Teach Your Kids to Obey: 3 Strategies for Success

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Introducing your new baby to her older siblings ought to be a joyful moment…but not when your two-year-old and four-year-old kids keep grabbing at baby’s face and handling her too roughly. Then, it’s just plain stressful.

That’s exactly the scenario that one frazzled father described to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak on a recent episode of the More2Life radio show. “Mark” said that no matter how often they told their kids to not touch the baby, they kept touching her. Mark’s question: How do I get my kids to obey?

It’s a problem many parents face, especially with little ones. Often, parents think their littles’ failure to follow their directions is either willful defiance or the fruit of a “wild” personality.

But as the Popcaks explained, what’s really going on is a lot more basic.

“Our kids don’t know anything unless we teach them,” Dr. Greg Popcak said. “So your child isn’t wild. He’s not broken. He’s not out of control. He’s not willful. He’s just untaught.”

That insight is good news, because if the problem is that a child is untaught, the solution is straightforward: teach them.

Don’t Just Tell; Teach, Too

Most parents naturally assume that once they’ve said something, a child has the information they need. Tell a three-year-old to sit at the table, and he should sit at the table. Tell a four-year-old to be gentle with the baby, and she should know what gentle looks like.

But children can’t draw on knowledge they’ve never been given.

“If we want them to sit still at a table, we need to teach them how to do that,” Dr. Popcak said. “And when I say teach them, I don’t mean tell them. I mean do it with them.”

Lisa Popcak offered an analogy: Imagine playing German-language radio in the background throughout your child’s life—no pictures, no context, just sound—with the expectation that your child would just naturally begin speaking German.

“Will they become proficient? Will it become their second language? No,” she said, “because they have no way to know what that noise is, what it’s referring to.”

We make the same mistake with behavior. We assume that children will absorb good manners by watching us, or pick up gentleness simply because they’ve seen it modeled.

But that’s like trying to teach your kids a new language by playing it on the radio. Behavior is a skill, and skills have to be taught and practiced.

Take Mark’s older children, the ones who were being too rough with the baby. Developmental psychology is pretty clear that two and four-year-olds still really struggle to imagine an experience different from their own. A four-year-old grabbing a baby’s cheeks doesn’t register that the pressure feels different to a much smaller, more fragile person than it does to her. She only knows what she feels when someone touches her cheeks

That’s why she needs her parents to teach her exactly what “gentle” means when it comes to being with baby. Not just describing with words, but actually coming alongside her and guiding her hands.

Realizing that we need to be more intentional about teaching our kids good behavior is actually empowering. Instead of asking, “Why is my child so difficult?” we can ask, “What does my child still need to learn?”

Three Ways to Teach Your Kids Good Behavior

With that insight in mind, here are three strategies for teaching your kids to do what you ask them.

1. Do it with them

Especially when it comes to littles, you need to do more than simply tell them what to do. Teaching means demonstrating the behavior and then walking them through it, step by step.

Most parents already do this when it comes to their kids’ bedtime routine.

“You don’t send kids into the bathroom to do their nighttime getting ready for bed ritual,” Dr. Popcak said. “You go into the bathroom with them and you walk them through those things step by step by step—night after night after night—until you see that it’s become second nature.”

So, what Mark’s children most needed was for him to take their hands, place them gently against the baby’s cheek, and show them—physically, repeatedly—what “gentle” means.

The same kind of accompaniment works with other behaviors, too.

2. Break it down

Most parents know that teaching a child how to put his shoes on correctly requires mastery of subskills: how to identify which shoe goes on which foot, how to hold the laces, and so on.

The same sort of task breakdown will help your children learn how to speak respectfully, how to touch a sibling gently, or how to regulate themselves at the dinner table.

“Everything needs to be broken down into small skill subsets that will build upon each other,” she said. It’s not so much a matter of taking it slow but identifying which skills are needed for the child to succeed.

Instead of simply saying “don’t do that” or “stop it,” ask yourself: “What do I want my child to do instead — and what’s the smallest next step toward teaching that behavior?”

