Today is Thursday, November 4, and this is William and Daniel Michael. This is our third podcast episode, talking together about the practical details of a family life in homeschooling. And in our our first episode we we talked a bit about our family schedule, and what the kids do in their studies, Daniel talked about what she does with the kids during the day. And we’ve got a number of responses from Catholic parents who were interested in the in those practical details. And were asking us to get into that kind of stuff. In more detail, details about schedules and what the kids actually do, specifically, in different subjects and studies, what we actually do day to day practically. And we’re going to get into that we’re going to get into all of those details. Because I think that the what’s helpful is for us to actually talk practical and not just spend a lot of time talking about vague general ideas, or saying what we think others should do, but talking specifically about what we do, what we have done and what our experiences have been. And as we started to think about how to get into these practical details, we said really there. It’s not so much that we’ve focused on any specific practical details. But what’s been most important for us through the years is being able to focus on a number of principles that always keep us focused and direct us in all of those practical details. And so we sat here for a little bit, brainstorming, making the list of 12 principles. Well, we just we started making the list of principles that through the years have helped us to get through all of the different challenges of parenting and homeschooling. And as we put a list together, we came up with 12 principles, 12 things that we always go back to as the principles that guide all of the practical details. And I think if we talk about these principles, the practical details will make more sense when we get into the practical details. And the reason why principles are important is because there’s always change in family life. There’s all kinds of things that come and happen and change and all sorts of things out of our control. But the principles always stay the same. The principles always allow us to get back to the center back on task back focused. And they help us through difficult times when there’s a lot of confusion and complexity. The principles are like lights that help us through those confusing times. And so what I’d like to do is to go through tonight, these principles that we have personally followed through the years that have helped us with the practical details of family life, and homeschooling. So I’m going to introduce each one of these principles, and then let Dania talk about the details of it. And we’ll, we’ll try to move through these because like I said, there’s 12 of them. And even if we spent five minutes on each one, it would be an hour long discussion. So we’re gonna move through these and in future talks, we can always dig into individual principles in more detail. And as we talk about the practical details of, of household life, and homeschooling and parenting, you’re going to hear these principles all the time through all of those discussions. So I’d like to just give an overview of them tonight. And that’s what we’re going to talk about. So we’ll title this talk something like principles for parenting or principles for family life. And we’ll simply fly through them in our talk tonight. So the first one that we’ll talk about, and these are in no specific order, we just were brainstorming and listing them as as they came to mind. So we’re just going to go through them in the order that we wrote them down. The first one is based on an old saying that we came across when we were first married, and the saying was duty done his fireside to the sole duty done, his fireside to the soul. So Daniel, why don’t you take a few minutes and explain What this saying means to us and family life and how it’s affected the practical details of our family life. Okay, well we think of a fireside, tonight is the first night of the year. So remember to chilly nights, first night of year we put a fire on. And for our whole family, everybody got together, we’re so excited kids get all the wood in the sticks, and everyone’s so excited for the fire and beyond. Because it just comforting, the whole house is warm, it brings a different atmosphere to house. So fire so many things that we just comfort and it’s at the end of the day of work. And it’s at the end of the day of a long day of work. And it’s comforting for a whole family. So when you think of fireside to the soul, you get this, this image of just comfort and peace for your soul. And what it means is that doing your duty doing the things that are necessary for you in whatever circumstance of life that you’re in, is, just as comfort is to your body at the fire is that’s how it is for your soul. So doing you’re doing our duty, whatever it is me as a wife to my duty is to love my husband, to love my children to be a homemaker. That is fireside to my soul. When I go to bed at night. I know everything is done. If I’ve done those things, everything other things can be done, the house can be messy, other things can be done. But if I’ve done those things, I’m at peace. And so each of us in our family has our own duties. And if we fulfill our duties, and that day, we can go to sleep at night with that type of peace. Yeah, and explain how you know what to what do we see in other families as alternatives to that, you know, like why did explain why that’s saying was significant for us in our life? Can you can you talk about that? Well, what, what we see in other families is there’s always these attempts to try and have vacations, find activities to do find things like family, fun, family, make everybody feel happy. There’s all these efforts to try and make people feel good and make that make, you know, good family memories and things like that. But that that saying duty done as far as sight to the soul, was our commitment as a family that we weren’t going to try to please ourselves with all kinds of artificial activities, all kinds of running around trying to have vacations and things like that. We’re going to, we’re going to make our peace, right our home vacation every day really like a vacation family life was going to be our vacation was going to be a peaceful house. All of our duties done responsible life, go to bed at night with a good conscience. Duty done his fireside to the soul. So that was that was one of the first principles early on when we first started having kids that we committed to and and we’re a family that stays home, our kids, you know, one of the keys to our family’s daily schedule, is that we’re just home. The routine is the same day by day. We’re not running around. We’re not trying to find social activities. We’re not trying to hang out with friends, we’re not trying to go on trips or vacations. We stay put. And we try to have our source of comfort and peace be the fact that our duties are done. And duty done is far aside to the soul was one of the most influential principles for us in getting our family started. The second one, and again, these are in no specific order. We just wrote them down as as we thought about them. The second principle that we practiced through the years that’s been that’s actually proven to be extremely helpful, especially now is to focus on the oldest child. And we always I always told, Dania, that we need to focus on our oldest child. And that was Jonathan growing up. I said, if we focus on the oldest child, everything that we invest in him will trickle down and affect the other kids so day, why don’t you talk about how that principle guided us through the years and how it’s working out now and actually helping us not only with with Jonathan’s influence, but with other older kids as well. Why don’t you talk about what it means to focus on the eldest? Well, ever since the kids were little, you would always just tell me focus on Jonathan, focus on Jonathan and Jonathan will lead the way with the other kids. And as we were raising Jonathan, I focus my attention on him on his on his schooling on his formation on his development. Everything was focused on Him The other kids kind of just followed along with what I was doing with Jonathan. Yes, I had attention on them. Yes, I did things with them. But he was always the focus. And, and that happened. There’s so many times I saw, I saw that blessed. I mean, for instance, like when I was teaching Jonathan to read, Elizabeth sat at the table, she was a year and a half younger than him. And she sat at the table. And she learned to read just by being at the table. Why talk, Jonathan. And that’s what that’s how it worked throughout the whole time, I would focus on Jonathan and the other kids would be in the room listening. And they learned so much of their lessons just through listening to Jonathan. And then since since that’s gotten older, yeah, we had trouble, normal trouble with kids being bad and all of that. But as Jonathan’s gotten older, he’s made a lot of good decisions. And then the pressure has been on the other kids to follow him now, because he’s set this mark. And now they have to reach toward. And so he’s set the way and paved the way as he’s made good choices. As