By: Emily Stimpson

 On a Saturday morning in April, a young girl — maybe 15 — sits in a crowded restaurant at a crowded table. Surrounding her are her parents, two younger siblings, and what looks to be an aunt and uncle. The family talks and laughs while they eat, jumping from one topic to another with ease.  But not the teenage girl.  Slouched down in her chair, shoulders hunched, hands under the table, she doesn’t seem to see or hear the chatter going on around her. Her focus is on the cell phone in her hands, not the people at her table. She types something. Waits. Then types again.  She is immersed in a digital world, a virtual conversation, and the real conversation, taking place in the real world, can neither capture nor hold her attention.  When the Internet went viral a decade ago, educational experts and social critics predicted it would make young people smarter, happier and more engaged with the world than ever before. With the advent of Web 2.0 — interactive social media such as blogs, texting, Facebook, etc. — the same experts repeated their praise. But the actual evidence — the hard data about American teenagers’ academic performance and social lives — as well as the anecdotal evidence from teachers and parents, paints a somewhat different picture.

Virtual Realities

Pick a study, any study — the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the National Survey of Student Engagement, the Kaiser Family Foundation Program for the Study of Media and Health, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute civic literacy surveys, studies by the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Geographic Society. They all say the same thing: The virtual worlds teens enter when they’re texting under the table (or blogging, posting pictures online, leaving comments on people’s Web pages, etc.) is harming them as much as, if not more than, it’s helping them. Teens’ “totally connected life” is shortening their attention spans, narrowing their worldview, damaging their ability to communicate, and leading some down a very dangerous path.  There are, of course, many exceptions. There are teens who use cell phones and computers wisely, teens who spend hours on the Internet researching religious orders or trying to understand the connection between Virgil and TS Eliot, teens who film video podcasts to spread the Gospel, and who still love curling up with a good book. But they are not the norm.  “It’s not that this generation is less intelligent than previous generations,” said Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. “And, of course, digital technology can and does deliver good content to them. The problem is that’s not what the vast majority of teens are using these tools for. They’re using them for what 15-year-olds care about: Other 15-year-olds.”

Constant Connections

As Bauerlein sees it, social media has locked teens into a world where peer contact and social life no longer ends at 6 p.m. when it’s time to join the family for dinner. Instead, it goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via blogs, social networking sites and, of course, texting.  “When I was 16 and walked into my parents house, my connection with my peers was over for the day. I had to sit at the dinner table and listen to my parents talk about money or politics. Walter Cronkite was on in the background talking about the Vietnam War. I didn’t care about those things, but I couldn’t help but overhear them.  “Today’s teens shut all that out,” he continued. “They’re text messaging at the dinner table, then they spend the rest of the evening in front of the computer, posting on blogs or chatting with friends. Even when they’re logged off, social life is still going on. Someone could be posting a comment on their blog or writing something about them online. There is no escaping their peers.”  That never-ending peer contact leaves little room for learning about politics or reading Jane Austen. It also leaves little room for adult voices, the voices that, in the past, have taught teens the art of conversation, modeled maturity for them, and ushered them into the adult world.

“Teenagers can’t grow up if their main contacts are with other 17-year-olds,” said Bauerlein. “You grow up by modeling older people. They’re the ones who teach you there is a bigger horizon than high school, a bigger timeframe than last week.”  They’re also the ones who teach you the difference between right and wrong. And with adult voices increasingly drowned out by the voices of their peers, many teens are navigating the digital world with those peers as their only guides. Which has something to do with why 42 percent of children ages 10 to 17 have already viewed pornography online (according to a 2007 University of New Hampshire study). It also has something to do with the latest teen trend involving technology: “Sexting.”

