Bringing your ‘little lambs’ to mass every week can be a challenge. For the littlest lambs, St. Francis of Assisi offers a Childcare Ministry at the 9:30 and 11:30 masses. Situated in the preschool classrooms in Clare Hall, certified caregivers are on staff to watch your children (ages 1 and walking to age 4). They will have a bible story read to them and will be able to participate in an activity or craft related to that story.

For your older lambs, getting them involved is the key to keeping them interested and attentive. Sermons4Kids is a great website that provides a peek into the current week’s gospel and provides a thoughtful and age appropriate explanation of what is happening as well as a few fun activities for kids to do.

Catholic Icing is another great online resource for fun and enlightening activities to help your children understand the feast days or seasons we celebrate as Catholics. This week’s topic is how to celebrate the May Crowing with your child. This site is filled with archived posts with information on how to make the celebration of our Catholic traditions meaningful to little ones.

There are also many fine children’s missals or mass guides available to help your little lambs follow what is happening during the service. The Catholic Company‘s website that has a book that is perfect for little hands and attention spans, The Mass Book for Children. With stylized pictures of parts of the mass and text, sharing the mass with your child will be a rewarding experience. Or My Picture Missal, which can be purchased locally at In His Name, a Catholic store in Raleigh, looks like it might be just the thing for young children.

Magnifikid! is a weekly publication for reading aged children. It gives the readings for that Sunday and the order of mass for the children to follow along with. There are also fun activities to do (best if done ahead of time so that they can get the most out of the mass) and follow up activities for taking the Gospel message home with you.

I can guarantee that both you and your little lambs will enjoy going to mass together and learning more about the Lord when everyone is fully engaged!

I am always amazed at how much I DON’T know in regards to parenting. By now, after 3 girls and 13 year of parenting, I should have this down to a science, but each of my girls presents a unique challenge. What works with one will invariably not work with another. Even day to day, actions I thought were an ingrained part of their routine easily slide by the wayside if I am not diligent and consistent. They certainly keep me on my toes!

There are many resources out there to help you hone your parenting skills and add new tools to the ol’ parenting toolbox. I mentioned a few in my last posting, and here are a few more opportunities that are offered by our parish.

ADHD Workshop

Saturday, April 28, 2012
1:00 – 3:00 pm
Padua Room, Assisi Community Center

Has your child been diagnosed with ADHD? Is your child very energetic, easily distracted, disorganized or forgetful? Have you ever wondered if it’s more than just a phase?

Join us for a candid discussion about living with ADHD. You’ll hear one parent’s journey from diagnosis to treatment as well as hear from a Board Certified Psychiatrist who specializes in ADHD across the lifespan. There will also be a representative from the local CHADD chapter.

We look forward to seeing you, and to walking this journey with you. To register for this event, click here.

For more information, please contact Kathleen Owen at 847-8205, ext. 241 or kathleen.owen@stfrancisraleigh.org

Active Parenting Now in 3!

May 8, 15, and 22
Morning Session: 9:15 – 11:30 am
Evening Session: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
$15 / Parents Guide
Anthony Hall Rm 403

Do you ever wonder if there’s a better way to handle those daily parenting problems? Maybe your son dawdles around whenever it’s time to get dressed for school… your daughter is suddenly using disrespectful language… or maybe the children seem to forget to do their chores and argue every minute of the day. Or maybe you’d like to prepare for the upcoming teen years.

You can become more successful at parenting with Active Parenting Now in 3, the acclaimed video and discussion program by parenting expert Dr. Michael Popkin. In just three powerful sessions, you will learn simple yet effective parenting skills that will lead to more harmony and happiness for you and your children. Our morning session will be led by Gladys Whitehouse, and the evening sessions by Ben Whitehouse.

If you are interested in learning more about this exciting and fun class, please contact the coordinator of Family Life, Jason Lillis, at 919-847-8205 x244.

Hang on!

Raising children is not an easy task on any level. We love them with all that our hearts can possibly hold and in the same instant, we wonder where on Earth they may have come from to behave that way. What should you do when you are feeling that sense of despair and helplessness? To whom should you turn?

