Monthly Archives: March 2023

How to teach children to take responsibility

parenting

I recently went to someone’s home for a quick errand, and the mother invited me in. As I came in and removed my coat, the bead on the end of the drawstring of my top came loose and fell to the floor

The four year old girl grabbed it and refused to give it back. Her mother said nothing. I bent down and showed her how it matched the one on the other side and how it could slide right back on. She refused to give it back. Her mother said nothing.

I said to her, “You can hold it for a few minutes and then give it to me before I leave.” As her mother and I spoke, she began stomping on it. I waited to see what the mother would do. Still no response.

The little girl went over to whisper to her older sibling, and they began laughing. Her brother told us they were laughing because she broke it in half by stepping on it. The mother said nothing.

I really don’t like disciplining other people’s children and generally stand to the side and stay quiet. But clearly this mother wasn’t going to say or do anything.

So I told the little girl with a sad face, “You know, this top I’m wearing is new and I’m sad that now I don’t have the bead for it because it’s broken.” Her laughing face turned a little uncertain. She looked at her mother, and her mother said to her soberly, “She’s right.”

The end. No apology from the mother, obviously no apology from the girl.

This is a kind, caring mother. However, her lack of response demonstrated that she’s a parent who doesn’t know when and how to set a boundary for her child.

Parents who don’t respond to their child’s provocation, don’t show them a way to make restitution, and at the very most will tell the child they shouldn’t have done that (usually when the incident is past and the person is gone) aren’t going to raise children who take responsibility for their mistakes.

I’m going to give examples of different points in this interaction that a parent could have and should have intervened.

The child grabs the bead and doesn’t want to give it back. I don’t want to force her to give it back because that’s not teaching her anything. But I’m also not going to let her keep something that isn’t hers, which would teach her a lesson I don’t want her to learn.

I say, “Isn’t that a pretty bead? It looks so nice, doesn’t it? I’m sure Mrs. Ploni likes it. It will look so nice back on her top!” Child smiles and gives it back. Mrs. Ploni thanks her.

What if the child still doesn’t want to give it back? Some children have a hard time with transitions and need more time and guidance. I say, “You know it’s Mrs. Ploni’s bead and want to give it back, but you really want to hold it a little bit longer. Hmm. Let’s ask Mrs. Ploni if you can hold it carefully for one minute. (Ask and get approval.) Okay, let’s look at my watch – in one minute you’re going to give it back.” (Don’t get involved in an adult conversation and lose track of this. Stay focused on your teaching moment.)

Depending on the child, I will remind them halfway through and maybe ten seconds before the time is up that “In ten seconds, you’re going to give it back.”

“Time’s up! That was so nice of Mrs. Ploni to let you hold her bead. Let’s give it back to her now.” Child gives it back.

What if the child still balks? “Child, I know you really like this bead. When we go home, we can look and see if we have beads you can play with. But this is Mrs. Ploni’s bead and now you need to give it back. Would you like to give it to her yourself, or do you want me to help you give it to her?”

If by this point the child isn’t giving the bead back, I would gently take it from them and say, “I see it’s hard for you to give it back. I’m going to give the bead to Mrs. Ploni because this is hers, and we don’t keep things that aren’t ours.” Child screams and cries. “I know it’s hard for you.”

You may be thinking this is way too much work over a bead. “What’s the big deal? Just let her keep it.” That’s obviously what the mother in the original situation did. The big deal is she is learning to disrespect things that belong to other people. The bigger deal is that small scenarios like this will be repeated with bigger and bigger issues, and a child who isn’t taught to respect parental guidance is going to become more difficult to parent, and unpleasant to be around.

Back to our scenario. I’ve ignored my child keeping the bead, and now she’s stomping on it. I stop my conversation with the other adult immediately and all my focus is on teaching my child in this moment. I’m not smiling now: I’m not angry or hostile but I’m firm and clear in my voice and body language that I mean what I say. “Child, stop right now. That’s Mrs. Ploni’s bead. That’s not how we treat things. Give it back to her right now.” If the child doesn’t give it back, I take it and give it to Mrs. Ploni.

I’m in the middle of an adult conversation and haven’t been fully aware of what she was doing. I’ve ignored my child keeping the bead, stepping on it, breaking it, and now she’s laughing with her brother. Now my son told me that it’s broken and they’re both laughing at how funny that is. I’m finally aware of the situation, but there’s nothing to do about the bead anymore.