3. Build in structure that makes success possible

Part of teaching children means designing situations where success is actually achievable.

The Popcaks share a simple example: the “hold hands or hold you” rule for walking in public. Children who have just learned to walk are thrilled by their new freedom but have no concept of danger. Rather than simply saying “stay close,” the Popcaks taught their children a clear, enforceable rule: you can hold my hand and walk, or I will carry you. No third option.

“And that’s how a child learns to stay close to us and to explore the world safely,” Dr. Popcak said. “They point at the thing that they want to go see, and we can decide whether it’s safe to go look at it. We’re giving them the option to explore in safe and healthy ways and learning how to stick close to parents who can keep them safe.”

Your God-Given Teaching License

The Church has always said that parents are their children’s “first teachers.” Fortunately, God doesn’t leave parents to shoulder this responsibility alone, but offers the help of the Holy Spirit and the Church itself.

“You’re invited by the Church to remember that you’re there to teach (your children) every little thing in their lives,” Lisa Popcak said, “so that they can become all that they can be.”

So, the next time your child doesn’t do what you tell them to do, remember: your child isn’t broken. She’s just still learning. Asking, “What does this child still need to learn?” changes everything. Instead of feeling helpless, you have a clear path forward.

To explore more faith-driven strategies for raising children, pick up a copy of Parenting Your Kids with Grace or Parenting Your Teens and Tweens with Grace by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak.

And if you’re looking for a community to accompany you on your parenting journey, join hundreds of Catholic parents (plus Catholic pastoral counselors) on the CatholicHŌM app.

Two Questions That Can Simplify Every Catholic’s Parenting Decisions

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Every day, parents face dozens of choices about how to raise their kids: Which sports programs are worth the time commitment? How much screen time is too much? What’s the best way to correct problem behavior?

Catholic parents face a whole slew of additional questions on top of those. How do I teach my kids to pray? How do I help them develop Christian virtues? How should I approach Mass with squirrelly little kids—or resistant teens?

Fortunately, Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, drawing on years of pastoral counseling and parenting work, offer parents two simple diagnostic questions that can help evaluate almost any decision, from the mundane to the momentous.

Two Questions to Ask About Everything

The two questions are straightforward:

  1. Does this choice bring our family closer to God?
  2. Does this choice draw our family closer to one another?

Notice that both questions ask about results, not intentions. The focus is on whether this particular choice, in your particular family, is actually producing the fruit you want.

Notice, too, that these questions are intertwined: choices that bring family members closer to God also draw them closer to one another, and vice versa. The Church often calls the family a “school of love.” And what are family members supposed to learn in this school of love? Nothing less than to participate in the love that unites the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No family does this perfectly, but the important thing is to help one another grow in love and virtue.

Does this draw us closer to God?

Many good Catholic practices can bring families closer to God—but not every good practice is right for every family at every stage.

Research shows that kids who experience their family’s faith life as a source of warmth are much more likely to continue practicing that faith into adulthood. Kids should experience faith as making a noticeably positive difference in daily life—for instance, by helping family members relate honestly and lovingly with one another.

Checking your family’s religious practices against this standard can be helpful in evaluating whether a given practice is right for your particular family right now. It can also shape and guide the way you approach a particular religious practice.

Take family prayer. If you approach it expecting a monastic level of discipline, it can become less than genuinely prayerful. Family prayer that produces frustration and stress—rather than a warm, personal relationship with God—ought to be adjusted or reconsidered.

For example, if you attempt to say the full rosary as a family but end up focused on policing behavior (“Stop trying to lasso your brother!”), it might be better to say a single decade while littles snuggle on your lap—or try an entirely different prayer form for a while.

This isn’t to dismiss the value of the rosary or other devotions. It’s simply a matter of ordering your prayer practices in a way that helps kids experience a warm and lively relationship with God.

