So you’re at a loss. You’ve been disciplining your kids, time outs, consequences, bribes, and the talking-to. The poor behaviour seems endless: biting, screaming, nagging, teasing, public outbursts, at-home tantrums—you step back and ask yourself—is this all that parenting is about? In the midst of poor behaviour mayhem, it’s easy to lose our perspective on what exactly is our role as a parent.

Well, we’re not just firefighters—here to put out the fires. We’re also here to draw the blueprints and be the architects of our children’s lives.

So let’s get the steering wheel and the map back in our hands. Let’s not ignore the negatives, but focus on the positives—and that doesn’t just mean noticing only good behaviour. It means having a positive vision of the kinds of people we would like our children to be presently and the kinds of adults we would like them to eventually become.

Having an idea of what kind of people we want our children to be is much less stressful than just focusing on the behaviour we don’t like.

This kind of parenting is called in some places character building, in others, virtue training. It’s about putting a name to the behaviours we would like to achieve in our children—as well as ourselves!

In this first part of our virtue series, we interview Irene Freundorfer of 10kids.com. She’s had many years of experience raising ten kids of her own, as well as mentoring many mothers, and giving talks on parenting and marriage. (She’s also Gerhard’s mom!)