Seeing Our Boys with Loving Eyes with Tom Royals: Not Projects, but Persons

In last week's episode, we considered how beauty is a special combination of order and surprise. To behold beauty, we learned, is to contemplate the dynamism of a being on the way to its perfection. It is to see the rose emerging from its seed. This week we talk with assistant headmaster, Tom Royals, about learning to see the beauty—albeit often messy beauty—of our own growing children. To be sure, in this adventure, we may find more surprise than order. Nevertheless, in learning to see our children with loving eyes, we learn to better understand them. And in better understanding them, we are better able to accompany them along their paths, each of which has its own peculiar order. In this episode, Tom encourages us to avoid thinking of our children as projects and instead to learn to contemplate them as free persons. For it is only in becoming contemplatives of our children that they will know themselves to be understood and loved, as they are. This knowledge, more than anything, will become the basis of their growth. Like Chesterton said of Rome, they are not loved because they were first great; they will become great because they have first been loved. Chapters 4:00 Not projects, but persons 5:43 To be seen and known 6:25 To be accompanied, not managed 7:20 To be contemplated 7:45 Charity as seeking to understand 9:30 Only the beloved sings 10:30 Accompanying as flowing from contemplating 11:50 The importance of knowing our stress points 13:08 ​​We are always teaching 15:30 Why we should "waste time" with our children 16:35 The importance of being available 19:15 The need for simplicity when attending to our children 21:00 The dangers of "search and destroy" mode 25:00 Why we should welcome guests into our homes 26:20 Storytelling around the dinner table 27:05 Limiting corrections at the dinner table 28:20 Parents and teachers are always learning 28:55 The long view in parenting and education 29:30 Loving your children as a manifestation of loving your spouse 31:12 Parenting and teaching: overflows of the interior life Also on The Forum 20 Ways to Improve the Family Dinner by Rich Moss Against Indifference by Tom Longano Ways to Foster a Family Culture by Alvaro de Vicente On Home as Social Hub: The Importance of Hosting Our Sons and Their Friends with Tom Royals Learn to Turn: Tom Royals on Parental Prudence with Tom Royals Cultivating Friendship in the Classroom by Austin Hatch Our Little Protectors: How Do WE See Our Boys? with Alvaro de Vicente