simplicity and openness which they had never learned when they were children.
Catholic writers have been very clear on the dangers of excessive severity. Here are a few of their statements:
Pope Pius XII (What he says here regarding boarding schools may just as well apply to education in the home):
“A communal life away from one’s environment, especially if discipline is so rigid as not to distinguish one individual from another, undoubtedly has its dangers. Even small errors in method can produce boys who will have anything but a sense of personal responsibility. Because of their mechanical discharge of their duties, their study, discipline, and prayer unconsciously become mere matters of form. Strict uniformity tends to suffocate personal initiative; a secluded life to restrict a wide vision of the world. An inflexible insistence on rules sometimes gives rise to hypocrisy, or imposes a spiritual level which for one will be too low and for another, on the contrary, unattainable. Excessive severity ends by making rebels of strong characters, while the timid become depressed and secretive.... It is possible and indeed imperative that these dangers be obviated by means of discernment, moderation, and kindness” (Address to Students and Faculty of the Convitto Nazionale Maschile di Roma. April, 1956. Cf. The Pope Speaks, p. 89-93).
Another author, Bishop von Keppler writes:
“Joy is likewise menaced when teachers and educators — we hope the case is rare, but it does sometimes occur — are under the illusion that the rod is the magic wand of pedagogy; when they are, first of all, masters in the art of flogging; when the teacher at school and the parent at home enter into whipping contests. For joy might be flogged entirely out of hundreds of childish hearts and out of whole generations of children; the joy of learning, the enthusiasm of youth, the strength of will and, in a word, every good impulse might be beaten to death, so that nothing but insolence and anger and spite and meanness and vulgarity would live any longer in the child. ‘Education’ of this sort must be classed among the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance; it ranks with oppression of the poor, the helpless, the defenseless.... He who has only the rod of pain and not also the rod of gentleness, had better not try to wield the first. With it alone he will never do good. That teacher or educator, deserves the palm and is worthy of all honor, who with a glance of the eye, a change of tone, an uplifted finger, a purely psycho-physical means of warning and of punishing, can hold his little flock in discipline and order, without destroying their joy and confidence” (von Keppler, Rt. Rev. Paul Wilhelm. More Joy, p. 67-68, 71.. Adapted by Rev. Joseph McSorley, C.S.P. 3rd ed. St. Louis: B. Herder. 1916. Archive.org).
Archbishop Fenelon, quoted by Bishop Dupanloup: “Fenelon asks, ‘What do we see in the greater number of educations? No liberty, no enjoyment, always lessons, silence, a cramping posture, correction, and threats.’ He adds, ‘An exactitude and a seriousness, of which those who require them would not themselves be capable, are often demanded from children.’ Again he says, ‘Those who govern children will excuse nothing in them, and everything in themselves’” (The Child, p. 236).
Far worse is the damage when the force is not merely external, but internal. This happens when instead of inspiring in them a love for the Faith and its practice, they force it on them merely under fear of the pains of hell and, as St. John Bosco said, make of religion a scarecrow. Bishop Dupanloup has some wise words of advice on this:
“A sensible teacher does not unceasingly threaten his pupils; servile fear blunts their courage, extinguishes their ardor. But there is a much greater danger in moral constraint; it is that of making them hypocrites. Children are naturally timid and full of false shame; it is true, they are also naturally simple and open-hearted; but restrain them ever so little, or give them cause to fear you, and they become constrained, and never recover their early simplicity. The means of preventing so great an evil is, to accustom them to speak openly of their inclinations regarding all lawful subjects; in order to do that, they must be allowed great liberty in expressing their thoughts and laying open their souls; otherwise this early artlessness of the natural emotions, which is so precious, becomes stifled in them. If they be never left free to evince their weariness, if they be always in subjection, if they be forced to like certain dull people or certain tedious books which displease them, if they be represented harshly, while they are displaying what they naturally are, everything soon becomes for them a source of dissimulation and a motive for disguise. They become politic, dissembling, indifferent to goodness, and secretly inclined to evil: in vain do they appear more docile than other children of the same age; they are no better. What do I say? You have taught them to outwardly repress all their inclinations. What comes to pass? All their bad habits, all their defects, increase, and ripen in silence” (The Child, p. 244-245).
What wise advice! The danger that can be caused to the faith and piety of young persons by excessive rigorism can hardly be exaggerated. Let us again listen to the words of Bishop Dupanloup:
“The more you wear out these children with a cold and imperious constraint, in order to make them outwardly fulfil their religious duties, so that official inspection may never find them defaulters, the more you compel them to put on a masked and hypocritical religion. Is this what you would wish? Who could say it? Who would venture to believe it? As for me, I never believed it” (The Child, p. 248-249).
It is important to note here that injurious moral force is also had when parents expect such a quantity of devotions from their children as to overburden them or require spiritual practices not suited to their age. Pope Pius XII spoke clearly of this harm:
“Even pious practices must know the right measure, so that they do not become insupportable or tedious to the soul. Not infrequently have deplorable results been noted from an excessive zeal in this matter. Boys of Catholic boarding schools where moderation has not been a guiding principle, but which have sought to impose a tenor of religious practices hardly suitable for young clerics, have been seen to neglect, on their return to their families, the most elementary duties of a Christian, such as going to Mass on Sunday. One should, indeed, help and exhort young men to pray but always in such measure that prayer remains a refreshing need of the soul” (Address to Students and Faculty of the Convitto Nazionale Maschile di Roma. April, 1956. Cf. The Pope Speaks, p. 89-93. Emphasis added).
