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Orthodox Christian Parenting, hosted by Faithtree Resources Executive Director (and mom of four!) Michelle Moujaes, is a weekly podcast for parents and grandparents navigating the holy struggle of raising kids in the Orthodox Faith. Each episode offers honesty, encouragement, and practical wisdom from the Church—creating space to exhale, freedom from the pressure to be perfect, and openness to grow as you raise children who are deepening their knowledge and love of Christ.
Welcome to another special episode of Orthodox Christian Parenting. We're continuing our summer clip series where we share some of our favorite moments before we're back with Season three. Today, we're revisiting a conversation we had with Doctor. Philip Mamalakis on what success actually looks like for us as Orthodox Christian Parents. He challenges the worldly definition of success and reminds us that true success is a long term process of learning to see others as icons of Christ.
Michelle Moujaes:You'll hear him talk about how to handle those stressful meltdown moments in church, how to prepare our kids for life by asking them questions rather than just lecturing and why modeling how to handle our own mistakes as parents is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. It is such an encouraging conversation. Let's dive in. For us as Orthodox parents, what's the win?
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:It's a great question. And we can get really mixed messages.
Michelle Moujaes:So many mixed messages.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:What is success? Yeah. We get it sometimes from the world and even from just people think, well, a win is highly educated kids that are highly successful. And by success, that means financially. And you gotta go to the best high schools.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:You gotta play an instrument, no language. You gotta be on a traveling sports team.
Michelle Moujaes:Oh, with the traveling sport.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:It is so hard because you know, you suddenly feel guilty, oh my gosh, we're not doing that. Can I just go to church on a Sunday Or is my child gonna be not gonna be competitive in soccer? There's also another area we get a lot of pressure. I had a dad tell me he was interviewing me actually for a podcast, and he said he brought his eight year old boy to his mom's house. And they come in the house, and right when they open the door, the grandmother comes to the door, and the child is supposed to greet the grandmother.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Uh-huh. Well, just in that moment, this little eight year old boy looked through the house and saw all the desserts Oh. On the table. So guess what an eight year old boy did?
Michelle Moujaes:Went straight
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:for it. Ran right ignored grandma and went right for the dessert. Wow. What is what what what is success? Is success suddenly from grandparents and other people?
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Oh, your child should not be like that or misbehaving. What is success? Yeah. Well, when we think what the church reveals to us, right, should we expect a six year old to what? Our goal our goal for that child is that he can see his grandmother and prioritize a person over his impulses and desires.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:So that's long term success. Long term success is by the time they leave our home, they know what the important things in life are.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Right? And when we think about the important things, we talk about salvation. We talk about life in Christ. We talk about knowing how to love and seeing people as icons of Christ and making decisions in life that value eternal things. Right?
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:We think about because we know if you go out into the world and you have a clear sense about what these eternal things are, Christ, the values and the virtues of the kingdom of God. You value people rather than use people for your purposes. You enter into adult life, you are able to control your impulses and desires, allows you to have healthy relationships. Right? So success is this long term process of learning, not my will, but God's will.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Right? Learning to obey God, to follow God, because God is the source of life. Success is knowing that my identity is wrapped up into being the body of Christ. Like church is not somewhere I go. Church is who I am.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Success is I don't have to be perfect, but I know that growing closer to God helps me to thrive as an individual.
Michelle Moujaes:So how can parents free themselves from this idea that that should happen really thoroughly and early on because immediately. Yeah. I mean, we want to kind of skip the investment in those lessons because we do get embarrassed or we do feel like we want to have kids that actually present themselves as others focused, right? Who know to greet their grandmother.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Why do we want all that? Once we reflect for a minute and we want kids to be a certain way, they become a thing.
Michelle Moujaes:Fair.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Okay. Parenting is about discovering that I have that instinct and repenting. A good parent is responsive to a child no matter how they misbehave or behave. We are gonna be because we're always teaching. So I know that's a pressure.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:So where I go to church, when my kids were young and my kid would misbehave, I would actually be secretly happy. Because I know when a child misbehaves, if you're a parent in church and some kid does something, our first instinct is, is it my child? Right? Oh my gosh. And once it's not your child, you're like, oh, thank God.
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Yeah. So I realized if my child's the one behaving, I just gave peace to every other parent in the church. And then the second thing is we all have this pressure that we should know what to do. We should, our kids should be compliant. And that's horrible.
Michelle Moujaes:Horrible.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Horrible. How can I teach every parent that that's not our goal is when the guy who wrote the parenting book has a kid who's melting down?
Michelle Moujaes:Right.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Cause I want to show them actually a parent is responsive to a kid who's melting down. My job is to stay peaceful, go to my melting down child, and just engage them and maybe remove them, maybe usually remove them if it's in church right away, but to stay peaceful as if there's no problem. Because our children are not problems to fix or tasks to accomplish. But they're persons who, for some reason, is having a meltdown in church, which when you're four is entirely appropriate. Now when you're 40, we should probably talk to you.