The bead may be a lost cause, but my child’s educational process isn’t. I don’t want to raise children who think it’s funny to harm other people and their things. I want to help the child learn to empathize with others and recognize their actions have consequences. “Children! Mrs. Ploni’s bead is broken?! Oh, no…now Mrs. Ploni’s top doesn’t have a bead. If you had a special toy and someone broke a piece off, how would you feel? What if they did that and were laughing about it? That would feel very bad, wouldn’t it?

Would you be sad? Would you be angry? How do you think Mrs. Ploni feels right now? (Wait for response.) What can we do now to show Mrs. Ploni that you’re sorry? (If the child doesn’t have a suggestion, make a suggestion of your own.) You want to tell Mrs. Ploni you’re sorry you broke her bead?”

The situation must end with a sincere apology from me and/or my child. It’s not fair for someone to be left to bear the consequences of your actions with no recognition that they have been negatively impacted.

There is an additional step I favor taking when appropriate. I tell Mrs. Ploni I’m sorry this happened and want to make restitution for my child’s actions. I ask her to give me the other bead so that I can buy a matching set of two similar beads. I then take my child with me to the store to buy the replacements, talking about what we were doing and why. (If the child were older, they would use their own money to pay for this.)

“Oh, come on, Avivah, I don’t believe you would do this!” Yes, I would, and yes, I have. I feel very strongly about teaching children to take responsibility for their actions. If they aren’t taught, how will they learn?

This scenario may seem time consuming, but it actually takes just a few minutes. As your child learns that you mean what you say, and is clear about what expectations are, it gets easier and less time consuming.

Avivah

More about fostering and being generous

parenting, personal development

In my last post, I shared an update about the foster care placement we were approached about. I mentioned it here when I did because after a month of being involved in this situation, the placement seemed highly likely and I wanted to share about the process we were going through. It was a question of ‘when’ more than ‘if’.

Today the social worker called to update me that they’re in a situation they’ve never been in before: they’re unable so late in the school year to find any school within an hour’s travel time from our home able to accept him, even with legal pressure brought to bear on the schools. (After telling me he can’t travel, they went back to looking at schools further away.) While it seems obvious that the easiest and best thing would be to leave him in school where he is, which is less than an hour away, there’s a funding issue that precludes that possibility.

Since they can’t find a school until the coming school year, they’ve cancelled the home visit that was supposed to take place a couple of days from now. Instead, they are going back to court to overturn the injunction that the child needed to be removed from this foster home, and request he be allowed to stay there. If that fails, they are talking about beginning a country-wide search to find a different foster home (close enough to a suitable school, presumably), since their search in the northern part of the country only found us.

To my mind, this is all upside down and doesn’t put the child and what is good for him at the center at all. It doesn’t seem efficient, logical, economical or prudent. But my opinions have no bearing on anything.

What this means is that now, the placement with our family is being placed very far on the back burner and as far as I’m concerned, it’s off the table. While I continue to be in touch with our social worker discussing potential solutions, there’s too much that can change between now and September for me to assume it will happen.

My take on this is, if something is supposed to happen, Hashem will make it happen. And if it’s not meant to happen, it doesn’t matter how much it looks like it should happen – it’s not going to happen.

I learned this lesson very clearly when we were involved with Baby M, when it seemed obvious to everyone involved we were the perfect family for her. Then that didn’t happen. When we got the call about ds6, it seemed highly unlikely it could work out; time and time again, rules were bent and changes to official procedure that had never been made were made to faciliate his joining our family.

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There were some very nice comments to my last post about me being a very generous person, and I want to respond with a bit of perspective.

A few months ago, I commented to my kids that I’m not a generous person. My children didn’t agree with me, and thought I was being overly critical of myself. What I meant, and explained to them, is that there are areas that I’m more easily able to give, and there are ways that are difficult for me. I’m very generous in some ways. And in others I’m not.

Some people can have people in and out of their houses all the time. I can’t. Some people have no expectations of guests, and willingly host regardless of if they like the person. I won’t. Some people don’t care if people show appreciation for what they do. I do. Some people generously share all of their possessions and time with others. I don’t. I could go on an on with examples.

I have a soft spot for children whose homes aren’t nurturing places. Part of the motivation for my work as a parenting educator comes from that. It hasn’t found expression in mentoring troubled teens or starting a halfway house, but mostly by trying to make my home a positive place where I hope our children feel loved, and helping others to do the same.

