A Little Help with Help

by Dan Masterton

Years ago, amid my day-in-day-out listening of NPR, I heard a story that struck a chord in me as a parent.

The reporter shared how kids whose offers of help and interest in collaboration are welcomed by grown-ups then grow up to be more consistently interested in helping. Essentially, the way you warmly receive and find constructive ways to accept kids’ interest in helping can have a significantly positive impact on their collaborative mindset as they grow and can become a firmer part of their personality.

For all the clichéd or inaccurate insights I’ve heard in seven-plus years of parenting, I really liked this one.

It’s something I had been intentional about as my oldest child, Lucy, got taller and stronger and more coordinated. I remember inviting a freshly-turned-2-year-old Lucy on to a stool to separate pepperonis for me as we mixed up a batch of meat, sauce, and cheese for our homemade rendition of “pizza bread.” She was delighted. It was a job she could handle and that she was excited to do.

That story couple with some early successes practicing this philosophy led me to double down. It became trickier as my middle kiddo then wanted to do and try everything that big sister was doing, but I try to stick to the mindset of finding components and subtasks in these processes that they can reasonably and safely attempt.

Then, one day at church, this philosophy crept into a new area that I wasn’t expecting.

As we prepared the bits of the ritual of baptism for our youngest daughter, Brigid, who was baptized last month on Mothers’ Day, my friend John (then a religious brother and transitional deacon, and now a religious priest) asked us to get a reader for the petitions. I thought for a moment and quickly had the idea — why not have Lucy do it?

My good friend, Cari, who’s been a youth and campus minister for decades, captured an excellent pastoral principle in tidy language: if there’s a role a young person wants to do, even if it’s a role usually filled by an adult, give them the support they’d need and have them try it. This has helped her expand youth engagement, widen youth leadership formation, and accompany young people in becoming stronger people of faith who desire to lead their peers.

My ideals of parenting and her ideals of ministry (which I share and support) coincided here as I took my 7-year-old daughter — who is an avid reader and also is already low-key a model Catholic who loves family faith formation nights and Children’s Liturgy of the Word — and showed her a slate of petitions to read with the congregation.

My wife, Katherine, took her aside to a quiet space to practice the words and clarify the pronunciations. When it came time to read, John unthreaded the microphone out of his vestments to bring it down to her level and hold it for her. And the two of them stood at her sides as she ministered to our little baptismal congregation by serving as a lector.

She did amazing! It was a joy to be a part of. I still remember, at her baptism, welling up as my friend Fr. Kevin prayed that “when the Lord comes, may she go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.” And this felt like a beautiful step in that direction.

Then, last weekend, we were visiting a big group of our friends on a big vacation together. Our host-friends had their priest-friend out to our houseful of friends, and he said a house Mass for us. The lectors for the readings? Lucy and our eight-year-old cousin. And they did great! And as I beamed, I thought of how our families welcome this thread of kid-help and bring it with us into our lives of faith, including regularly going to Mass to pray together with our families and our faith communities.

These were small moments where a young person had an interest in helping. There was a place where her help could be needed and used, and where her gifts could minister to and serve others. Her help was welcomed and accepted, and her mindset of wanting to help and serve is nurtured, sustained, and hopefully furthered.

I hope we’re sensitive and attentive to offers of help — from little ones, from teens, and even from young adults. And I hope we all bring it thoughtfully into adulthood. I hope we never get so individualized or efficiency-minded or unimaginative that we turn down help. I know I’m prone to making things smooth and slick, and too often that comes at the expense of interaction and collaboration. I’m glad my daughter, my wife, my friends, and my faith could help draw me out of those things in myself and toward this life we ought to live in and with one another.