Dangerous Trends

In a nutshell, “sexting” is sending sexually explicit pictures of yourself to someone else via text message. This trend first hit the headlines in 2008, when a 17-year-old Cincinnati girl, Jessica Logan, hanged herself after a nude picture of herself that she texted to her boyfriend was sent on to the phones of hundreds of her classmates. “Sexting” resurfaced in the news again some time after, when students at a Massachusetts junior high made headlines by “sexting” a video of two of their classmates having sex to half their school.  Unfortunately, those examples aren’t isolated instances. According to a study conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 22 percent of teenage girls — that’s more than one in five — admit to “sexting” or posting pornographic pictures of themselves online.  Only in a world where the primary voices you hear are those of your peers, does anyone think it’s a good idea to send naked pictures of themselves out into digital space. But, like Bauerlein, Father David Marstall, a high school teacher and campus minister in the Diocese of Wichita, said that is the world many teens inhabit.  “In terms of getting a message across, I have a lot of competition,” he said. “As much as I try to teach students in the classroom or Mass, there are a lot of other people teaching them other ideas, ideas opposed to what we want them to have. And they’re listening, accepting post-modernism and all that goes along with it.”

Losing Personal Touch?

Father Marstall is no stranger to technology. He uses Facebook to get in touch with teens or post information about campus events. He posts podcasts of his Sunday homilies on his campus ministry website and recognizes social media’s value to his ministry as a communications tool. But, he also recognizes that all the texting teens are doing (an average of 2,272 texts per month according to the Nielson Co.), as well as Facebook posting and instant messaging, is changing the way they communicate and understand friendship.  “They communicate more frequently, but less personally,” he explained. “They struggle to express what’s important to them and to organize their thoughts because they’ve grown accustomed to having conversations one line at a time.”  Rebecca Arnold*, a mother of five girls, is witnessing that struggle firsthand. According to Arnold, her two oldest daughters — ages 23 and 14 — both prefer texting or instant messaging their friends to talking with them. And although she strictly limits 14-year-old Kathleen’s computer use, (and encourages personal get-togethers and phone calls), her efforts are normally met with frustration.  “Phone calls last five minutes at the most,” she said. “I’d be happy to get Kathleen a phone for her room, but at this point, she doesn’t want one.”

The reason why?  Explained Kathleen, “I don’t know what my friends and I would talk about.”

Instant Gratification Faith

Beyond changing how teens communicate with one another, Father Marstall also sees social media changing how teens communicate with God.  “Young people today have grown up with Google,” he said. “They’re accustomed to asking questions and finding answers quickly. But when they get to questions that they can’t answer in a few minutes, they give up. And when it comes to the spiritual life, to discerning a vocation or understanding the mysteries of the faith, answers don’t come quickly. Conversion is harder for teens today compared to 15 years ago.”  It’s not, however, just matters of faith that teens struggle to reflect upon. Studies cited in Bauerlein’s book point to digital media’s across-the-board impact on shortened attention spans.  The blinking, flashing screens, brief amounts of text, and hyperlinked information in the digital world “conditions minds against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unassisted by visuals, against linear sequential analysis of text,” summarized Bauerlein.  And because their social life hinges on their participation in that world, it’s not easy for teens to walk away and work on developing the skills necessary to counteract those problems.  “At 17, there’s nothing worse than being excluded,” said Bauerlein. “A kid can’t risk not getting the message that everyone is meeting at Starbucks at 4 p.m. When a parent takes away a cell phone because it’s getting too expensive, they see it as taking away their teenager’s toy. The teenager sees it as taking away their life.”

Hope for new media

Given all these problems and pitfalls, it might be tempting for parents or teachers to attempt a reversion back to the pre-digital age, issuing a ban on computers, cell phones and the like. But Eugene Gan, professor of new media technologies at Franciscan University of Steubenville, said Catholics need to be wary of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”  “The Church has actually been very positive about these new technologies and about youth using them for the glory of God,” he explained. “Every year on World Communications Day, we get yet another message from the Church talking about the good that can come from these tools.”  The trick, of course, is using those tools wisely, and Gan conceded that the younger generation is far from mastering that.  “We have to look at what needy young people are trying to fulfill through all the texting and sexting and posting on Facebook,” he said. “That’s where abuse of these tools is coming in. And then we need to develop guiding principles for the use of these technologies, principles that can help us use them as the gifts they truly are.”  Those principles, Gan continued, have already been laid out for Catholics in Church documents on communications. They include: using the media to facilitate, not replace, real world relationships; encouraging balance and moderation in use; always respecting the inherent dignity of the human person; and using the media to inspire a love of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

“Media has the power to attract people to beauty and truth and to inspire a greater desire to learn about the world,” Gan concluded. “It really is a gift from God. The question is not: “Do we use it?” It’s: “How do we use it?” We need to give young people a better map than we’ve given them so far. They’re adrift in a sea of media, and if we’re not careful, they’ll be lost in it.”

