Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

1. Charity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

3. Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

4. Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

5. Patience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

6. Serenity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

7. Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

8. Humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Appendix:PrayersoftheRosary . . . . . . . 223

Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

ix

c h a p t e r o n e

Charity

[Love] is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes.

—St.‑Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:7

Loving our children during adolescence can become a soul-searching struggle. How do you love a chronically angry, stubborn teenager? How can you respect a sloth-

ful, cruel, or promiscuous adolescent who shows no inkling of your values? When you are on the receiving end of continual hostility, and even verbal abuse, how do you respond with kindness?

And yet a child cannot survive, much less flourish, without the love and support of adults. Unconditional love is the birth-right of every child. A parent is supposed to love a child. All parents fully intend to love a child—forever and always.

Then adolescence happens. Some children are bent on behaving in ways that mothers and fathers and stepparents find repugnant. Many such parents find themselves thinking the unthinkable: I don’t like my child anymore. And they harbor a secret shame because their hearts have become so cold toward one of their own. Many have come to us with such unchari-table confessions. One mother pleaded:

� �

Help! I don’t like my daughter! My eleven-year-old daughter is full of anger. She tried to strangle a classmate because the girl “pissed her off.” I have not admitted this—even to the counselor we’ve been seeing—but I am having very negative feelings toward my daughter. She is my child, but I can’t stand to be around her. And I am embarrassed by her. She has a bad attitude from the moment she gets up in the morning till she goes to bed at night. She has alienated herself from all the girls in her class, from her siblings, her stepfather, and everyone with whom she comes into contact. She is very good at hurting everyone around her. I wish I could say this behavior is new for her, but it’s not. She has been this way since she was a little girl. It’s just getting worse. My husband and I have come to the conclusion that this is the way she is, and we will just have to deal with her the best we can. I am scared for her, for myself, and for our family.

Running out of love as a mother, father, stepparent, or caregiver is a double-edged sword. You have to deal with emo-tional bankruptcy and the self-inflicted judgment of being inadequate. A parent’s love and ability to nurture aren’t supposed to run dry. When they do, guilt rushes in to fill the empty space.

This love drought happens at the worst possible moment. The fact is that when your child is at his or her worst, that is when your love is needed the most.

Perhaps the image of Christ turning the other cheek to derision comes to mind. Yet when your child hurts you deeply, it’s not always possible to be so Christlike. It’s hard to emulate Jesus’ gesture because your own child isn’t supposed to be your nemesis.

� charity

In this chapter we will show you how to reconnect with love. We will deliver a number of transforming lessons and introduce you to the saints who can show you how to live those lessons. To help you keep love uppermost in your mind and in your actions, we are going to send you on a scavenger hunt for concrete tokens that you can hold on to when you need to love more and love better. We will help you find ways to renew your capacity for warmth, understanding, forgiveness, and affection when you are faced with rebellion, defiance, and even hatred.

God the Celestial AlchemistIn medieval times a mysterious science called alchemy

surfaced. Alchemists holed up in castle laboratories, stewing over cauldrons and beakers, trying to master the transmu-tation of base metals into gold. Alas, the alchemists never quite succeeded at materializing those King Midas fantasies. It turned out that there was no scientific way to change common worthless metals into gold. There is, however, one alchemist who can transform anything common into some-thing of value: God. He is a celestial alchemist because he can transform us with his love. If we turn to God, even in our meanest or our most hard-hearted state, he can overhaul our hearts by infusing us with his everlasting love. When you are hate filled and feeling loveless, realize that transformation is within reach.

charity �

Transform Vengeance into Forgiveness

A teenager pushes you over the edge. You rave inappropriately and say things you wish you could take back. You feel disgusted with yourself after a screaming match. This behavior becomes a pattern. You don’t like the person your child has become. And even worse, you don’t like the person you have become.

One way to rediscover love is to embrace forgiveness. The first step toward forgiveness—and toward finding your way back to being that loving parent you so want to be—is learning to forgive yourself. You are, after all, only human. Even though you are the adult and your son or daughter is the child, you are still a person who needs love. When your teenager withholds love and delivers only anger and pain over time, it’s natural for you to lash out or silently turn away and harden your heart.