he’s gotten older, they kind of follow suit. And now right now we have seven kids at home. So now my oldest focus on is Mary. And so Mary is the focus, and she now has set the path with the other kids, as I’ve worked with her more than everybody else ever. If she comes to me, I drop everything and work with Mary. And now she and her starting to get zealous and now she’s setting the path for the other kids. So now I have Samuel, Jacob and Joshua seeing her starting to get salads, and that now that’s put pressure on them. And they have started to want to work more, and one that now she’s saying the path for the whole family. She’s the oldest. So I’ve seen them, I’ve seen this really be effective the last 20 years, it just has helped. Yeah, and it’s it’s it’s important to also mention that it’s not just when Jonathan has made good decisions, but also, when Jonathan has made bad decisions, the kids have seen us telling him what to do, warning him of the dangers him not listening, and then going and paying the penalty for him. And so, you know, they’ve seen both good and bad are We’ve always focused and focused on Jonathan, through the years and our relationship to him, as our firstborn son has sort of taught every moral lesson to the younger children as they’ve watched that relationship. Through the years, we’ve always focused on Jonathan, just so you know, Jonathan is now in college. He’s doing great. He’s in an ROTC program, studying to be an officer in the military as tuition is paid, getting good grades in college, living independently, and pressuring his younger brothers and sisters, every time that he talks to them or stops home, pressuring them, to listen to mom and dad do their schoolwork, and take life seriously. So focusing on the eldest, and like, like Daniel said, not just on the oldest, not just on the oldest kid, but also on the oldest kid who’s home, when the adult kids start heading off and getting their lives started continuing to focus on the eldest. And now Mary is is doing great, was there something else you wanted to say? Do I want to say something else, because what I see a lot of mothers do now is the older kids get older, it becomes more difficult to parent them. And I see a lot of mothers neglect, start neglecting the older ones kind of giving up on them, and focusing their attention and delighting in their babies, which is the opposite of what we’re saying to do. Because you babies are easy. And you can start focusing on them, start nursing them more, start devoting more time to this little individual specific care of babies, and leave off the older ones. And it’s tempting to do that, because it’s easier you can make but all you’re hoping is other little one who you have no idea what they’re going to be as they get older, and you leave your focus off the older ones to kind of let them go and just kind of give up on them. The other thing too, is if the older kids become bad, become really bad and evil, you’re gonna have so much evil influence on the younger kids, that you’re never going to control that influence. And that’s why focusing on the eldest is really so important. Because the eldest cannot be allowed to become a terrible influence. On the other kids, they have to see the older the older brother or older sister, they have to see that older brother or sister as a good example. And when that when the older brother or sister does something bad, they have to see the consequences for that and learn. So you’re focusing on the eldest, avoiding that temptation to choose to spend your time with the babies and just ignore the older ones. That It’s been a principal through the years that we’ve always focused on and has always produced good fruit for us. And now, like I’ve said before, we had trouble. You know, some families have trouble with homeschooling, because the kids resist it. And it’s uncomfortable. They get pressure from family, things like that. We had that pressure, when Jonathan and Elizabeth and David were coming up, because they were our first children. We were the only people in our family that homeschool, we had all these, all these criticisms from outside of our home and from inside of our home from the older kids, because they had expectations that they would be discriminated against, because of homeschooling. And what they found, when they went into the workplace, when they went into the military, when they went to college was exactly the opposite. They found that there was no discrimination at all. And they were actually shocked at how well things like a homeschool diploma. And the education that we gave them were received by the military, by colleges, and so on. And now, by focusing on those oldest kids, and having good results with them, we don’t hear a peep from our younger kids about homeschooling, there is never any resistance to homeschooling among our younger kids, it’s just, it’s just taken as normal, everyday life. And it is what it is. And they’ve already seen it works. It worked for John, it worked for Liz, it’s working for Dave. And now it’s just their turn. So that second principle, focusing on the eldest has definitely been a key for us and has been very fruitful through the years. The third principle that we wrote down here was to focus on the precepts of the church, and this one’s probably going to be a little controversial. Focusing on the precepts of the church, and Daniel, why don’t you talk a little bit about what we mean by focusing on the precepts of the church? Well, we don’t mean we might we mean not adding in other rules or things that would burden the kids. The church is actually very near to the priests of the church, it’s actually very, it’s actually very easy. And you know, any, you can kind of feel like you want more you want the church to tell you to do more. And the priests of the church are very simple that they can be kept by, they can be kept by us. And so we just, we don’t add anything extra, we just tell the kids are focused on the precepts of the church. And that’s all we as we asked them, yeah. And so like, if you think through the precepts of the church, the focus is on going to Sunday Mass, going to Mass on holy days of obligation, making confession, that the precept of the church is to make confession once a year. And what we try to do is we try to stay positive. If we make confession, once a year, we fulfilled the precept of the church, and everything beyond that should be treated positively. If we go to Confession three times a year, we’ve gone three times as much as the precepts of the church require us to go, and it should be positive. If we could go more than that, great, it’s positive. And by keeping a focus on the precepts of the church, we make religion positive. It’s not hard for anyone to keep the precepts of the church, it’s not hard for the children, they consider it reasonable to keep the precepts of the church. But once you go beyond that, once you go beyond that, and start making strict devotional practices, for example, we like to pray the Liturgy of the Hours we like we like routine prayer, my wife likes to pray the rosary. I like to study theology and study Sacred Scripture. You know, I talk and think about theology 24 hours a day. That’s my own devotional life. That’s my wife’s own devotional life. And we have, we have Grace’s and experience as Christians that have made us appreciate those things and desire those things. And our children haven’t shared in those experiences they haven’t shared in the lessons that we’ve learned through the years, and they don’t understand why we desire to do certain things we do so even when we pray. One error that we made early on was that we tried to really press devotional activities on the kids and make them participate and things like that. And after a while, we just realized that, that that causes more harm than good. It’s no one’s no one’s requiring those things of the kids. And if we would just focus on the precepts of the church and maintain a positive attitude towards religion and realize that in order for the kids to embrace more devout practices, they have to grow in grace and that’s not something that’s in our control. And we’re going to focus on the things that are in our control. And we’re going to try to keep a positive Spirit in the house with regard to religion. So we’ve always encouraged the kids to do more invited the kids to do more, taught the kids how they can do more. But we’ve learned to not require the kids to do more and leave that for their own choosing. And you can just think about how Jesus taught people Jesus came to teach away of perfection. He came to teach perfection to call men to religious vocations to comment to celibacy, for the kingdom of heaven. But he didn’t demand that of everyone. He invited everyone to perfection. But for those who didn’t choose to follow him in the way of perfection, everything remained positive. It was good for them to take their time and learn and pray and confess their sins, and amend their lives little by little. But at the same time, he taught and demonstrated the way of perfection. And I think that model that Jesus gives us, is continued in the church, the church does the same thing. If you want to learn the way of perfection, you can in the church, but the church doesn’t preach it from the pulpit on