1. Other Moms and Dads: Let’s face it, when you are seeking advice the best source is from someone still ‘in the trenches’. St. Francis of Assisi offers 2 opportunities for you to make connections with other families with children of similar ages as your own. Moms, Pops and Tots is a group of TFS families that meets twice a month at local playgrounds. The locations vary so that families can also get to know some of the unique play spaces in our area that are available to them. You can contact Deirdre McMyler at mcmylerd@yahoo.com for more information and to get on the email distribution list. The next few outings are scheduled to meet at these locations:

• April 18: Blue Jay Point Park: 3200 Pleasant Union Church Rd, Raleigh
• May 2: Laurel Hills (All Children‘s Playground): 3808 Edwards Mill Rd, Raleigh
• May 16: Williams Park: 6601 Leadmine Rd, Raleigh
• Rain location is the gymnasium of Lake Lynn Community Center

And our parish’s Family Life Ministry has another program for families with newborns. This is not just a group for brand new parents, but also for parents who have children already as well as their brand new baby. The New Parent Care Ministry is still ‘new’ but they are here for you. Click here for more information and to contact the ministry leader.

2. Experts: Your child’s teacher is a great place to start. They are trained in child development and will have suggestions of strategies that they use to meet the varying needs of all the children who make up their classrooms.

Project Enlightenment

Also, a plethora of books, articles, blogs and research studies done by parenting ‘experts’ are available to you in ways unheard of 10 years ago. Some will have a similar philosophy in light of your own and others will be at the opposite end of that spectrum. Project Enlightenment is an amazing resource for parents of young children. Its focus on early childhood (birth through age 5) education and intervention as part of the Wake County Public School System – but it is open to those not part of the system. Here is a list of resources that Project has compiled for both parents and teachers.

Wake County Public Library System

Books and articles that cannot be found at Project Enlightenment, might be found in the Wake County Public Library system. Besides shelves of books and helpful librarians, they also have storytime and activity-based programs for all ages. Best of all, these are free or have a minimal cost associated with them.

3. The Village: It truly does take a village to raise a child. Many of us are transplants here and our families are unable to lend a hand from a distance. St. Francis of Assisi is fortunate to have 2 Babysitting Co-op groups. They are a network of parish families who provide childcare for one another. In other words, they swap babysitting for babysitting. It is a win/win – you get to know a fine group of families from the parish and you get shared babysitting too! Group II is actively seeking new members at this time as well. They are holding an open house for prospective members on May 7th at 7:30 pm in the Padua Room of the Community Center. For more information, email stfrancisBSC2@gmail.com.

We also offer a Childcare Ministry during the 9:30 and 11:30 masses. In the Preschool classrooms of Clare Hall, certified caregivers are on-hand to watch your child during mass. First come, first served until all the spaces are filled, so arrive early!

Children’s Liturgy of the Word is a ministry that serves children ages 4, 5 and 6 during the 9:30 and 11:30 masses. After the opening blessing and prayers, the priest will invite the children to meet with their Presider and Shepherd who will lead them back to their rooms in the far end of Anthony Hall. There trained Presiders share the Word with the children at a level they can understand and often there will be an activity and a chance for them to participate. This wonderful ministry allows the children to participate in the mass in a way that is appropriate for them and also allows their parents an opportunity to sit in relative peace to truly reflect on the Word at mass.

It’s been said that when you reach the end of your rope, you should tie a knot and make a swing. As you can see by the link, that may not always work…

Have other suggestions of where to go when you have reached the end of your rope? Leave them here!

© Microsoft images

I have offered some of the more child-friendly ways to bring the Easter story to life in your home in past blog posts. (See: Faith Connections) There are also many books out there that can help you relate the Resurrection story to your children. One Preschool favorite is called, Benjamin’s Box, by Melody Carlson. It is the story of a boy with a treasure box filled with items that seemingly have no worldly value. In the book, Benjamin tells the story of how he came to collect each of his unlikely treasures.

The 4-year old classes were fortunate enough to have Fr. Bill tell this wonderful tale to them last Friday. Using an actual treasure box filled with each of these marvelous tokens of the Lord’s journey from birth to death to resurrection, Fr. Bill related the story in his powerful and moving way. In sharing the story, Fr. Bill often solicited responses from the audience and was very pleased when the children showed him how familiar they already were with the Easter story! Granted, they also had LOTS of other unrelated tidbits to share with him and he gamely took their responses to heart. Luckily, he is quite adept at steering the conversation back. Thank you, Fr. Bill!

