Six Tools for Your Discipleship Discipline Toolbox

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When most parents think of “discipline,” they think of punishments: taking away privileges, sending kids to their rooms, or maybe scolding them into behaving better.

But as Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak say in their book Parenting Your Kids with Grace, discipline isn’t about punishment. It’s about teaching.

“Children don’t learn anything … because someone tells them to do it (or punishes them for not doing it),” the Popcaks write. “They learn because someone reviewed the expectations clearly ahead of time and then provided the structure, support, and practice the child needs to succeed.”

This is the heart of Discipleship Discipline: helping kids grow in virtue through “reason, religion, and loving-kindness,” the three core principles of St. John Bosco’s “Preventive Method” of discipline that the Popcaks have adapted into the Discipleship Discipline approach.

Earlier in this series of articles about Discipleship Discipline, we compared it to other discipline strategies and explained that this type of discipline has been shown to have better outcomes for kids and parents. We also discussed the importance of strong, secure parent-child relationships for the success of any discipline strategy.

Now that we have those foundations, let’s look at some of the most important “tools,” or strategies, in the Discipleship Discipline “toolbox.” In this post, we’ll introduce the first six of these tools.

1. Rituals and Routines

Family rituals are more than nice habits — they are daily “catechisms” in Christian living. By intentionally working, playing, talking, and praying together, parents model how to live balanced, godly lives. That might look like cleaning up the kitchen together after meals, having family story time, or blessing one another before bed.

Routines are equally important. Consistent morning and bedtime patterns, or predictable ways of handling chores, create a “current” that carries the family through daily life with less stress. Instead of fighting about what should happen, kids learn, “That’s just the way it is in our house.”

2. Collecting

Too often, parents shout instructions from another room and then get frustrated when kids don’t follow through. Collecting helps avoid that cycle. Before giving an instruction, parents “collect” their child by going to them, engaging warmly, and ensuring they’re truly listening.

That might mean kneeling down, making eye contact, offering a gentle touch, and saying, “Hey buddy, I need you to….” Parents also check for obstacles, have the child repeat back the instruction, and encourage them as they begin the task. This simple practice takes a minute or two, but it prevents the meltdowns that often come from barking orders.

3. Team-Building

Every family has “rough patches” in the day — after school, before bed, during chores. Instead of treating these times as inevitable chaos, team-building invites everyone to work together. Parents gather the family, name the problem, and ask, “How can we take better care of one another during this time?”

Kids are more cooperative when they help create the solution. If the 90 minutes right after school are consistently chaotic, for example, the whole family might gather together to agree on a routine. Part of that discussion might include checking in with each other to ask what that person needs most during that time of day—time alone, a snack, a hug, a listening ear? The result of this team-building exercise will be a calmer, more connected household — not because Mom or Dad cracked the whip, but because the family became a team.

4. Catch Them Being Good

It’s easy to focus on what kids are doing wrong. But discipline becomes more effective when we notice what they’re doing right. The Popcaks urge parents to “catch them being good.”

That might mean saying, “I really like the way you’re sharing with your sister,” or, “You really plowed through that homework assignment, even when you got frustrated—you really are persistent!” These small moments of affirmation light up a child’s heart, reinforce virtues like responsibility and kindness, and remind them that their efforts are seen and valued. Far from spoiling kids, encouragement builds their confidence and generosity.

5. Virtue-Prompting

When kids are frustrated, parents often slip into convincing, lecturing, or even arguing. Virtue-prompting takes a different approach. Instead of telling kids what to do, you ask: “What do you think the generous thing to do would be?” or “How could you say that in a more respectful way?”

By prompting kids to name the virtue themselves, parents help them shift from emotional reactivity to moral reflection. Over time, children learn to approach problems not just by avoiding trouble, but by actively seeking virtue.

6. Do-Overs

Do-overs give kids a chance to try again when their first attempt fell short. Whether they’ve spoken disrespectfully or rushed through a chore, parents calmly say, “Let’s try that again, with your best effort and a respectful tone.”

This practice avoids both nagging and punishment. Instead, it communicates confidence that the child can do better — and teaches that what matters isn’t just checking off a task, but doing it with love and integrity.

Building Peaceful, Virtuous Homes

Each of these six tools helps parents guide their children without yelling, bribing, or punishing. More importantly, they strengthen the parent–child bond — the real foundation of Discipleship Discipline. By using rituals and routines, collecting, team-building, catching kids being good, virtue-prompting, and do-overs, you’re not just managing behavior. You’re raising competent, caring children who know how to love, cooperate, and grow in virtue.

