One of the things I find myself fretting about is the question, "How does one raise children in the Catholic faith?" Or in any faith, really.

Looking back on my own childhood, there is such a marked lack of spiritual awareness that I stall on this issue every time it comes up. Which is pretty often, with two little kids at home. I don't have an example to follow me, so I'm just sort of guessing how you do it.

When our son Zooey (rhymes with Huey, Dewey and Louie, please) was a little guy, I got into the habit of murmuring prayers like the Our Father while he nursed to sleep. Then as he got older, we expanded that a little to include "God bless ____" and he learned to "help pray" the Our Father by interjecting the appropriate words when I paused.

After the baby made her forthcoming appearance known, my husband took over Zooey's bedtime routine, adding the "Now I lay me…" prayer he’d learned when he was a boy. That one always bothered me because it hinted at an early death, but Zooey doesn’t seem to mind.

We also taught him to pray before meals, using the Protestant standby, "God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. Amen." We’ve since replaced that with the traditional Catholic prayer. And we have a collection of Arch Books -- if you don’t know about those children's Bible stories, they are generally set in rhyme with colorful illustrations. My husband couldn’t get enough of them when he was a boy. I haven't particularly checked to see if they uphold Catholic values, but our local Catholic bookstore sells them.

It just seems to me there is so much more to it than that. Surely our examples are the cornerstone of any faith-building. There is no other way to teach a child to speak the name of the Lord reverently than to hear it spoken so, every time.

Still, I am well aware of the fact that you can "do everything right" -- whatever that means -- and still see your children grow up to reject the Christian faith you treasure so much yourself. I've seen it happen in Catholic and Protestant families alike. Sometimes praying with them, praying for them, praying near them, talking about spiritual things, educating them about various functions of faith and worship, taking them to worship services, and even sending them to Christian school just isn't enough.

Not that I’ll quit doing any of those things.

The kids both have Rosaries, now. Our sponsors gave a very nice wooden one to the baby on the occasion of her acceptance into the Church on Saturday. Zooey's is one of the black plastic ones made for kids. I had purchased one for his Easter basket that had red wooden beads – red being his current favorite color, but it was scented. I thought that would make it a sure winner since the boy is constantly asking to smell things ("Can I smell my milk?" or even "Dad, can I smell your knee?"). Unfortunately, the smell of roses was less than appealing to him ("Bleh!!!") so I switched the red one for the black one.

Zooey got fascinated with Rosaries over the weekend, so Sunday morning, I offered to show him how to pray with one. We used the baby's, because the beads were bigger and color-coded, and I tried to abbreviate the prayers he didn't know so it wouldn't be too much all at once. (I hope that’s not a grievous sin.) For the Apostle's Creed, we said, "I believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in the Holy Spirit." And then we did the Our Father, one Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. I told him the "story" of the first mystery, and as he held the colored beads of the first decade, we did one Hail Mary, the first sentence of the Glory Be, and the first sentence of the Fatima Prayer. Then another "story" and so on round the beads, finishing with a highly shortened "Hail Holy Queen."

It's always hard for a 3-yr-old boy to sit still, but Zooey did all right. The frequency of stories about Jesus and Mary helped – he loves to hear stories. I just wanted to make it "pre-school" size for now. I intend to build up to the full-length prayers and also the full number as he gets more accustomed to it.

I'm not sure how he feels about the experience, but at least I think he knows that praying the Rosary is something special. He pulled out his own Rosary a few more times yesterday, and he asked for a carrying pouch to put it in, like my husband and I have, so I quickly stitched one up out of some scraps of felt and Velcro®.

I don't want to shove all this down his throat, so I’m trying to be sensitive to both his interest level and his intellectual ability to grasp the concepts. And I don't expect either him or the baby to be particularly pious children. I want them to grow in Faith, which I hope will mean they will become grateful to God, trusting Christ to provide forgiveness for their sins. That's all. It's something that was missing from my own childhood, and I think my own life would have been much different – less painful, less shameful – had I known about God all my life.

--Sparki