Here are some photos from the storytelling:

Fr. Bill warms up his audience

Fr. Bill invites 2 Bens and a Bennett to help him tell the story

One of the treasures in Benjamin's Box was the die used to cast lots for His clothing

Fr. Bill shares the story of Benjamin's Box with the 4-year old Preschoolers

Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

The phrase “Spring Cleaning” may send shivers through even the most hearty souls. My household is no exception. The possibility of endless hours scouring and scrubbing places that haven’t seen a rag in months (or years as the case may be…) sends my family members running for cover. Currently, my 3 little spring chicks have a regular gig doing Saturday morning chores at Casa Hemedinger, most of which they perform in utmost haste and with cursory attention to detail, yet they still grudgingly do them. And I have to say that they do them now with much less supervision than they needed when they first began. Like a garden, patient tending can yield surprising results!

I can’t expect them to actually get enthusiastic about cleaning, but it doesn’t have to be torturous. Pricilla Dunstan of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service has written an article on how to get even the most reluctant munchkins involved in the process by appealing to their strengths. Does your child like to sort and organize? Sorting clothes into piles and stuffing them in the washing machine would be a perfect way to capitalize on those inclinations! What about the child who likes to keep moving? Put out bins and set a timer – make a game out of picking up the toys and beat the clock. Don’t expect your youngsters to have an eye for precision, though. Start with “good enough” and once helping out becomes an ingrained habit, then you can focus on their attention to detail.

The benefits of pitching in and helping out around the house are more than just a lighter work-load for mom and dad. In an article in Psychology Today, Dr. Nancy Darling outlines the ways that chores are good for our kids. She outlines how children develop a sense of belonging by contributing to the success of the household. Also, they genuinely feel a sense of accomplishment when tasks are completed. I can attest to this because our 3 girls are amazed at how good the bonus room looks when it is tidied up and they are careful to keep it that way for as long as they can (usually for just the afternoon, but sometimes it can remain uncluttered for another day!). Dr. Darling also mentions how chores engender gratitude in children. Knowing how difficult the task really is helps our children to appreciate what their parents do. Helping one another with chores or helping a neighbor also teaches them compassion and kindness. So, getting kids to help out around the house is a win/win for everyone. Soon, they will be asking, “Can we do MORE chores for you, Mom?” Well, maybe not right away…

Sometimes we mean well but wind up doing our children and ourselves an injustice. UCLA houses the Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) and there was a paper presented at last year’s conference about the benefits of children’s participation in household chores. The study, researched by Wendy Klein, Anthony P. Graesch and Carolina Izquierdo took into account working families in the Los Angeles area. They discovered that:

…most children in our study spend surprisingly little time helping around the house and engage in fewer tasks than what they report in interviews

…allowance is not an effective motivator

…children in families with access to paid domestic help tend to be less helpful than children in families without

…inconsistent and unclear expectations from parents negatively affect children’s participation in household work

Anthropology of Work Review
©2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.

Basically, if we want our children to be productive members of our small household community and to grow into productive members of a larger world community, we need to do so by clearly setting up reasonable expectations for them and giving them many opportunities to be successful contributors. Kids can set the table, wipe down counter tops, sweep floors, put their toys in bins, pick up their dirty clothes and put their clean clothes away. Sure, it IS a pain to start the process — the kids will balk and complain, they will do it in a way that you would not, they will take twice as long as you would if you had just done it yourself, but we need to involve our children. They need to know that belonging to a community means that “Everybody does their share”.

Resurrection Rolls

Image from catholicicing.com

Children learn best through hands-on experiences and will remember rolling the dough around the marshmallow. When they come out of the oven and are opened up, they will be amazed when the marshmallow has disappeared! You can find the list of ingredients and the directions on how to make them on the Catholic Icing site.

Swinging is not seen as 'Productive' behavior, but truly it is!

Coordination and strength is required for lots of different 'play' activities

Play teaches creative problem solving as well as other cognitive skills

Connecting to nature through play increases awareness of the environment

Play is important on so many levels – essential to physical strength and dexterity, creativity and problem-solving and also in terms of exploration and forming a connection with the natural world around us. Organized sports are valuable too, but let’s make sure that there is lots of room for play in our children’s lives as well.

Soup's on!

Stations of the Cross (Chapel) at 6pm
Meatless Menu in Assisi Cafe at 6:30pm
Assisi Café Entertainment from 7 – 8pm

March 16 – The Retreads
Acoustic guitar duo with Rich Zemonek and Steve Wingerter.

March 23 – Ed Moon Trio
Favorite instrumental jazz standards.

March 30 – Rude Troll
The Celtic duo is back by popular demand.