For more practical tools like these, pick up a copy of Parenting Your Kids with Grace by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. And for ongoing support in your parenting journey, consider joining the community of Catholic parents and pastoral counselors over at CatholicHŌM.

To Raise Healthy, Happy, Holy Kids, Start with a Game of Catch

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In our last post, we talked about various discipline strategies, and why authoritative discipline—and Discipleship Discipline, in particular—produces the best outcomes for kids and parents alike. Now, we’re going to look at the foundation for the success of Discipleship Discipline (or any discipline strategy, for that matter): a strong, secure relationship between parent and child. Without this foundation, the best discipline strategies in the world will fall flat, because kids learn best from people they are securely bonded to.

(By the way, much of this post is adapted from Parenting Your Kids with Grace: Birth to Age 10 and Parenting Your Teens and Tweens with Grace: Ages 11 to 18.)

Playing Catch: The Back-and-Forth of Parenting

Have you ever played catch with your kids? When you toss the ball, your goal isn’t to make it hard for them to succeed. You throw it in a way that helps them catch it, and when they throw it back, you do your best to keep the game going.

Parenting works the same way. “Discipleship Parenting is a lot like teaching your kids to play catch,” Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak write. “You try to help each other get better at sending the ball back and forth… and you try to keep the ball in play no matter how it’s thrown to you.” The back-and-forth of daily interactions is how kids learn to trust us, listen to us, and eventually, follow us in faith.

Parent-Child Relationships: Good Soil for Growing Healthy, Holy Adults

Long before kids are ready to be taught about God or virtue, the foundation for those lessons is already being laid.

“Babies and toddlers can’t learn faith facts, but they can learn how much they’re worth in God’s eyes when their parents take time to gaze at them, comfort them, and meet their needs as generously as they’re able,” the Popcaks write.

These early, nonverbal experiences literally become part of a child’s brain architecture. They form the neurological foundation for self-control, empathy, and even moral reasoning. As kids grow, the same principle applies: their confidence that Mom or Dad will “catch the ball” whenever they throw it—whether it’s a problem, a worry, or a mistake—determines how open they’ll be to guidance and how resilient they’ll be in the face of peer or cultural pressures.

At this point, you may wonder whether we’re talking about attachment parenting—a style of parenting that often emphasizes practices like babywearing, extended breastfeeding, or co-sleeping. These techniques can certainly support secure attachment, but they are not the same thing as attachment.

Attachment itself isn’t a set of practices. It’s a relationship—a child’s inner confidence that their parents are there for them, consistently, generously, and lovingly. Some parents may use attachment parenting methods but still foster insecure attachment if they are resentful, inconsistent, or emotionally unavailable. Likewise, parents who don’t use those methods can still raise securely attached kids if they cultivate habits of warm, responsive, and reliable caregiving.

And importantly, attachment isn’t just something babies need. It matters through every stage of a child’s life. For example, imagine your teen comes home from school looking withdrawn. They slam their backpack down and retreat to their room.

A parent who is focused only on correcting behavior might scold: “Don’t you dare slam things around this house!” But a parent practicing attachment-based discipleship would start by “collecting” their child—that is, making a personal connection that signals that Mom or Dad is on their team. The parent might start by gently knocking on the door and asking, “You seem upset—want to talk about it?”

Even if the teen doesn’t open up right away, that consistent, nonjudgmental presence communicates: You can turn to me. I’m here for you. Over time, this creates the trust that makes real correction and discipleship possible.

As we discussed in our earlier article, discipline that is grounded in a warm, secure relationship is not the same as “permissive parenting,” a parenting style in which parents provide their kids with little or no structure to support their growth. Authoritative discipline styles provide kids with rules, boundaries, and expectations, all supported by warm, secure parent-child attachment.

Secure vs. Insecure Relationships

Let’s go back to our “game of catch” analogy. What happens if the game of catch breaks down? The Popcaks point out that children who don’t experience consistent responsiveness often stop wanting to “play.” This can take a couple of forms:

  • Anxious attachment develops when parents respond inconsistently. Kids may achieve a lot, but inside they never feel good enough. “This child comes to believe that the game doesn’t go well because there’s something wrong with them.”
  • Avoidant attachment grows when parents are disengaged or dismissive. These kids learn not to bother throwing the ball at all. They avoid intimacy, become suspicious of closeness, and may even look down on those who seek connection.

Neither pattern sets a child up for healthy relationships—or for a living, vibrant faith. In fact, research shows that our attachment style to parents strongly predicts how we will relate to God, the Popcaks say. Anxiously attached people may see God as harsh and impossible to please, while avoidantly attached people may keep God at a distance.

