Coming Home is one year old today. As with all first years, there has been development by fits and starts, missteps, and lots of growth. You’re all invited over for some cake and coffee. Many thanks to all who have come, read, illuminated these threads with their comments and insights, prayed with us, offered their encouragement, and mentored a fledgling pro-lifer. It’s been a beautiful experience!
Open house all day. Come hungry, and come as you are!
God Bless,
Gerry
Coming Home 
You make us feel welcome, while challenging us and teaching us! With joyful thanks.~
Julia
Happy Birthday, Coming Home! That looks good. Thanks for all you do Dr. Nadal.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!
You are not shouting into a void.
I’ve scoured your archives. All this, all of it, is new to me. I am glad you have a steady, sincere, compass attached to your great intellect. I am glad you obviously love and speak highly of, your entire family. I am glad you have chosen a life of service, in so many ways. When you go to heaven, and dance, I’ll be in the ring of souls around you, clapping.
Thanks all. And Ari, thank you for your kind words.
I do indeed hope that I’ll be able to dance in Heaven, because as Mrs. Nadal will readily testify, I can’t do it here on earth! True story:
Some years ago, one of my best friends and his wife breezed along past Regina and me on the dance floor at a wedding. He looked at me and remarked, “I didn’t know you had Polio as a child!”, and continued to glide on by. Truthful friends are a blessing, and a curse 😉
While I’m at it, are you going to write a book about development for teenage boys? American Girl has great girl books, but for boys- yeesh. They have drawings of monsters, and h/t masturbate, or come out of the closet, or deal with a divorce- but not—-take a daily shower. It’s horrifying, that the publishers have basically written off teenage boys. I’ve got two little boys. They are growing up kind, religious, funny, clean, moral, —-and they are getting disrespected in so many ways. I’d love it if you would write a book.
That’s a great idea Ari! Also, I haven’t had the opportunity to stop and welcome you, and to thank you for your insightful comments. So, welcome and thank you!
Boys have been written off, and it’s time we changed that. Get your boys into Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts if at all possible. It’s a great peer environment for good, clean, decent boys. My son recently joined and I’m a member of the Troop Committee and merit badge counselor. It’s as much fun as an adult as it was as a boy!
I grew up in the seventies and early eighties- height of “girls just want to have fun” and you know, I tested it all out. I mean, my dad’s best friend, a doctor- gave me, at sixteen, enough otc b/c to fill an entire drawer in my chest of drawers for clothes. I was horrified. The assumptions…….
anyway, I felt like a genius, just coming up with “you know Christmas? How if you knew of a present early, like last year, how sad you were? Well, God gives you presents when you get married. You can open some of them early, but nobody is going to be happy to see you get them. Nobody is going to throw a party b/c they are happy. And, frankly, they sort of get broken if you open them early. God gives you all sorts of presents when you get married, and being God, his presents give life! You guys were presents from God, for me and your Dad- the absolute best presents we have ever gotten in our entire lives!”
It helps that we have always referred to them as the presents we got for certain holidays- father’s day, christmas and mother’s day. And, our little girl keeps saying that the “baby angels’ helped her get inside me, and they tucked her in, and helped her play hide and seek and peek a boo. Since I didn’t even know I was pregnant for four and half months, it’s kind of spooky in a good, snow- globey, sarah laughed, sort of way.
ari
Oh! They will ! Be Boy Scouts!
My husband met the troop leader for the troop at church at the fall festival. They talked. DH had no idea what scouting was like, or about. He thought it was lame, from what he’d seen when he was growing up. But this troop leader and him were the same age, they talked about the kids……He’s on board. He was the difficult sell.
The boys are on board, too. The oldest is ten. Next year he goes off to middle school- we are in a town that has choice and waivers, so we had to research. The troop is right next to his school. We are letting him have lots of thought and input, b/c so much of what he wants to do, he’ll have to work really hard, so it helps that he feels like he signed up for the pain, not we chivvied him in to overachieving. His plan is boy scouts, the football team, and the lego team- which is mostly engineering and math. Plus art. What’s great is that the football team- is mostly scouts- half the varsity squad of the high school is eagle scouts.
They’re youth leaders at their churches, too. I had no idea. It’s really something joyous for me. I grew up fundamentalist Baptist, so there was this bitterness and fear and pain and resentment. It kind of ( definitely) drove people crazy. The most depraved people in this town- are from this same background. So this mainline Protestant, or highly Catholic, or even mainline Baptist- joyfulness, and life- i- ness- I can’t quite explain…..healthy, talented, sheltered and cared for, compassionate, ambitious, young people…….the football team, the lifeguards at the pool, the volunteers at the homeless breakfast……..it’s a good life.
Anyway, quite seriously, my ten year old’s body has been changing over the last year. His eight year old brother, of all people, sat down and said ” You’re becoming a tween. That means you’re not quite a teenager, but you’re also not just like me anymore. You’re growing up.” His little four year old sister found a commercial for “man wash”- you know those silly Axe commercials featuring teenagers? She wanted to buy that and new legos for him, to celebrate his tenth. My dad bought a hat for him. I started stocking a kitchen for him, talking about learning to take care of himself, and cooking for himself and others, and we sort of had dates. he’d invite me to watch a TV show with him- Psych- and he’d cook dinner. His father signed him up for football, He also started reading books for “boys to become men” which were books about heroes in history, So, this very organic, family, joyful, NORMAL- growing up. And, people understood it- the clerk who helped us find “man wash” stuff- his parents had done the same thing for him, so he was willing to go look in the warehouse to find “just the right one.” I’ve done the grocery shopping for years- nobody has ever looked in the back. People suggested hero books- george washington, davy crockett- xenophon- his teacher sent hero books home.