Limited Access

Contrary to what the culture says, parents don’t need to turn their teenager’s bedroom into a computer command center.  In fact, they need to do just the opposite, said Dr. Mark Bauerlein, author of “The Dumbest Generation,” and Christopher Chapman, a senior educational consultant for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  Our Sunday Visitor recently asked both specialists what parents can do to limit technology’s harmful effects on their children. Their suggestions include:

Banning computers from the bedroom: Computers should only be used in public areas and with a parent’s express permission, which both limits the time that can be spent in front of them and prevents teens from going where they shouldn’t in the virtual world.

Require full access: Parents’ should only permit their children to have a Facebook or MySpace page (or blog or website) if they have full access to the site. They also need to use this access regularly to monitor content and activities.

Filter, filter, filter: Take advantage of different software programs that allow you to filter Internet content and/or monitor where each user of the family computer goes when they’re online.

Limit screen time: Set a time limit for computer use (and television watching) during the evenings and on weekends.

Have a required reading hour: Make it a nightly event. One full hour with no interruptions (that means no sending or receiving text messages).

Table calls at mealtime: Institute a cell phone ban at mealtimes and during family time.

Limited calling plans: When purchasing a cell phone plan for a teenager, if possible, make it an “emergencies only plan” (i.e., “pay as you go”). At the very least, have the phone’s picture taking capabilities turned off and strictly limit the text messaging capabilities.

Plan intergenerational events: Invite grandparents and older neighbors over for dinner, so that teens are exposed to stories and ideas outside of their peer group.

Family time, unplugged: Spend time together doing things that don’t involve technology. Go for a drive or a hike, play games, talk about current events, work on projects around the house and in the yard, or volunteer together at a local charity.

Be an example: Limit your own time on the cell phone and computer, modeling for your children what the balanced use of technology looks like.

Introduce them to Eucharistic Adoration: Drop them off at the Church once a week for one hour of silent, focused prayer. It’s the perfect antidote to flashing screens, beeping phones and other noise-producing machines.

Falling Behind

Despite the billions of dollars invested by parents and schools in educational technology, American students still aren’t making the grade:  On the 2005 NAEP tests: 53 percent of American twelfth graders scored “below basic” in history, 46 percent scored “below basic” in science and 27 percent scored “below basic” on literary tests — all results comparable to or worse than those from similar tests administered in 2003, 2001, and 1994.  According to a study conducted by the National Conference of State Legislators, only 10 percent of teens can name the current speaker of the House of Representatives. Sixty percent, however, can name the current “American Idol.”  In the 2006 Geographic Literacy Survey, 63 percent of teenagers could not identify Iraq on a map.  In May 2007, ACT reported in “Rigor at Risk: Reaffirming Quality in High School Core Curriculum” that “three out of four ACT-tested 2006 high school graduates…are not prepared to take credit-bearing entry level college courses with a reasonable chance of succeeding.”  The Internet may put a veritable Library of Alexandria at teenagers’ fingertips, but most seem only interested in the magazine and music sections:  Only 7 percent of 18-29 year olds go online to read about political news and current events, says a 2005 Pew Research report.  The same study reports that 48 percent of teens visit social networking sites like Facebook at least once a day….and that 30 percent of teenagers host their own blog or Web page.

