Shelterwood- School for troubled girls and boys

Sometimes i wander over how troublesome i must have been as a child! And my thoughts do wonder over the millions of young girls and boys and how tough parenting is without any support from schools that are just founded for the education of a child. It's a worrisome prolonged period to nurture your child into a successful adult all by yourself esp. if the child is a struggling adolescent. But no more, do you have to struggle to cope with the nurturing of your child yourself.

I came across this suggestible residential treatment program for parents to turn to in the case of troubled teens, if you have one. Shelterwood is a co-ed boarding school for troubled teens. It is a different but licensed boarding school designed to mentor kids with the right love, care, and right therapeutic environment to help them accomplish a bright and successful future. They are uniquely equipped to treat struggling adolescents showing signs of low self-esteems and depression, addictions such as drugs or alcohol, anger or family conflict. They stand apart from other boarding schools because they strive not only to treat the child therapeutically, educationally and spiritually, but the whole family as well by getting to the root of issues, through a multifaceted approach. So, if you are considering Shelterwood out of all boarding schools for troubled girls and boys? Here is a summary info.

Shelterwood was founded in 1980, located in Missouri and they provide high quality facilities like individual, group, and family therapy along with an accredited school for at-risk youth for troubled teens with the help of their residential treatment program designed to help the kids overcome challenges they face in daily lives. They are equipped with an on-site private program so teens receive topnotch accredited education while at shelter wood. You can find out more by contacting them directly or through the application process online!

The Parenting Process

Parenting is a process. I am 5months into this crazy adventure of love, and if nothing else... I know this, parenting is a process. If it isn't, I am way behind. If it is, then we, as parents, must wake up each day trying to learn how to better love and care for our children. Ironically, this isn't too unlike our marriages, our single-celibate vocation, or our religious vocation. They are processes.

In fact, to fully attain your vocation you must endure many processes. Marriage has friendship, courting, engagement, marriage-preparation (pre-Cana), and finally the Sacrament of Matrimony. The single life has friendship, dating, heartbreak, confusion, discernment, and acceptance. (I am not 100% on this one... because well, I was called to marriage. For more info please see Adoro Te Devote's: Catholicism and Single Life) The religious life has the longest and most complicated of the processes, and depending on what form of religious you become the process can take YEARS!

Parenting too is a process.

The fact that one is in a process, does not give them the latitude to make big mistakes along the way knowing that there is still a "long road to travel." In fact, the early periods of a process might be so vitally important that how you function early on, could quite easily have profound implications for the later part of the process. This is true in parenting... as I am learning. So, while reading a post today, of a blog that I have on my RSS feeder, I found a section of a post that succinctly explains how this idea of process relates to parenting.

Andrea, over at The Escape posted about parenting and the importance of parenting PROPERLY even during your child's early years. Her post Parental Failings struck a chord with me, because of the way it spoke about the importance of being mindful of how this process is not a license to "wing it" early in your children's lives, just because they are young and "seem to be none the wiser." Most importantly she said:

How I treat my children now is important whether they remember it or not. In these formative years, they will learn how to function in society and how to treat other people. More importantly, the way my husband and I treat our children will affect the way they see their heavenly Father and mother.

I think she is dead on. Love, is also a process. How many times have we heard that we pick spouses like our parents, that we model relationships like those that we see around us, and that we seek that which fills us? If we want to model positive aspects of love, so that we can learn to love perfectly, and teach love perfectly - we must model it early and often. (This is not to say that we will ever attain perfection.)

She goes on further to say:

My children are young and there are many years to come in their formation. When my part is finished, I want my children to hear the word mother and think of a kind, compassionate and loving person, not a tired, stressed out woman who is always on edge. I know this is only one occasion and there will most likely be many more where I lose my temper, but that is no excuse for the behavior. Every occasion effects not only my soul, but the soul of my child which God has entrusted to me. May God grant me patience and peace so that I may raise saints for His heavenly kingdom.

The Escape is not a blog I have on my sidebar, because it is more of a "Catholic Mom" blog in the line of "Catholic Family Life" blogs. I have it in my RSS feed that I read, which consists of about 75 different blogs, but it isn't one that fits in the same niche that I generally post in. That being said, certain parenting posts, like this one, fit right into my wheelhouse. So click on over to The Escape, give Andrea a bump, and comment on her post.

Prayers for Young Sailor

This is one of those sad cases of horrible circumstances: 16year old Probably Lost at Sea
Please Pray for her.

Saint Brendan - Ora Pro Nobis

There is a lot to say about this... but I don't really think now is the time. As adults we are entrusted with young people, not only because they are our children... but because they are God's as well. There is a fine line between letting children grow and risk, and knowing when to say "That is too much." There will be time for that discussion later...

For now, let us just pray.

Really Pro-Life

While reading Shoved to Them today, I came across a little anecdote that made me smile and chuckle a bit:

"What is your profession? Breeding?" He asked sarcastically.


"No," I told him. "I've chosen to be the Mother of Nations. We will populate the Earth."


I could tell he didn't get it, so (being the nerd I am) I did a little math for him. "If our children have babies at the same rate that we do, you will have 4 grandchildren and I will have 36. If we keep it going you will have 16 great-great grandchildren and I will have 1296. A few more generations and my decedents can touch every corner of the globe."


There was a long pause on his end, then he wistfully replied, "I would have liked to have had a little girl."

When my wife and I got married, we were required to take an NFP class. The class was... well it just was. I have some very confused thoughts and feelings about NFP. I understand that there are those that use NFP as a family planning method, while others use it in a way to try and help conceive. My wife and I have always used the phrase, "We want as many kids as God blesses us with." It really throws people for a loop. My wife grew up in a house of 4 kids and I in a house of 2. I would say both of us also grew up in lower middle class, or upper-lower class socio-economic situations. That is to say, both families may have had more children if we lived in higher tax brackets.

My wife and I had our "Monkey" 11 months and 1 week after we were married. We don't know how many we will have, but we are friends with families that run the entire spectrum. What is interesting though, is that at our parish we are friends with folks that have quite a few kids. In fact if you took our 10 closest friends at our Parish and added all our kids together, there would be 44. That's 11 families (including us) with an AVERAGE of 4 kids per family. This includes several families that have only 1 child and/or are newly married. Only 1 these families is officially "done" having children. In fact, only one family even has teenagers, the rest are 12 or younger. This is a lot of kids, and in reality when things are said and done, if you gave each family the average amount of kids, the number would grow from 44 to 56. Our parish has a couple hundred families in it, I honestly don't know if there is an exact count. But theoretically, using the same argument as in the above example, we would be a majority in the Church in one more generation. Meaning in about 25 years, there could be 170 - 224 kids, just from our group of 11. Let's just cut that in half - 80-110 new people in the parish in 20 years. Add to that all of us, and you have about 200 people, just from 11 families.

Now if you take 11 families with 2 kids each...using the same math, the number of people stemming from those families will be around 60.

60 v. 200... that is a BIG DIFFERENCE. That is what being REALLY pro-life is all about.