Be honest with yourself. Acknowledge your diminished capacity to love this child. Only then can you forgive yourself and commit to trying harder.

The next step is to forgive your child. You have every right to be angry at a misbehaving teenager. A teen who dumps on you, your spouse, and his siblings is betraying you and sabotaging the family. Yet you must learn to separate the hurtful behavior from the child. You had no trouble making that distinction when your son was five or six. You would say, “I love you, Jake, but I don’t like the way you hit your baby brother.” Now, it’s harder to make distinctions between who he is and how he acts. His behaviors—disrespectful talk, lack of consideration, brooding tantrums—pollute nearly every family interaction.

Stepparents can have an even harder struggle with forgive-ness. A stepparent “inherits” a child after committing to a new spouse. This communion creates an unnatural family unit, a

� charity

family of strangers. Love doesn’t naturally bloom between the stepparent and stepchild in the same way it does for the remarrying adults. Stepchildren want their old families back, not the newfangled hybrid.

Stepmothers who are raising stepchildren teeter in positions of authority, often without having the support of the biologi-cal mother or the goodwill of the child. Many of these women find themselves raising an exiled teenager, meaning one whom Mom couldn’t handle any longer and shipped off to live with Dad and the new stepmom. Stepfathers are in many cases the head of a blended household and receive little gratitude—much less love—for their contributions of time, energy, and money.

Raising a troubled teen is hard enough. Being responsible for someone else’s troubled adolescent is a burden no one but those in the predicament can fully appreciate. So if you are in such a situation and resenting every minute with your step-children, forgive yourself for not being able to measure up to your fantasies of the kind of stepparent you think you should be. And forgive your stepchild. He is involuntarily stuck in the trauma of his parent’s divorce. He is a hostage in a future he never wanted or planned for himself.

We know that converting resentment, even hatred, into forgiveness is easier said than done. Let God inspire you, as he is the perfect model. Think of how he forgives our sins, no matter how many, how mortal, or how frequent. All we need to do is ask his forgiveness, and he grants it. God’s forgiv-ing nature is mirrored in the lives of many saints. St.-Maria Goretti is just one.

Maria was born in 1890, one of six children in a farm-working family who lived in Roman Campagna. Her father died of malaria when Maria was just six. Her mother became one of the original single working mothers. With no man to

charity �

CHARLENE C. GIANNETTI and MARGARET SAGARESE are the coauthors of numerous books, including Cliques (Broadway, 2001), Parenting 911 (Broadway, 1999), and The Roller-Coaster Years (Broadway, 1997). They

are also popular lecturers. They host chats and answer parenting questions regularly at www.parentsoup.com.

Charlene C. Giannetti & Margaret SagareseAuthors of The Roller-Coaster Years and Cliques

good PAR

EN

TS, tough T

IME

SG

IAN

NE

TT

I/SA

GA

RE

SE

Parenting/Religion $14.95 U.S.

The bestselling authors of The Roller-Coaster Years, Parenting 911, and Cliques draw deeply on their faith and the rich Catholic spiritual tradition in this

guide for parents of children in crisis.In Good Parents, Tough Times, authors Charlene C. Giannetti and Margaret

Sagarese focus on the spiritual well-being of the parent as much as the behavior of the child. The authors draw parallels between the real-life struggles parents face today and those endured by the saints. They believe that the qualities that enabled the saints to face great troubles—charity, knowledge, faith, hope, patience, serenity, truth, and humility—can help parents cope with a troubled child.

“This book provides what every parent needs: a chance to learn from the saints and to look to them for encouragement and practical advice.”

—Scott Hahn, author of The Lamb’s Supper

“Deep, yet simple and practical, this book will help parents and all who have teens in their lives to know better how to listen, pray, and help.”

—Fr. Paul Keenan, author of Heartstorming

“[Good Parents, Tough Times] not only offers parents the saints’ very practical advice about raising teens with faith, hope, and love, but also helps parents

receive the grace of the saints’ powerful intercession.”—Bert Ghezzi, author of Voices of the Saints and Mystics and Miracles

serenity, truth, and humility—can help parents cope with a troubled child.