Tech time

A 2009 study by a British research group found that teens spend an average of 31 hours per week online. The breakdown includes:

3.5 hours  instant messaging their friends

2 hours  on YouTube

3 hours  looking for homework help

9 hours  on social network sites

1 hour  looking for weight loss or beauty tips

1 hour and 40 minutes  viewing pornography

and  1 hour and 40 minutes  downloading music

(Source:  www.cybersentinel.co.uk)

Credit to Emily Stimpson of  EmilyStimpson.com

By: Emily Stimpson

As a pediatrician, Dr. Meg Meeker thought she had seen it all: eating disorders, sexual abuse, self-mutilation.  Then, a 5-year-old walked into her office in a push-up bra.  “Just over a decade ago, younger and younger girls started coming in dressed in sexually provocative clothes, underwear with suggestive writing on it, and inappropriately cut underwear,” Meeker said. “These were young girls – 5 to 7 years old. It was incredibly disturbing, to say the least.” Since then, Meeker, who is the author of “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know” (Ballantine, $14.95), said that she has only seen the problem grow worse, both in the numbers of young girls dressing and acting in a “highly sexualized manner” and in the degree to which they do so.  “The shorts keep getting shorter and the shirts keep getting tighter, for the little girls, as well as the older girls,” she said. “That’s changing the way they perceive themselves, and not for the better.”  Few observers of the culture would disagree with Meeker. From the chain smoking pageant princesses on “Toddlers and Tiaras” to miniature stiletto heels for 4-year-olds, anecdotal evidence of early sexualization abounds. Whether they’re 5 or 15, increasing numbers of young girls have seemingly been following the lead of older women and vamping it up, valuing “sexy” more than “sweet.”  Now there’s a study that confirms that.

Sexy dolls and grade schoolers

Published in the journal “Sex Roles” this past summer, the study was the brainchild of then Knox College psychology major Christy Starr.  Starr said she became interested in studying the sexualization of young girls after seeing so many dolls done up in fishnets and heavy makeup in stores.  “I was surprised that such products would be marketed to young girls, and found that the companies who made them claimed that this was what little girls wanted,” she told Our Sunday Visitor. “I wondered if that was really true, and if so, what would cause young girls to have sexualized preferences.”  To find out, she teamed up with her professor, Gail Ferguson, and recruited 60 local girls between the ages of 6 and 9, some from public schools and some from a nearby dance studio, to participate in the study.

In the study, they showed girls four pairs of dolls. In each pair, one doll was dressed in provocative clothing – fishnet tights, mini-skirts, midriff bearing tops – and the other in less-revealing  but stylish attire – cargo pants and fitted hoodies or sweaters. The girls were then asked to choose one of the two dolls in answer to each of four questions: 1) Which doll looks more like you? 2) Which doll do you want to look like? 3) Which doll looks like she would be more popular? 4) With which doll would you prefer to play?  Overwhelmingly, the girls picked the “sexy” doll as the doll they would like to look like and the one who would be the most popular in school.  A slightly smaller majority picked the sexy doll as the one whom they looked most like. When it came to which doll they preferred as a toy, there was no noticeable preference.  “Although I had hypothesized it during data collection, it was a little surprising to watch so many young girls [none of whom were dressed ‘sexily’] choose the sexualized doll as who they wanted to look like,” Starr said.

The preference was also concerning.

Stunted development

While some adults may think it’s cute when their 6-year-old strikes sexy poses in pictures or clamors for tiger-striped mini-skirts, experts say that such behavior is harmful for them in both the short-term and long-term. Greg Popcak, author of “Beyond the Birds and the Bees: The Secrets to Raising Sexually Whole (and Holy) Kids” (Ascension Press, $14.99), said encouraging girls at an early age to develop an identity rooted in sexual desirability can stunt their psychological development.  “Developmentally, kids at various stages are supposed to identify themselves with different ends,” he told OSV. “In grade school and junior high, they’re supposed to be identifying themselves by their skills, talents and abilities, as well as with healthy groups that can enable them to become well-socialized responsible people. In adolescence, they should be learning to identify themselves by their values and ideals.”  “But, when we give our kids an identity that’s entirely sexualized from the earliest ages, they don’t have to do any of that other work,” he continued. “They don’t have to identify their skills and abilities. They don’t have to find healthy groups and decide what principles they want to live by. They think, ‘I can just be sexy, and have other people drawn to me. That’s where I’m going in my life.’”