Sunday or guilt everyone over it. The church maintains the precepts deals with personal issues in confession and counseling. But if you want more you can get it and I think maintaining that simple focus on the precepts of the church and not overburdening the kids with religious pressures, especially when they don’t have the grace needed for those devotional practices or disciplines. They just don’t appreciate or understand them. And it’s like asking them to make bricks with no straw. So the third principle is focusing on the precepts of the church and trying to stay positive, and make religion, religious practices, voluntary moment, kids, that’s the third principle, the fourth, focusing on what’s in our control, focusing on things that are in our control. And what I mean by that I gave up just so you know, I gave a walk talk that was titled, Why education, why Christian education, should focus on philosophy, and not theology. So if you want to get into this one in detail, I gave a whole walk talk on this topic, but we’ll talk about it just a little bit, focusing on what’s in your control, then you can you talk about that a little bit what it means to focus on what’s in our control as parents, okay, well, we can teach our kids, we can teach our kids virtues. I, for instance, I can read everyday we read the Scripture reading with them, I read Proverbs with them every day. And I can teach them the virtues. But for them to actually do it that requires grace and requires them to have faith from God. That which is his, which is the gift he gives them, requires them to have hope in His promises and requires him to have love. So requires them to be given spiritual virtues actually do these things. And God has to give that to them in their gifts even to desire them. Yeah, even to want them. Yeah. So I can focus, my focus can be on what’s in my control, I can teach them, I can teach them virtue and try to and try to win them over. Like we read Aesop’s Fables every day. So they’re reading, they’re learning about all these virtues and why it’s good to be virtuous. And it’s foolish to be unvirtuous. You know, they see the foolish characters, and they just suffer when they’re being selfish, or, you know, they just, they just always have all these things where they suffer when for not being virtuous. So they can see, it’s illogical to see it’s reasonable to do these things. So that’s the kind of things that we can focus on. But to actually do it. Most of us God has to give them the grace actually, will it and to and to want to do, yeah, so there’s just a lot of things in our children’s lives. There’s a lot of things that are not in our control. And I just want to say that, if you look in the Catechism if you study the virtue of hope, that when when hope is described in the Catechism, it explains that included in the grace of hope is a desire for heaven. And just think about that, if hope is a supernatural virtue, infused into the soul, by God, and in Hope is the desire for heaven. You can’t give a child a desire for heaven, and that’s the foundation of everything in the Christian life is a desire for heaven. Nothing makes sense, without a desire for heaven. And that desire comes in and through the grace of hope that we can’t give the kids that And so there are duties for parents to fulfill. And those are the things that we can focus on we can, we can set a good example, we can have a good routine, we can form good habits, we can discipline and discourage bad habits, we can protect them from harmful behavior. But to go beyond that, they need grace. And also things like we can pray with them. When we pray with them, they can see answered prayers, and that and just seeing prayers be answered, that gives them shows you guys alive, God is working, I can see, you know, you know what I mean, I can see the fruit of this. Yeah. And we’ll talk about that later, when we get into the last, the last of these principles, because that’s going to come back but focusing on what’s in our control, understanding that, that we’re not God, we don’t have we’re not the Holy Spirit, we don’t have the power to cause our children to be born again. Those things are spiritual gifts that God alone can give. And He gives His Spirit and His gifts differently to different people. This is what we learned in Romans chapter nine. We look at people in the Bible, look at Isaac his two sons, Jacob and Esau. Same father, same household, two completely different children. And God says, Jacob, I have loved and Esau I have hated. And St. Paul talks about that in Romans chapter nine. But there’s just things that we can do for our kids. And there are things we can’t do for our kids. And we focus on those things that are in our control focus on fulfilling our duties. So that’s the fourth of these principles. Principle number five, is that marriage is permanent. And parenting is temporary. Marriage is permanent. And parenting is temporary. And just just to get this started, if we just think about our marriage vows, we take marriage vows, till death do us part. marriage relationship is a marriage until death. Parenting is not a relationship unto death. Parenting is a relationship until a child reaches adulthood, and then the child’s free to make his own life choices and start his own adult life. And so then you can you talk a little bit about how this principle that marriage is permanent. And parenting is temporary relates to our dealings with the kids day by day in the house, which is mean simple, and that the house is our house, you know, when the kids are going to leave, and we just remind them of this all the time, like this is moms and dads, this is Dad’s mom’s house, this is not your house, you’re going to be leaving. So as much as the decisions that we make are ours, you know, and the rules are our rules. And you will one day get to have your own household and type your own rules. Almost. We’ll see how that goes. We’ll see. No, that’s That’s simple. Yeah. And this is where I come in a lot as dad, because for me even more, this is my house. And so I’ll have teenage boys who talked back to mom. And, you know, there’s a I’ve talked about this in walk talks. But there’s a scene in The Odyssey where Tillett MCUs yells at his mother, he snaps back at his mother to let me guess is Odysseus his son. And there’s a scene where he snaps back it is mother. And that’s the kind of thing that happens often in the house, when teenage boys are living with their mother. All of a sudden, you’ve got these young men who are growing, and they’re going to become independent heads of households, they’re going to become independent men who make their own rules and run their own houses. And they’re living with a woman. And they start to develop this independent spirit as they get into their teenage years. And it’s a good thing. And that’s why I brought up thalamic is because in the in the Odyssey in the scene where Tila MCUs snaps at his mother and tells her to be quiet. Everyone looks on and it’s an impressive scene, because it’s a sign that delimit Gus is becoming a man and taking responsibility for the household while his father’s away. And so that kind of that kind of, you know, pushback from boys is just part of becoming men. And what I found through the years is that it’s actually very reasonable. Once I explained to the boys that this is my house, and that they may not agree with me about things that I do, they often don’t understand why I do the things that I do. And that that’s irrelevant. because this is my house, and they’re obliged to keep the rules of my house until they’re adults, and they become independent. And then when they’re independent, they’re going to be allowed to have their own house, their own family, their own rules. And that’s the appropriate time for that, that this is not the appropriate time for that this is not the time for you to pretend you’re an independent man, because you’re not, you’re still living in my house, eating my food, dependent on me for for provision, you’re not an independent man. And you need to acknowledge that and be respectful in my house. And I find the boys have no problem understanding that. And, and seeing that, there’s going to be a time for them to have their own way. And the other thing that I emphasize is, their opinions and their ideas, they’re going to pay for with their own money. And that’s going to affect what ends up actually being their opinion, or what they do, because they’re going to have to pay for it. And they’re going to learn, there’s a reason we don’t do those things. But that’s part of growing up. Marriage is permanent. This is our house, husband and wife, we’re going to be here, when we’re 60 years old, the children are not going to be here, just like I’m not in my parents house, just like you’re not in your parents house, the kids are not going to be here, this is our house. And we focus on that principle that marriage is permanent. And this parenting relationship with our kids is temporary, not that our parenting relationship doesn’t continue. But it changes when they become adults. So that’s the fifth of these principles. The sixth principle that that really is, I think, far more important than people realize is the importance of health and fitness, the importance of health and fitness. So why