When I was asked about this foster placement, I was quick to say no.
My two youngest sons are moving out of the very intensive stage of supervision that I’ve been at for a very long time. After almost thirty years of being there for my children around the clock, I’m now able to enjoy some quiet, kid-free time in the mornings, time I can use as I want. That’s very precious to me.

The idea of adding another child who needs constant supervision really didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t have readiness to give up that long awaited quiet and space in my life. I certainly had no interest in becoming more involved with social services.

Having made it clear I wasn’t interested, I began to think about it without any outside expectation or pressure. I thought very much about what would be necessary to parent this child, what it would require of me physically and emotionally.

Here’s a very important detail that I haven’t shared. I mentioned he has a sibling for whom a possible placement was found in Yavneel and that’s how we were originally contacted, as a potential home in the same area. The sibling is actually a twin. It deeply, deeply pained me to think of two siblings who had so much taken away from them, now being separated from one another.

Though the social worker didn’t ask us to consider taking them both – they don’t expect to find any family willing to do that – the question I asked myself was if we could bring them both into our home. Though you might think that would have been so overwhelming that it would make it even less likely a possibility, somehow the sense of mission it created in me was significant enough for me to be willing to give up my long awaited quiet.

When I looked at what would be involved, I could see that our lives had prepared my husband and I for this. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be very challenging. We were both very realistic about this. But we felt it was something that we were being called to do. So the placement that we have actually been discussing has been for both of the children, though I’ve referred in my writing here to only the child we were initially asked about.

There are lots of other things we could have been asked to do that wouldn’t have felt like a fit for our strengths, and we wouldn’t have been willing to extend ourselves to do it. As I said, there are ways I’m able to give and ways I’m not.

That’s the back story about what motivates me and activated my generosity in this situation.

Avivah

Foster care update

parenting

A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were approached regarding a foster care placement for a four year old boy with special needs.

After expressing our interest in learning more, we had a two hour meeting with our social worker, the child’s social worker, and the supervisory social worker.

We got a detailed description of the challenges this child is facing, which are significant. (And he’s actually five and a half.) We also learned about the legal process involved.

Since this isn’t an emergency placement but transferring from a temporary foster home to a long term home, there is a getting-to-know-you process. This entails four visits by us to the temporary foster home an hour away, initially with me and my husband, later to be joined by our children. There would then be one visit to our home. All of this ideally takes place within ten days. Then the placement would take place.

We followed this meeting with much discussion between my husband and me, and then included our teen boys in the conversation. We all agreed this is something we can do and would be willing to do. I told her we’d be willing to have him come the first week of March, but that it couldn’t be right before Pesach.

Several weeks have gone by since then, and because there’s a bureaucratic process involved, slow is the name of the game.

I’ve been in touch with our social worker for updates and after hearing one particularly exasperating update, I told her I don’t know how she can stand working in a system that doesn’t put the best interest of the child ahead of everything. She admitted that sometimes she wants to pull her hair out but it is what it is.

Where I live, there are very few educational options for children of all ages; not regular ed and certainly not special ed. (His special needs result from growing up in an emotionally impoverished home, not a genetic birth diagnosis.) That’s why ds10 and ds6 travel an hour by school van to the school they attend, as do all the other children living in this area. It’s just a reality of living here.

Someone in some position of authority decided that it won’t be good for this child to travel for school. While I agree that it’s not ideal to travel (and I wish my boys didn’t have to do it, either), there’s no school locally that meets his needs.

I asked our social worker, did they take into account that he’s in an foster home that wants him out weeks ago (and that will be closed for fostering after this placement ends, due to their unsuitability), that there’s no one else willing to take him, and that setting this parameter means he will be forced to stay where he is because there’s no school for him? Talk about losing sight of the forest for the trees.

I was taken aback to learn they’re putting all efforts to find him a school on hold until we have a home inspection done. This surprised me since we’re already licensed foster parents and did an initial home inspection; we have a social worker visit monthly so it’s not like we’re new to the system. (I had understood that the issue that was taking time was finding a school, and it was a couple weeks after we agreed to take him that they told me this.)

Don’t think that scheduling this home visit that everything supposedly hinges on has been a top priority. They’ve finally scheduled the visit for next week with three social workers in attendance – ours, the child’s, and one from social services in the area where the parents live.