And then, the school, sent home a permission slip for “body health.” The slip said it would cover hygiene. I signed it, b/c I’m friends with some of the teachers, and they comment about how the kids’ bodies change, and that they are so innocent that they have no idea how much they smell. They’re little, innocent kids. So, I signed- who wouldn’t want a lecture on showers for stinky kids, right? The DISTRICT sent in a travelling health nurse-male- STRANGER- to do the class- and he started the whole thing by a slideshow of ERECT MALE PENISES- and then flaccid, adult male penises. Unreal. My poor child then started staring out the window and basically trying to count to ten and distract himself, b/c it was so overwhelming and R-rated. He spent the next few days furling into himself, just like the victim in an after-school special, every person and creature he drew was frowning ( the child whose pirates all smiled) and he was having outbursts “don’t touch me! Don’t say those words!Don’t make me say those words!” and harassing his brother- ” I Know what’s under your underwear!” His brother hit him- saying it was creepy- and we agreed. My husband took him to dinner and asked what was up- and heard about the class in detail. My poor little boy was trying to protect me from the “yucky, nasty R-rated pictures.” I could have cried. He was trying to protect me- a grown woman who should be protecting him from this. He then insisted we never, ever sign up his brother or sister.
I went to the principal, and she GIGGLED when I told her how distressed my child was. She said that it usually made boys uncomfortable. I could have cried. We are trying to bar international aid to Ethiopia b/c little girls are “uncomfortable” but we can’t even think to protect our own sons here? When did the school decide that my child doesn’t need to be innocent?
I started looking for books to sort of counter-act the damage, or at least get some healthy, age appropriate information….for boys, there is NOTHING. For girls, books all over the place. I can’t even find an address to a girls’ publisher to say ” Hey, these great, enlightened, healthy girls- some day, they’ll want to marry these boys that you have maligned and neglected and slandered. How happy to do you think your precious girls will be then?”
The American Girls body care book has sold 3 million copies. There is nothing even remotely comparable for boys. I’ve looked. The worst of the bunch had a giant, full-sized page diagramming a girl’s private parts- seriously-and a page saying ” So what do girls look like under their clothes?” and had some drawings, and said ” “See? No big deal.” Every mother I’ve said that to, describing the book, has recoiled- physically recoiled, from that statement. There weren’t any diagrams of boy parts, just tiny thumbnails of the parts of “monters”- furry humanoid wolves. It was so completely bizarre, I’m at a loss to describe it. I tell parents, and they recoil, too. It was like a cartoon youth version of Penthouse- not even playboy- penthouse, at best. I’m still trying to figure out what sort of person thought any of this was a good idea.
The American Girl book starts with body care- teeth, and dental care, and showering. It gets to more grown up stuff later. It’s designed to be read a little at a time, as the girl grows up. there are no gratuitous nude shots, or essays about “coming out” (in one of the boy books- why?) or sex. It’s age appropriate for normal, healthy, loved, cared for, in a family, kids. If it weren’t so pink, I’d buy it for my boys, and just tear out the pages on how to insert a tampon.
I joke about re-typing it, but I don’t know what information to include for boys. Their body changes, and I’m not a boy, so I don’t know what’s remarkable and necessary information. My husband talks, but I want a book that they can stash and check later in privacy. They do have private important stashes. The oldest has been to first communion- he has in his stash, so far, his first communion cup, a baseball trophy, a picture of a cheerleader he cut from Sports Illustrated ( he did this when he was three- he thought she was pretty) his dad’s golden book of ” the ugly duckling”, his favorite lego clone trooper…….and I hope he never googles this, since I just violated his privacy. But I think it shows how normal, and nascent, and innocent he is.
I’m trying to talk your ear off, so that you see —I’m normal, my kids are normal, your kid is normal, you’re normal- you have skills——-other people’s kids need this, too.
? would it be casuistic to assert, yes, you’ll dance!
ari there are books for boys but they are hard to find:
Bethlehem Press publishes some great ones:
They are Catholic BUT the books are not necessarily catholic and some of their historical fiction reprints are fantastic.
A few good titles:
Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal
Beorn the Proud
Big John’s Secret
Hittite Warrior
John Treegate’s Musket
God King
Year of the Black Pony
Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow
I think you get the idea. You will also find these books enjoyable to read yourself and to read aloud should your children wish for this!
The link is: http://www.bethlehembooks.com/
Most tween and teen lit is sadly, rife with unsuitable situations and topics. It would be wise to assume this for most literature unless the publisher is specifically Christian or Catholic.
God bless,
MC
I didn’t realize but Bethlehem books also has a webpage specifically for boys titles:
http://www.bethlehembooks.com/category/specific-interest/for-boys