The same question applies to other, nonreligious activities, too. When your child considers joining a traveling sports league, ask: Will this draw them closer to God? If the Sunday game schedule and relentless demands on family time get in the way of religious and family obligations, you might decide to hold off. Another way to frame it: Has this activity become an idol, effectively supplanting God? For example, you might decide that your teen is ready for his or her own phone. But if you find that the phone is constantly getting in the way of real-world relationships, you and your teen might want to talk about strategies that help her re-order her priorities.

Does this activity draw our family closer to one another?

Family relationships don’t build themselves—they require shared time, shared rituals, and genuine connection. The Popcaks often emphasize that families need to regularly spend time working, playing, talking, and praying together. This time isn’t optional; it’s an essential foundation for forming deep, lasting relationships and forming kids (and parents, too!) in their Christian vocation. The family may be a school of love, but it’s hard to learn anything if school is never in session!

Most families have no shortage of activities. Each may be good in itself. But if the cumulative effect is that your family is always scattered and rarely sitting down together, it’s worth pausing. Before committing to a new activity, ask: Is our family getting enough time together? Will this cut into it? (The Popcaks suggest 10 hours a week as a baseline for most families.) The foundations of strong family relationships need to be laid now, not after your kids have left home.

You can also deploy this question around family rituals of working, talking, playing, and praying together. A two-hour game of Monopoly might build connection in one family and end in tears and slammed doors in another. A shared chore like cleaning up the kitchen after dinner can be a moment of teamwork and laughter—or a battle of wills. What matters isn’t the activity itself but what it actually produces in your family.

Discipline practices can be evaluated through this lens as well. Any discipline strategy should, in the end, strengthen the relationship between parent and child, not strain it. On the other side of a correction, kids should feel that their parents are reliable, trustworthy partners—not adversaries. Discipleship Discipline, the approach the Popcaks develop in their parenting books, asks parents to lead with warmth and relationship rather than fear.

Putting the questions to work

These two questions won’t eliminate every hard parenting call. But they give you a consistent, theologically grounded framework for making those calls.

When you’re weighing a decision—a new activity, a family devotion, a discipline strategy, a shift in routine—ask what the fruit will be: Is this producing closeness with God in my family? Is it producing closeness with one another?

If the answer to both is yes, that’s a strong green light. If the answer is no, it doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the practice—sometimes it means adjusting the approach, scaling back, or waiting for the right season.

Children who grow up experiencing the faith as a source of warmth are far more likely to carry it into adulthood. That’s the goal. These two questions keep it in view.

For a deeper look at the principles behind these questions, pick up a copy of the Popcaks’ book Parenting Your Kids with Grace at CatholicCounselors.com. And for daily, ongoing support putting these principles into practice, join the community of Catholic parents and get personalized parenting coaching at CatholicHOM.com.

Six More Tools for Your Parenting Tool Box

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In a recent post, we looked at the first six practices in Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s Discipleship Discipline Toolbox: rituals and routines, collecting, team-building, catching kids being good, virtue-prompting, and do-overs.

Each of these tools are ways that parents can practice Discipleship Discipline, the authoritative (not authoritarian!) approach to discipline inspired by St. John Bosco’s “Preventitive Method.” In this approach, parents focus on teaching kids how to be virtuous. Instead of taking on the role of police officer and judge, enforcing rules and handing out punishments, Discipleship Discipline parents take on the role of a good coach who helps the child to not only follow the rules of the game, but to develop the skills needed to play at the top of her game. (For more about Discipleship Discipline, see “Why Discipleship Discipline Helps Kids and Parents Thrive” and “To Raise Healthy, Happy, Holy Kids, Start with a Game of Catch.”)

Now, let’s look at the next six tools: rehearsing, time-ins, emotional temperature taking, time outs (done right), sibling revelry, and logical consequences.

7. Rehearsing & Reviewing

When kids repeatedly struggle in the same situations, parents often resort to nagging or scolding. But as the Popcaks remind us, “telling kids to do something differently rarely works.”