don’t you talk a little bit about the role that health and fitness play in the life of our kids and how it affects all other aspects of family life and behavior for them. Okay, well, we can start with food, I mean, food we’re very, we live a pretty temperate life. We usually two meals a day, maybe one meal a day sometimes. And my kids usually very simple we have a lot of just simple food. And so that’s what our kids are, our kids are not eating junk all the time. It’s usually two meals, we don’t eat outside of the meal time. And it’s it’s, we just don’t eat a lot of food, you know? So that’s one thing. And then second simple food and what simple foods simple. We don’t we do it simple. Yeah, if you do a lot of just focus on bread or potatoes or rice or and then just something to go with that. So it’s a simple food and it’s not a lot of food. And we don’t eat outside of mealtimes very rarely. And the only time I really have any kind of desserts or anything fancy are for birthdays and holidays and you know who’s very simple. So they’re used to that life. And anytime anything. Anytime we have a special holiday or a birthday or something comes up it’s very special to them. So we don’t get a lot. They don’t have a lot of sweets and things like that. And then fitness every day. I mean every day we encourage them to run so after school, they usually just run do the exercise a play games say they just run for about two hours a day, all of them. So they’re always are. Well the younger wines outside. Yeah, so they’re outside. And we live in the country. So it’s healthy. There’s a pond, there’s a stream, but they spend a couple hours a day just running and yeah, two hours a day. Yeah, that sounds that’s on school days when if we have extra time off they’ll know they’ll have outside workdays so it could be raking leaves. It could be cleaning them barn cleaning grandma grandpa’s barn, it could be, you know, all kinds of stuff that they do outside. So they’re always they’re always physical, they’re always, you know, always running, always running climbing. When they get older, they have their job, or older kids wanting to have a job at an organic greenhouse around the block or working for another neighbor. I saw Mel but it’s always just physical, physical work, you know, so they’re, they’re just fit. And when and when they’re in the house, when they’re in the house, they’re calm because they get all their physical energy out in their work and in their play. And we provide lots of time for that. They’re not looking to roughhouse in the house or bang around. People ask us at church how the kids are also calm. And one of the reasons is they just they like to be able to sit down and relax because they they work hard and there. They live a strenuous life with a lot of physical activity and exercise. And when it’s time to sit down. They don’t mind sitting down because they’re tired, and they got all their energy out, or they know they’re going to get it out at recess time. And they’ve always, they’ve always been active and physically fit and strong, they camp out during the summer. There, we make them play outdoors, at least two hours a day, they’re outside, all around year round through all the seasons, learning outdoor skills, fishing, shooting guns, building stuff with whatever supplies they can find. We just encourage them to be very physically active and to live a light and temperate life so that they have they have both a temperate diet and a very physically active daily routine. Well, one of the benefits we have is that we live out in the country. We are farm and so that’s there’s always stuff to do, whether it’s taking care of animals or gathering manure or helping get rid of gardens ready or weeding. So definitely living on the farm. Living in a country on a small family farm with kids is very helpful. If you’re if you’re interested in that topic. I did a walk talk titled where should we live, and I talk about the benefits of country life. And I also talk about if I were to live in a suburb, how I would have the boys and have the kids live if we lived in a suburb or if we lived in a city. So the same benefits can be had in other places. But out in the country. It’s just different. Because the kids can just rough house during their play time or work time. They learn to be tough, they get injured, they learn to deal with injuries, they you know, military life is no problem. One of the first things we moved down here years ago, we always lived in apartment complexes for we came down to the country. And I remember the first thing when the kids first got the car, they all got out and they ran and they just started yelling. We had three or four little ones they started yelling and I remember my first reaction was tell him be quiet. Because we’re always under this tight little apartment complex. And I remember you telling me Dania, why are you trying to be quiet? There’s nobody here. And that was just a first that was a big thing for me. Like the kids can really just yell and run and screaming, no, no one’s gonna be affected by it, no one’s bothered by it. And they do that that’s how they’re they live it why sound they run and scream they love country life to even even the older ones like Jonathan is in Charlotte in the city at college. And you know, he looks forward to the day where you can finish school and finish his career work and settle back down country life so the key there is health and fitness. And even with the kids like when they get older, you know, I bought the kids weightlifting equipment, exercise equipment, I exercise we try to keep set a good example for the kids was staying active and and fitness has always taken all of that energy out of them and put it to good use so that it doesn’t distract church life, school life. Other home activities and things like that, giving them a way to be healthy and fit even a simple thing that people can do in a summer but they have a basketball on the outside. They just spend our lives with lifting weights just running as teenagers. Yeah, right. Yeah, the teenagers, I’ll run down the run to military promotes, are you thinking about military fitness, it’s push ups, sit ups, running pull ups, you know, the kids, that’s what they do. So just health and fitness, you have to get that physical energy out, you have to make the kids temperate and courageous. And that comes through play and work and injuries and overcoming challenges and things like that, and focusing on health and fitness every single day, at least two hours, they have plenty of physical exercise. So that’s the sixth principle. The seventh principle, again relates to that, and it’s just the importance of focusing on our setting a good example. You know, one of the principles that I that I always tell Dania, Daniel will come to me complaining about a kid doing something bad or there’s some problem. And what I always do, even to a fault probably at times, and we might argue about this a little bit as is I’ll just ask what we’re doing. that’s causing the problem, what we’re doing as parents, and I’ll tell Danya like, what do you what do you expect? You know, look at what we did here. We didn’t keep the morning schedule. Things were screwy here. We’ve had a couple of wacky days. What do you expect, like what do you expect the kids to do? And this goes back also to focusing on what’s in our control? If we’re not doing everything that we’re supposed to be doing? How can we ask the kids to do what they’re supposed to be doing. And so, you know, a lot of these principles relate to one another and in. But this setting a good example, setting a good example in, in doing the things that we tell our kids are important. So for example, my kids see me studying all day and all night, they see me working, they see the fruit of my work, they see the focus of my life. If I turn around and yell at my kids to spend more time studying, that’s coming from a guy that they know is studying. Same thing with my wife, my wife, she’s, she’s studying, she’s working, she’s helping me. She’s busy, she’s getting a meal ready, she’s helping me and off with office work. She’s helping the kids with their studies. She’s doing her job and setting a good example. When she turns around to tell a kid to get to work. He’s being told to get to work by a woman who’s working harder than he is, why don’t you tell? Talk a little bit about a times that you’ve been able to get on the kids because you’re you work harder than they do as teenage boys, you talked about that? Are you talking about like when boys were living here? Yeah, you can talk about that, oh, there was some times, it was just a couple times when we’d be working out in the garden or working on working in the farm to a farm work, and I’d be pregnant or things like that. And we’d all be working, when you’re, when you have garden work to do a farm work today, you just have to get done doesn’t matter what your state is, you have to just get it done. And so we’d be doing garden work, and boys would be teenage boys would be complaining. And I’d be sitting next to them when they were goofing around and complaining. And I’d be sitting next to the how, and I say, Hey, look at me, I’m praying, and I’m working, I’m doing more than you’re doing, you know, and they How come you with all their physically