That, in turn, creates a whole host of other problems.  To start with, as Meeker pointed out, seeking sexual attention (and getting it) at a young age is a precursor to high-risk behaviors such as early sexual activity.  Girls who do that, added Popcak, also become far more sexually aggressive and less open to being told there’s anything wrong with such behavior.  “They don’t see being objectified as a problem anymore. They think of it as empowering. Their whole goal in life is just to be the prettiest object they can be,” he said.  With “pretty” and “sexy” at the top of a young girl’s goal pile, other, much more worthwhile goals tend to fall by the wayside.  As Starr noted, different studies on self-sexualization have linked teen girls and women objectifying themselves with poorer performance in school (most notably in mathematics) and in competitive sports.  “It’s deeper than simply not wanting one’s daughter to dress in a sexually provocative way,” she told OSV. “If we want girls in our culture to grow up to be healthy teens and confident grown women, it is important to ensure they do not begin sexualizing themselves at a young age.”

A hostile culture

Popcak said such attitudes among young girls only reinforce the tendencies in men to objectify women, sending the message that using women for sexual pleasure is perfectly acceptable behavior. And for those adolescent boys who are trying to be chaste and to treat their female peers with respect, it becomes that much harder.  It’s not just girls, however, who suffer from their early sexualization. Sexually aggressive young women who are ready and willing to be seen as objects of male desire aren’t exactly helping the boys and men in their lives, either.  “I’m talking to parents of 12 and 13-year-old boys whose girlfriends are getting mad at them because they won’t do sexual things,” he said. “Boys who are attempting to live some kind of values are getting feedback from their male and female peers that there’s something wrong with them.”  Then there’s the long-term forecast for the culture as a whole, which, when it’s increasingly made up of men and women sexualized at an early age, isn’t a pleasant one.  “Down the road what we’re likely to see is a culture that will experience greater degrees of narcissism, depression and anxiety disorders – those things being driven by not knowing how to be effective as a person and not being valued as a person,” Popcak said. “We’ll also see more and more relationships breakdown as marriage is redefined even more, as a temporary institution based on adult desire, not commitment between the spouses and commitment to raising children. Essentially, we’ll see all the trends we’re seeing now, only amplified.”

Parental misguidance

Reversing those trends begins with understanding the reasons underlying them.  One piece of the puzzle is the media and its sponsor, the advertising industry.  Over the past 15 years, little girls and big girls alike have been treated to different advertisements for Skechers tennis shoes featuring a pigtailed Christina Aguilera wearing a short, tight, Catholic school uniform and unbuttoned blouse, for padded training bras courtesy of the tween clothing store Justice, and for the Barbie Basics line – heavily made-up dolls with collagen-plumped lips sporting black mini-dresses.  Girls have also sat in front of the television watching the adventures of mini-skirt wearing, eye-rolling tween sensations Hannah Montana and iCarly, have received their first manicures and blowouts at the age of 4, courtesy of the Disney Princess Salon, and have performed in dance recitals to those classic odes of American girlhood, “Wild Thing,” “All the Single Ladies” and “You Shook Me All Night Long.”  All that exposure quickly adds up, and if parents don’t step in to help their children make sense of what they’re seeing, the wrong messages sink in.

It’s not the media in and of itself, however, that’s necessarily to blame. The Knox College study found that one of the prime buffers to prevent early sexualization wasn’t a complete ban on media, but rather mothers with a healthy self-image who helped their children become discerning viewers of media, pointing out problematic messages and discussing them with their daughters. When mothers didn’t step in, tended to define themselves in a sexualized manner, or banned media almost altogether, problems arose.  Those findings agree with what Popcak and Meeker have observed in their work: It’s parents, more than the media, who bear the responsibility for young girls’ early sexualization.  “I don’t think there’s a parent out there who wakes up and thinks ‘I want to turn my child into a sexual object,’” said Popcak. “Rather, it’s a commentary on the culture as a whole. What they’re thinking is ‘I don’t want my child to stand out.’”

And these days to be innocent is to stand out.

