Children, safety, and the sixth commandment.

At home we say that my six-year-old, who will turn seven in January, is in first grade. He is an outgoing and cheerful child who loves to meet people. So I was really looking forward to starting him in religious ed at our parish this year, because that is one of the first "classroom" experiences our kids tend to have. Meanwhile, I looked forward to starting him slowly at home with memory work from the St. Joseph First Communion Catechism, as I have done for all the other kids. I have a little personalized copybook printed just for him, and we take two years to work through memorizing and copying the answers to the questions:

Who made me?

"God made me."

Did God make all things?

"Yes, God made all things."

Why did God make me?

"God made me to show his goodness and to make me happy with Him in Heaven."

It is not just memorizing and copy work, although I find it is a good vehicle for practicing handwriting and for stretching the child's memory. As I introduce each one we talk about it: what it means, why we use some words and not others, sometimes different ways to think about the answers, which of the answers seem easy to grasp and which answers are so difficult that grownups still argue about them when they go to college and other grownups write whole books about what they mean. Six- and seven-year-olds, I find, are proud to be learning about things that are so important and difficult that grownups argue about them.

We add one or two of these per week, and to get through the whole First Communion catechism it takes about two school years, so I start in first grade. By the time second grade rolls around and the parish sends home the packet of things To Be Learned before First Confession and then First Communion, our children have hardly balked at learning the Ten Commandments and the Act of Contrition and the Five Steps To Prepare For Making A Good Confession and the like. I have rolled it right into their copybook and each year it has become part of the memory work.

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But as I have said, I look forward to enrolling our kids in our very good parish religious ed program in part because I like them to have a classroom experience with other kids and a teacher, just that little experience of collegiality and being a school-kid, complete with chairs and desks and chalkboards, evenings in the parish school.

So I was more than a little disappointed when my 6yo arrived for his first day and there weren't any other first graders in his class.

Demographics, the religious ed director told me. The recession. There are only about 15 six-year-olds among all the families registered in the parish, and the others go to the school and so they don't need Wednesday night religious ed. There just were not a lot of kids born in 2009-2010. My ten-year-old daughter in the same parish had 43 First Communicants in her cohort, maybe a dozen of whom were in religious ed classes with her.

The school was willing to devote a first grade teacher to my one little boy, but in the end -- he will turn seven this year -- we decided to send him to second grade, and so everything is accelerated. It is the better option for him under the circumstances, but I wanted for him to get a year older first. I wanted to have time to teach him my way for a little while.

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I was talking with a good friend over coffee the other day. She wanted to pick my brain about sex education for children and teenagers, something that I thought was kind of funny because she seems like the sort of person who would have absolutely no difficulty talking about anything at all with anyone. But as we talked it became clear that she is thinking hard about how to thread the needle between a healthy sex-positivity and anything goes, between encouraging moral behavior and fueling shame (or worse, shaming others), between a culture of chastity and the dark side of what she called "purity culture" (the notion that purity can be lost and afterwards you are permanently worth less; cf. comparing human beings, usually girls, to used wads of chewing gum and the like).

I am not sure I added anything to that idea other than "back to the Theology of the Body for you!" Because that is what authentic and sex-positive Catholicism looks like. But we talked a little bit about our different styles and how she is very assertive ("let's sit down, son, it is time for us to talk about Internet porn") and at least for young children I tend to be watchful about questions and respond to them instead. I don't want to burden them, too early, with things that they might not be ready for, I said. But as they grow older I try to spark the questions when it seems time, mostly via artful curriculum choices. So, for instance, my 10yo daughter and 13yo son are both getting Life Science this year with human reproduction included. I tend to stick to the clinical and academic, and I surround it with the social and moral context to it as we go, as it seems necessary.

I called that a "retreat" compared to her style, but she didn't think so. "The other Catholic homeschoolers I run with, it seems like they are afraid to teach their kids about the biology, because it might get them interested in sex." She felt social pressure.

"But what did you mean, specifically," she asked me, "about 'burdening' them too early? Like, what specific knowledge is a burden to a child who is too young for it?"