Brush those teeth!

The upside of all this nagging is that, thus far, not one of my girls has had a cavity. Clearly this is a win/win situation – they don’t have to suffer through the pain of having a filling put into one of their permanent or baby teeth and I don’t have to pay for the process! But on a daily basis, they don’t always agree with my dogged determination that this essential part of their hygiene be checked off. There are so many other tasks that demand their attention, and somehow, brushing their teeth for a total of 4 minutes per day (on a day when they brush them well) seems too onerous a commitment for them at times.

It appears that they are not alone. In an article in the Raleigh News and Observer today, dentists all over the nation are seeing a rise in the number of cavities – particularly in toddlers and preschoolers. There have been no formal studies done on this trend, but dentists have noticed this pattern in all socio-economic groups. They suggest that the reluctance of parents to inconvenience their squirmy infants and toddlers to brush their teeth has contributed to this trend, along with the widespread consumption of convenience snacks – juice boxes, raisins, fruit rolls, snack pack crackers, bottled water without fluoride etc. Foods high in sugar and carbohydrates with lots of ‘sticky’ properties, remain on the teeth and cause tooth decay if not brushed away.

One parent quoted in the article claimed that “I had a lot on my mind, and brushing his teeth was an extra thing I didn’t think about at night.” As our lives become more hectic and busy, I can see where she is coming from. But the consequences were that her 2 1/2 year old child had to be sedated to treat the 11 cavities in his 20 baby teeth. Dr. Jonathan Shenkin, a pediatric dentist in Augusta, Maine, and a spokesman for the American Dental Association recalled in the article that, “I have parents tell me all the time, ‘No one told us when to go to the dentist, when we should start using fluoride toothpaste’ – all this basic information to combat the No. 1 chronic disease in children.”

If you are wondering what to do about your child’s dental health, there are wonderful resources out there for you to read and the Triangle area is filled (ha!) with pediatric dentists to consult with and have your child taken in for bi-annual check-ups. The Centers for Disease Control website has an oral health primer for parents. Sesame Street also has a site dedicated to healthy living for children and a section on oral health is included. But, my all-time favorite is advice from the Toothbrush Family – a segment that ran on Captain Kangaroo back in the old days of TV. It is a little disturbing to think that my toothbrush is running around my bathroom at night, but the song at the end is what I remember to this day and is a sweet reminder of how to brush!

(to the tune of Three Blind Mice)
Brush your teeth,
round and round.
Circle small,
gums and all.
A small soft toothbrush
the round-a-round way
will keep your gums healthy
and stop tooth decay!
Go round and round.
Round and round.

Gustave A. Dentzel Carousel (1911) - listed in the National Register of Historic Places

Pullen Park:

Pullen Park’s amusement rides have gone under an elaborate and substantial make-over. Besides the beautiful park it resides in – acres of rolling green hills to run through and play on, picnic shelters and a picnic ground to dish out your luncheon spread, walking trails beside the water, 2 playgrounds – it has an authentic carousel, a train to ride, kiddie boats and paddle boats for adults.

American Tobacco Trails:

Looking for a relatively flat place to practice those 2-wheeled biking skills for your little ones? The Triangle area is much hillier than one can imagine, but here is a great place to ride, walk or roller blade that is remarkably level. The Trail is well maintained and paved for 7 miles between Southpoint Crossing Shopping Center and the American Tobacco Campus/ Durham Bulls Stadium. Start at the Shopping Center for food, water, restrooms and parking.

Eno River State Park

William B. Umstead State Park:

Looking to forgo the paved trails and hike through the woods? Try either one of these gems. You will find lots of different trails of varying difficulty and length. Both are fantastic woods to explore and see nature in its finest. Check out the trees, plants and bushes to see what Spring has sprung in the woods!

Sarah P. Duke Gardens

JC Raulston Arboretum:

Sarah P. Duke Gardens:

Stroll through the gorgeous grounds of either garden and smell the heavenly scent of what is in bloom on that day. Each garden has several areas in which to walk, rest, enjoy and play.

Blue Jay Point County Park

Blue Jay Point County Park:

Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve:

Looking for more knowledge with your outdoor experience? Both of these parks have excellent educational programs for all ages. Spend the day hiking or biking or enjoying the park AND take a class that will teach you about the native plants and animals in the area or any other fine program they offer.

Do you have any other suggestions of where to ‘Take it outside’? Post them below for all to enjoy!