That’s where rehearsing (or for teens, reviewing) can be helpful. Rehearsing means practicing good behavior before the problem arises again.

For instance, if your children ran wild during the last grocery trip, you don’t just hope for better behavior next time. Instead, you come up with a plan (e.g., your kids will hold your hand or the side of the cart). You walk through the plan with them, and even practice in the parking lot before going in.

Teens don’t necessarily need the same physical rehearsal of good behavior, but they still need your help thinking through a plan for how to handle a challenging situation better in the future. If your teenager ends up drinking at a party, for example, you might impose a meaning­ful consequence. But you would also help him do better in the future by talking through how things went wrong and making a plan for avoiding or negotiating that situation going forward.

Rehearsing and reviewing isn’t about compromising your expectations for your kids’ behavior. Instead, it’s about giving them the strategies and skills they need to meet those expectations.

8. Time-In

When kids are overwhelmed by stress or even excitement, they become dysregulated. In other words, they literally lose access to their brain’s self-control systems. The result: meltdowns, disrespect, and other poor behavior.

A time-in counters this by engaging the child warmly, often with touch, listening, and empathy. Unlike the better-known time out, a time-in brings parent and child closer together. It’s a chance to reconnect, regulate emotions, and then move forward peacefully. Time-ins can be short and simple: taking a child on your lap to let them calm down, talking through their feelings while rubbing their back, or planning special one-on-one time when they seem “off”: doing a project together, going for a walk, or eating out, for instance. The time-in might include some shared problem-solving, too (see “Team-Building”).

Parents often resist this strategy because they view it as rewarding bad behavior. But time-ins are really about refilling your child’s “emotional gas tank” so they have the resources to regulate their behavior again.

9. Emotional Temperature-Taking

Parents often say their kids go from “zero to 100” in seconds. But children often show warning signs long before a full-blown meltdown. The Popcaks encourage parents to learn their child’s “emotional temperature,” a scale from 1 to 10 that measures how regulated (or dysregulated) they are based on behavioral cues.

At a 1–3, your child is calm, affectionate, and capable of cheerful obedience. At a 6 or 7, stress chemicals are rising; you may notice fidgeting, sighing, or eye-rolling. By 9 or 10, the filters are gone: tantrums, hostility, or withdrawal take over.

The gift of this tool is awareness. By noticing signs at a 6 or 7, you can step in with collecting or a quick time-in before things unravel. Kids can also be taught to monitor their own “temperature,” giving them language to say, “I’m at a 7 — I need a hug or a break.” This helps kids build lifelong emotional intelligence.

10. Time-Outs (Making Them Work)

Simply sending a child to their room is not discipline; it’s isolation, and it rarely produces lasting change. A proper time-out is not a punishment, but an opportunity to reset and practice doing better.

Time-outs should not be your first-line strategy; rather, this approach should only be used when kids are at an 8 or above on the emotional temperature scale. When done properly, timeouts follow a clear process:

  1. Attempt collecting first. If your child is at an 8 or above on the emotional temperature scale, they may resist regulation. At that point, you can explain that a time-out is a chance to calm down.
  2. Escort them to a quiet, safe spot. No toys, no devices, not their bedroom. The goal isn’t entertainment but space for regulation.
  3. After the time is up, check in to see whether your child is self-regulated (at a 5 or less on the emotional temperature scale) — don’t let them “release themselves.”
  4. Finally, take a moment for learning and skill-building. The child names what went wrong, apologizes sincerely, identifies a better choice, and rehearses it with you.

Throughout this process, the parent calmly frames the time-out as the break both parent and child needs in order to figure out how to work things out together.

11. Sibling Revelry

Sibling conflicts can leave parents feeling like constant referees. Instead of endlessly deciding “who started it,” the Popcaks recommend teaching kids how to reconcile through what they call “sibling revelry.” Here’s how it works: first, use virtue-prompting — “What would be the generous or respectful way to handle this?” If the conflict escalates and collecting or time-ins do not help, send both chil­dren to a time-out with the assignment to think about what they personally could have done to make the situation better.