strong bodies teenager kid who has come up with me. And so just things like that, you just have to be tough and, and be a good example to them. Even if it’s even if it’s difficult, or even if you know you have youth, they can see that you’re undergoing difficulties. And it’s and they’re, they should be stronger and more physically able to do this work than you. And we cannot ask the kids to do things that you don’t do. You cannot tell the kids that things are important that that they see are not important in your life, they see your schedule, they see what you do at your free time. They see how you eat, they see how you sleep, they see how you work, they see how you study how you pray, they see everything that you do. And when you turn around, if you try to tell the kids to do something that you don’t do, not only is it hopeless, because they’re you know, they’re not going to listen to you unless they’re saints. But you’re revealing to them just how dishonest your character is, and permanently harming that relationship. And even comes times when you have to sometimes you don’t get a lot of sleep as a mother, sometimes you’re really tired. And you’re really tempted to just like take a day off of school and just like rest. And you know, you can’t you just got to keep going. You know, once in a while you do once in a while you just can’t keep going. But the biggest thing is just to even if you’re tired, just keep going and be a good example to them to work through things and to keep working, you know, maybe something you need to do go take a walk together, you know, walk around the room as you’re studying or something like that. But you have to keep pushing through if you want if you want them to be those kind of people that push through difficulties, then you have to do it yourself. Yeah. And that also includes confessing your sins to the kids. Yeah, that’s, that’s one of the most I know, one of the most influential things in my life with the kids has been times where I’ve, I’ve just, I snapped at them, or I talk nasty to them or I said something nasty, and they went to bed and I set up feeling terrible about it. I had to confess and so even not just setting an example of doing everything, right, but also setting an example of how to how to handle relationships when you do something wrong. Even as a wife, like as a wife, if I say if I snap at my husband or say anything like that to you, you know, and I’m I you know the kids can see it you know, the kids see, like, they know mom was wrong. You know, I have to tell you that I’m sorry. But then also tell them you know, that was that was I was a real jerk. Yeah. And in our society where the mothers are just, you know, totally disrespectful to the husbands constantly arguing and fighting. And then those parents turn around or those mothers turn around and ask kids to obey. It’s just It’s just ridiculous. And the kids know that the kids know it’s a joke the kids know if this is religion than religion is a joke. No, I even feel like that. If I feel like I’m being a bad wife, you know, to go then to the room and go yell at them to go obey me. I can feel myself I’m being oh my goodness, I’m being a hypocrite. And usually I can like, either have to be quiet and just shut up and bear with what they’re doing or I have to make up video and you have to tell you I’m sorry, kids. I told Dad, I’m sorry for that I was a jerk. Okay, now you need to listen to me. Yeah, so good example. Good example. You know, you see parents, parents love to play this act, that they’re strict. And they’re like, on top of these little kids, and they’re yelling at them about all these little details yelling at them to do this, do that too. And then you look at Dad and dad’s like, undisciplined, lazy, idle. But he’s pretending like he’s, he’s gonna pretend he’s a serious father by yelling at the kids and being down the kids throats all day long. And mothers do the same thing. Just always yelling at the kids. nitpicking every detail. And the mother herself is disorganized, and slothful, and, you know, doing whatever she wants, and the kids, the kids. They’re rational creatures they see right through that hypocrisy. And that’s the kind of stuff most importantly, that hypocrisy is what causes us to lose respect for their parents. And that’s, that’s the big issue. When kids lose respect for their parents. It’s game over for those families. So being a good example, not just a striving to do everything, right. Because Jesus said, be perfect. That’s the standard. Not just striving to do everything right positively, but also, when you’re doing what’s wrong, being a good example of taking the necessary steps to fix and acknowledge those things to confess those things. So that your kids can say, alright, you know what, Dad’s screwed up. But he owned up to it, and confessed it. And I know, when I’ve confessed my sins to my kids, I can see in them a sense of relief. Like, Dad loves me, Dad can’t go to sleep if he does something bad to me. And he came in and made that right. And I know that dad loves me. So that kind of stuff. setting a good example, before you ask the kid to do something. Ask yourself, if you’re doing that thing, because if you are and the kid can see, it’s serious, it’ll make it much easier for that kid to follow. You just think about how Jesus moved people was to go into town and say to the people, follow me. He didn’t say you need to do this, and you need to go do this. And you need to do that. And you Jesus could say, Follow me. And that’s the way that you lead children to do what they should do. So setting a good example number eight, household order, and we’ve talked about this a little bit household order. When my wife and I got married. I was very serious about being a bad dad who was gonna have my household in order. Daniel, why don’t you tell this is a funny and kind of embarrassing story. But why don’t you tell story about my effort to get our household in order from from the beginning. With my? Well, you’re a little obsessed so well, our kids, Jonathan was strictly scheduled from the day he was born pretty much I mean, two year old his two year old days were scheduled from the time he got up till I went to bed every hour what we were doing. So he had an order, in orderly of he had an orderly day from his, from the time he was born. But when we were first married, you had made a family constitution for us of how we were going to live. I don’t even know if we were married yet, but you had written it up for me. And it was our it was our Constitution, our where to live. And I think I still have it. And then you but all throughout, all throughout our early days, you’re always we’re making constitution or different things, resolutions, things, things we’re gonna work on and change. And as a wife, sometimes it was hard and I had to, but I had I wanted to obey, I wanted to be a good wife. So I usually usually tried to go along as much as I could, but you know, and so. So you were always you always were set that the husband is ahead, and you had all your responsibilities to do as a husband and I was going and I was to obey. And then our children would obey what obey both of us and that’s just how it’s always been said, and it sounds silly. Yeah, those things sound silly. But, you know, the reason why I took it so seriously was because I was studying Xenophon, and I was studying the ancient Greek philosophers. They took household management seriously My household management is government. It’s the it’s like the founding organizational unit of society. And it’s not so much that I think that I took it too seriously, I think that men take it. Don’t take it seriously enough that that how much how much work, how much planning and organization, it really takes to establish a household, an orderly household where there’s structure, there’s social order, there’s gender roles, there’s, you know, responsibilities for everyone, everyone’s accountable, and it’s a sustainable order, it’s a responsible order, no, I have to work, I don’t have time to nitpick over what we’re having for meals, or what’s going on, I have to work. That’s my primary responsibility. And for me to be able to have a household where my will, as the head of the household is known and enforced. When I’m not directly involved all the time, that’s very difficult to achieve. And there has to be order established, you know, like, like a government. And it’s got to be, it can’t just be like occasional conversations and things like that are always putting out fires, constantly fighting with everybody. It’s got to be set down almost as a law. And we used to make up, we used to make up schedules, we used to make a list of procedures for how we were going to do things. So P SOPs, standard operating procedures, because you can joke about it and laugh about it. But what’s the alternative to not have anybody know what to do, to not have anybody know? How we’re going to do these things. And so, you know, we work together early in our marriage, to establish things like family schedule to establish SOPs for how things get done, everything from grocery shopping to the household routine, and having household order, establishing household order, because it’s artificial, and partly artificial, partly natural, but partly artificial, establishing