Family

How much do we know about love? Enough to understand that love is not an obligation—we cannot love by force, nor be loved in this way.

Is it possible, as single parents, to instil in our children a love for God and for the church?

Family conflict? The fact that not only milk and honey flow within our families, and conflicts crop up more often than we would like, is not new to anyone. Experience teaches us that people who share a roof as well as a last name clash in their opinions or behaviours in direct proportion to the number of hours they spend together.

The relationship between a parent and their child is one of the most significant in their lives, with its primary role being education.

No matter how much we avoid it, the day will come when our parents will not be able to get by without us, just as we would not have been able to grow up without them.

To err is human. “The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no ideas”, Albert Einstein said.

We love stories, and Hollywood knows how to dramatise them. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that Hollywood is first and foremost an industry driven by ratings and profits. Children are more vulnerable and more likely than adults to pick up identity models from the film world.

Regular reading of the Bible in childhood is a strong predictor of spiritual health in adulthood. If instilling a love for the Bible is a crucial factor in religious education, parents need to develop methods to reinforce a habit that keeps children on the desired spiritual trajectory.

If the death of our parents is a blow which makes “the very fabric of life…buckle and cave in,” the ageing of our parents resembles a classroom where we learn to give more than we are used to receiving.

In the book, "Sisyphus: Or the Limits of Education," first published in German in 1925 by Siegfried Bemfeld, it is stated that education is limited by the personalities of the adults who take care of the children or students, the personalities of the educated, and the social environment in which the educational act takes place.

Raising children with the ability to empathise is key in creating a kinder, more compassionate and loving world. 

In the whole array of virtues that a stepparent must possess in order to succeed in raising a well-rounded child whose world has been shattered by the separation of his or her parents, courage is only mentioned in passing. Yet courage is the foundation of a construction that promises to be challenging from the outset, say those who have plunged into the role...

One of the biggest challenges facing both parents and teachers is to help children stay motivated so that they can keep focus, persevere when they are struggling, move forward, and finish what they have begun.

Today's mothers are faced with difficult decisions: breastfeeding or formula feeding, having a career or being a stay-at-home parent, modern or traditional education—and silent pressure from the fear that any choice they make is a mistake. This constant doubt weighs more heavily on them than the choices themselves.

Education is essential for the survival of any social group, since a community ensures its existence and development only by passing on to the next generation the knowledge it has accumulated, the power it derives from it and its ideological aspirations.