You have the school message open, dinner unfinished and a form you meant to return yesterday. Your child is stuck on homework but insists everything is fine. You may recognize the feeling: asking for help can seem harder than carrying the problem.

Today, Wednesday, October 28, 2026, the Church celebrates Saints Simon and Jude, apostles. Their feast offers a small opening for a conversation at home: you do not have to understand everything, or manage everything alone, to belong.

Jude had a question, too

In his October 11, 2006 audience about Simon and Jude, Pope Benedict XVI recalled a question Jude asked Jesus at the Last Supper. Jude wanted to understand why Jesus would reveal himself to his disciples rather than to the world. An apostle, sitting with Jesus, still had something he did not understand.

That is a useful place to begin with your child. You do not need an elaborate lesson about the apostles. Try this: “Jude asked Jesus a question. What is something you wish you could ask someone today?”

Leave room for an ordinary answer. It might concern a math assignment, a friendship or why your family cannot buy something right now. You do not have to turn every answer into a teaching moment. You can simply listen.

Give your child words to borrow

Instead of telling your child only to “speak up,” offer a sentence they can actually use. Practice together when nothing urgent is happening.

• “I understand the first part. Can you explain the next part?”
• “I want to try, but I need someone beside me.”
• “I don’t know how to ask this.”
• “Can we talk somewhere private?”

You can take turns pretending to be the teacher, coach or trusted adult. Keep it brief. This is not another assignment your child needs to get right.

You can also make your own requests visible without handing adult worries to your child. “I’m asking someone to explain this form” is enough. You do not need to share the overdue balance or the whole conversation.

Let prayer be honest, not a bargain

The Catechism acknowledges the difficulty of praying when a request seems unheard. It asks whether we approach God as an instrument to use or as a Father. Catholic prayer is not a promise that the right words will produce the result we want.

For your family, that means you can pray plainly without promising an outcome. You might say: “Jesus, this is hard. Help us tell the truth about what we need. Help us recognize someone who can help.”

If your child asks why a problem remains after prayer, you can answer honestly: “I don’t know why this hasn’t changed. We can keep praying, and we can keep asking for help.” You do not need to defend God with an explanation you do not have.

Make receiving help part of family life

You may want your child to be generous. Make room for receiving, too. Consider the message in these ordinary sentences: “Our neighbor helped us today.” “Someone showed me how to do that.” “I’m glad we asked.”

Try not to attach a confession of failure to every thank-you. You can appreciate assistance without calling yourself disorganized, helpless or a bad parent.

Keep your child’s privacy in mind as well. Asking for help does not mean telling the whole parish, team or family group chat. Let your child know what you plan to share and with whom whenever you reasonably can.

In Corpus Christi, a first question can be practical

If groceries are the concern, the Coastal Bend Food Bank says you can call with your ZIP code for a referral to a nearby partner agency. Its Find Food page explains that individual pantries determine eligibility under applicable income guidelines. Call 361-887-6291 and ask where to begin, then confirm the pantry’s hours and requirements before traveling.

If paperwork is the barrier, the food bank also offers application and renewal assistance for programs including SNAP, Medicaid and CHIP. Its social services page provides an online request form and describes phone and in-person assistance. Asking a navigator to explain a form is a practical request, not a personal failure.

You do not need to make that call in front of your child. The family lesson can be as simple as: “There are people whose work is helping families find the next step.”

You can begin with one question

Ignite Fit, Ignite His Glory’s free family fitness and nutrition program for children in Nueces County, is another place to begin a conversation. We are Catholic in faith and open to everyone. Faith is never a condition of help, and you do not need polished answers before reaching out. Season One dates will be announced soon.

Your next step: open Ignite His Glory’s Contact page, choose “Register a child,” and send your question about Ignite Fit. Start with what you need to know.

This Sunday is All Saints. Monday is All Souls. In the middle of a week of school, practice and leftover candy, your child may ask a question you did not plan for. Where do people go when they die?

Many Corpus Christi families have already started remembering. The Día de los Muertos Street Festival filled downtown on Saturday, October 24, and included a Community Ofrenda Display honoring loved ones. Whether your family builds an altar, lights one candle or stays quiet, this week is a natural time for the subject to come up.

What the Church remembers this week

November 1 is the Solemnity of All Saints. The next day, the Church invites us to commemorate all the faithful departed. Monday, November 2, is that day, often called All Souls.

The Catechism explains why Catholics pray for the dead. From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers for them, above all in the Eucharist. Prayer for the dead is also one of the spiritual works of mercy.

Pope Leo XIV spoke about memory at Rome’s Verano Cemetery last year. He said we keep our loved ones with us in our hearts, even though they left us when they died. He said faith lets us hold those memories as “more than just a recollection of the past but also, and above all, as hope for the future.”