that order when the kids are young, so they grow up, and they know it. And it’s just how life works. And you know, now 22 years into marriage, our kids know, the household order. But in the beginning, there was no household order. It had to be established, and cultivated and taught and maintained. And that’s hard work. And that’s that’s work that fathers have to do to establish household order. Next, the ninth principle, and we’re closing in on an hour here. So we’ll keep chugging along, we’re doing pretty good. We’ve got through eight in 15 minutes. The ninth one, one that I emphasize with the kids all the time is that school is children’s full time work are a full time job. We tell the children everyday school is your full time job. And I’m going to talk about this a little because I have seven sons. And I believe that boys should work hard in their schools. And I really lament how few boys there are, who takes studies seriously. And one of the errors that I see that I get on my kids about all the time is that boys think that school is not that important, and they want to work. They’ll say, you know, especially my boys, my boys are hard working good looking, rough, and healthy boys and our neighbors are eager to employ my sons for work. And my sons love this idea of getting out of school to go work and we’re talking serious jobs where they’re paid well. For me, in my opinion, that’s an excuse to get out of your real work, which is to study and it’s something I learned I actually learned this when I was out at Clear Creek Abbey, because the abbot gave me a commentary on the rule of Saint Benedict. And that explained that when St. Benedict taught aura at labora, pray and work study was included in that work. But study was only acceptable when it was pursued as diligently as manual labor. So study is labor. And this is something I always try to emphasize with my students that study is physical, intellectual work. You don’t sit on a couch. You know, drinking an iced tea studying study is physical work. And when you’re looking at old school houses and old school masters, boys were meant to work work in school. And that’s that’s something that in our culture we’ve lost school today is for sissies. The boys play sports and laugh about their bad grades. While the girls are on the honor roll. Most of the most of the top students, I deal with the classical liberal arts academy, our girls, I don’t see many high achieving boys in the classical liberal arts academy. And we have to stress with our children, that their full time job as children is to study not not to go find part time jobs and all this junk that kids do their full time job is to study. And I don’t want to hear a boy tell me that he’s a hard worker, when He doesn’t study, a boy who’s a good student will also be a good worker. But a boy who doesn’t want to be a good student, he also won’t work because school is just work. And school is your full time job. And that’s what we teach our children. So when you ask, how many hours a day should the Children’s Study, school is their full time job. That’s what they should do. They need to study as if study is work. And when you look at the classical Catholic curriculum, you’re not going to make progress. Unless you work like it’s a full time job. I’ve told our college kids, I have to tell them this, it’s called full time school for a reason. They call it full time studies, you’re called a full time student for a reason. Because to accomplish the objectives of your studies, you need to devote full time effort to it. So another principle that we’ve emphasized is that school is your full time job, especially when you’re a minor. Okay. The next one is one that you can talk about day. The 10th principle little by little bit by bit, little by little bit by bit, why don’t you talk about that principle? Well, it’s always I’ve always said we’re the kids little by little bit by bit, that’s how work gets done. And so it’s always just kind of a process like every day, we’re going to work and it’s we may not get the entire lesson dynamite, y’all get a ton done. But, but it’s the scope of thing, it’s the big picture, that over years and years and years, this little bit that they do every day is going to be is going to be great. It’s going to be the whole curriculum is gonna get done with it just or, or as much as they can get done. But it’s gonna be not by big heroic effort today, which is which isn’t sustainable, there’s no way you can never happens like that. But if we just do a little bit every day, they give me you know, they give me a good amount of work every day. Just it’s just we just persevere. And that’s how they actually make make it through that. Yeah, when we when we talk to homeschool families who are struggling, it’s almost always because the mother is breaking a bunch of these principles. You know, she’s not there. She’s asking things of the kids that are not realistic. She’s putting pressure on them that is simply not sustainable. She’s asking them to do things that are not in her control. She’s asking she she’s has a vision of what the kids studies should look like, even though she’s never done it herself. And they’re simply trying to get a lot done and thinking that that’s how you make achievement. By getting a lot done. Today, we’re going to, you know, it’s back to school, we’re going to organize the school room, we’re going to get everything organized. We’re going to have new planners, new, this new that new that back to school, we’re serious this year. And in six weeks, it’s back to chaos. And the reason why is because their expectation and plans are not sustainable. Because the way that real achievement gets made, is little by little bit by bit multiplied by a long time. Why is consistency to just being that this is all with us. It takes a lot of contentment for mom, because sometimes we get stir crazy as ladies and we want to go do stuff we want to go go on a trip, go, let’s go to the park. Let’s go do this, go through this. And as mom, you really have to settle your soul. You really, really need to pray and calm yourself down to be content in your house. Be content with your husband and your children right where you are. And stop wanting to go do stuff stop wanting to think you need to go see everybody and do things and be content, be home and be simple. And just set yourself at Little by little bit by bit. That’s how work gets done. And you’re just going to do this over a long course of time. Just think about mA Yeah, I think about monks and nuns That’s That’s how their life works. One of the reasons why when people visit monasteries or convents, they feel like they’re going to go crazy, because it’s just so boring. It’s the same routine, every single day, every single day. It’s the same routine. And yet, that’s how, throughout history, monks and nuns have accomplished so many extraordinary things, because they just do it little by little bit by bit over long periods of time. And that goes back also to the first principle, which is duty done as far aside to the soul. That’s when you talk about that contentment, being content to stay put, and keep things calm. Let the kids make progress today, keep things consistent. Don’t Don’t look for variety, don’t constantly change the schedule. Little by little bit by bit, multiplied by many, many days, is how things get done. And that takes the stress off. It makes expectations realistic, keeps everything positive. But the challenge there is the repetition. Yeah, and just try and do it every day. Like don’t Don’t, don’t don’t take days, you don’t need days off. You don’t you just need, you seem to keep doing the same thing. I mean, you may feel bored, you may feel like it’s not very exciting. But you know, that’s how you will make progress as children make progress. That’s how your house become orderly and just just be content, you know, just learn to ask God to help you be content. Yeah, the kids need you. But one thing you know, one thing we say Danya is I say you need to be the pendulum. In the house, you need to be the pendulum, you need to be that the source of everyday order, I may have to, you know, my work life may be crazy. One day, I may have tons of work be up working overnight, one day, my life, I can sort of absorb all the craziness. And then your role is to be boring, your role is to be the pendulum that gives the kids the consistency and the order and the routine that allows them to get that and that’s that’s hard for I mean, that takes real discipline and self sacrifice, to just say, you know, I have to be the one that kind of maintains this boring routine for the benefit of the kids long term studies. Yeah. And this may be you may have to tell other mothers, no, we can’t have all these outings. We can’t do all these things. Because you know what I have, this is more important. I have to be home with the kids. I have to have this consistency in their life every day, and just homeschool. We’re homeschooling. We’re not a normal family. This isn’t a day off. This isn’t a play day. We’re a homeschooling family we have, we have studies to do. And so little by little bit by bit, having realistic expectations, not stressing out making every day miserable. But realizing that the real key is to multiply the daily achievement by many many