And that question really gave me pause. I realized I had been saying that for a long time, without ever articulating something specific to myself. I ended up telling her that I remembered a deep sense of revulsion, something not quite shame or fear, but a desire to get away, at the ages of eight-nine-ten if ever one of my parents wanted to speak to me about sex or puberty or any such thing. I have heard it said that this is a natural impulse, possibly self-protective, that many children have; I have also wondered if I felt unusually unsafe in that territory because that was around the time that my own family broke down around me, and there was no context in which it would have been safe to discuss morality or justice or consent. So I don't know, but the memory of that feeling of horror has made me reluctant to impose the feeling on my own kids. I "retreat" (at least in theory -- we shall see if I managed it, I guess) to a clear and age-appropriate explication of biology and a clear and age-appropriate explication of our duty to act justly to other human beings and never to use them as a means to an end, and draw the connections when I get the chance.

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From that conversation I discovered at least one thing that I think can burden a child too young for it, and that is a certain way of looking at the sixth commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

My six-year-old, the one thrust a bit too soon into the first-communion-prep program, is supposed to memorize the ten commandments because of the first-confession-prep which precedes it. Memorizing the ten commandments is completely fine with me. I get that the ten commandments can also be used as a handy memory aid when one is examining one's conscience. But I have always been a little bit bothered by the "child's ten commandments" they offered to us to make it easy for the kids.

"God comes first" is fine. "God's name is holy" is fine. "God's day is holy" is fine. All of them are fine until you get to number six, and then the children are offered as an alternative to "Thou shalt not commit adultery,"

"Be pure."

And -- I don't want to teach a six-year-old that this is what the sixth commandment means.

For one thing, it isn't accurate.

For another thing, none of the real ten commandments are about what you should "be" -- they are about what you should "do." Breaking one does not change you from who you are -- a human being, a child of God -- into something else.

For a third thing, "thou shalt not commit adultery" is a call to acting justly towards others, whereas "be pure" sounds like something you do within yourself, without reference to anyone except yourself and God.

I know where this comes from. It comes from the commendable practice of using the ten commandments as a sort of mnemonic for examinations of conscience, or possibly from the way that the Catechism organizes its discussion of the moral life around the structure of the ten commandments. All the possible sins against chastity are gathered together in section six.

And the teachers are trying to come up with a way that they can teach the children to start obeying the sixth commandment right away. They think "Be pure" is a child-sized version of it.

"Be chaste" would be better, I think.

But even better would be to teach the seven-year-olds this: Seven-year-olds cannot violate the sixth commandment.

The sixth commandment is for their sake. It is meant to protect them. But it is not aimed at them.

When they get older, they will need to incorporate it into their own behavior.

But right now, it is not aimed at them.

The St. Joseph First Communion Catechism pointedly reassures its readers that young children do not commit mortal sin. Before going on to explain that grownups do commit grave sins, and sometimes so do even big boys and girls, it says about young children: God protects them in a special way. They learn about both venial and mortal sin now for completeness, and because later they will have to wrestle with both kinds; but for now we reassure them that they cannot endanger their own souls at the age of seven.

I like this formula, and I think we should adopt it for the sixth commandment.

I don't think seven-year-olds need to be burdened with the worry about whether they are "being" pure.

I think seven-year-olds should understand clearly that if they are exposed to unchastity in their families, if someone inapproriately sexualizes them, if they come upon explicit materials or media -- it is because someone else has sinned against them.

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This post turned out way more rambly than I thought it would, but it has been helpful.

I always have taught the meaning of "Thou shalt not commit adultery" to my young children like this: It exists to protect children and families. The sixth commandment means that mothers and fathers should work hard to make a safe home for children. It means, "Do not find another person who is not your husband or wife to be with," because children need to grow up with their mother and their father.

I have always felt confident about teaching that. In part because kids get it: They know that their parents, and other adults, are supposed to take care of them and keep them safe. And also because as they get older, they can come to understand that all of chastity serves justice for children. Chastity exists to put the needs of children above the desires of adults. I want my kids to know my marriage as a mantle of safety wrapped around them, and I want them to remember that mantle when they grow up and know where it came from, and what that means for their own decisions.

 

Will they be safe people for children?

Not "be pure" but "be safe."

"Be safe," in the sense of "be a person who offers safety to others." Especially children, I think I will be more purposeful about rejecting the "be pure" formulation, starting today. Even when we are well-meaning, we take serious risks when we teach simplified versions of the words of Scripture or of sound doctrine. It may be more difficult, but it is always safer to stick with the original.

 

 

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Comments

[Jenny]

This post pricks so many issues for me so be prepared for several, perhaps unrelated, thoughts.

First, the baby bust. I am so frustrated that it seems that only one of my children (2007) was born when other children were born. We can find so many friends her age and almost nobody for any of the other children. It is really apparent now that my oldest is starting to become very socially aware. We can't send her to play with kids her little sister's age forever. 2010 babies are also scarce on the ground. I worry about these things.

