We’ve Got Each Other’s Backs
How Parents Can Assist Teachers (and Thus Their Own Children) at Home
The growth of a well-formed child is like a tree, strengthened by three kinds of support: home, Church, and society (school is the preparation for society). In an ideal world, the support from each area would be equal and each would be in harmony with the other. But we live in an imperfect world stained by original sin, so sometimes the support lacks on one side. The grace of God and determined human will can remedy the slack.
Whether we are parents, teachers, or both, we have the same end goal: to know God, to love him, serve him, and be happy with him forever in heaven. Parents of a Catholic marriage come together to make souls for God, and to love each other enough to bring each spouse and the children to heaven. This is an incredible mission. As Catholic teachers, we ultimately want the same thing for our students.
To go about raising a “tree” for this noble goal, it helps have all three realms give their best. Let us consider the following tidbits and principles that help parents and teachers work together toward the education and ultimate sanctification of our students.
Where Knowledge Begins and the Good, the True, the Beautiful
God is the good, the true the beautiful.1 Children (and you and I) first come to know everything through our senses, and we can only desire what we know. (Imagine someone being expected to love chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but they had never tasted or seen it!) So, if we want our children to desire and seek after the good, the true, and beautiful, we need them to know goodness, beauty, and truth through their senses. Below is an example of how each of the senses can inform the mind:
- Eyes: Surrounding a child with beauty helps form his taste. What he sees around him in his house, where he spends recreational time, what he wears, the body language he observes (which is 70% of communication), are ways by which a child can be uplifted and given pieces of God. What a child sees is stored up as images in his memory and forms his imagination.
- Mouth: Taste of the tongue is a type of discernment. To know the good insofar as food and drink are concerned has always been a mark of a well-rounded child. What passes out of one’s mouth is also worth considering: tone and quality of speech—these can lift people’s hearts or inflict stings of pain.
- Ears: what passes from sound into a man’s head helps form his thoughts and soul. Music is often defined as the language of the soul, and it is something that is both heard and felt but not seen. A healthy diet of music nourishes a child’s soul. What a child hears in conversation also forms him: What sort of conversation do you want him to partake in and be in a habit of? We must foster that conversation around him and within our own heads.
- Nose: Being aware of smells and how they relate to the rest of creation is something we’re not always aware of. But a smell of a specific spice can transport us in a second back to a favorite adventure abroad, or can indicate the need to slow down and bathe, or just to stop and smell the flowers.
- Touch: To touch and feel (not emotionally, but using the nerves under our skin) is a delicate sense. Studies show that children are more healthy and smarter when they receive physical affection in their years of growth.2 People who are hugged daily are less depressed.3 Textures, the way things feel, inform the mind: the feel of cool linen on the palm, the soothing rush of cold river water against the hand, or the caress of wind on the cheek.
How do you regard God and sin?
Do you act as though you hope in the love of God or the fear of sin? Mother Janet Stuart,4 an incredible educator from the same order as St. Philippine Duchesne, the Society of the Sacred Heart, counsels that good and not evil should be made a prominent feature of religious teaching. She bemoans that often our first impressions of God “are gloomy and terrible,” and then we are consequently always worried what the “sleepless Eye” is watching. This leads to a life of “if we may not escape, let us try to forget.” Would we as parents like ourselves to be so misrepresented? This she says, is what we do to God.
Instead, if we can see that all that is lovable, beautiful, enjoyable, gracious, strong, and add to that and then “multiply it a million times, tire out our imagination beyond it… we shall give a poor idea of God indeed, but at least, as far as it goes, it will be true, and it will lead to trustfulness and friendship, to a right attitude of mind, as child to father, and creature to Creator.”
PERSONAL INTERVIEWS
The following points capture information shared in personal interviews with many teachers, some of whom are priests or parents:
- Authority that supports other authority makes for not only a peaceful household but also a peaceful community. One teacher-parent commented: “One can differ in views, but it is not the child’s place to ever tell the teacher this. This is between the two authorities.” Another shared: “As long as nothing they do undermines the authority of the teacher,” and vice versa. A house divided shall not stand.5 If authorities can be mutually supportive, then their combination will make an even stronger child.
- Keep in mind the fallen nature of our dear children. Like you and I, they are not perfect. Sometimes we will feel betrayed by our children, let down by them, and disappointed by them. But remember “to err is human, to forgive is divine.” As parents and teachers, we get to be the images of God, showing consistent follow-through coupled with mercy and understanding.