days upon is when you take a lot of days off to go do things. Now when you do come back to school. You’re like oh my goodness, I have to do four days worth of work today. Yeah, and then yes, how schools following the school calendar, taking breaks or holidays and taking summer vacation taking three months off a homeschool because that the homeschool publisher is publishing material just for September to June. Why in the world is a homeschool family following the public school calendar makes no sense and so, little by little bit by bit multiplied by many routine days is how real achievement gets done. The next principle, something that we came across when we were first married, we found an old book. Who was it? Comment? No Cocker Cocker was Cockers morals. Cockers morals was a book full of short little proverbs moral sayings. And one of the moral sayings was how many by wise management of time, from low degrees have mounted to Sublime. How many by wise management of time, from low degrees have mounted to Sublime. And when we were married, to put it in context, we were dirt poor, we had nothing. We got married, we had an apartment. We were we were studying at Rutgers University. My wife was finishing up a little before me because I had changed majors and put myself back a couple of years. But she was finishing up and she was going to start teaching at a Christian Elementary School. And when we got married, we had no idea how we were going to pay our rent. We had no idea. I think what was it 675 A month. We had no idea how we were going to manage to pay that rent. We had no money God always provided for us and things you know I always worked out, but we had no money. And even when I was teaching when when we started to have children, and I was, I was the only one making any money and I was just a Christian school teacher. We were barely making any money. But what we had was time. And so even though we didn’t have a lot of money, between the two of us, we had time. And that that’s saying from Cockers, morals, how many by wise management of time, from low degrees have mounted to Sublime. And so, what we did have time, we made good use of and, you know, with homeschooling, you know, there are a lot of Christian families, young Christian couples getting started in life who are in exactly the same place we were, they don’t have much money. They have no idea what they’re going to do 10 years from now. And yet, you know, they get married. And the next thing they know, they’re expecting a baby. And life just starts getting busy and things go. And what what young couples have to realize is that it’s not so much that you need more money, you may have enough money to do everything that needs to be done. But the resource that you really need to be careful with is time. And that principle, how many by wise management of time, from low degrees have mounted to Sublime. That’s another principle. Not as much today because our life and routine is pretty much well established now at this point in our life. But when we were young, just getting started with babies in the house, no money career is just getting started figuring out what we were going to do. Time management was the key. And you know, one thing I can say that we did well, is that we manage our time well between ages 20 and 30. And, you know, today we reap the benefits of some of those decisions. But that principle, anything else you want to say about that? For another principle? That was another one? Well, then another principle that oh, we always talked about is nothing human? is foreign to me. Yeah. Okay, we’ll make that 13. That’s, that’s pretty deep philosophy. So we’ll save that for last. All right, the next the next principle. And this is, this is another one that that Christian parents Catholic parents don’t necessarily want to think about. But I think it’s a real source of peace. And it’s really helpful in just parenting through the years, and it’s constantly meditating on a couple passages of scripture that we need when things are not going well. So meditate, meditations on a few passages of Scripture to actually that are important when things are not going well. The first one is to meditate on Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son. And we’ll get into it in a little bit. To meditate on the parable of the prodigal son, especially when the kids are being bad. When the kids are being bad, you’re going to go through times in the kids lives where it’s just dark. And we went through these times, especially when our kids got into their early teens, our eldest kids, in their early teens, there were some dark days. And we could have easily gotten discouraged. And there are times when we did get discouraged. But meditating on the parable of the prodigal son always pulled me out of it, and always encouraged me and kept me going. And we’ll talk about that a little bit. And then the other one. As parents, we say that our goal in parenting is that we want to raise our kids to love God. We want our kids to love God, I would sacrifice anything for my kids to love God. And yet, when we think about what Jesus teaches, he says, Those who are forgiven much love much. Those who are forgiven much, love much. And if we if we put that into its context, those who sinned much are those who are forgiven much. And those who are forgiven much, or those who love much, and so the love of God has a certain relationship to our sinfulness. And when we have kids, we have this dream, that we’re going to keep them from ever sinning. They’re never going to sin. We’re going to watch over them 24 hours a day, and never let them sin like they’re like their souls or these you know, pure Crystal clean pools of water that we’re going to keep clean forever. And when they when they begin to do evil things and they begin to sin. Sometimes we have, we just don’t know what to do with it, it surely bring them to confession, but they’re still doing bad things and choosing bad things. And we feel like we’re losing them because they’re making bad decisions. And some of these can be really bad decisions. But then when we when we think about what Jesus says, when he says, Those who are forgiven much love much, you realize that this is just part of the Christian life. It’s just how it works. And the kids have to be evangelized, they have to be taught that God is merciful, that God is forgiving. And this is one of the things that the church does extremely well, that the church doesn’t get enough credit for, is really communicating to the kids in their dark days. God’s mercy. And we often criticize the church for being too soft and so soft. We wish sometimes that, that the priest would yell at the kids or, or, you know, get strict with things but, but that may be our own error, because the church always airs on the side of mercy. And that’s it that’s very important in the kids lives. And in those dark times, in the dark times, meditating on the parable of the prodigal son, just to quickly go over the story. We have a father who has two sons, one of his sons is good. One of his sons is bad. And that right there is significant. Good Father, good son, bad son, same house, good son, bad son, same father, his son, his wicked, asks for his inheritance so that he can pack up and leave, takes half of his father’s possessions, which is his inheritance, leaves the house and blows it all. On immorality, that’s the prodigal son loses everything, and ends up in the street, me, he’s like the modern day junkie, left in the street, lost everything we’re talking prostitutes. You know, today, it would be drugs, it would be you know, who knows what that prodigal son is sitting in the depth of his life in the lowest darkest place. And what saves him his the memory, of the goodness of his father. He remembers how good his father’s household was. And the goodness of his father inspires him to get up and go back home. And what it teaches us is that no, no matter how badly any of our children go, go astray, or fall away into sin. The life that we live with them when they’re home, is what they’re going to remember when they fall away. And we have to ask ourselves, is that memory of life at home? Good memory, or bad memory? Because you can imagine what would happen to the prodigal son if he fell away, and his mind was filled with bad memories of home? Want to come back? Yeah. So when our kids are struggling, or even before our kids struggle, we have to realize that the life that we provide for them, the relationships that we develop with them, the experiences that they have in our homes, may be what saved them in their darkest times in life. And we hear so many stories about suicide and drugs and all these kinds of things. And you have to wonder how many of those kids when they fell into the gutter just had nothing to sink back on? Nothing to turn to, you know, no, no good memory, no thought of going back home and that, that thought of having one of my kids fall into sin, which I can’t control. That’s not my concern, because I can’t control that. But what I do have the opportunity to control is what exists in that kid’s mind and heart in that moment, when he’s in the gutter that can bring him back and so always focusing on The story of the prodigal son that that Jesus tells us that story of the son returning