After the time is up, check in with each child separately to see whether they can name how they could have made the situation better.

When they can do this, bring them back together to admit what they did wrong (with no qualifica­tions), apologize sincerely, state how they will do better, and role-play the healthier response. Finally, end with a group hug.

This method avoids blame games and teaches siblings that they always have the power to make things better, even when they are feeling frustrated.

12. Logical Consequences

The final tool in the Popcaks’ toolbox is logical consequences. Logical conse­quences are not punishments. Punishments impose pain on a child in the hope that if they suffer enough for bad behavior, they will magically learn to how to self-regulate and behave virtuously.

By contrast, logical consequences flow directly from the misbehavior and lead to the desired appropriate behavior. Further, they give kids a chance to practice the virtues and skills they need to do better in the future.

For example, if a teen keeps flouting his parents’ expectation for not using his phone during family time, the parents might take his phone privilege away for a week. During that week, his parents guide him in practicing the virtues that he would need in order to do better — in this case, showing love and respect for his family.

Other examples include practicing morning routines on Saturdays if a child struggles to get ready on school days, or redoing sloppy homework under a parent’s supervision. The key is consistency and clarity: privileges return only when the child shows they’re ready to handle them responsibly.

Logical consequences don’t punish. They create a structure that builds the very skills kids need for long-term success.

Shepherding with Love

These six tools — rehearsing, time-ins, emotional temperature-taking, time-outs, sibling revelry, and logical consequences — equip parents to lead their children as loving shepherds, not drill sergeants. Discipline done this way doesn’t just correct bad behavior. It strengthens attachment, builds virtue, and shows children that they are loved even when they struggle.

For the full set of tools and more practical guidance, 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.

Why Discipleship Discipline Helps Kids (and Parents) Thrive

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What’s the best way to discipline your child? Parents have wrestled with this question forever: Should I lay down the law? Should I let my kids figure things out? Should I try to be their friend? It’s easy to feel pulled in different directions.

Today, though, child development research points clearly to one answer: an authoritative discipline style works best. This approach balances warmth and love with clear expectations and structure. Kids raised in authoritative homes consistently do better—not just in childhood, but well into adulthood.

At the Pastoral Solutions Institute, Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak promote a faith-filled version of this approach called Discipleship Discipline. Rooted in the best of modern psychology and enriched by the wisdom of the Catholic tradition, it blends the insights of St. John Bosco (the 19th-century Italian priest and founder of the Salesians), St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, and contemporary parenting science.

You’ll find the full approach in the Popcaks’ books Parenting Your Kids with Grace and Parenting Your Teens and Tweens with Grace, as well as through the CatholicHŌM program. But here, let’s look at the main discipline styles, why authoritative parenting stands out, and how Discipleship Discipline takes it even further.

The Four Basic Discipline Styles

In the 1980s and 90s, psychologist Diana Baumrind identified three main parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. A fourth, neglectful, was later added.

Authoritarian Discipline

Dominant in the early 20th century, authoritarian parenting cast parents as judges and enforcers. Parents were expected to:

  • Impose strict rules at the level of adult expectations.
  • Avoid explanations (“Because I said so”).
  • Punish with unpleasant consequences for breaking rules.
  • Withhold affection to avoid “spoiling” children.

This approach often produces fearful, anxious children with lower self-confidence and self-regulation.

Permissive Discipline

In the 1960s and 70s, many parents swung the other way. Permissive parenting emphasized freedom and self-expression. Parents often:

  • Set few rules or expectations.
  • Negotiate endlessly, rarely enforcing rules.
  • Overlook misbehavior or enforce inconsistently.
  • Provide warmth without limits, overlooking that real love sometimes requires setting healthy boundaries.

While warm, this approach often leaves children with weak boundaries and poor self-control.

Neglectful Discipline

Neglectful parenting is just what it sounds like: being uninvolved, failing to meet children’s needs, and providing little structure or guidance. Children raised this way often struggle with emotional health, academics, and relationships.

