Parenting with Prayer is a great book from 1993 that helps with the challenges of parenting. It is said that the family that prays together stays together, so Parenting with Prayer will help with that. The author of Parenting with Prayer presents an excellent message for parents and children. Mary Ann Kuharski’s overview of the basic teachings and practices of our church, strong message on the sacredness of Sunday for the entire family, is refreshing. Parenting with Prayer should appeal to everyone, though the message of the book is catholic in orientation. This 190-page book is readable. Do you need advice on raising your children?
Summary of Parenting with Prayer
There are three salient facts from Parenting with Prayer. First, family life is a blessing. The author urges the reader to take the time to treasure parenting. All the bickering teens and the dirty diapers were not too high a price to pay for the gift of time spent with the kids. Job opportunities will always be there, but children will only be young once.
Second, parents cannot do it alone. The author says that they must rely on God clearly; they must rely on something. With so much activity in the large Kuharski household, they had their fair share of trying times and messy moments. Through it all — including a brain tumor that struck her husband — she clung to Christ through hope and prayer. That is an inspiring story and a high point of this book.
Finally, going against the grain of a materialistic and selfish society is not easy. Kuharski is the first to admit that not everyone is called to parent a large family. She is also the first to confess that she was not worried about being the most popular parent on the block. Take it easy and just get through it, rely on your support network.
Mary Ann Kuharski Biography
Mary Ann Kuharski, the author of Parenting with Prayer is very accomplished. She mother of thirteen children, six of whom are adopted and of mixed races with “special needs.” So, she is well-equipped to give parenting advice. She and her husband John, are members of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Minneapolis and active members of the Knights of Columbus.
Mary Ann is an author and speaker on many life and family issues. She is a founding member and Director of PROLIFE Across AMERICA. She has served as an Advisory Board Member of the National Council for Adoption and on the Minnesota Governor’s Task Force regarding children with handicaps and special needs. She has testified twice in Congress on adoption-related issues and has appeared on local and national radio and television, including EWTN Live with Father Mitch Pacwa and Johnnette Benkovic’s Abundant Life.
Tips on Parenting
Here are a few parenting tips, based on research, that may be helpful as well.
- Teaching skills and behaviors: being a good example, incidental teaching, human communication of the skill with role-playing and other methods, communicating logical incentives and consequences.
- Parent-child relationship skills: quality time spent, positive communications, and a delighted show of affection.
- Encouraging desirable behavior: praise and encouragement, nonverbal attention, facilitating engagement
- Anticipating and planning: advanced planning and preparation for readying the child for challenges, finding out engaging and age-appropriate developmental activities, preparing the token economy for self-management practice with guidance, holding follow-up discussions, identifying possible negative developmental trajectories.
- Managing misbehavior: establishing firm ground rules and limits, directing discussion, providing clear and calm instructions, communicating and enforcing appropriate consequences, using restrictive tactics like quiet time and time out with an authoritative stance rather than an authoritarian one.
- Self-regulation skills: monitoring behaviors (own and children’s), setting developmentally appropriate goals, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, and setting practice tasks, monitoring and preventing internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
- Partner support skills: improving personal communication, giving and receiving constructive feedback and support, avoiding negative family interaction styles, supporting and finding hope in problems for adaptation, leading collaborative problem solving, promoting relationship happiness and cordiality.
- Mood and coping skills: reframing and discouraging unhelpful thoughts (diversions, goal orientation, and mindfulness), stress and tension management (own and children’s), developing personal coping statements and plans for high-risk situations, building mutual respect and consideration between members of the family through collaborative activities and rituals.
Conclusion
We all need help with parenting, and Parenting with Prayer offers a way to do it. God calls us to be parents; it is a natural stage of life, but it is difficult, and as such,h this book will appeal to a large audience. Another highlight of this book is the ‘how to pray the rosary’ figure. That is useful. So is the practical advice from an expert on parenting.
