Cardinal Newman Catechist
Consultants — 7th April, 2016 — HANDOUTS n. 132
“Clear, brief and easily assimilated by all”
Growing-up — the Great Adventure
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GROWING-UP is “A work in progress.” As for the
critics, “Fools and children should not be shown unfinished work.”
Parents are often discouraged or annoyed by criticisms of
bystanders — especially by the armchair critics who have never done it
themselves and don’t really know what they’re talking about.
Even the Lord Jesus failed to make
His apostles perfect. But just look at the final successful outcome!
GROWING-UP progresses, at least as an ideal, through three
stages:
Secure child
Eager adolescent
Mature adult.
These stages are not like changing gears on an old
three-speed gear box. Rather, this is a case of fluid-drive. One stage
merges into the next, as infancy does into early childhood.
THE SECURE CHILD
The secure child depends on a faithful marriage. Father
and mother build on their own experiences when they were children and
adolescents. They modify ideas and ideals in the light of new
experience. Thus they lead, guide and educate their children through
the varied facets of fallen nature, despite all its instinctual
impulses, for better or for worse.
‘Education’ comes from two Latin verbs: eduedre,
to bring up;
educere, to draw out, with a specialized
meaning of piloting a ship from the harbour to the open sea.
Vatican II favours the idea that parents are the
educators, while schools offer specialist teachers for intellectual
formation:
Among the various organs of
education, the school is of outstanding importance. In nurturing the
intellectual faculties which is its special mission... Christian Education, GE n. 5(a)
This was before Catholic home-education. In it, parents
are also give a schooling, which is not the same as classroom
teaching done by school teachers.
Various aspects of the secure childhood involve:
“Civilizing the savage”;
“Discipling the child”.
FOUNDATIONS for civilizing
* Children saying YES to parents
(= co-operation).
* Helping them say NO to self
(=obedience).
* Dressing, washing and knowing
where their shoes are.
* Not getting everything they ask for.
* Not having too many toys, books,
clothes, gadgets.
* Stopping instantly when told.
* Obeying at once.
* Answering respectfully when
called or spoken to.
* Coming at once when called.
* Consideration for others through
punctuality.
* Becoming increasingly worth of
trust.
* Rendering an honest account of
their duties.
FOUNDATIONS
FOR DISCIPLING
Civilizing is foundational for character, which itself is
the foundation for a growing measure of freedom.
Discipling to the Lord requires spiritual growth. Freedom
is essential for that growth, for responding personally to His
whisperings in the conscience.
A failure in civilizing or discipling leaves the soul open
to the persuasions of the Devil.
Inevitably children will make mistakes. They should learn
from them. Henry Lawson said, “The young fool must learn what he won’t
be taught.” Freedom is a challenge to do something difficult:
* Tom Sawyer painting the fence
(cf. HO n. 52).
* Shackleton recruiting for the
Antarctic (ibid.).
* Naarnan bathing in the Jordan (2
Kings 5:13).
ADULT
CHILDHOOD
‘Adult childhood’ has nothing to do with childish adults.
Rather it is a highly desirable rounding-off a secure childhood. In our
time, if it happens at all, it mostly passes unnoticed and without
comment.
Girls of about 8 to 13 well brought-up in a family, especially
a large family, or a small family with relatives and friends, can often
be, and often are, entrusted with adult duties. Without any supportive
adult present, they adopt the motherly role:
1.
minding little children, baths, nappies and all;
2.
occupying them (without using plug-in-drugs);
3.
cooking meals, cleaning a room or a whole house;
4.
and all without discord, raised voices or fights.
Boys of about 10-14, even when well brought-up, seem less
capable of taking on a fatherly role and adult responsibilities.
Without adult intervention, they tend to
1.
fail in ‘constant vigilance, eternal suspicion’;
2.
neglect essential details in prescribed tasks;
3.
or cover their uncertainty with blustering egotism.
Some boys do achieve adult childhood: Children of the
Oregon Trail 1844 by A. Rutgers van der Loeff is a history of a
recently orphaned boy of 13 (growth-spurt then was at 14). He led his
six siblings on foot across half of North America. Try to see one of
the film versions of his real-life saga.
Moreover, in traditional fiction, boys do. reach adult
childhood, as once they really did in bush expeditions — look after
each other, find their way, camp, cook, observe hygiene, and cope with
mishaps better than in present suburban hot house upbringings. See Bush.
Boys on the Move Appendix 3 or New Boys Go Bush Again
Appendix 6. (A hint for budding authors: you need a plausible reason
for getting rid of the adults.)
THE EAGER ADOLESCENT
An adolescent is moving upward through a stage,
progressing towards adulthood: the word ‘adult’ is from adultus,
past participle of adolescere, an incipient, meaning “to grow
up” (nothing to do with adultery, adulerdre, to make impure,
spurious).
That desirable eagerness in a maturing adolescent is in an
eagerness to please, an eagerness to help, and without
getting the grumps or resentment at being asked or ordered to help.
