By Susan Ciancio
Several years ago, a Pew Research study asked parents which values they thought were most important for their kids to learn. While responsibility came in at number one, helping others and empathy for others ranked at three and seven respectively.
Though parents may not know or realize this, helping others and empathy are two core pro-life values, and both are so necessary in today’s world.
Even just a cursory look at a news site will show you more bad stories than good. Bad news sells; this has always been the case. We can debate whether today’s world has more evil in it than our world 40-50 years ago or whether we just hear more about it now, but neither really matters when it comes to the truth that evil exists and it’s up to parents to teach their kids the necessary values to combat it.
How do we teach them? We do so intentionally, through conversations from the time our kids are small, through our examples, and through stories and books filled with characters and heroes that our kids can emulate.
If we want to raise children who help others and who have empathy for those around them, we must first teach them that all people have value. This core truth is foundational in forming children who have a greater likelihood of growing up to respect and protect all human beings, from creation until death.
This is what it means to be pro-life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that parents are and should be the first educators of their children. This means that we must teach values at home, and the Culture of Life Studies Program makes this incredibly easy for parents—even those who feel they already have too much on their plate.
CLSP creates downloadable lesson booklets for parents of kids from preschool through high school. In an age-appropriate way, all of these booklets teach pro-life values. Four, in particular, teach empathy for others through the lives of saints.
- When Heroes Become Saints: Saint Damien de Veuster of Molokai introduces kids to the priest who volunteered to minister to lepers in a leper colony. He did so because he understood that the people there had been isolated and forgotten.
- Unconditional Love and Respect for Everyone: St. John Bosco introduces kids to a priest who founded schools and homes for young boys who had nowhere to go and no one to care for them.
- No Greater Love: Saint Maximilian Kolbe teaches about a priest who gave his life for another prisoner in a concentration camp because he knew that man had a family.
- St. Carlo Acutis: Extraordinary in the Ordinary teaches about a young boy who died at 15 and who spent nearly all of his short life caring for the people around him.
These men serve as beautiful examples for our kids, especially our boys. When we nurture the faith and give our children holy role models as heroes, they can start to see themselves as modern-day heroes who can courageously protect the bullied student, befriend the lonely student, speak the truth about the sanctity of life, and grow to become adults who do the same for the people in their homes and communities.
Many children will go back to school in a few weeks. They will face situations and problems that previous generations couldn’t even fathom. Arm them now with the tools they will need to protect all human beings from creation until death.