Okay. I’m gonna answer your question. And this question was a little bit layered though, by the way. So this mom, her kids are five, three and a half, two and a half, and nine months old. Okay girl, I love you so much. I’ll address that in just a second.

And she was just saying how do you balance like religion with everyday life? ’cause of course, you know, with those ages and those are all pretty small, you know, we’re just trying to get through, feeding them and nap time and them spilling their water all the time and running into chairs and then crying and it’s just a lot. It’s really intense.

And she said, but this was the really important thing she said. My husband and I don’t want our kids to resent mass or their prayer life. Okay? So that’s the deep seated fear, right? The fear is we’re looking at these teeny tiny kids that aren’t even gonna remember this time, right?

And we’re worried that the way that we’re talking to them and the way that we are doing religion with them is going to. Leave some sort of like bad taste in their mouth, some sort of bad experience. And then they’re not gonna choose religion as adults.

So let me just break this down ’cause there’s a couple things going on here. First of all, we are required to teach the faith to our children. I’m Sterling Jaquith, I had six kids in eight years and I really didn’t like motherhood. And I went on this journey to figure out how to enjoy the whole thing.

And I’ve been teaching women how to do that and have interior peace for 10 years. And so I’m answering questions like this all the time. And I post ’em here on YouTube. It is not our responsibility to make sure that they end up Catholic. And that is so important because a little bit, you’re trying to do God’s job, right? It is between your children and the Lord, their salvation story.

Okay. It is your job to show them the love of Christ and the peace. This is where I think most of us need to work on improving the peace that we have by believing that God is who he says that he is. We should be a living example of peace and joy. There should be this like brightness around us that people are attracted to. Because we are Christians, we should look different than the rest of the world. That is the thing that should be attractive. Right?

And if we’re doing that well, the kids will be like, I see that and I want some of that. Okay. Still some won’t choose it, but it’s not your fault. So if you go into parenting thinking, if I push all these buttons the right way, people, people, then the kids will be Catholic. This is not true. They have free will. All of us must choose the Lord freely of our own will. For it to be true.

And that is just between them and the Lord. They will all get to be adults and they will all choose. My husband and I, we’re adult converts, so it’s very easy for us to tell our kids like, Hey, you may choose not to be Catholic. I tell ’em that.

It’s totally your choice. I said, we’re gonna raise you Catholic and I’m gonna ask you to go to Mass and I’m gonna tell you what I believe. ’cause I looked at the world and out of all of the religions, this is the one that I chose as an adult. Nobody made me. So I really, truly, genuinely believe that it’s true. And I said, but that’s the only reason to be Catholic.

The only real reason to be Catholic is that you believe that it’s true. And I said, you guys are all gonna get to figure that out for yourselves as adults. We are not worried about this at ages five, three and a half, two and a half and nine months though, my friend. Okay? And that is some tight spacing and I had spacing like that.

So we are just trying not to yell at them. I’m telling you right now, that is the Jesus that you can give them right now is not yelling at them. And she’d be like, I love you, little ducklings. Come here. We’re taking them to mass.

When I had little kids in mass, our rule was quiet, but they could still be wiggly. So I didn’t want them to be loud, but I didn’t mind those boys like crawling all over me. You know? I mean, at one point my boys were one, two, and three, and then they were two, three, and four, and then four or five and six, right? Like, that’s nuts. Taking those ages to mass.

But as long as they were quiet, I didn’t mind that they were like crawling around and wiggly and whatever. I also have no requirement that my kids like mass. None for a long time. I mean, I don’t even know that I say that to my big kids who are now 13, no, I’m sorry, 14, 12, and 10 the girls. Okay.

I’m just like, why would you like mass unless you truly understand what’s happening at the mass, and do we really think that seven year olds get that? Some of them do. I do think that some young children, by the grace of God, receive a special gift from the Holy Spirit and they just like totally get it.

But most of the kids are gonna feel like mass is boring. And I’m like, yeah, mass is totally boring if you don’t understand what’s happening. And that’s why I tell my kids, by the way, when they’re like, oh, I wanna go to mass. I’m like, totally, I totally get that. If I was a kid, I don’t think I’d wanna go to mass either.

And I said, but when you really begin to understand what’s happening at the mass, right, you’re gonna long for it. And I will say like, mom, nobody makes mommy and daddy go to mass. We wanna go so badly, we wanna go so badly on a random Wednesday. ’cause we know what’s happening there and we love it so much.

And that’s just the truth that I tell them. And I just fully believe that by leaving out how I feel about it and telling them out loud why I am choosing it, that they will more than likely choose that I don’t make them. I don’t shame them. I don’t try to rub their nose into it, you know, I’m not like, you should love the rosary. It is boring. The rosary is also boring until you really, truly and deeply understand what the rosary is.

Now in our family, we expect the obedience of them to pray the rosary when we’re doing it. But I don’t expect them to like it. I am totally fine if they roll their eyes and go, I don’t feel like doing it. I’m like, I know I love you so much, but we’re gonna do it right.

So, you know, right now. You’re in this phase and it’s hard, but you’re projecting what’s gonna happen in the future. And this is something that’s just so important. God doesn’t give us any grace for our imaginary problems.

