What kind of world are my children growing up in? It’s the question that weighs on so many of us parents. The world we live in is crazy and influential. I feel like I'm pretty grounded but yet I still feel the fear of, what will stick with them? What will they see on TV? Or at school?
My kids are so young, are not yet formed intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, etc. and if I’m honest, I want to just keep them in my bubble where I know what could influence them. I want them to learn virtues, to be kind, respectful, and love Jesus.
For example, when I bring my daughter to the playground and she sees a kid hit or spit, I get to be there to explain about right and wrong. But I can’t always be there. So how do I give them tools to know what’s right and wrong no matter what they face and when I’m not there?
I grew up in a home where we asked questions like, what is my family legacy? What do we want to be known for as a family? My parents, at a very young age, instilled in my sisters and me a sense of purpose and identity. We knew our family was different. In a predominantly Catholic country, compared to my friends and family we were “more Catholic. ” We practiced our faith more outwardly and in action.
I remember my parents would always say to us that we are daughters of God, we are children of God. We read books about "growing little women" and discussed our identity as women. This was my parents' way of teaching us purpose and identity. We had dedicated time for prayer daily as a family, weekly family meetings, and just time to learn. To have the language accessible to us, to be able to discuss these things and these truths was very good. I didn’t love it as a child because it was so serious but really looking back at it now there's so much value in what my parents did. I even remember they gave us the talk about sex at a young age and it was weird and uncomfortable but again, beneficial because it gave us an understanding of what the purpose of marriage and sex are in a Catholic perspective not the way society shows and portrays it.
While I don't think I'll do it all this way, having time to discuss these things was so important and laid a really important foundation for me.
My parents used to work for multinational companies that were successful because they had vision, mission statements and core values that guided the behaviour of each and every employee. My parents saw how beneficial it was for a group of people to come back together and realign their purpose and thought it could be applied to families too and so they started a tradition of year-end family retreats.
Every year at the end of the year, instead of having parties and taking part in New Year’s celebrations we would end it with a family retreat. We left the busy city of Manila, the Philippines to spend a week of family bonding, prayer, rest and team/family-building.
At these retreats, we were guided and taught by our parents and sometimes guest speakers like the nuns or priests at the retreat center. We’d talk about many different topics from money management, virtues, time management, spiritual growth and many more. My parents made these “boring” topics fun, interactive and child-friendly. A lot would label this as a little extreme but little did I know, I would recall these lessons they taught us on many occasions as an adult.
The first retreat we had, I was probably 11 or 12, we created our Family Vision and Core Values. We brainstormed ideas, prayed about them, and made the final decision together on creating an identity that we would all live by. My parents made sure it was a joint decision and we were involved in the whole process so that we took ownership of it.
Our vision was: To become a family of God-loving members, living the Christian values by example.
We broke up our core family values into an acronym to easily remember—CHORES:
C - Caring
H - Honesty
O - Obedience
R - Respect
E - Encouragement
S - Sharing
We created a family logo, discerned it, prayed about it. My parents printed stickers to put in our school books and everything so that we would always be reminded of our values. As a child and as a teenager, I was sometimes embarrassed, I wasn’t always proud of it mainly because of how I was teased about it. I was labelled “the innocent one”, made fun of because of the stickers or whenever I would share about our retreat people would say “that’s weird”.
Admittedly, it was different. It was not normal but what was ingrained in me all those years of doing our year-end retreats has moulded me and shaped me into the woman I am today.
It guided us, just like how the 10 commandments guide us as Catholics in our moral principles and how to live a full and happy life. At first, it was my parents reminding me “Is this in line with our vision? Or values?”
I often ended up being annoyed at these questions they always asked. But as I grew up into a young adult and adult, because my parents had explained things well and genuinely, it integrated deep into my heart.
They weren’t just rules to follow but they modelled the life they wanted for us.
Yes, sometimes I rolled my eyes but I also never made decisions without really thinking about it properly whether that was about dating, treating my siblings, or falling into the social influences of high school. Knowing the why in a decision and how it would affect everyone was built into me. It made me desire to help and care for others, to treat everyone with respect, to understand the value of caring for others, and to share with others who are in need.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” (1 Cor 13:11)
As children we followed and tried to understand what our parents were teaching us. We saw value but as the passage says, we thought like children and couldn’t fully comprehend the reasoning behind all these lessons.
As an adult, a wife and a mother, I could now see how that formation was so important in helping me be grounded in my identity and equip me to resist the strong influences of the world.
I understood that they were more than just rules from my parents but they did align with my values.
I see my children and how worried I am of how the world is constantly changing, how my children can be influenced by anything and everything, I think of how I can prepare them to face the world. In these thoughts, I am brought back to how I was raised and our family retreats. I can see now how—as extreme as it felt at the time—setting a family vision and having core values formed me as a person.
When my husband and I were dating, we created a vision and a goal for the two of us: to bring each other closer to Christ. Now that we are married with kids our vision and goal has changed in a way to reflect our new state of life. Ultimately, we journey together as a family to heaven, we bring each other to heaven and to Christ and we do that through our actions.
My family mission might not yet be perfectly defined but just like a sapling, my husband and I started planting the seed when we were dating by talking about our vision as a couple and we are growing those roots now so that our children and our marriage will be firmly grounded to withstand the storms that would come our way.
I don’t know what life will look like when my kids are 10, 15, or 22. I can’t control what they will see or hear from the world. But I can give them the tools that will ground them in truth no matter what comes their way.
I can model our family values and a genuine love for Jesus. Right now is where formation starts for them so how I can prepare them to not just stay close to Christ but learn how to take on the world?
Join us for Safe Haven Sunday, a weekend set aside by the Archdiocese of Vancouver and parishes to directly address the harms of sexualized content and pornography in an appropriate way.