“To not go along with the trends, to not keep your child ahead of the curve, whether in how they dress or by signing them up for 30 different activities, is making a statement that you reject the culture,” he explained. “But the only reason someone rejects the culture is when they have another culture to promote. If not, they’re just going to drift with the tide.”  Mothers in particular are at fault in that regard, said Meeker.  “It’s the mothers who are buying these clothes for their daughters, not the dads,” she explained. “On one level, some are living vicariously through their daughters. On another level, it’s extremely important to mothers, even mothers of faith, that their daughters are accepted by their peers. Many want them to fit in more than they want them to have a healthy psyche. So they allow the sexy clothing, even though they know it’s not good for them.”  Parents, however, are only the product of the larger culture, and it’s that larger culture, which identifies happiness with sexual fulfillment, that has convinced them that blue eyeshadow and leather mini-skirts are acceptable for second-graders.  “Everything we’re seeing now is a direct result of the celebration of sex without personhood – without the acknowledgment that a human being is a person who deserves to be loved, not an object, not a thing I can use and throw away,” Popcak said.

Changing course

Changing that culture of objectification and use won’t happen overnight, but parents can take action now to protect their daughters from the damage of early sexualization, starting with their own attitudes.  “Dads have to become more assertive and let the moms know why the sexy clothing is inappropriate,” said Meeker. “Moms also have to remember that sexiness and ‘fitting in’ does not equal healthy self-esteem. Dressing modestly may not make their daughters popular, but it will help them develop into strong, confident women who value themselves rightly.”  Helping children become intelligent media consumers should also be high on parents’ priority list. Doing that requires more than a simple media ban. In fact, the Knox College study found that young girls who came from homes where the faith was important but media rarely viewed, actually opted for the “sexy doll” at a higher rate than those who regularly watched television.  Starr’s faculty adviser, Ferguson, who now teaches human development and family studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, posited that result may have something to do with a “forbidden fruit effect.”  “It is possible that girls whose exposure to the real world is too restricted at home … actually crave that exposure more and idealize sexy things in the world more because they are forbidden at home,” she said.

She continued: “Perhaps the implication of our findings supports Christ’s advice from Matthew 10:16: ‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.’ Shrewd parents will prepare their daughters to understand what is out in the world … and will guide them in responding to what they see – both the good and the bad. Perhaps this is a way to live the Christian principle of being ‘in the world but not of the world.’”  Getting your children to listen to what you say can be a trick in and of itself, which is why Popcak urges parents, above all else, to prioritize forging strong bonds of attachment within the family.  “Most parents want to check these problems by simply controlling their kids’ behavior – what they watch, who they hang out with, what they wear,” he told OSV. “Kids need guidance in all those areas, but just trying to control those things is not enough. Kids are buying into the culture, as shallow as it is, because they feel affirmed by that culture, more than they feel affirmed by us.  “Our families have to be more attached, more loving, more connected,” he concluded. “We have to work to spend more time with each other, to develop rituals and routines that bring the family together and help us like each other better than the average family. If parents can achieve that, then they can provide guidance on what to wear, who to associate with, how to behave. If they can’t achieve that, their attempts to give guidance will become a power struggle, and the parents will always lose.”

Credit to Emily Stimpson of  EmilyStimpson.com

By: PaxCare Staff

The Winter months present a great opportunity for family togetherness. Especially around the Holidays, families draw a little bit and if you live in snowy weather, there’s an extra incentive to stay indoors and get some much needed family time. But one doesn’t have to wait until the holiday season to partake in creative activities with the family. Crafts, games, telling stories or singing together are just some examples. If fun and family closeness aren’t big enough motivators for you, then here are some other benefits creativity can give your family.

1. Family Creativity Reduces Stress and Burnout

Being creative together helps to take down family stress. It enables us to step outside our usual roles and just play together. Who couldn’t use more of that?

2. Family Creativity Improves Your Brainpower

Creativity teaches and reinforces good problem-solving skills. It helps you learn to look at new challenges from different angles and be more willing to learn to benefit from each other’s talents and ideas.

3. Family Creativity Boosts Confidence

As parents, we all want confident kids. Taking creative time boosts everyone’s confidence by letting you showcase your gifts and ideas in a safe, accepting environment.

4. Family Creativity Saves Money

You don’t have to spend money to have fun. Make a craft! Make up a game to play! Create a new tradition. Creativity makes it possible to make fun last by making real memories.

