Table of Contents

Program I. Changing the Culture

Section One: The Crisis of Culture
Section Two: The Development of the Child
Section Three: Proactive Parenting for Safe and Moral Children

Program II. Child Development

Section One: Secure Attachment
Section Two: Insecure Attachments and Healing
Section Three: Adult Attachment Relationships

Program III. Authoritative Parenting

Section One: Discipline and Emotions
Section Two: Styles of Parenting
Section Three: The Marriage-Centered Family

Program IV. Moral Development

Section One: Moral Formation in Early Childhood
Section Two: Moral Emotions
Section Three: The Adolescent and Morality

Program V. The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality

Section One: Educating for Love and Chastity
Section Two: Sacred Parental Responsibilities
Section Three: Subsidiarity and Parents’ Rights

Program VI. Healing the Family, the Community, and Culture

Section One: Healing the Broken
Section Two: Healing the Parish and the Home
Section Three: Healing the Children

 

Forward (excerpted from the Program Workbook):

Welcome to this video series, Healthy Families: Safe Children. Healthy Families: Safe Children addresses the moral crisis of culture, parenting styles, and child development, especially the development of moral values rooted in the dignity of human relationships. The program integrates the timeless truths of the human person from the perspectives of philosophy and theology with the most recent findings in neurophysiology, social biology, and psychiatry in order to provide parents with effective methods for communicating with their children, for preventing problem behaviors, and for guiding their children along healthy developmental pathways. Every parent can glean insightful information to reinforce, improve, and heal family relationships. While this program is primarily for parents, it will benefit any adult who is in a position of trust, authority, and responsibility for children. It provides adults of any age with a valuable experience of self-reflection and provides a deep understanding of the roots of morality and healthy relationships.

Healthy Families: Safe Children is an important contribution to the “wider context” of moral renewal recommended by Pope Benedict XVI. In his address to the Catholic Bishops of the United States on April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict spoke about the issue of the clergy sexual-abuse scandal and the bishops’ response to it: “If the policies and programs to protect children from sexual abuse you have adopted are to achieve their full purpose, they need to be placed in a wider context. Children have a right to be educated in authentic moral values rooted in the dignity of the human person. We need to reassess urgently the values underpinning society so that a sound moral formation can be offered to young people and adults alike. Every member of society can contribute to this moral renewal and benefit from it. Truly caring about young people and the future of our civilization means recognizing our responsibility to promote and live by the authentic moral values which alone enable the human person to flourish.”

Healthy Families: Safe Children does what Pope Benedict proposes. It is a program to assist parents in promoting the sound moral formation of children while protecting their innocence and guarding them from abuse. It is my deep hope that Healthy Families: Safe Children will contribute to the moral renewal of our society and the building of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth—one child at a time.

The Most Reverend Robert F. Vasa, D.D., J.C.L.

Introduction (excerpted from the Program Workbook):

Healthy Families: Safe Children was created to assist parents, the primary educators and protectors of their children, in forming children to be emotionally healthy, safe, morally responsible, and virtuous. Very young children are by nature morally inclined and can behave morally even though their brain is not capable of moral reasoning. A child’s natural inclination for truth and goodness, however, is not enough to develop a healthy moral conscience. Parents must nurture and develop the child’s God-given inclinations. In 1984 Pope Benedict XVI, who was then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote in his book Bishops, Theologians and Morality, “Man is a being who has an organ, the conscience, an organ with the interior knowledge of good and evil. For the conscience to form, it needs the help of others. The conscience can be stunted; it can be stamped out; it can be falsified.”

Healthy Families: Safe Children examines the formation of conscience and the roots of virtue and of violence. It discusses the early childhood indicators of antisocial and violent behaviors. These are propensities to act as a bully and/or victim and can usually be traced to attachment difficulties in the child’s early life. During early development, children establish or fail to establish healthy attachment relationships. Children who develop secure attachment relationships with authoritative and virtuous parents are confident and competent, have a good sense of self, and have empathy for others. They have the foundation for a healthy moral conscience which includes self-control, respect for self, respect for others, and a moral code based upon the natural law and the teachings of the Church. These children have the capacity to discipline their desires and impulses for the good of others because they respect and care about others. They become the master of their emotions and can live and act with respect for the dignity of each person and the sacredness of life. In contrast, children with insecure attachments may lack self-worth or impulse control and are vulnerable to bullying/victim behaviors.

Healthy Families: Safe Children is a strategy for educating parents in child development, healthy relationships, and the healing of vulnerable children. I pray it will help parents fulfill their sacred responsibility of forming emotionally healthy and virtuous children while it simultaneously reduces the violence and victimization of children.

Lynne Bissonnette-Pitre, M.D., Ph.D.

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