Family life : Bringing up children
Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy
Most of us blanch at the thought of our children marrying under the age of 25, much less under 20. The immediate reaction is: "They’re too immature." We expect teenagers to be self-centered and impulsive, incapable of shouldering the responsibilities of adulthood. But it wasn’t always that way; through much of history, teen marriage and childbearing was the norm. Most of us would find our family trees dotted with many teen marriages.

Dec 15, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Multiply Blessed and Fully Alive: To Grow in Faith is to Glorify God
“Multiple Intelligence Theory” and Learning in the Orthodox Church
Parenthood itself is a vocation that glorifies God. Like God the Father and Vinedresser (John 1:15), you can nurture and cultivate the traits in which you see your children growing and thriving. When you do so, you participate in God’s work. Like the Father who lovingly raises each person to the fullness of life, you can invite and inspire your children to grow to their full capacity, in whatever ways work for each.


Aug 13, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Summer Camp + You = A Lifetime of Memories!
Over the years many people have written articles of their experiences of summer camp with many coming to the same conclusion, “What would we do without our camp friends and memories?” Now is the time for you as parents to plan so that your children can have those fun-filled memories too!


Jun 2, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
The Challenge of Raising Children in the 21st Century
In the Orthodox Church we often use the expression that the home should be like "a little church." In Romania, a country the size of the state of Pennsylvania with over 500 monasteries, they take this saying a step further and say that the home should be like "a little monastery."
May 10, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Why we should Let Kids be Kids!
Delighting in the Gift of Childhood
A few months ago, a parishioner told me about a neighbor who would no longer allow her daughter to play with hers because she discovered that they had been playing hospital. Since they weren’t really nurses and their dolls weren’t really sick, the neighbor reasoned, such “unrealistic fantasy” could have a “negative impact on my child’s ability to discern reality from fiction.”

Mar 9, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
A Final Word on Parenting for Faith
In the past couple of weeks, I have shared some reflections on how we can offer our children a sound and living example of faith, one that they may readily choose to follow in their own adult lives. This week, I would like to conclude with a few suggestions on how to formally catechize your children at home.


Feb 12, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
More on Parenting for Faith
As parents, this means that the most powerful witness of our faith will depend on whether or not we have the humility and the courage to “get up” by repenting of our mistakes in the presence of our children. This is perhaps the most difficult parenting challenge that we will face. It means apologizing to our spouses, our colleagues, friends, acquaintances and even strangers—in plain sight of our kids.
Feb 8, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Parents of Faith
One of the biggest mistakes that Christian parents often make is to confuse catechism for education. We begin with the externals. Isn’t there a book I can read and teach to my kids? Isn’t there a curriculum I can implement? Isn’t there a moral system that I can somehow drill into their little minds? We want solutions in a box, simple equations into which we can feed our kids, from which they can emerge as believers.
Feb 2, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Nativity Epistle
As we prepare to celebrate the Nativity of Christ, it is customary for all hierarchs to issue a Nativity sermon, an inspiring word about the feast, and homily about the place of the event in our salvation. This year, I wish to take a different approach and discuss another aspect of the event of the birth of Christ into this world. Instead of a homily about the Nativity Feast, I would like to say something about this childhood and family which Jesus Christ has sanctified and given to us as an example of the relationship between God and His Church.


Jan 8, 2010, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
So Your Child Wants to Become a Monactic
You may feel threatened. You spend your whole life nurturing the well-being of your children: you feed them and worry over them; you help them to discover their abilities and you encourage them to develop their talents. Perhaps your son is a natural musician or your daughter a born lawyer, and you spend your life supporting them--emotionally and financially--and preparing them to be successful in the world. And after all these years of effort and anxiety, they suddenly decide they want no part of it, they don't want the world, or the life that you envisioned for them. This can be a very threatening and painful revelation.
Oct 23, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
When Our Young Adult Chidren Marry Non-Christians: Parents' Perspective
If you are a parent whose son or daughter is seriously dating or engaged to a non-Christian, some of the following suggestions and observations might prove helpful to you. They come from my work with parents who have already grappled with the challenges outlined in this article—some more successfully than others.


