“Anger isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.” For some reason, dealing with sons and daughters can bring out anger in a person who has been mild mannered and easy going their whole life! Why is that? What we have noticed is that children do not create our weaknesses, they reveal them. It is good to understand why we react so strongly to certain situations in order to grow in virtue. In this podcast, we shed some light on the truth about anger, give some tools and ideas for handling anger...
Jan 18, 2023•58 min•Ep. 222
“The sacrifices our parents made to give us brothers and sisters is one of the greatest things they have done for us.” - Mike and Alicia Hernon We usually talk about family life from the perspective of parents. But for this podcast, we are going to take some time to talk about what it was like growing up in a family of 6 for Mike and a family of 10 for Alicia. We didn’t realize it as kids, but our parents' lives were really hard and they made a lot of sacrifices having the large families that th...
Jan 10, 2023•59 min
The holidays are a perfect time for families to have game nights or even game days! Games teach children invaluable lessons about strategy, logic, and skill but also about how to get along with others, what consequences mean, and how to be a good loser and a gracious winner. Taking time to invest in games for kids is a great activity for parents and you may actually have fun too! See our list of games for families below to enjoy! Support our mission and choose a great thank you gift: https://mes...
Dec 26, 2022•46 min•Ep. 220
If curiosity is a trait that can lead to the development of healthier, deeper, and more intimate relationships, then it could be another vital feature of the life of the child. - Maggie Hernon Did this title cause you to look? Do you wonder what it is about? Is it causing you to click to listen? That is because you are curious and that is a good thing! Curiosity is something we should all be encouraging in our children and there are numerous benefits. People who are curious have better mental he...
Dec 19, 2022•58 min•Ep. 219
"When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things—not the great occasions—give off the greatest glow of happiness." - Bob Hope The holidays are an important “memory making time” for children because these are the years in which their impressions are sometimes bigger than life, bigger than reality! Parents need to be very intentional about the messages that they are sending to their children through the way that they spend their time, energy, and money. In this podcast we t...
Dec 12, 2022•55 min•Ep. 218
“Money touches every aspect of our lives and colors our interactions with others. If we don't get our relationship with money right, our relationships with others hardly stand a chance.” ~ Jonathan and Amanda Teixeira Boy do we have a treat for you! One area in which we have always been hesitant to talk about is family finances. But we figured, when you know what you are not good at, you outsource! This is why we are bringing in Jonathan and Amanda Teixeira, founders of WalletWin, a financial-su...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Join us for a conversation that was inspired by our listeners' needs! Our daughter Katie (with a guest appearance by baby Catalina!) joins us as a host to ask questions that have been sent to us by various families over the past few months. In this episode we first talk about the time between dinner and bedtime, which we affectionately call the “witching hour”. For some reason, it’s always a difficult time but there are strategies that we have used to make it better. We also discuss the sad real...
Nov 21, 2022•53 min•Ep. 216
“Ultimately, only bountiful marriages can transform our domestic churches into sanctuaries for this liturgy of love; and it is this liturgy by which we sanctify our daily lives and the world” ~ Living Beyond Sunday We have been blessed to work with many great ministries serving marriage and family and The Catholic Man Show is one of them! David Niles and Adam Minihan, along with their wives Pamela and Haylee have written a great book for Catholic families called Living Beyond Sunday; Making Your...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 4 min
“Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.” ― Padre Pio Parents worry about many things - finances, children’s health and education, extended family, grandparents… and then there is the state of the world and the economy! How do Christian parents handle all the things that COULD go wrong? The answer is that this world is not our home and God is in control. God allows difficulties to come our way not for us to worry or be anxious, but for us to turn...
Nov 08, 2022•51 min•Ep. 214
"True love involves the selfless pursuit of what is best for the other person, even if it means sacrificing one’s own preferences and desires” ~Dr. Edward Sri We are so happy to share with you the recording of one of the largest public date nights we have ever had! Our interview with Dr. Ted Sri and his wife Beth was fun, insightful, and, we hope, inspirational to everyone who heard it. Their new book, The Good the Messy and the Beautiful has the same perspective towards family life that we have...