Nurturing Attachment with the Liturgy of Domestic Church Life

How, then, can Catholic families intentionally cultivate secure attachment? One powerful framework is the Liturgy of Domestic Church Life, a model developed by the Popcaks that highlights everyday practices that build faith and family bonds.

The “rites” in this framework include practices proven to strengthen healthy parent-child attachment. Some of these practices include:

  • Extravagant affection and affirmation. Kids who receive extravagant affection and affirmation from their parents thrive in all areas of life, from academic achievement to peer relationships and more. This might take the form of (appropriate) physical contact such as hugs as well as words of genuine encouragement and acknowledgement. Even when parents provide a child with healthy boundaries or help them correct their behavior, the overall vibe is one of teamwork, not opposition.
  • Prompt, generous, cheerful, and consistent attention to needs. When parents respond promptly, consistently, and generously to their needs, kids feel safe and secure. And when kids learn that they can rely on their parents to “be there for them” as children, they continue to turn to their parents as tweens, teens, and young adults. And there’s a bonus: parents who model and teach their children this way of relating benefit from kids who want to do the same for them.
  • Intentionally making time to be together. It’s hard to have a relationship without shared, common experiences—and in today’s world, that means intentionally making time to work, play, talk, and pray together.

These and other simple but intentional habits help children form strong relationships with their parents, siblings—and God. That’s because the parent-child relationship provides a template for the child’s relationship with God.

The Heart of Discipleship Parenting

The bottom line: secure attachment—the confidence that your child can always turn to you—makes all the difference. “Fostering strong attachment with your children through every age and stage is the key to creating a discipleship relationship with your child,” the Popcaks say.

This doesn’t mean being perfect. Parents will “drop the ball” sometimes. What matters most is consistency: showing up, listening, responding generously, and making repairs when things go wrong. Over time, these habits create the kind of bond that makes children resilient, open to their parents’ guidance, and ready to follow Christ.

For more on how to foster secure, faith-filled relationships with your kids, check out Parenting Your Kids with Grace (Birth to Age 10) and Parenting Your Teens and Tweens with Grace (Ages 11 to 18) by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. And for ongoing support building stronger bonds with your children, join the community of Catholic parents and pastoral counselors over at CatholicHŌM.

Yes, There IS a Catholic Way to Parent. Here’s Why.

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Is there a Catholic way to parent?shutterstock_163230620

It really depends upon what you mean by the question.  If you mean, “Is there an approved list of preferred parenting methods the Church requires that we use for child rearing?”  Well then, of course the answer is “certainly not!”

But if you mean, “Does our Catholic faith ask parents to have a mindset about parenting that reflects the Church’s unique vision of family life and make choices that are mindful of that vision?”  Then the answer is, “unquestionably, yes!”

Vision, Method, and Mindset

Catholicism is an incarnational faith.  Catholics can’t just say prayers that invoke the name Jesus and be done with it.  We have to live differently.    So, while Catholic businesspersons aren’t “required by the Church” to use a certain brand of accounting software, they are challenged to have a mindset about work, management, and money, that reflects the Church’s views on economics and, in turn,  informs their workplace behavior and choices.  Likewise, the Church doesn’t tell soldiers what uniforms to wear or weapons to carry, but the Church does insist that soldiers have a mindset informed by Just War principles that will govern their behavior and choices on the battlefield.

In the same way, the Church never says to parents, “Parent this way.”  But it also doesn’t say, “Just do what works best for you!”   Instead, the Church does say, “As Catholics, we have a unique vision of family life,  so Catholic parents, please keep that vision in mind when making decisions about parenting so that vision may be fulfilled and you can be the witness the Church calls you to be.”   So, what is that vision?

The Vision

Archbishop Chaput once observed that Pope St. John Paul the Great wrote about two-thirds of everything the Church has ever said about marriage and family life.   His Theology of the Body could arguably be said to make up the mission statement for Catholic family life.  If Catholic parents are looking for a place to turn to see what makes the Catholic vision of family life different from, say, the various Protestant denomination’s views of family life or a more secular view of family life, then it would be hard to find a better place to start than the Theology of the Body (TOB).  And while TOB doesn’t tell parents what parenting methods to use, per se, it does articulate certain principles about family life and love that Catholics are encouraged to give serious consideration to when choosing their parenting methods.  In fact, the parenting methods we choose are actually a kind-of catechism.  The way we interact with our children–even more than what we say to them–teaches them how to think about relationship, life, faith, priorities, and morality. 