[Melanie B]

I wish I could go back and have the girls copy out the catechism. Ben isn't ready for that much copying and he still needs to learn to read first, but eventually I might have the younger kids do that.

I still need to figure out how to do first communion prep for a child who cannot read at all. Or do I keep putting it off until he can? I honestly think he's ready to receive in terms of understanding the Real Presence. He's not ready to go to confession, though, because he will not talk to a priest or to anyone outside the immediate family. I guess this is where sending him to religious ed might work, but I think he might rebel. He's done classes with siblings at homeschool retreats and vacation Bible school and the art museum, but never a class where he was solo.

[Jenny]

Secondly, there is a rather heated debate happening in my diocese right now. Some families are strongly objecting to the sex ed program that is used at one of the Catholic high schools. This is particularly problematic because there are only two diocesan high schools so there isn't a lot of choices to voice your concerns with your feet and still have your kids go to a Catholic school. The school is not allowing students to opt out. You will attend this class or you will not attend the school.

For many families, this high school is the only reasonable choice to make. For many other families, mine included, Catholic schools are these theoretical places that exist far away from us. Anyway, coming back from the tangent. All that to say this is very heated because parents are backed into a corner without many options.

Some of the parents are very concerned that the material is too explicit. This sounds like a reasonable concern until you know that these particular parents have lamented nudes at the art museum. So. There is a very real fear that knowing will lead to doing. Maybe? I'm not exactly convinced.

The school has very recently made the material available online, but I have yet to click over and look at it for myself. I'm not sure I want to know.

Puberty happens whether parents like it or not. I know one mother in this same social group who has worried about finding an appropriate puberty book for her oldest boy (12) because every book she finds discusses a particular physical reality of a boy going through puberty. Cough. She seems to think that if he never finds out about that particular aspect of life, it won't happen to him because the seed wouldn't have been planted in his mind. (If I point the joke out, is it still a joke?)

I know parents have concerns, but I wonder about the desire to keep children not just innocent, but ignorant.

[Bearing]

Melanie, re: first communion prep for a child who cannot read, I would do the same catechism stuff I am doing now but entirely with memory/recitation. If anything the catechism method should be especially well suited to a nonreader.

Jenny, whew. I think there's no such thing as too explicit in the sense of *factual information,* but it's possible to be imprudently explicit with imagery; and of course, it is possible to run contrary to correct moral teaching. Still, though, I am surprised that the diocese permits the high schools to be so inflexible with parents since church teaching is clear that parents are primary educators and they only delegate it to the schools.

[Bearing]

Oh, one more thing, Melanie -- my parish absolutely insists on confession before communion, I think. A kid who wasn't ready for confession would be assumed unready for communion. Perhaps exceptions would be made for kids with special needs, I don't know.

[Jenny]

Comment, the third: Knowing too much too soon.

I was a child who knew too much too soon. My mother, for reasons I cannot fathom, told me everything there was to know when I was four years old. My early childhood featured regular retreads of the information in question. I, too, had that feeling of revulsion and being horribly trapped while she told me these things. She would tell me that she wasn't telling me everything, that some things had to wait until I was older, but the withheld information turned out to be all the different types of birth control and why you definitely should be using it.

By the time I got to the normal age for learning these things, it was old, old information. It didn't strike curiosity or wonder in me at all. I don't remember ever not knowing. My memory doesn't go back that far.

This was not a good state of affairs. I knew way, way too much. And when the information was becoming relevant, the conversations stopped because, I guess, she thought she had checked off that box. I had a lot of information and not much guidance to go with it.

I might state again this was very bad.

My approach with my own children is definitely colored by my own experience. I err on withholding rather than telling. I try extremely hard to answer questions that are asked instead the next question after that. I like to think I am doing fairly well at threading the needle. I don't flinch at classical statuary, anyway. I am helped by an oldest child who has been decidedly uninterested.

But yes, the sixth commandment exists to protect children. I think children do need to know that. They aren't afterthoughts. God provides for them.

[Jenny]

I have spent more time than I ought clicking around this afternoon looking for that curriculum in order to make a reasoned judgement on it, but cannot find it.

It is definitely problematic the way the diocese is usurping the rights of parents to opt out. The diocese argues that it is a month-long unit in a required theology course so it is a vital part of their overall Catholic education. I am less sure about such things.