Oct 19, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
The Beginning of the School Year:
Some Questions for Parents to Think About
Accompanying our children’s education, there are some other areas with which parents need to concern themselves in relation to students’ spiritual and moral lives. Below are a few questions for personal reflection. Since we are approaching the Church New Year, perhaps some of these can be “resolutions” for our families.


Sep 3, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Redeeming the Time:
What to do on Saturdays and Sundays
I realize that due to our inability to serve more than one Sunday divine liturgy it is sometimes difficult to fit in some activities that get planned on Sunday morning. But if we allow our children to miss the liturgy continuously because of these activities what kind of priorities are we teaching them? What should we assume that they will later teach their children about the “needful thing”? How do we expect them to develop the experience of God if we rush them through the church “part” in order to get to what we might consider as the more important parts of the day?
Aug 29, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Training Up a Child: Educational Options for Orthodox Christians
In recent times, there has been much discussion among Orthodox people regarding how we should raise and instruct our children, which is a good thing, since, as St. Theophan the Recluse tells us, “Of all holy works, the education of children is the most holy.” In pursuing this holiness, there are people who are firm believers in the public school system. There are people who firmly believe in Orthodox parochial education. We also have people who are strongly committed to homeschooling. Indeed, Orthodox Christianity in America has all been influenced by all three of these.
Aug 11, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Building an Orthodox Christian Home
In 2009, the accelerating rate of change, the spinning pace people keep, and the lack of quiet is an enemy that contends for our souls and the hearts of our children. We don’t know how to be still or to “throw things off the boat” as my father confessor aptly puts it. In our hectic lives, we multitask continually, and much of this activity has very little to do, at least overtly, with our lives in Christ. No matter how I might justify it, my overcrowded schedule leaves little room for quiet dinners and evenings with my children, for a walk around the neighborhood that might open the door for me to connect with them, or just a cozy snuggle and prayer before they go to sleep.
Jul 30, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Courting Disaster
Orthodox youth display largely the same sexual activity, pregnancy, and abortion rates as other North American youth. So-called "Orthodox" countries such as Greece and Russia have the highest abortion rates in Europe. Pornography is rampant and public in these nations, the effect of a global assault on and abandonment of the Christian lifestyle. Intermarriage rates between Orthodox and heterodox youth (with the exception of Serbs) are at such high levels that the diminishing size of church schools in many older parishes should be little surprise to anyone.
Jul 21, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Raising Children in the Orthodox Faith
In the same way, any child who grows up surrounded in an atmosphere of prayer in the home will, almost certainly, find himself drawn into that pattern of regular and effortless prayer. By "effortless" there, I don’t mean that we don’t have to put effort into our prayers; I mean that sort of home where time spent in prayer is taken for granted without some great up-heaval of routine. "Now we will have our time of prayer" always seems to me to be more of a threat than a promise.


Mar 20, 2009, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Children and Prayer
"I wish, children, to talk to you about prayer. Do you know how to train yourself to pray? First, you must pray just a little, but as often as possible. Prayer is like a spark: in time it can turn into a great flame, but in order to kindle this flame you must have untiring zeal, and you must also have time and skill.

Oct 21, 2008, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Junk food for the soul
Television is an almost precise spiritual equivalent of junk food. The entire content of its programming is unedifying, un-nourishing, opposed to sound mental and emotional health, and filled with value-training which is diametrically opposed to a sound and healthy society. The life styles and ideals it portrays are artificial, corrupt and undesirable. Moreover, television is highly addictive.