You do not have to be Catholic to light a candle for your grandmother. Every family remembers. Faith is never a condition of anything we do at Ignite His Glory.

Children meet loss earlier than we expect

A 2016 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics said the vast majority of children experience the death of a close family member or friend during childhood, and about one in 20 experiences the death of a parent. The AAP has since revised that clinical report. Those numbers are from 2016, but the point still stands. Your child is probably not the only one in the classroom carrying a loss.

What pediatricians suggest about the conversation

This is not medical advice, and your child’s own doctor knows your child best. These ideas come from the AAP’s HealthyChildren.org:

• Be clear and honest. Use words that match your child’s age and stage.
• Do not assume an older child is fine. One opener the AAP suggests is “I’m wondering which part of this is the hardest for you.”
• Expect some kids to hide it. Children may keep their grief quiet because they think sharing it will make their parents feel worse.
• Expect it to take a long time. A child will not simply “get over” a death within a few months or even a year.
• Look for company. The AAP says children’s bereavement groups and camps exist, and some programs are free. Your pediatrician’s office is a good place to ask.

Four ordinary ways to remember

None of these needs a budget or a script.

• Cook the dish. Pick one recipe from the person you miss and let your child stir. Say who taught it to you.
• Make a small shelf. Put out a photo and a candle. Add one new story each evening this week.
• Take a walk. Go somewhere that person loved, such as the bayfront, a park or the block where they lived. Walking makes it easier for some children to talk.
• Pray one short prayer. The Eternal Rest prayer takes about fifteen seconds. A child can say it with you.

Sunday is also the weekend the clocks fall back. Daylight Saving Time ends at 2:00 a.m. on November 1. That can make a tender weekend feel even longer. Go easy on bedtime and dinner.

Why we mention food, movement and sleep

Here is where this connects to our work. One health system’s guidance for grieving children lists a regular routine, eating well, staying hydrated, physical activity and good sleep as vital. In a hard week, the ordinary rhythms of the day give a child something steady to stand on. You do not have to fix anything. Keep the meals, the movement and the bedtime as steady as you can, and stay close.

That is the thinking behind Ignite Fit, our free family fitness and nutrition program for children here in the Coastal Bend. Move sessions are 45 minutes and coach-led. Sessions open and close in prayer. Families are invited and never required. Nobody is asked to explain what is going on at home.

One next step

This week, choose one way to remember, and do it with your child. A recipe, a photo or a walk is enough. If your child seems stuck or very sad, call your pediatrician.

When you are ready, visit the Ignite His Glory website to learn about Ignite Fit. Season One dates will be announced soon.

You do not need another family challenge with a chart you will feel bad about abandoning. You need something small enough to survive a missing permission slip, a late shift and a child who cannot find a shoe.

As you look ahead to Advent, try a different question. Instead of asking, “What should we add this season?” ask, “What would we want to keep afterward?”

Maybe it is a brief prayer together. Maybe it is listening without reaching for a phone. Maybe it is learning to apologize without adding “but you started it.” Choose one, not all three.

Let each season do its own work

Advent and Lent are not interchangeable self-improvement projects. Advent turns us toward Christ’s coming. The Church’s Compendium of the Catechism describes it as a yearly return to the long expectation of the Savior. Your family practice can begin there: making room to notice, wait and welcome.

Lent invites repentance and a return to God. The Catechism names prayer, reconciliation and concern for others among the expressions of conversion. That gives you a wider starting point than a household contest about who can give up the most.

You might practice attentive waiting in Advent and repairing hurt in Lent. Neither has to disappear when the season ends. Keep the seasonal meaning, then carry one ordinary expression of it into the rest of the year.

Give the practice a place to live

“We should pray more” is a hope. “After we put the dinner dishes by the sink, we will say one short prayer” is a plan you can picture.

A 2022 study in Frontiers in Psychology examined habit building among university students and users of a habit-building app. A more stable setting was associated with actions becoming more automatic and with better follow-through. It was not a study of children or family prayer, so it cannot promise results for your household. It does offer a useful planning idea: connect the new action to something that already happens.

Try completing this sentence together: “After we _____, we will _____.”

• After we set down our backpacks, we will take a quiet moment together.
• After we clear the table, we will each name one person to pray for.
• Before we say goodnight, we will ask whether anything between us needs repair.

These are options, not a checklist. Pick the one that fits the family you actually have.

An Advent habit: leave room for an answer

For Advent, consider one unhurried question at a time you already share: “What are you hoping for?”

Your child might say a bicycle. They might say they hope a friend sits with them tomorrow. You do not have to turn every answer into a lesson. Listen first. You can finish with a simple prayer: “Jesus, help us welcome you and one another.”