5. Family Creativity Builds Social Skills

Turning off screens and spending time together doing a puzzle or making a special meal or any number of things improves social skills by challenging family members to work together, learn from each other, and cooperate with each other.  

Anyone Can Do It.

You don’t have to be Martha Stewart to be creative. Everyone has a creative spark. Let your children inspire you to re-engage with your own sense of child-like wonder.  Who knows, it might become a habit!

By: PaxCare Staff

Many parents worry about causing their children to experience undue guilt. As Catholics we get attacked a lot for being a guilt-mongering people. Most of it is undeserved, but the bad press is enough to make many parents more than a little concerned about the potential for their discipline to be the source of unhealthy guilt in their children.

Healthy v. Unhealthy Guilt.

It might be helpful to start by looking at guilt in general: is guilt ever useful? And if so, what separates healthy guilt from unhealthy guilt (i.e., scrupulosity)?  The truth is, there is such a thing as healthy guilt, and healthy guilt can serve a positive role in leading a healthy life. Guilt belongs to the family of reactions (like pain, fear and anger) that we might call “warning emotions.” That is, these feelings tell us that something is amiss and that corrective actions may need to be taken if we want to be healthy and happy. Just like healthy pain lets us tend to a physical injury, and healthy fear alerts us to a potential threat to our safety, and healthy anger alerts us to a possible injustice, healthy guilt lets us know about threats to our integrity.  Research consistently shows that self-esteem and a positive sense of self-worth is dependent upon “being true to ourselves.” In other words, we can only truly feel good about ourselves if we perceive that we are living up to the values we claim to hold. That is, if we maintain our integrity. Healthy guilt protects our integrity, and by extension, our identity strength and self-esteem.

3 Functions of Healthy Guilt

Guilt can be thought of as healthy if it does three things.

• First, if it alerts you to potential threats to your integrity (and, by extension, your self-esteem).
• Second, and even more importantly, guilt is healthy if it motivates you to take some concrete actions to address the offense to your integrity (and, by extension, your self-esteem). The function of guilt isn’t really to make you feel bad. Its function is to help you do something to fix a problem that poses a threat to your healthy functioning.
• Third, to be healthy, guilt should decrease as you work to resolve the threat to your integrity.

Guilt vs. Toxic Shame

By contrast guilt becomes unhealthy if…

• it is free-floating and not tied to specific offenses to your integrity.
• it doesn’t motivate you to take any action. Unhealthy guilt is just happy to make you feel awful about yourself without giving you anything to do about it.
• it doesn’t decrease once you’ve addressed the perceived offense.

A better label for unhealthy guilt is “scrupulosity.” Interestingly, both psychology and religion view scrupulosity as problematic. For the psychologist, scrupulosity can represent a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which moral contamination replaces the more common germophobia associated with OCD. Likewise, for the religious person, scrupulosity is actually (and, perhaps, ironically) a sin, in that it separates us from an experience of God’s love and mercy. (by the way, that is the definition of “sin”—i.e., “a privation of the good” or to put it another way, sin is settling for less than what God wants to give you.)

Parenting and Guilt

When parents use gentle methods of correction that teach the child what to do instead of punitive methods that simply communicate disapproval, the child develops a healthy sense of guilt; a, gentle, internal voice that says to the child, “Hey! You messed up. But here’s what you can do to make it right again.” That voice is actually a good one to have in our heads, because it allows us to turn failure into a learning experience.  By contrast, when parents use more punitive methods that simple communicate displeasure at the child’s actions, the voice in the child’s head is completely different. This inner voice sounds more like, “Shame on you! You messed up again! Can’t you do anything right?”

“Guilt” is What You Make It.

So, in conclusion.

• Healthy guilt is good because it facilitates integrity, which is an essential component of self-esteem.
• Unhealthy guilt is actually scrupulosity, which is viewed as a disorder by both clinicians and authentically religious persons.
• And finally, parenting methods are tools that can be wielded to different effects by the people wielding them. Just like hammers can be used to either build homes or bludgeon people, parenting styles can either affirm and build up, or cause hurt and harm.