Oct 31, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 213
It is not our job to change our child. It is their job to change us ~ Maggie Radzik Oh boy, do we have a treat for you! In this podcast we have a fascinating conversation with catechist and Montessori trainer Maggie Radzik. Maggie is a leader in Catholic Montessori in the US and she is committed to seeing the work of Maria Montessori applied in a truly Catholic context. What is so genius about Dr. Montessori’s philosophy is that she drew her conclusions not from her own theories, but through fir...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 212
"Families are the ultimate and best example of a team" Every family is made up of individual people with strengths and weaknesses. Knowing these enables us to work together better! Patrick Lencioni, celebrated author and speaker, has found that there are six “geniuses” found in effective teams. Every person has two of them. When we find out our working genius and that of our spouse, we can function more effectively for the good of our family. Listen in to this podcast where we talk about the six...
Oct 17, 2022•58 min•Ep. 211
“A definition of self-control is joyful mastery over one’s thoughts and desires.” - Dominican Sisters of Mary on Open Light Media Children are little raw balls of personality - and some have more than others! They are unformed little people and it is the job of parents to form them. This is a great joy to be given the privilege of training a child in the way they should go, but (let’s be honest!) it can also be exhausting! In this reboot episode we have a conversation about teaching kids self-co...
Oct 10, 2022•56 min•Ep. 210
"A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels." - Proverbs 31:10 Let’s be honest. Moms do much more work than the average person, especially when they are at home with young children for most of the day. Even moms who work, or who have a side hustle, rarely pull back on caring for children, running the household, and keeping everyone fed and clothed. But this great service to the family can also be a burden, it can cause resentment, and it can cause burnout. Moms can feel st...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 209
“We are witnesses to what the Lord Jesus has done in our lives.” ~ Tony Foy, Executive Director of NET Ministries Ireland Many of you may have picked up that Mike is pretty proud of his Irish heritage. We had a daughter who wanted to be an international missionary at 18 and Mike was hesitant until she said she wanted to be part of NET Ireland. That was a quick sell! NET is an organization that forms missionaries to evangelize junior high and high school students all over the world. Tony Foy and ...
Sep 26, 2022•58 min•Ep. 208
“Most people spend more time planning a one-week vacation than they spend planning their life.” ~ Michael Hyatt As we begin a new school year and the fall season we think this is a perfect time to start or re-start a new habit or routine in your family and be more intentional about your family culture. This is a great time for your family to do a reset! Too often we put off making changes in our family, or it ends with us just talking about it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. This is a speci...
Sep 19, 2022•45 min•Ep. 207
“If you want to be a great parent, you need to be an amazing spouse” ~Mike and Alicia Hernon Often romance is associated with shallow, fleeting feelings, but really, the romance that we share without spouses is a powerful example to our children of the exclusive intimate relationship that only spouses are to enjoy. A kiss in the kitchen or an embrace in front of your children is not only to make them say, “Dad! Mom! Ewww!” but it is to show them the way they are called to love. It is this intima...
Sep 12, 2022•57 min
“We do not hesitate to declare that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most effective school of the love of God; the love of God, We say, which must be the foundation on which to build the kingdom of God in the hearts of individuals, families, and nations” ~ Haurietis Aquas, 123 What is the devotion of Nine First Fridays? This is a request that Our Lord made to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1675. In these visions, she saw Christ revealed with His heart exposed as He explained to her th...
Sep 05, 2022•49 min•Ep. 205
Love should be seen as something which in a sense never ‘is’ but is always only ‘becoming’” ~ St. John Paul II All marriages go through a cycle. That cycle includes times of romance, when everything is going well, your love is full, and you are working as a team. It also includes times when things aren’t so great - we call this “disillusionment”. Disillusionment is when you don’t have the feelings of being in love; you may not even like your spouse very much! This is when we feel dry and even al...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 204
“The family is where children discover how to be human. It’s where they learn how to respect and love other people.. where they discover their place in a family story larger than themselves.” -Archbishop Charles Chaput We meet parents all the time who tell us, “My kids don’t get along!” and our response is, “Of course they don’t get along. That is kind of what your job is as parents. To teach them how to live in peace with other people and they practice this with their siblings.” Family is the t...