Oct 16, 2008, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
An Orthodox View on Child Abuse
Even more widespread in our society is the emotional abandonment of our children. Children are not "wanted", they are a "burden," it is not "fashionable" to have children. The neo-paganism of our times repeats the attitudes of the enemies of the child of every age.
Oct 9, 2008, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
“Blessed Are the Pure in Heart for They Shall See God”
Parents are for the child the first door to the Kingdom of God. By the way the parents live a godly life, they provide the first example of God’s love and care. Saint Theophan the Recluse (The Path to Salvation) advises that “the upbringing in the home is the root and foundation of everything that follows.” Setting a right foundation, then, is the first priority of the parent for the child. When an infant has such a beginning in life, there is little that can change his belief later as he matures. The foundation of belief becomes a part of the concrete, so to speak, that hardens and forms the person the child grows into.


Sep 19, 2008, 10:00

Family life : Bringing up children
SUNDAY'S CHILD AND DEATH, Part 2
In Part I of this article, we looked at some ways that both meanings of death - the physical and the religious meanings - could be presented to children. That discussion, however, centered around death in general and didn't involve explaining the death of someone the child knew. What should an adult tell a child when someone the child has known dies? What kinds of reactions can the adult expect? Should the child be encouraged to attend the funeral and the burial? How can the adult help the child to cope with the loss?
Aug 16, 2008, 10:14

Family life : Bringing up children
SUNDAY'S CHILD AND DEATH, Part 1
Like Timmy's mother, many adults often find that explaining the death of a relative or friend to children is not an easy thing to do. It's difficult to know what to say and how to say it so children can understand and accept what they are told without being overwhelmed by the fact of death or people's responses to it.
Aug 13, 2008, 10:01

Family life : Bringing up children
Children and Television
Mythological television characters replace parents, relatives, the Saints, and Christ as role models. A normal American fourteen-year-old girl talks with her mother (in terms of actually discussing a subject in an intelligible way and in a sensible context) only about four minutes a week! Listen to your family's dinner conversations. Can they compete with hours of TV? Or for that matter, what do Church services mean to your children in terms of the thousands of hypnotic, mindless hours before the television? As family communication decreases, television watching increases. And as the TV devours more and more hours in young children's lives, almost nothing can compete with it for attention.
Jul 22, 2008, 10:01

Family life : Bringing up children
On Giving Children the Sense of the Beautiful
What models of outward beauty can parents then provide for their children today, as alternatives and antidotes to the contemporary cult of ugliness?
Apr 19, 2007, 14:06

Family life : Bringing up children
Parents need to love the child...
So, first of all, parents need to cultivate this quality of dignity and self-respect in themselves. And if they encourage this in their children, if they set the example, the children will become true Christians. They will become worthy people and the Christian truths will be the core of their lives, not just knowledge. Because the scariest thing is when a person says one thing, but does another.
Mar 31, 2007, 14:12

Family life : Bringing up children
The Upbringing of Children
The Orthodox church always regarded the family as the main source of the Christian enlightenment of children. The Apostles used to call the family the "domestic church" and taught spouses to strive conjointly for a spiritual life.
May 30, 2006, 11:19

Family life : Bringing up children
Raising Children
When the child is yet young, begin to train him/her in sympathy and consideration for others and in unselfishness. By these means he/she will grow up to understand that the material things of this world are not the most important things for Orthodox Christians. Your life-style and example will be the greatest influence on your child in this matter.
Aug 24, 2005, 01:00

Family life : Bringing up children
Children in Church
Every Christian mother considers it one of her primary obligations to teach her child prayer as soon as his consciousness begins to awaken - prayer that is simple and easy for him to understand. His soul must be accustomed to the warm and fervent experience of prayer at home, by his cradle, for his neighbors, his family. The child's evening prayer calms and softens his soul, he experiences the sweetness of prayer with his little heart and catches the first scent of sacred feelings.


May 19, 2005, 01:50

Family life : Bringing up children
Teaching Our Children to Pray
When the Road to Emmaus staff first decided to talk to an Orthodox mother about children and prayer we pictured an experienced woman with grown-up children and the leisure for a long interview. After some discussion, however, we decided on Inna Belov, a young mother with a three-year-old son, “in the midst of the fray.” At a time when her joys, fears and concerns about raising an Orthodox child occupy most of her waking hours, we found Inna’s spontaneous reflections both fresh and intriguing.
Apr 16, 2005, 01:40