The Compendium identifies the Christian family as a first place of learning prayer and recommends daily family prayer. It does not require your kitchen to look like a chapel before you begin. A brief, sincere prayer beside the homework pile is a reasonable place to start.

When Advent ends, the question can become, “What is on your mind?” The seasonal words change. The space you make for your child can stay.

A Lenten habit: practice making things right

For Lent, you might choose a small practice of repair. Start with yourself, rather than assigning your child a behavior to fix.

Try: “I interrupted you. I am sorry. Please finish what you were saying.” Or: “I promised to help and forgot. Let us choose a time now.”

Invite your child to try the same kind of plain language. Do not demand a public confession around the dinner table. Leave room for a private conversation, and do not insist that someone stop feeling hurt immediately.

The practice you are choosing is not a perfect evening. It is returning to one another after an imperfect one.

Plan for an ordinary Corpus Christi week

Picture the practice on a regular Nueces County school night, not only on a quiet Sunday. Perhaps you are still coming home along South Padre Island Drive while another adult handles dinner. Perhaps your children move between households.

Choose a cue that belongs to your time together. It need not happen at the same clock time in every home. And it need not require supplies, a special purchase or another drive across town.

If you miss an evening, begin again at the next opportunity. You do not owe the calendar extra prayers to catch up.

Carry something small forward

That is the spirit we want to bring to Ignite Fit, our free children’s fitness and nutrition program in Corpus Christi: family participation that reaches beyond a season. We are Catholic in faith and open to everyone; belief is never a condition of help. Season One dates will be announced soon. Your next step: visit our Contact page, choose “Register a child,” and ask to receive the season dates and forms.

A doctor who wrote a Gospel

On Sunday, October 18, the Church remembers St. Luke. St. Paul calls him “the beloved physician” in his letter to the Colossians, and Luke is the author of the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

Luke also gave us a story you may have told your child at bedtime. The parable of the Good Samaritan is found only in his Gospel. A stranger stops for a hurt man, tends his wounds, and makes sure he keeps being cared for.

We wrote about the works of mercy earlier this week. Today is smaller and closer to home. What does a physician saint say to a parent deciding whether to book a checkup?

Caring for the body is part of faith

The Catechism, in its section on Christ the physician, teaches that Jesus came to heal the whole man, soul and body, and is “the physician the sick have need of.” It adds that his love for the sick has drawn Christians through the centuries to care for those who suffer in body and soul.

Nothing in that teaching asks you to be anxious. It does not treat good health as a trophy. It says the body matters to God, so ordinary care of it is a quiet form of love. We made the longer case in A temple, not a trophy.

What a yearly checkup does

HealthyChildren.org, the American Academy of Pediatrics site for parents, says seeing the doctor at least once a year helps keep track of your child’s growth and development. The same page says regular screenings of vision, hearing, balance, breathing and heart function can identify possible problems, from mild to life-threatening.

It also says the doctor can ask about mental and emotional health and offer guidance on nutrition, physical activity, sleep and a family media plan. That is a lot of help for one appointment.

For some healthy kids, the back-to-school visit is the only time they see a pediatrician. That page is written with August in mind, but October is not too late to call. Ask the office what they recommend for your child.

What to bring

• A Medicaid or CHIP ID card, a list of your child’s medications, current immunization records, and a list of your questions, which is the checklist one Texas health plan gives its members.
• Your one-page family health history, if you made one after our earlier post on that.
• One thing you have noticed lately. It might be loud snoring, a tired child, a sore tooth, or a comment about their body. Small details help a doctor.

If your child has Medicaid, the visit is free

Texas Health Steps is free healthcare and related services for children birth through age 20 who have Medicaid. The Texas Health and Human Services page lists medical checkups, dental checkups starting at 6 months, health education, and rides to the doctor or dentist. A state eligibility handbook describes one checkup a year for children 6 through 10.

Not sure where to start? The Texas Health Steps toll-free number, 877-847-8377, can help you find a doctor or dentist and set up a checkup.

The state’s family resources site adds that Children’s Medicaid and CHIP cover regular checkups, hospital services, dental care, vision and hearing services. If you are not sure your child qualifies, our earlier post on uninsured children in Nueces County walks through it.

A checkup is not a verdict

Some parents put off the appointment because they dread a talk about weight. That is understandable, and you are not alone in it.

If the topic comes up, you can ask the doctor how to talk about it at home, in words your child can hear without feeling ashamed. We covered why “just lose weight” fails children in an earlier post. The short version is that the visit is for noticing and helping, not for scoring.

Think of Luke’s work this way. A physician’s first skill is paying attention. You have been paying attention to your child since the day they were born, and a checkup lets you share what you see with someone trained to help.