The more we are committed to helping working for our children’s good and teaching them the way they should go (instead of yelling at and punishing them for going down the wrong road) the less we have to worry about creating unhealthy guilt in our kids.

By: Gregory Popcak

She came up to us in tears.  “Thank you so much for your talk. I never realized how important what I did actually was.”  We had just finished discussing what we lovingly refer to as the “corporal and spiritual works of mommy.” That is, the little way of holiness that all mothers walk which allows them to both be a blessing to their families and become more saintly themselves.  We often fantasize about great Christian heroes like Mother Theresa or the Saints and think, “If I could just abandon everything to serve the poor in some far off distant land, then I could do something really important! Then I could be holy. But I’m just a mom.”  But nothing could be further from the truth! The path to holiness is not tied to geography, it is tied to the willingness to pursue virtue in whatever state of life God calls you to. Everyday, mom’s across the globe practice the same acts of heroic generosity that the great saints have always done; specifically, they exercise the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

To feed the hungry

When moms work hard to provide thoughtful and nutritious meals for their family they don’t just feed the body. Family meals provide an important way for families to bond together and to feel cared for. Studies consistently show that families that eat regular meals together are physically healthier, have stronger and happier homes, and have lower rates of depression and other mental health problems.

To give drink to the thirsty

Getting up late at night to give a child one more drink of water can be such a sacrifice, and yet doing it with love is such a simple and beautiful way to say to a little child, “you are precious to me.” And whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.

To clothe the naked

If negotiating the clothing choices of a fickle toddler or teen, patiently, isn’t a path to holiness, then we don’t know what is!

To give a home to the homeless

Moms do so much more than make sure that their families have a roof over their heads, they work to make a comfortable, hospitable, and safe home where the seeds of God’s love can take root and flourish.

To visit the sick

Where would any of us be without the comfort of “Dr. Mom”?     Wiping those runny noses and standing by to help with those tummy aches does as much good for the child’s (and the Mother’s) soul as it does for the child’s physical well-being.

To visit the imprisoned

How many children long for Mom to come and deliver them from the dreaded Time Out? Gently correcting, educating, and comforting the child who has done wrong and finding godly ways of welcoming the child back into the bosom of the family is one of the most important activities a mother can take up.

To bury the dead.

When Gordon the Guppy or Ben the Bunny goes to his glory, who offers the comfort, the prayers of commission, (and the shoe box)? It is mom who helps the child learn to grieve these losses and feel God’s love in the presence of this sadness. In these small acts of consolation, the child learns that God cares about all of our sorrows, great and small.  Of course, the value of the mother’s role extend beyond taking care of the family’s physical needs. She plays a valuable role in forming the hearts and souls of her family whenever she exercises the spiritual works of mercy.

To instruct the ignorant

From teaching a little one to tie his shoes, to helping an older child with her homework, it is often mom who takes primary responsibility for sharpening the child’s mind and enabling them to see God at work in his world.

To counsel the doubtful

When we are ready to give up on ourselves, or God, or life, Mom is often the first one to notice, and help us find hope again.

To admonish sinners

A mom is never more like the Good Shepherd, who leads the lost lambs back home, than when she takes the time to lovingly correct a struggling child.

To bear wrongs patiently & forgive offenses willingly

A mom is often challenged to respond to the angry words or the disobedience of a child with kindness and a desire to instruct, not shame, the child. The mother who masters this is not only on her way to sainthood, but also models dignity and grace under pressure to her children.

To comfort the afflicted.

Whether she is called upon to minister to the burn of a skinned knee or the pain of a broken heart, a mother has ample opportunity to be an instrument of peace and comfort to the afflicted ones in her care.

To pray for the living and the dead

Most importantly, a mom is a woman of prayer. She prays for guidance for her family. She prays for the souls of those who have gone before, and she prays that both she and her family will be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the communion of saints.

Sadly, many moms doubt their worth these days, or worse, are treated as if they are worthless by children who don’t know better and husbands who ought to.     But, this sad fact aside, the woman who practices the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in her home can have an equal if not greater impact on the world and achieve equal if not greater heights of sanctity as the greatest missionary or martyr because, like them, she too images the very heart of Christ to a community that needs her more that it even knows.