Websites and Podcasts
Here are a few resources worth checking out for assistance and topics in parenting.
Messy Family Project
The Messy Family Project was started by Mike and Alicia Hernon as a podcast in 2015 discussing issues with families from their own experiences raising children.
The Messy Family Project has downloadable guides on Discipline, Siblings, Technology, and Teamwork.
Catholic Sprouts
Saints Alive
Saints Alive is a podcast that brings the stories of the saints to life with professional voice actors and directors. Listen to monthly episodes of saints, Eucharistic miracles, and more.
Recommended Books
The following are all books recommended by Fr. Luke to assist in parenting. The link will lead you to Amazon.
Sitting Like a Saint
Dr. Greg and Barbra Bottaro
Dear Parents:
We’ve written this book for two reasons: to help you introduce your children to some of the great saints of our faith, and to help you and your children grow in the peace beyond all understanding that comes from being loved by a Father who takes care of us. Mindfulness may seem like a new concept, but as it is presented in this Catholic context, it is something that has been practiced since Jesus commanded us to “not be anxious” about our lives. These exercises are an effective way of teaching our children, through the bodies God gave us, how to accept our feelings without criticizing ourselves for having them, and at the same time how to control our expression of them. In our own family we’ve experienced that often when we devote time and energy to helping our kids, we end up helping ourselves as well. We can’t give them what we don’t have, so learning how to trust God and let go of our fears, worries, and frustrations is the best way to model that peace for our children. We pray that in teaching your children about God and the saints who have loved him in the past, you will also experience a bit of that peace.
In Christ,
Greg and Barbra
Boundaries with Kids: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Kids
Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend
Discover how setting biblical boundaries can improve your parenting and your relationship with your children.
Join Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, authors of the New York Times bestseller Boundaries, as they share the research and guidance you need to raise your kids to take responsibility for their actions and emotions and enable them to lead balanced, productive, and fulfilling adult lives.
The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving
Dr. Lisa Miller
In The Spiritual Child, psychologist Lisa Miller presents the next big idea in psychology: the science and the power of spirituality. She explains the clear, scientific link between spirituality and health and shows that children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality:
* are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances
* are 60% less likely to be depressed as teenagers
* are 80% less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex
* have significantly more positive markers for thriving including an increased sense of meaning and purpose, and high levels of academic success.
Combining cutting-edge research with broad anecdotal evidence from her work as a clinical psychologist to illustrate just how invaluable spirituality is to a child’s mental and physical health, Miller translates these findings into practical advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop and encourage their children’s―as well as their own―well-being. In this provocative, conversation-starting book, Dr. Miller presents us with a pioneering new way to think about parenting our modern youth.
Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence
Lawrence J. Cohen
Have you ever stepped back to watch what really goes on when your children play? As psychologist Lawrence J. Cohen points out, play is children’s way of exploring the world, communicating deep feelings, getting close to those they care about, working through stressful situations, and simply blowing off steam. That’s why “playful parenting” is so important and so successful in building strong, close bonds between parents and children. Through play we join our kids in their world–and help them to
• Express and understand complex emotions
• Break through shyness, anger, and fear
• Empower themselves and respect diversity
• Play their way through sibling rivalry
• Cooperate without power struggles
From eliciting a giggle during baby’s first game of peekaboo to cracking jokes with a teenager while hanging out at the mall, Playful Parenting is a complete guide to using play to raise confident children. Written with love and humor, brimming with good advice and revealing anecdotes, and grounded in the latest research, this book will make you laugh even as it makes you wise in the ways of being an effective, enthusiastic parent.
The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child
Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.
When facing contentious issues such as screen time, food choices, and bedtime, children often act out or shut down, responding with reactivity instead of receptivity. This is what New York Times bestselling authors Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson call a No Brain response. But our kids can be taught to approach life with openness and curiosity. When kids work from a Yes Brain, they’re more willing to take chances and explore. They’re more curious and imaginative. They’re better at relationships and handling adversity. In The Yes Brain, the authors give parents skills, scripts, and activities to bring kids of all ages into the beneficial “yes” state. You’ll learn
• the four fundamentals of the Yes Brain—balance, resilience, insight, and empathy—and how to strengthen them
• the key to knowing when kids need a gentle push out of a comfort zone vs. needing the “cushion” of safety and familiarity
• strategies for navigating away from negative behavioral and emotional states (aggression and withdrawal) and expanding your child’s capacity for positivity
The Yes Brain is an essential tool for nurturing positive potential and keeping your child’s inner spark glowing and growing strong.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Jonathan Haidt
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.
