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Danielle Bean

Danielle Bean
Danielle Bean, a mother of eight, is editor-in-chief of Catholic Digest and Faith & Family. She is author of My Cup of Tea, Mom to Mom, Day to Day, and most recently Small Steps for Catholic Moms. Though she once struggled to separate her life and her …
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Rachel Balducci

Rachel Balducci
Rachel Balducci is married to Paul and they are the parents of five lively boys and one precious baby girl. She is the author of How Do You Tuck In A Superhero?, and is a newspaper columnist for the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. For the past four years, she has …
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Lisa Hendey

Lisa Hendey
Lisa Hendey is the founder and editor of CatholicMom.com and the author of A Book of Saints for Catholic Moms and The Handbook for Catholic Moms. Lisa is also enjoys speaking around the country, is employed as webmaster for her parish web sites and spends time on various …
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Arwen Mosher

Arwen Mosher
Arwen Mosher lives in southeastern Michigan with her husband Bryan and their 4-year-old daughter, 2-year-old son, and twin boys born May 2011. She has a bachelor's degree in theology. She dreads laundry, craves sleep, loves to read novels and do logic puzzles, and can't live without tea. Her personal blog site …
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Rebecca Teti

Rebecca Teti
Rebecca Teti is married to Dennis and has four children (3 boys, 1 girl) who -- like yours no doubt -- are pious and kind, gorgeous, and can spin flax into gold. A Washington, DC, native, she converted to Catholicism while an undergrad at the U. Dallas, where she double-majored in …
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Robyn Lee

Robyn Lee
Robyn Lee is a 30-something, single lady, living in Connecticut in a small bungalow-style kit house built by her great uncle in the 1950s. She also conveniently lives next door to her sister, brother-in-law and six kids ... and two doors down are her parents. She received her undergraduate degree from …
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DariaSockey

DariaSockey
Daria Sockey is a freelance writer and veteran of the large family/homeschooling scene. She recently returned home from a three-year experiment in full time outside employment. (Hallelujah!) Daria authored several of the original Faith&Life Catechetical Series student texts (Ignatius Press), and is currently a Senior Writer for Faith&Family magazine. A latecomer …
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Guest Bloggers

Kate Lloyd

Kate Lloyd
Kate Lloyd is a rising senior, and a political science major at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire. While not in school, she lives in Whitehall PA, with her mom, dad, five sisters and little brother. She needs someone to write a piece about how it's possible to …
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Lynn Wehner

Lynn Wehner
As a wife and mother, writer and speaker, Lynn Wehner challenges others to see the blessings that flow when we struggle to say "Yes" to God’s call. Control freak extraordinaire, she is adept at informing God of her brilliant plans and then wondering why the heck they never turn out that …
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The Work of Discipline

Hard, but worth it

Yesterday, Camilla and I did not have an easy morning.  I was struggling with more nausea than usual, and Milla decided to do her part to contribute to the household happiness quotient by not listening to a single thing I said.  She’d throw something on the floor, I’d tell her to pick it up, and she’d turn away or run into another room to show me how dedicated she was to ignoring me.  After a few hours of this I was incredibly tired of chasing her, making her listen, making her pick up the stupid whatever-it-happened-to-be already.  I sat her down to have a little chat about Listening to Mama and Obeying, and she did not take it well.  The whole thing culminated with her standing on a kitchen chair where I’d put her to calm down (she thinks she can’t get off the chairs, so they’re perfect for time-outs), wailing at the top of her lungs while I tried to breathe deeply and focus on cooking the macaroni for our lunch. 

Camilla eventually did calm down, and apologized in her sweet little way with hugs and kisses, and the afternoon was better.  The rest of the day, though, I was thinking about discipline and how the grind of it really gets me down sometimes.

Whenever I am feeling overwhelmed by the job of disciplining, I remember something my very wise father once told me.  He was talking about how some parents opt out of the job of disciplining their children because disciplining feels like being “mean” to your kids, and they want to be nothing but loving, all the time.  He pointed out that actually, failing to discipline your kids is very un-loving.  The most loving thing a parent can do for a child is to say to them, in essence, “I care about you too much to let you grow up into the kind of person who doesn’t know how to behave properly.”

A lot of the time, I have to admit, I really don’t want to take disciplinary action with Camilla.  It would be so much easier to let her have the things she wants, not to make her do the things she’d rather not do.  But then I remember my dad’s words and how much I want my daughter to grow up into a loving, well-behaved person, so I grit my teeth and discipline her anyway.  It’s worth it.

Also, it’s occurred to me that there is an analogy here to the way God loves us.  He could make it so our lives were easy and carefree, but He knows that it is through trials that we are perfected, so He allows us to undergo them so that we might have the chance to be more like Him.  He loves us too much to let us have what we want all the time.

If my husband and I can manage just a small echo of God’s perfect love as we raise our own children, we’ll be doing well.


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