TOB & PARENTING:  2 Principles for Practice

TOB is a huge body of work, and this article couldn’t possibly begin to articulate its unique vision of family life in any comprehensive way, but here are two points taken from TOB to begin to give you an idea of how TOB can help parents make choices about parenting that are truly informed by a Catholic vision of relationship.

1. Love is Embodied.

TOB teaches that God gave us our bodies so that we could express love for one another.  It isn’t enough to have warm feelings for someone.  To be truly meaningful, love must be expressed with our body and experienced by another body through words, and acts of service, presence,  and affection.  The more bodily an expression of love is, the more senses it uses to communicate itself, the more intimate that expression of love is.

Catholic vision of family life is one of embodied self-giving.  God gives moms and dads bodies so they can hug and hold and carry and cuddle their children so that their children can feel God’s immense love in real and tangible ways.  As TOB says, “the body, and it alone is capable of making visible that which is invisible; the spiritual and the divine.”   Our children first encounter the reality of God’s love through our loving touch.  The more physical we are with our kids, the more they develop the capacity to feel love and be loving.  Interestingly, this theological point is backed up by neuroscience.  Physical affection stimulates nerve growth and myelination (the growth of coating around nerve cells that make them fire more quickly and efficiently) especially in the parts of the brain responsible for empathy, picking up on facial and social cues, moral reasoning, compassion and other pro-social traits.   TOB teaches that biology is theology because God’s fingerprints are all over creation.  If we want to know how God wants us to relate to each other, look at the ways of relating that make our bodies function at their best.

Considering this teaching of embodied self-giving as the ultimate sign of love, Catholic parents have a clear mandate to ask themselves which parenting methods do a better job of communicating this vision embodied love: breast or bottle? Co-sleeping or crib? crying it out or comforting to sleep?  And so on.  The Catholic vision of love is embodied self-giving.  Parents who want to convey an authentically Catholic vision of family life do well to choose those methods they prayerfully believe are the most bodily-based expressions of their love they are capable of giving.

2.  Love is Intimate

TOB also teaches that we were created not just for love, but for intimacy. The entire point of the Gospel is loving, intimate, eternal union with God and the Communion of Saints. Think of intimacy as a unit of measure for love.  Just like ounces, or cups, or gallons tell us how much water there is, intimacy tells us whether the love that is present is a puddle or an ocean.   TOB tells us that families are to be “Schools of Love” that help us experience, as much as possible, the ocean of love God has for us.  By extension, Catholic families are encouraged to choose those styles of relating, organizing their priorities, and disciplining their children that foster the deepest level of intimacy possible.

In Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul the Great wrote,

By word and example, in the daily round of relations and choices, and through concrete actions and signs, parents lead their children to authentic freedom, actualized in the sincere gift of self, and they cultivate in them respect for others, a sense of justice, cordial  openness, dialogue, generous service, solidarity and all the other values which help people to live life as a gift.

Here, Pope St. John Paul II articulates a mission statement for the Catholic family.  To approach parenting with an authentically Catholic mindset, we have to make all of our choices with this call to respect, justice, cordial openness, dialogue, service and radical togetherness in mind.

Does the Church tell parents exactly how many activities to let their kids participate in, or what discipline methods to choose, or how much time parents and kid need together?  Of course not.  But you parent with the mind of the Church when you ask yourself how many activities your kids can be involved in while still preserving the prime importance of family intimacy. Likewise, you can determine which discipline methods are more “Catholic” in the sense that they are more relationally-based and more likely to foster the open dialog and cordiality discussed in Evangelium Vitae.

Why, “Do what works for you”  Is NOT Enough

Theology of the Body doesn’t give parents a step-by-step methodological blueprint for parenting that says, “do these methods instead of those.”  What it does do is say, “Here is the mindset God wants you to have about family life.  Choose accordingly.”

As Catholic parents, it just isn’t enough to say, “What works?”  Or even, “What works best for you?”   Catholic businesspeople can’t do that.  Catholic soldiers can’t do that.  Catholic families can’t do that either.  Rather, from a TOB perspective, Catholics are challenged to ask, “Of all the different ways I could raise my kids and organize my family life, which choices enable me to do the best job I can of bearing witness to the embodied self-giving and call to intimacy that rests at the heart of the Catholic vision of love?”

For more information on how the Theology of the Body can transform your family life, check out Parenting with Grace:  The Catholic Parents’ Guide to Raising (almost) Perfect Kids and Beyond the Birds and the Bees:  Raising Sexually Whole and Holy Kids.

Dr. Greg Popcak is the author of almost 20 books. He directs the Pastoral Solutions Institute which provides Catholic tele-counseling to clients around the world.  www.CatholicCounselors.com