home. And he says, the father in that story is a symbol of God. And the son in that story, the prodigal son in that story is a symbol of us. And that’s just normal. It’s a part of life. And, you know, God forbid, it happened to any of our kids. I mean, I don’t, I don’t obviously don’t want that to happen. But we have to realize that it may happen. And it may just be the means by which they’re led to a strong, saving faith that I would pay anything for. And if that’s the route that it takes, for the kids to love God and to be faithful, I would be happy 1000 times to go through that. But the parable of the prodigal son, and seeing his return and what, what prompts him to return home, and realizing that’s in our control. And then Jesus is teaching that those who are he doesn’t say those who never sin, love God. He says, Those who are forgiven much love much. And so our kids are going to sin. And we have to teach, we have to evangelize them, and teach them that Christ came into the world to save sinners. And they have to learn through experiencing all of the times that they fall and sin and receive good things from Christian people. They do bad things, and our kids have done bad things. They do bad things, and they’re met with forgiveness. And over time, they’re going to learn that their parents, the Christians are good. And they’re going to love us because of that, always present readiness to forgive. Because the world is not going to treat them like that. And they learned that the hard way real quick, when they get into adult life. So understanding that sin is normal in the Christian life, the church provides remedy for sin. And understanding that our kids need to be taught that when they sin, they simply need to confess their sins and amend their life, that God is merciful, the church’s merciful, were merciful. And we just want them to be happy. And maintaining that attitude. That was the 12th principle that meditating on the prodigal son. And the idea that those who are forgiven much love much helped me in those times when our kids were struggling. And it got it got discouraging to just be patient, and just keep working. And those times came and went, you know, lastly, the last principle you brought up that nothing human is foreign. To me, this is an old philosophical, saying, and I forget who said it, I’d have to look it up. But it was one that I started talking about. When I was studying in college, nothing, nothing human is foreign to me. And that’s just really just a principle of being able to figure things out, you know, realizing that anything that we face is human, it’s normal. And there’s a solution for it. And it likely has already been handled in history. And most of the time when we face a difficult issue, we just have to know where to look, to get counsel and to figure out what to do. Because nothing that we face is new. Oh, this helped me this, that principle you taught me helped in the beginning of our marriage, when we didn’t have much money. And like you said, we had lots of time. And I needed to learn how to become a housewife and feed my family and called my family, but not having a lot of money by having time. So I had to look I looked at all kinds of old books, it was Google Books were started coming around, and I went to the library, and lots of good libraries back when we lived in Rutgers and up there. And so I would go to the library, I try to find historic books, but housekeeping and how women managed their homes and how women managed their kitchens and, and that praise Well, nothing human is foreign to me. I said, Okay, these women have done this. This has been women have been much harder circumstances than I am. But women have done this, they’ve know how to do these things. And these answers must be out there. And I would search all those old historic books to try to find how people did it. And because I had all the time to do that at the time, you know, and I found that I learned how to make bread. I learned how to make some I learned how to sew I learned how to crochet I learned and different things like that, that that were that provided some of the needs that we had during those times when money wasn’t there, you know? Yeah, that’s another another good thought that that comes out of that is just that. And when we’ve had to do this at different times, we’ve had to make we’ve had to make risky Christian decisions, where we had to step out of the path that everyone else is on and take a route, that we had no idea what to do. And when we took it, we found that there are Christians who already lived that life and already did all those things. And, you know, just because it’s a, it’s a route that we had to take that was unpopular. It’s a route that Christians have taken before. And, you know, for the sake of serving God, for the sake of fulfilling our own duties in life. We can’t just keep walking with everyone else all the time. And we can’t look like everyone else. We can’t do everything like everyone else, we can’t have everything that everyone else has, there are times where the decisions that we have to make come with consequences. And we have to be willing to learn to live differently, take a step in a direction that our families never went in, that we’ve never been in. And we have to learn to do those things. And we have to realize that those those moments in our leisure, we have to step out of that path and do something different. What’s different in our society is not necessarily different historically. And when we when we have had to take those steps, we found Christians, they’re able to teach us not necessarily living today, but we found Christians there who had to make the same decisions and take the same side routes for the sake of good conscience. And we’ve we’ve realized that there’s always somebody who’s done it before. And you can find help, and you can find advice and find instruction, no matter what weirdness, you have to go through. And stuff like that comes up all through our lives as parents. So that’s it. We ended up with 13 principles, things that have been really influential in our life as parents in our life is homeschooling parents 13 principles. As I said, there’s no order to those to that list. As we went through it. We just brainstormed and came up with a list. It’s a lot of information read an hour and 22 minutes right now. So it’s a it’s a long talk. But I think that going through these principles will help us as we continue to move into the practical details. When we when we talk about practical things that we’ve done or that we do, I think that you’ll understand more clearly the thinking behind them, the principles behind them. And you’ll see that sometimes things may seem crazy, but they’re really not crazy. They’re principled. And there is a there’s a thought process behind them. But they’re certainly different. And so as we get into practical details, we’ll start in our next talk to start really getting into the details of homeschooling. And the reason why I say we’ll get into homeschooling is because I know, we’ve already been asked several times to get into the practical details of what the kids study and do and how their studies are managed. And what we’ll get into those details. But I wanted to go through the principles First to kind of provide some, some sense of the reasoning behind things. Another topic that I’d like to take up, my wife has had 10 children, three of them, born at home, taking care of 10 children, and I can say as a husband and father with 10 children, that in 22 years with 10 children, I have never had to take care of a baby. The babies were always cared for. I was always free just to work. And there’s a lot of there’s a lot of philosophy and principles and practices that my wife learned and followed through the years that we studied together at times through the years to figure out how to manage things and we’re going to also spend some time talking about things like that, like how my wife managed babies through the years how she she handled pregnancies, deliveries, nursing, scheduling babies, getting babies, trained to participate quickly into our family routine, things like that. So a lot of practical parenting stuff, but also some practical homeschool stuff. So I hope this is a helpful overview of some principles. I’d like to know from you, if there are any principles that you’d like to suggest and add to this list principles that you’ve already found helpful if you’re a young, a young family or things you’ve been taught by older, wiser Christians who’ve given you good advice, or if you’re an older experienced parent, you probably share some of these principles, but you might have others I’d love to hear what those principles are. And maybe we can collect a list of all of these principles that we’ve, we’ve focused on and learned and and have been helped by through the years. So I hope that’s helpful. If you have any questions or would like to talk about anything in more detail, feel free to contact us. Our email address is mail at classical liberal arts.com You can comment on the YouTube videos if you’re following this on YouTube, but we’re easy to get in touch with email us, contact us on the Academy website. We hope that’s helpful. God bless your families.
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