The Discerning Parent

Blending personal experience and practical advice with wisdom they’ve learned from Ignatian spirituality, Tim and Sue Muldoon, authors of Six Sacred Rules for Families, offer guidance for Catholic parents raising teens and tweens. You’ll gain confidence to help your teen make better decisions, deepen the roots for your parenting, and relate to your teen in a way that reflects the tenacious love of God.

The Muldoons draw from their professional experience working with teens and their parents in high schools and colleges—Sue as a counselor and religious educator, Tim as a theologian and professor—to explain how the Ignatian practice of discernment is an excellent tool for the healthy parenting of teens and pre-teens. They share their hard-won wisdom as parents of three to offer you encouragement and practical guidance to:

Let your teens know you love them

Appreciate their gifts while accepting their limits

Put them in touch with those less fortunate

Guide them in choosing friends who will care about what’s best for them

Appreciate the value of their faith and going to Mass

Respect their bodies and make good choices about sex, alcohol, and drugs

Think about what really makes them happy

Tim and Sue describe discernment as slowing down, listening, being receptive, praying, examining our lives, and sifting the conflicting forces at play around us. In this wise and personal book, they share how Ignatian spirituality and discernment can help us keep a clear-eyed, prayerful perspective on the difficult decisions you and your teens face. The key is to open yourself to God’s presence and discover what he calls you to do.

This thoughtful approach shows you how to talk with your children openly about freedom vs. limits, friendships, family time, sexuality, the use and abuse of technology, faith and Catholic practice, recognizing the needs of others, and getting through hard times together. You’ll discover when to be tough and when to be forgiving, when to control and when to give freedom, when to give feedback and when to wait. You will learn the importance of praying for your teens, and the important of praying together as a family.

Daily and weekly prayers, devotions, and meditations will guide you as the Muldoons show how this is a time of discernment for you as well as your teens—and create a way for you to move through these challenging years together. The Discerning Parent offers you an opportunity to pause and consider your life and your teen’s in the light of faith.

Features & Benefits

Brings together Tim Muldoon’s expertise as author of five previous books, including the popular Ignatian Workout (more than 20,000 copies sold).

Tim Muldoon is widely recognized as a leading popularizer of Ignatian spirituality for the laity. Sue Muldoon’s experience is a parish director of religious education and a therapist in private practice.

A helpful and commonsense approach to faith formation for parents who are struggling with how to guide their children through the adolescent years.

The practice of discernment at the heart of this book is rooted in the Ignatian (Jesuit) spiritual tradition, an area where Tim Muldoon is an expert.

Tim Muldoon is a theologian and the author and editor of several books on Ignatian spirituality, marriage, and family. He is the coauthor, with his wife, Sue, of Six Sacred Rules for Families and participated in the video production of Joined by Grace, the new marriage preparation program from Ave Maria Press. A professor for many years, Muldoon has taught at Mount Aloysius College and Boston College, and lectures and speaks frequently at colleges, universities, schools, parishes, dioceses, and retreat centers in the United States, Canada, and Europe.


Sue Muldoon is a therapist and religious educator who has worked in clinical, collegiate, and parish settings. Her clinical work has focused on young adults and children. She worked for many years in college counseling at Saint Vincent College and Saint Francis University, and she has worked as director of religious education for Good Shepherd Parish in Wayland, Massachusetts. Muldoon is the coauthor, with her husband, Tim, of Six Sacred Rules for Families and participated in the video production of Joined by Grace, the new marriage preparation program from Ave Maria Press. She and Tim have three children.