Michelle Moujaes:Right. Right. Right.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:But yeah. So this is how we engage as a Christian community. One of the reasons that we wrote a companion guide to the to the book
Michelle Moujaes:have it. Hold on. I'll show everybody.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Because there is so much pressure This is the we go to church to behave, and then we're so embarrassed when our children who aren't poisoned by this kind of toxic pride are just interacting. And that undermines the very heart of the Christian community.
Michelle Moujaes:How can we teach our children that this is the expected behavior when you walk into grandma's house? This is the expected behavior in the church.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Kind of And This is our role, is to teach that. Which means, like you said earlier, we don't expect mastery. We expect learning.
Michelle Moujaes:Learning.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Because they do need to learn how to behave at the church. And you know what? That boy needs to learn. You do not run to the table of desserts. You greet him because there's a deeper principle.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:I want him to grow up to see persons. So we want to teach, and we do that in every interaction. So how do we do it? We prepare them beforehand. On the way to church, we have a conversation.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:How we behave in church? Right? Because if we expect learning, we wanna invite our children to reflect, to start paying attention. Where am I going and how am I called to behave? Because kids can learn really well.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:This is a gym. This is how you play in a gym. And this is a library. This is how you behave in a library. They do fine.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:This is grandparents' house. This is our house. This is church. This is a park. They really can learn that.
Michelle Moujaes:I love it.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Some of the strategies are prepared beforehand. And we don't just lecture them. Here's what I want you to do in church. You ask a question. All right.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Reminders. How do we behave in church? Because you know, they it's every Sunday. They hear it all the time. And then invariably you nurture a culture of reflecting.
Michelle Moujaes:I like that.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:And we're strict because we don't say
Michelle Moujaes:you nurture a culture of reflecting even in your young ones,
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:even in your three or four year olds. Cause if they have an older six year old sibling, they know the answer, but it, it communicates to your child. You are perfectly capable to think about this. I even don't need to repeat myself because we talked about it last Sunday. And then they feel respected, like they're being talked to like a human being.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Now, will that get us compliance in church?
Michelle Moujaes:No. Not every time.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Not every time. So when they fail, we step in, we escort them, and then on the way home, we talk about it after. So preparing beforehand and then talking about it after.
Michelle Moujaes:I like it.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Same thing with going to a grocery store, same thing with going to a restaurant, same thing with going to a grandparent's house. That nurtures a culture of learning. Success for us as Orthodox means that ongoing learning. Because a disciple, remember, a disciple, the translation is student. And for us as Orthodox, when we talk about learning, we talk about you're gonna make a mistake, but we're gonna do something different again.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:We can communicate as parents now at our age that we are still learning. Because the temptation for me, the pressure on me as a guy is, oh, you're a dad. You're an authority figure. You should know. You should know.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Yeah. And that's a lie. So if I pretend that I know things and I have my act together, you know, that feels good. But when my son gets to be my age, he's gonna realize, don't really know everything. How does that prepare him?
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:So I think it's important for me to disclose that, you know, I really don't know what to do.
Michelle Moujaes:No clue.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Right. I actually think I screwed up. You know, that was really a mistake I made.
Michelle Moujaes:Mhmm.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:And and then he sees, what do I do when I don't know what to do? Actually, I take a deep breath. I say a prayer. I go ask for help. I ask for guidance.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:What do I do when I make a mistake? Mhmm. I feel bad. I say, forgive me. I make a plan to make it right, and I try again.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:And then I involve my priest. So now we are preparing our kids for that. We are preparing our kids to know when they leave our homes, what to do when they make a mistake.
Michelle Moujaes:Got
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:it. And the only way to do that is allowing them to make mistakes and teaching them. And then by modeling, we're gonna teach them what it means to be an adult who makes mistakes. Because the second lie is once they leave our home, then they will never make mistakes. Right.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Successful parents have kids when they're young adults, never make mistakes. How is that even possible?
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah, it's totally not possible.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:And, but we believe this. So then when our young adult kids make mistakes, we go ballistic. Like, how could this happen?
Michelle Moujaes:And we forget that we make mistakes.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:Course, we do.
Michelle Moujaes:I say to my kids all the time, listen, I'm totally comfortable with my sins, but I hate yours. Right? I don't but, I mean, it's important to know, like, of course, they're gonna mess up. I mess up every single day.
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:So what is success? Success is raising children who know what to do when they make mistakes.
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah. And one
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:of things we want them to do is come to us and
Michelle Moujaes:say,
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:I have no idea. I think I screwed up. So how do we teach that? In the interactions, in their mistakes during when they're young and as they grow up. And then by modeling for them, what do we do when we fail?
Dr. Philip Mamalakis:So it creates a culture of learning that actually prepares them for a lifetime of learning.