Kim Cameron-Smith is an on-fire Catholic revert, bibliophile, armchair philosopher, mediocre cook, and “an artist of family life.” She lives in Northern California with her husband Philip and 4 children.

Kim is the author of Rooting Your Teen in the Faith: A Field Guide for Catholic Parents (Our Sunday Visitor) and  Discipleship Parenting: Planting Seeds of Faith (Our Sunday Visitor). She hosts the Gentle Catholic Parenting Podcast and blogs at Intentional Catholic Parenting. Her writing has been featured in The Imaginative Conservative and the Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly.

Kim’s Approach

Kim’s thinking about parenting is shaped by many disciplines, including developmental psychology, neuroscience, Gordon Neufeld’s attachment paradigm, and Catholic social doctrine and virtue ethics. Her understanding of what it means to live a joyful, intentional life with her children continually grows and evolves as she learns more about them, herself, and how God has created us to find him in all things, especially relationships.

Kim describes herself as “an artist of family life.” This doesn’t mean she lives in an Instagram-worthy house! Her project focuses on the art of family relationships. Science tells us something about how children thrive, but raising children is not itself a science. It’s much more an art. Sometimes we are walking blind, trying a little of this here and little of that there, like an artist playing with color on a canvas. Sometimes we see that what we’re doing isn’t working, so we have to reconsider our assumptions about what our children need and our vision of how we get there. With experience and maturity, we begin to see our children the way a seasoned artist sees a landscape, gaining perspective, recognizing veiled beauty, accepting the limitations we bring to our craft. In this uncertainty, we as parents are changed. In our parenting journey, we learn as much about ourselves as we do about our children.

Kim is a curious student of parenting, but she doesn’t claim to be a perfect parent. She’ll be straight with you about her own shortcomings. We’re all wounded and blind in some way, which is why parenting is filled with moments of grace: God grows us up along with our children.

Kim’s Background

Kim is a trusts and estates attorney and a Confirmation teacher in her parish. She holds a B.A. in English from Wellesley College, an M.Phil. in Medieval Literature from Oxford University, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University, and a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley. Despite all this fancy education, she finds herself saying and doing dumb things on a regular basis!