Bishop Dupanloup points out that such a forced piety can be lost in a very short time, which may explain some of the “sudden” changes parents notice in the piety of their children as teenagers: “Moreover, the constraint of excessive perfection is always injurious to the real strength and development of character; one becomes disgusted with that which he has for a long time been forced to be in spite of himself; and one hour of freedom has frequently destroyed the ephemeral labor of many years” (The Child, p. 212-213).
By now you should be getting at least a rough idea of the image we are carving. We have cut away many of the false and harmful methods used by parents and teachers. I think it is safe now to begin painting a positive picture of what Catholic education should be. No doubt you have already begun to grasp it from some of the quotes given above. I can best express it by the following statements:
- There is no mathematical mean between laxity and severity. Each child must be treated as an individual.
- A parent should use firmness in requiring certain basic practices on the part of the child, but should remember that forcing a child to do something against his will is always the lowest level of education with very little fruit.
- To do any real good for a child, parents should inspire and encourage them with the proper motives, not only to do those things which are of obligation, but to be more generous by their own choice for the love of God and other supernatural motives.
- Parents who do not themselves lead holy lives or who are content with doing only the minimum when it comes to their spiritual practices will never be able to apply the first three rules given here. They will always be tearing down by their own example the work they are attempting to do in their children.
Rule number three is the one primarily emphasized in this article. It seems to be, together with number four, one of the rules most neglected by parents, either because they do not know the rule or they do not know how to do it. Bishop Dupanloup states the rule several times in his wonderfully clear manner:
“I have said the child himself should labor, by a personal concurrence, by a free, spontaneous, generous action, in the great work of his education; it is the law of Nature and of Providence. This concurrence of the child is so necessary, that no education can be carried on without it.... This action, this concurrence, is essentially free; it may, it ought to be stimulated, sustained, encouraged; it ought not to be constrained or forced” (The Child, p. 205-206).
These words make it very clear that parents who do not take the time to inspire their children with proper motives so that they will be good by their own choice will never succeed in raising holy children. The wise bishop also reminds us that forced good is no longer good and that this is the reason for the failure in the education of so many children. Parents must also remember that cheerfulness is necessary if they wish to see progress in their children:
“How can we hope to accomplish this by material force, by servile fear, by imperious authority? No; if we wish to render children reasonable, it is necessary to speak reasonably to them, and they will listen; if we wish to render them virtuous, it is necessary to treat them with confidence; they are moved by it, and become grateful and cheerful. Fenelon went so far as to say that cheerfulness and confidence should be their ordinary disposition. A mind controlled by fear is always a weak mind; fear only cramps education, and consequently renders it superficial” (The Child, p. 238-239).
Bishop von Keppler also points out the need to inspire children with the love and desire for virtue: “Joy is a truer ally and better assistant than the rod could ever be. When we succeed in having the child enjoy prayers, divine worship, work, acts of self-denial and charity, then his education has reached the heights; character will develop spontaneously thereafter” (von Keppler, Rt. Rev. Paul Wilhelm. More Joy, p. 186. Adapted by Rev. Joseph McSorley, C.S.P. 3rd ed. St. Louis: B. Herder. 1916. Archive.org).
In conclusion, it seems to me that the answer to most parents’ difficulties lies in learning how to join firmness with kindness, high ideals without undue force. It seems that many parents fail by giving in to the lax standards of the world, and others, in an attempt to combat the laxity of the world, enforce a strictness which is excessive because it doesn’t know how to inspire. What we need is more strictness, but strictness of the right kind. Strictness alone will fail miserably.
This is what Pope Pius XI meant by the following remark in his encyclical on education:
“The Apostle of the Gentiles did not hesitate to descend to such details of practical instruction in his Epistles, especially in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where among other things he gives this advice: ‘And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger.’ This fault is the result, not so much of excessive severity, as of impatience and of ignorance of means best calculated to effect a desired correction; it is also due to the all too common relaxation of parental discipline which fails to check the growth of evil passions in the hearts of the younger generation. Parents, therefore, and all who take their place in the work of education, should be careful to make right use of the authority given them by God, whose vicars in a true sense they are” (Encyclical Divini Illius Magistri, #65. December 31, 1929).
Bishop von Keppler reechoes the same thought:
“We are not opposed to reasonable strictness, nor to the exercise of the right of chastisement, when chastisement is dictated and controlled by reason and affection. We are not partisans, but avowed antagonists, of slack training, careless discipline, unmanly softness; and we regard these things as contributing to the decrease of joy in the children’s world.... It is precisely for joy’s sake, that we do not exclude, but rather insist upon, seriousness, discipline, order, and effort on the part of children, whether at home or at school. Yet, on the other hand, we are certainly not of the opinion that bodily punishment is the only means to this end, or that it is indispensable. By nature, it is a disciplinary means which may have both good and bad effects — good, if rarely used, bad, if it becomes a regular part of the routine. Even when the children are exceptionally undisciplined and perverse, the constant use of punishment is still unjustifiable, if for no other reason than because its very frequency renders it ineffectual and changes the dispositions of the child from bad to worse” (von Keppler, Rt. Rev. Paul Wilhelm. More Joy, p. 68-71. Adapted by Rev. Joseph McSorley, C.S.P. 3rd ed. St. Louis: B. Herder. 1916. Archive.org).
I hope all of the above has made it clear that to raise holy children requires much prayer for guidance and much careful thought. May all parents take seriously these duties and never forget that they must first become holy themselves. If they will not live a life of prayer and self-sacrifice, even the best advice will fail to help them raise their children as saints.