- Open communication is essential, an educator from both SSPX and public schools shared. It’s the bridge of understanding between two entities. No one, as much as we like to think it, has the gift of mind-reading. Always give the other party the benefit of the doubt. Too often parents are worried that they might be over-communicating, teachers just run out of time to write those emails, or both parties shy away from the effort it takes to reach out to one another. Don’t ever skip the teacher when it comes to communicating, but don’t be afraid to go up the chain of command if your teacher isn’t communicating with you. It’s important to nourish all relationships, and the only way one can do that is through communication. Communication between the parent and the child also fosters a strong sense of trust and openness.
- Encourage gratitude. Several teachers who were formed in public schools and who now teach in our SSPX schools are filled with so much gratitude for what our schools can give the students that they seem on fire with love for the students. A teacher who is also a convert and mother repeatedly urged the practice of gratitude in the home, “Cultivate wonder and gratitude for what the children are learning at school. Encourage your children to have great respect and gratitude towards teachers and administrators, especially the religious.”
- Honesty and Personal Responsibility were musts, said several veteran teachers. This is a foundational habit: if a child can own up to his mistakes and take ownership of them, he’s going to understand the consequences that must come from his actions.
- Parents who have self-respect and emotional awareness will teach children how to have similar self-respect, manage their own emotions, and be self-confident overall.
- “Surround them with beauty,” several priests and teachers echoed. When I asked my own mother why she did some the things she did, like sewing us beautiful dresses at Easter and Christmas, her reply was “I wanted to surround you all with beauty.” Beauty is that which uplifts and is good in and of itself: this includes music, decor, clothing, bearing, language, tone of voice, and surroundings.
- Reading aloud for entertainment was one of the most popular suggestions. It’s an informal way of nourishing the mind in a social context. While audiobooks are good, there’s nothing like a respected member of the household sitting down in a comfy chair and reading aloud while all around curl up on the sofa or stretch themselves on the floor to draw, color, or simply lay next to the dog. One mother-teacher shared, “By reading to your children you teach them language (vocabulary, comprehension); this is important at a young age to make learning to read easier. Classic children’s literature helps teach and internalize the moral order, emphasizing the good and evil, while giving the children [and their adult reader] hope.”
- The dinner table is a place where children should be heard and seen, according to one vibrant mother. One priest observed that in France, the dinner table is where the children learn how to think. Where else will they learn to engage in lively, inquisitive conversation and to talk about and make connections with things that matter in a courteous way? This is also an opportunity to sit together, to inquire into their day, and to share something of each other around the breaking of bread. The dinner table can be the foundation of many social graces.
- Are we making time to contemplate? To look at God’s creation? To look inward? This is “any quiet time they can make at home, which is not filled with ‘thrill’ and ‘screen’” said an educator. “Our kids out here are so thrill-soaked that it is hard for them to appreciate the contemplative side of life.” Are our adult lives fostering a life in which one can sit and rest and see, beyond the digital screen? Simply going outside and taking a walk around the neighborhood can spark an interest in creation, or simply help readjust one’s mental perspective. “Miss Bryan,” one 8th grade boy asked me as we came back from a stroll I had promised them, “Have you noticed that everyone seems just happier and ‘reset’ when we come back from walks?”
- Foster the intellectual life. The highest function of our being is our intellect; therefore,
we do have a responsibility to nourish it and develop it . One wise teacher recommended the following “Parents can talk to the principal and to their children’s teachers to find out what they are reading in school, and read it also! … Parents who read about history, who study doctrine … who have books on the shelves! It’s unbelievable what a difference it makes.” - Don’t be a perfectionist with yourself or those around you. “Emphasize and encourage your children’s strengths. Whatever your children excel in, encourage them, give them opportunities to learn and do more. Gently guide your children in areas they struggle in. Work with them one on one.” “Find different ways to teach the subject using wonder and gratitude,” shares a teacher and mother of many.
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. If we can help bend the twig or trunk of the young sampling towards the good, the true, the beautiful, while supporting each other through mutual respect, communication, contemplation, and integrity, all on the foundation of charity, then we can trust in the projection of that growth. Then you and I, with the young souls, by the grace of God, our good will, and our collaboration will “be as stars for all eternity.”6
Endnotes
1 Dr. Dan Guernsey, “Educating to Truth, Beauty and Goodness,” Last modified October 17, 2016, <
2 Pamela Li, “Importance Of Hugging Your Child – 7 Amazing Benefits,” Parenting for Brain, May 8, 2022,
3 Melissa Locker, “Why Some People Hate Being Hugged, According to Science,”
4 Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ,
5 Mt. 12:22-28.
6 Dan. 12:3.
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