Teach your children to embrace God’s will in all areas of their life, and never tell your child to do something and just leave it at that.

Sheltering your children only works as long as they live with you. After that, they decide for themselves. Therefore you MUST, when age-appropriate, explain why something is good or bad, and then further explain why your children should accept or reject it themselves regardless of whether you are there or not.

Ultimately, it is in your child’s best interest to follow God, not just yours: Teach your children that getting to Heaven is THEIR responsibility and you won’t always be around to help them get there – because you really won’t.

Also teach them that it is THEIR responsibility to be good role-models for their youngers.

If you teach them properly, you will be surprised how often your children take it upon themselves to do the right thing and help their brothers/sisters as well—sometimes even more than you!

When you finally get “buy-in” from your children, you are close to keeping your child Catholic! Congratulations!