By contrast, a teenager is an adolescent
who is stuck in a state, often plodding aimlessly, rather than
moving upward through a stage.. The ‘-teen’ numbers for ages
13 to 19 are simply 10 (teen) plus 3 to 9, which more than
embrace the years of adolescence.
Is it possible to skip a prolonged state of
teenage grumps, gloom and rebellion, and move into the stage of
an eager adolescent?
There were no teenagers in Australia before the 1950s,
according to a priest long involved in social work and psychology. He
quoted an anthropologist from USA who, in the late 1940s, came to study
our aborigines, until he found our adolescence far more interesting.
There was nothing like it in USA.
He found our ‘rite of passage’, the ritual for entering
adulthood, was the easiest in the world.
Children simply left school, went to work and earned money
in adult company, in NSW at age 15 (only 14 until 1943). They were adolescents,
of course, with their internal confusions, doubts about themselves and
embarrassments, though usually concealed, with the uncertainly about
their capacity to meet expectations in a world of husbands and fathers,
wives and mothers, or priests and Religious.
They were ‘adulted’ (nothing to do with adultery) as
junior adults. There were expectations on their conduct as an
inducement to live up to their status.
By contrast, some teenagers today suffer from teenagitis
(rhyming with tonsillitis and appendicitis). It is an aberration
characterized by too much money, the wrong sort of freedom, no
responsibilities, few duties, scanty manners. This phenomenon is the
scourge of parents and often of the police.
The eager adolescent sublimates (a Freudian term) his
rebellious natural instincts from sinful Adam. This lifts him
out of himself towards co-operating with parents and family,
or a boss at work, workmates, and the wider community. It is a matter
of character, virtues and spirituality.
He tends not to learn this in school, rather the contrary.
School is a less suitable environment.
TOO LONG AT SCHOOL
Lengthy years of schooling hinder maturity by alienating
adolescents from parents and siblings and making them peer dependent.
Today’s society imposes snares and traps at every turn. It
lacks many of the former situations that might have matured the
adolescent.
DIFFICULTIES for FATHERS with SONS
Compared to girls, boys are ill-served. Girls at home have
mother role-models on the spot, but it is rarer for boys at home to
have father role-models for so much of the daily activites.
Thus unless they live on a farm, few boys can achieve
adult childhood compared to girls.
A Catholic world-view upbringing includes catechism and
Biblical literacy, vocation discernment and obedience to God and His
representatives. ....
With these rudiments, an adolescent boy will learn how to
conduct himself and radiate a good example. Also, he will have been
told:-
·
what to look for in a fiancee;
·
and how to court her honorably;
·
how and why to develop business instincts;
·
and to avoid dead-end employment;
·
how to budget, plan and save earnings;
·
how to uphold the benefits of Christendom;
·
how to promote the health of the community;
·
how to disciple others;
·
how to provide for wife and children in ♥ and $;
·
how to observe the legitimate demands of the state;
·
how to handle the illegitimate demands of the state;
·
how to understand and beat corruption in churchmen;
·
how to serve God without playing religious games;
·
how to leave a substantial estate to his descendants;
·
how to honour his parents and his Catholic heritage.
THE MATURE ADULT
This third part is too vast for
the space available. Hence this conclusion is simply a further spur to
action.
WE KNOW that the world is full of
people who are unhappy and confused. Yet we so often miss the priceless
chance of teaching our own children something sure and reliable. The
commonest answer is that we don’t know ourselves what is sure and
reliable. But that is not true. By the time we have reached the age of
thirty-five or forty, and our children are becoming old enough to be
taught the difficult questions, we have found answers which satisfy us
as a working basis. Good. Let us teach them to our children.
They will criticize them, attack them, and discard them,
for a time at least. Good. We have done our duty. We have given them a
basis to work on for themselves. They can come back to it, or find
something better. They can accuse us of teaching them wrongly (although
usually not of deliberately cheating them) and of trying to thrust our
opinions down their throats (however gently we teach them, they will
say that); but they cannot say we neglected them, wasting forty years
of our own experience and fifteen year's of their young lives.
Juvenile courts and mental homes are full of youngsters
who were taught nothing useful by their fathers and mothers. It is not
that they were badly brought up. They were not really brought up at
all. They were never told how to behave.
School meant practically nothing to them. The older
children whom they knew were equally ignorant. The films taught them
that life meant excitement and daring.
Their fathers never told the boys how to control their
powers and arrange their lives. Their mothers told the girls nothing
about the real pleasures of life. Nothing.
When we look at the pouched and bestial face of such a boy
or girl, ruined at seventeen, and instinctively feel that he or she
looks worse than a savage, we are right. A Sudanese tribesman, a Jivaro
Indian, a Borneo highlander trains his children far more purposefully
and far more successfully than many fathers in the mightiest cities of
the world.
The Art. of Teaching, Gilbert Highet, in England, in 1951.
On the advantages of homeschooling
for maturation see HO nn. 102, 115, and especially 112.
Father James Tierney
© The Rev. B.J.H. Tierney. Handouts
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