Authoritative Discipline

Authoritative parenting offers the best of both worlds—love and structure. Parents are encouraged to:

  • Set clear expectations appropriate for the child’s age.
  • Explain rules and listen to their child’s perspective.
  • Enforce consistent, fair consequences based on natural or logical outcomes.
  • Provide abundant warmth and support, while encouraging independence.

Large-scale, long-term studies (sometimes lasting decades) show that children raised in authoritative homes tend to excel academically, display healthier social skills, develop strong self-regulation, and enjoy better mental health into adulthood.

Why Discipleship Discipline Changes Everything

So what makes the Popcaks’ approach different? The clue is in the word disciple. From the Latin discipulus (“pupil, learner”), a disciple isn’t just a student—they’re a dedicated follower of a way of life.

This hints at one of the main differences between Discipleship Discipline and other discipline styles:

  • Permissive discipline tends to view the parent-child relationship in terms of a friendship between equals.
  • Authoritarian discipline tends to cast parents as cops and judges enforcing rules and meting out punishments.
  • Authoritative discipline, by contrast, casts parents in the role of teacher (or coach) and the child in the role of learner.

In Discipleship Discipline, parents are called not only to teach their children the skills they need to become fully competent, confident adults, but to become all that God calls them to be. Discipleship Parents help their kids develop a way of life as Christian disciples—not just rule-followers, but people who embody the love, integrity, and virtue of Jesus Christ.

Discipleship Parents recognize that God has entrusted them with the responsibility (and therefore authority) to guide their children along this path. This means setting expectations for behavior (boundaries and rules) and, when needed, enforcing those expectations. Discipleship Parents provide their kids with the structure they need to thrive.

But Discipleship Parents also recognize that their God-given authority isn’t limitless or arbitrary: instead, it is exercised for the good of both the child and the parents. Moreover, Discipleship Parents recognize that their authority is most effective when it is based on a warm, loving, trusting relationship—much like the Bible’s image of the Good Shepherd.

This blend of structure, warmth, and faith makes Discipleship Discipline a powerful tool for Catholic families.

Next Steps

In our next article in this three-part series, we’ll look at how parents can nurture the warm-yet-authoritative relationships that make this approach so effective.

In the meantime, you can explore Discipleship Discipline more deeply in books Parenting Your Kids with Grace and Parenting Your Teens and Tweens with Grace by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. And for ongoing support, check out CatholicHŌM, where you’ll find family-friendly resources, pastoral guidance, and a supportive community to help your family thrive in faith and love.

Less Stress, More Joy: The Power of Family Fun

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Soccer practice, piano lessons, theater rehearsals, youth group…many parents today feel like their family life happens in the car. We’re constantly running from one activity to the next, hoping that the time we invest in our kids’ activities will pay off.

Instead, 65% of American parents say they are just “getting through the day” rather than actually enjoying it, according to a 2024 Harris Poll.

What’s worse, overbooked kids often experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and anger, child health experts say.

If all of this sounds familiar, Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak have a simple suggestion: make more time for family fun.

Regularly playing together as a family reduces stress and increases joy, they explained on a recent episode of the CatholicHŌM podcast. Even better, family play rituals strengthen relationships and fortify a healthy, holy lifestyle.

Fun is the Glue That Holds Families Together

A wealth of research shows that kids who have strong family relationships tend to thrive during childhood and adolescence—and even later on, as young adults. Family fun time plays a big role in developing strong, rich relationships between children and their parents.

“When we have fun with our children, when we make time to play…we become the people that they know they can trust and enjoy,” Lisa said.

The trust that develops between children and parents when they have fun together lasts into adolescence and beyond. Children who regularly play with their parents know who to turn to when life gets hard. On the other hand, over scheduled children may learn to turn elsewhere for connection.