Aug 15, 2022•52 min•Ep. 203
Family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice. - St. John Paul II Let’s be honest. Parenting is hard. Some studies have shown that up to 18% of American parents regret having children. Though that statistic may not be completely true, it does show a growing number of people who don’t just struggle with being a parent, but actually resent it. We need to talk about this! It is good to acknowledge those feelings, but parents need to then move through those...
Aug 08, 2022•52 min•Ep. 202
Food is love, but it’s only love if it’s shared. ~ Fr. Leo Patalinghug Family dinner is something so simple yet so important and foundational in your family culture. We need to constantly be reminded and encouraged to take time to focus on those relationships in our family daily, or at least weekly. In this fun, engaging conversation with Fr. Leo, we discuss family dinners, but also inviting others into our homes, and how to have true leisure. Fr. Leo makes the point that dinners together are no...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 201
Blessed is the house where an older person lives! Blessed is the family that honours the elderly! - Pope Francis, from his message for the Second World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly None of us live in a vacuum. We didn’t just appear upon the earth in isolation! We are all part of a family - not just our nuclear family, but a wider group made up of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great grandparents, stretching back generations. How often do we consider the role of our grandparents in our ...
Jul 25, 2022•58 min•Ep. 200
The vocation of marriage and the vocation of consecrated life beautifully work together and we think this interview demonstrates that fact! In this podcast we have a conversation with Sr. John Paul, from the order Mary Mother of the Eucharist, a Dominican congregation in Ann Arbor MI. She is a fellow Franciscan University alum and principal of St. Michael School in Columbus OH. Like parents, she is in charge of the formation of virtue in young children, but she sees this formation from a differe...
Jul 17, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 199
We love it when our listeners dictate what we talk about! In this episode we tackle some great email questions and voice memos that parents have sent us. A mom asks if its ok that her 2 yr old is wearing his sister’s dress up clothes and another mom is overwhelmed at another child on the way. Does this make her not “open to life” or a bad Catholic? We also had a wife share with us her heartache at her husband’s lack of faith in the home. How can she honor the Lord and honor her husband at the sa...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 4 min
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” - G.K. Chesterton As we celebrate the founding of our country, we want to take time to salute and honor those families who serve our country. The decision to serve affects not only those serving in our armed forces but also the spouses and children. In this podcast, we discuss with three military families on the joys and crosses of this vocation they have chosen to live. This conversa...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 197
“You know what my bedtime routine was when I was a kid? Darkness!” ~ Jerry Seinfeld We love our listeners. And we love answering their questions! In this episode, we are joined by our Program Coordinator, Katie (Hernon) Gamboa who represents the “every-mom” and gives us some great topics to talk about. The first issue we tackle is sleep! Since few young parents ever get enough of it, we help out by giving some tips and tricks as well as perspective. One of us is good at getting kids to lay down ...
Jun 27, 2022•48 min•Ep. 196
“It's better to be wrong together than right alone” - Michele Doman Every couple argues. Or at least they should. The reason is that arguing can be a path to unity which is what marriage is all about. Some couples argue in measured tones with carefully reasoned ideas, while others argue with raised voices and emotional exchanges. Every couple is different, but there are some principles that we all can follow to make our “discussions with emotion” more productive and focused on bringing spouses c...
Jun 20, 2022•52 min•Ep. 195
Anxiety results from assuming responsibility that God never intended. I need to play the part God meant for me. ~ Michele Doman This is a very special podcast that takes you behind the origins of the Messy Family Project. Many of the ideas, philosophies, and lessons that we teach come from the wisdom of the Church, and also from wisdom we have gained from others. This show is an interview that Alicia did with her mom, Michele Doman, who taught her much of what she knows about parenting! Michele ...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 194
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Augustine of Hippo We want our community of messy families to be above average. Intentional. Vibrant. Better than all the rest. One way to do that is to be very thoughtful about how you spend your leisure time with your family this summer. Every family and every trip is different, but no matter what the length is or where you go, families should be sure to make the most of their time with their children. Vacations strengthen...
Jun 01, 2022•55 min•Ep. 193