The diocese argues that when parents choose to delegate to the schools, they lose the right to decide further about particular curriculum choices. I think that is shockingly wrong, but honestly, I am not surprised.

[bearing]

I'd be inclined to side with the diocese if their goal was to make sure that sex education occurs *in a moral context.* Assuming for the moment that everything in the program is orthodox (a big assumption, I know): Just as you could imagine prudish conservative parents wanting to opt out of the biology part if it offended their sensibilities you could easily imagine progressive-type parents (or non-Catholic parents) wanting to opt out of parts of Catholic sexual morality.

But even though I'd be more inclined to side with the diocese there, I'm still skeptical when it comes to sex education specifically that the parents don't have the canonical right to opt out.

[mandamum]

They talk about there being a "sexual latency" stage to development, and I think it goes through about 10-11 - perhaps that lines up with the revulsion? So I think you're right about "more than they're ready for" being a burden - it either brings the sexual latency period to a premature end, or it becomes something that must be ignored/avoided.

In explaining the 6th commandment for kids, I've said it means a person shouldn't "act like a married couple" with people he/she not married to. I like your point about it being to keep children safe - good point. We tend to talk about the 9th commandment more broadly, including not being jealous of one friend's relationship with a different friend, and letting Mom and Dad watch a show together without insisting on hanging out with them....

Fr. Ricardo mentions often that we should teach the 10 Commandments in the context of instruction on how NOT to be slaves, since that's the context in which they were given.

Melanie, we did 1st Confession/Communion with non-readers partly by reading Bible stories together (Prodigal Son, 10 coins, Lost Sheep, Vine/Branch, etc) and then having the child narrate them to me as secretary, then (sometimes) illustrating them with drawings, coloring pages, etc. We put all these in a binder with their other prep work that my kids keep referring to as (sacramental) life goes on. I can read them back for the still-non-readers, but the pictures help a lot. For 10 commandments, we worked through each commandment with a little kid-generated picture that goes with each one, and perhaps a kid-generated label, and then put these all inside a file-folder 10 commandments like this one at Shower of Roses:
http://showerofroses.blogspot.com/2009/03/ten-commandments-lap-book.html

[Tabitha]

I love this post and discussion! Erin, would you be willing to share your copybook that you print out?

[bearing]

Hm, I'd have to go into the file and make a special version, because I have family photos of it. Will see how much work it would be.

[Tabitha]

I'm sure I can make one...I was being lazy! 😀.

[Heather]

This is a great post. Thanks for giving me more food for thought as I prepare for my first First Communion prep! I have a six year old boy turning seven in February, but happily he is surrounded by boys his age, including two other homeschooling boys his age just in our neighborhood!

Also, to Jenny's concern about her diocese, I believe Amy Welborn covered the situation well here: https://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/4th-period-is-sexytime-today/

Her post even includes a link to the offensive material. I agree with Amy--totally usurping parents' rights in a way that contradicts the teachings of our faith, and also just goes into inappropriate visuals and details.

[bearing]

I remember seeing that post on Amy Welborn's blog but didn't connect it to "the diocese Jenny is writing about."

I would be willing to use material that gives a similar level of information, although I would probably prefer a different presentation, in educating my own kids. (The term "explicit" is ambiguous and not neutral, so I am going to avoid it here.) I have to agree that the problem is the diocese making it compulsory (and possibly, putting it in class at all -- they had other options, such as sending material to parents with plenty of lead time and instructing them, "Kids will need to know this material, please review it for your reference and convey the content to your child at home.") But I am fairly sure they are in the wrong canonically *as well as*, pardon my French, just being dickish to parents by refusing to let parents opt their kids out.

I might promote elevating this above the diocese level, although I am not sure who to contact -- ask a canon lawyer blogger like the one at Canon Law Made Easy?

[Jenny]

Oh look! Amy Welborn did indeed write about the goings-ons here.

I asked someone I know to send me a copy of the curriculum so I now have it in my inbox. It's not horrible but some of the details are over the top, and I don't know how you cover it in class without it getting really, really uncomfortable.

I'm not sure if the parents involved are going over the bishop's head or not. I do think he has made an error in supporting the school's stance in not allowing opt-outs.

[Joseph]

For the past 83 Advents of my life it looks like much to still be learned. Thankyou Erin for all your posts and may our Lord shower His blessings on you and your family.

[Kathleen Miller]

My wording of the sixth commandment: If you're married, don't pretend to be married to somebody else. That worked for my little ones.