“The people that your children have fun with are the people that your children trust,” Lisa continued. “So if your children are only having fun with other kids their age…who are they going to turn to when they have a broken heart or a difficult question…? Their friends.”

But not all time spent around our kids strengthens our bond with them. Parents often assume that showing up for their children’s activities is the same thing as spending time together. But kids don’t see it that way, the Popcaks said. They cited research that found that kids view their parents’ attendance at sports and rehearsals not as an investment in them, but as an opportunity for parents to socialize with other parents.

Attending games and rehearsals matters, but it’s not the same as shared, face-to-face fun, Dr. Greg explained: “They’re not interacting with us, and we’re not communicating to them how Christians enjoy each other and enjoy life.”

The temptation to over schedule comes from good intentions. We want to give our kids opportunities, build their skills, and support their passions. But when the family calendar is too packed, something vital is lost. Spontaneous fun disappears; relationships become transactional (“Did you finish your homework? What time is practice?”), and stress replaces joy.

Holy People Have More Fun!

Family play has another important function: it’s one of the ways we disciple kids into a healthy, holy Catholic vision of life.

When families have fun together, they teach their kids that Christianity isn’t just something for church, but for all areas of life. More than that, they teach kids that Christian values can actually enhance fun and recreation.

“The fact is, if we aren’t teaching our kids how to enjoy life and how to enjoy each other in healthy ways, the world is more than happy to suggest a million ways for our kids to enjoy themselves in sinful and destructive ways,” he said. 

Reclaiming Time to Play

So how can families reclaim time for play in a world that rewards busyness?

First, start by making family fun time a priority—and that means being intentional about scheduling time for it.

“Play rituals don’t just happen on their own,” Dr. Greg emphasized. “We need to treat family time in general, and play rituals in particular, as things that are on the schedule that we plan other stuff around.”

You can set aside routine times for family play, like after dinner and before prayers, or you can schedule family fun time as you meet to plan out your week.

Prioritizing family play rituals doesn’t mean pulling your children out of sports, theater, or youth group activities, the Popcaks emphasized. But it may mean cutting down on the time they spend on those activities so that there is time available for your family to connect.

Second, don’t be afraid to start small. Family fun time doesn’t need to involve a major, Monopoly-level time commitment. You might begin with as little as 15 minutes, Lisa said: “Just begin by asking, can we get 15 minutes today? What would we like to do with that time?”

If even that feels challenging, look for ways to spark little moments of joy during the day. Lisa described how her mother asked her father to come home from work with a joke for the family every day.

“He would run around the office toward the end of the day saying, ‘I need a joke. My wife won’t let me in the door without a joke,’” Lisa said. “And we can do that with our kids: bring a joke to the table for dinner time and start everybody laughing. Just having a moment of joy together is better than not having joy together.”

Just Do It!

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all model for how to have fun together as a family, the Popcaks emphasized. Talk about it together and experiment to find a rhythm of play and fun that works for your particular family. Be prepared for family play time to evolve as your kids get older, too: the ten minutes you spend tickling and roughhousing on the living room floor might become ten minutes of throwing a football around in the yard.

Above all, don’t be afraid to dive in, Lisa said.

“So often, we over schedule ourselves because we’re afraid to just have fun with our family. What if they don’t see me as an authority figure? What if they think I’m silly? What if it messes up the house? What if I can never get them settled down to go to bed? We have a million fears about just enjoying our children and our family time together in a fun way.

“I promise you, if you start making fun part of your family rituals, they will look at you with more respect, more love. They will trust you more. The emotional temperature in the house will come down over time because you’re not always being punitive. Play has a million wonderful fruits (that come) with it.”

When families reclaim time to laugh, play, and enjoy each other, they rediscover the joy of being a domestic church.

To learn more about weaving play and other rituals into daily life, explore the CatholicHŌM app, where you’ll find community support, downloadable resources for family fun, and videos and podcasts addressing common challenges that arise around family time. Plus, you can listen to CatholicHŌM podcast Episode 88: “The Family That Plays Together Prays Together.”