So right now you have the current problem of four really tiny kids and just the logistics of living with four really tiny kids. Okay? But on top of that, and God’s giving you grace for that ’cause you have it.

But on top of that, you’re like carrying a 25 pound kettlebell of the future of them resenting you or mass or religion. Right. You’re just like walking around carrying this and the Lord’s like, but you could probably you could just set that down, right? You could just set that down and not worry about that. I can’t help you with that ’cause it’s an imaginary problem.

And I’m being a little silly about this because we do this all the time. So many of us are exhausted because we’re just literally carrying something that God has not asked us to carry. So we covered a lot in this video. One, you are not responsible for your kids being Christian. You are not. That is between them and the Lord.

Now, I’m not abdicating any kind of like, so you’re on your own kid. I’m not doing that. I’m showing the beauty of Christ and Catholicism, and I tell them why I believe it’s true. I tell them why I chose it. I was raised with nothing. I was Protestant for two years and then I chose to be Catholic.

And I talked to them about why, and I tell them that they get to choose and they better believe what they choose. I said, don’t be Catholic just ’cause your parents are Catholic. Right? But you can just see I’m giving them so much space to grapple with it themselves because they have to anyway.

Right? So many people, like they raise their kids in like ultra strict Catholic households and they make it seem like there’s no choice. And then when they get out they realize like, there is a lot of choice. And actually the vast majority of people don’t choose to be Catholic. And then for those kids, sometimes they just don’t know what to do and then they stop gonna mass.

So tell them early on, like you can choose it. And then also, like I said, I don’t make them like it. Why would they like it if they don’t understand it? And I don’t know what the capacity of children’s minds are to understand some of these things.

And so I just say you’re gonna understand someday. And then I hope you love it as much as I do. By the way, I am a catechesis of the Good Shepherd teacher, which is trained to teach children about religion from ages three to six in a Montessori environment. And that is when their hearts are really naturally open to the love of God.

And it’s kind of just like God loves you so much and he’s with you and you know, we teach them the infancy narratives about, you know, the visitation and you know, the birth of Jesus and the adoration of the Magi, and we talk about the Good Shepherd. So I think kids can soak up a lot of concepts.

I don’t know that they can understand what’s happening at Mass to the degree that a 4-year-old would then not think that mass is boring. Even my Atri kids who come and have this amazing experience with me about the mass in our little class still probably on a Sunday, are like, but it’s long and I’m wiggly and I wanna go home and I wanna eat goldfish crackers, or whatever.

Right. And I’m just okay with that. And again, some of them have the gift of the charism of getting it at a young age. Some priests feel their calling their vocation at a very young age. That does happen. But if it isn’t happening, I don’t then think it’s a problem and I don’t make it mean anything about their likelihood or not of choosing Catholicism as adults.

So to answer the very last question, which is really about like how do you get over perfectionism? It’s just removing the pressure on yourself. The reason that you are like gripping the kids and trying to expect perfectionism a little bit. We don’t wanna be embarrassed in front of our friends. That’s just true. We don’t wanna be disruptive.

So I would just immediately be like, I don’t even care. It is amazing that I got four tiny children into the car and in this place, I don’t care what anybody thinks around me. Right. Like, I think it’s so great that we chose to come here and we didn’t have to.

So that would be my thought about bringing four kids to mass and anyone looking at me weird or anyone being like, get ahold of your kids, then I would just be like, I am going to love the Lord so much that my kids see that he is my reason for my peace, which is what we talk about here on this channel, which is interior peace. The Lord is the reason for my enduring peace.

And of course, we’re gonna lose it all the time, that’s fine. But we’re gonna come back to it and we’re gonna show the children. I have peace even in hard situations. And I will say to the kids, I don’t know how people do life without Jesus, right? Because I’ll be like, today is rough and I’m having a hard time, but just the Lord lives inside of me and I talk to him. I don’t know how people do it without him.

And I will tell them that because I want them to know when their life is hard, they can lean on him and he can give them real comfort and real strength in difficult situations. So you’ll care less about what the kids, what your 4-year-old is doing in mass when you don’t feel this crushing pressure to make sure that they’re Catholic.

The way that we make sure that they’re Catholic, if we could, and you can’t because of free will. really genuinely is just to live it out. And then to tell them that they have a choice and that they’re gonna have to choose.

And as they get older, you’re gonna tell them more and more things about Catholicism and the Eucharist and the Catholic church and the rules and why, and Mary and the Saints, and there’s so much, it’s so layered and so beautiful. We could never learn it all.

But as you unveil more of it to them and you get excited about it, you’ll transfer that to them. But your job, I forget the wording of the catechism, but it’s like our job to teach the faith of the kids. The catechism does not say It is our job to make sure the kids end up Catholic. Our job is just to teach it and live it out to model it for them and let that be our focus.

And then when that’s your focus, you’re like, I gotta work on that interior piece thing. Then Sterling, I’m like, yeah, that’s why I’m here. I’m here to help all of you guys work on interior peace, and this is a really common lie that moms believe, like that they’re screwing up the religion aspect of the kids and that they’re not gonna be religious.

All right, my friends, I’m praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.