Where Ignite Fit fits

Ignite Fit is the free family fitness and nutrition program for children run by Ignite His Glory here in Corpus Christi. It is open to everyone. Our sessions open and close in prayer, and families are invited, never required. Faith is never a condition of help.

Our coaches are not doctors. We do not diagnose, and we do not replace your child’s pediatrician. We hope to work beside your doctor by giving your child a place to move, learn about food, and have fun with other kids and with you.

Season One dates will be announced soon.

One next step

This week, call your child’s doctor’s office and ask for the next available well-child visit. Write down two questions before you go.

If coverage is the hurdle, the Coastal Bend Food Bank lists free application assistance under Social Services at 5442 Bear Lane, phone (361) 887-6291. Call and ask what they can help with for your child’s application.

St. Luke, patron of physicians, pray for our doctors, our nurses, and the children in their care.

Your child hears “corporal works of mercy” and asks what it means. You do not need a lesson plan. You can start at the kitchen table, while you fold laundry, or on the drive home.

Try this: “They are ways we care for people’s bodies because every person matters to God.” Corporal means bodily. Mercy means noticing someone’s need and responding with love. Pope Francis explained that these works meet people’s material needs, often through small, everyday actions.

Start with a person, not a vocabulary test

You might ask your child: “If you were hungry, would it help if someone only said, ‘Hope you find lunch’?”

Then ask: “What could that person actually do?”

That is the difference you are teaching. Kind words matter, but someone who needs food also needs something to eat. The Catechism describes works of mercy as actions that help our neighbors with their bodily and spiritual needs.

In Matthew 25, Jesus identifies himself with people who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, without clothing, sick, or imprisoned. In child-sized language: when we care for someone in need, we are serving Jesus, too.

The seven works, in everyday words

The Church’s traditional list includes feeding, giving drink, clothing, sheltering, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead. Here are suggested ways to explain each one to your child, with an adult handling arrangements and safety.

1. Feed the hungry

“Help people get food when they do not have enough.”

You could let your child help prepare a meal for a family you know, or choose an item a pantry has requested. Ask what is needed before buying. The point is not clearing unwanted cans from your cabinet. It is helping someone eat.

2. Give drink to the thirsty

“Help people have something to drink when they need it.”

Try a simple family habit: when you set out water for an outdoor gathering in Corpus Christi, check whether everyone has been offered some. Let your child help fill cups. Explain that noticing who has been left out is part of caring.

3. Clothe the naked

“Help people get clothes that fit and give them comfort and privacy.”

The old wording may make your child giggle. Explain it plainly, then sort a small stack together. Suggest checking for stains, broken zippers, and missing buttons. Ask: “Would we feel comfortable giving this to a friend?” Follow the receiving organization’s requests.

4. Shelter the homeless

“Help people who do not have a safe place to stay.”

Your child is not responsible for finding someone a home. You could ask a local organization whether it needs household supplies, then choose one requested task together. Welcoming a new classmate is another way to practice hospitality, but explain that people without housing also need practical help.

5. Visit the sick

“Help someone who is sick know they have not been forgotten.”

You might arrange a call with a relative, make a card, or help with a requested errand. Let the person and their caregiver decide what contact works for them. Your child’s role is companionship, not fixing the illness.

6. Visit the imprisoned

“Remember that people in prison are still people who deserve care.”

You can explain that caring about someone does not mean saying every action is right. For a 9-year-old, consider asking your parish about an established prison ministry and whether it has an appropriate family task. Do not arrange independent contact or share your child’s personal information.

7. Bury the dead

“Treat the body of someone who has died with respect, and care for the people who miss them.”

Your child does not have to perform a burial. You might attend a funeral together when appropriate, help bring a requested meal afterward, or accompany a relative to tend a family grave. Make room for questions without requiring your child to feel a certain way.

Keep the neighbor’s dignity at the center

Try setting three family ground rules: ask before helping, protect people’s privacy, and do not expect a thank-you performance. Skip photographs of people receiving help. Let your child participate without turning someone else’s difficult day into a public lesson.

If your own family needs food, you belong in this conversation, too. Coastal Bend Food Bank’s Find Food page lists partner pantries serving Corpus Christi. You can call 361-887-6291 with your ZIP code for a referral. Confirm eligibility and distribution details with the pantry before traveling.

Choose one next step

At Ignite Fit, our free family fitness and nutrition program, children practice caring for others as well as themselves. The program includes a shared corporal work of mercy. We are Catholic and open to everyone; faith is never a condition of help.

Want your child to take part? Use Ignite His Glory’s contact form and choose “Register a child” to request Ignite Fit’s season information and forms. Season One dates will be announced soon.