I’ve learned that due to unfortunate negative stereotypes about charedim, there is resistance to placing this child with us since he is coming from a non-religious home. My social worker (who isn’t religious) told me as soon as they meet me they’ll realize whatever they’re worried about isn’t an issue but for right now they don’t know me, and the lack of speed in moving forward seems to be partially a reflection of social services being hesitant about us.

My family members have been asking me, will this child be coming to us? I really don’t know. When it comes to foster care, you don’t make any assumptions until that child is pretty close to being in your home. At this point it seems to me that we won’t be able to begin the visitation process until after Pesach, so if it does happen, it will probably not be for another five or six weeks.

Avivah

You can’t make everyone happy, but you can create boundaries for yourself

parenting, personal development

The hosting of the Shabbos sheva brachos has ended and it went so beautifully. There was a lot of uncertainty for an extended period about where we would have the meals. I made a point to trust it would all work out rather than get anxious, and thankfully it did – it wasn’t until Tuesday evening that we found the venue that we would be using for Friday/Saturday. It was exactly what I wanted. Since it was recently renovated and wasn’t suitable for our needs prior to the renovation, no one had thought of it as an option when I was asking around.

We hosted our mothers, all of our married children and our newest son-in-law’s parents, siblings and their families. Being two large families with a lot of young families, it was a lot of people to host for sleeping and meals, but we were so happy to have everyone. It was a beautiful Shabbos with two families who were able to genuinely enjoy getting to know one another.

I self-catered three meals for approximately 45 people at each meal (my oldest daughter prepared all the desserts). As much as I very much wanted to, I wasn’t able to find people to hire to do the setting up and serving, so our children stepped in for that. They were great. But it was a lot of work that I would have preferred we didn’t have to do.

I felt good about having all the sleeping arrangements taken care of, having plenty of food well organized, and being calm and present for all the different relationships in the midst of such a busy time of doing. There were changes and disappointments and things that didn’t go as planned, and I stayed relaxed and rolled with the punches. I was extending myself for a lot of people and glad to be able to do it, and didn’t feel pressured or stressed.

It was on Saturday night that I got some feedback that was unfair and judgmental. It was certainly unwelcome and inappropriate at that moment in time, after an extended period of so much giving.

When I finally was able to get to bed, I was deeply exhausted. After a few hours of sleep, I woke up to do some journaling, which I haven’t done for some time. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Pages. About all the things I did, and how well I did them and how good I felt about it.

I wrote about the critical comments and how unkind and unjustified it felt. Usually I try to think about things from the other person’s perspective and understand them, but in my journal I allowed myself to have my own feelings of hurt and anger about it.

What came out for me of all this writing, was the very clear realization that it’s just not possible to make everyone happy all the time, no matter how hard I try and no matter how well everything goes. Everyone isn’t going to appreciate my efforts, appreciate me, and think I’m a good enough person. Everyone isn’t going to feel that I give them what they need.

The larger our family grows, the more the expectations of me grow. There are more and more people who come into the family, through marriage or birth, with their own ideas of who and how I should be. I’m no longer ‘just’ a wife, mother and daughter, but a mother-in-law and grandmother. Those who married in to our family grew up in a different family environment with different ideas of what my role in their lives should look like. Even with our biological children, there are different levels of satisfaction with how I parent. Everyone has expectations of how I should be, what I should do, what I should give (in terms of energy, time and physical resources). And I can’t adequately meet some of those expectations.

Obviously, making everyone happy or wanting to be appreciated by everyone for your efforts can’t be the goal, because it’s unobtainable.

I mentioned to a mother with several adult married children a few weeks ago that a married child/spouse was disgruntled with something I hadn’t done in the way they wanted, and she looked at me without saying anything for a long moment. I told her, “Don’t tell me you’ve never experienced this!” She responded, “That’s how it always is; I take it as the norm.”

There’s so much written about the challenges of growing children and busy households, but much less shared about the challenges and realities of this stage of life. After decades of parenting and homemaking, rather than slowing down and taking it easy, a mother is expected to up the bar and do more and more and more, for more and more people. She is expected to be calm, organized, giving, nurturing and patient, and magically know how to meet each person’s needs in the way they prefer.

I went directly from this demanding wedding period into Purim and organizing all of the necessary activities, and will soon begin Pesach preparations. We’ll be having my mom and three married children staying with us; my daughter will host another of our married children for sleeping. All five families will be with us for the seder and four families for the ensuing meals for as long as each chooses to stay.

I love having everyone together, seeing the grandchildren playing together and all the adults spending time together gives me much nachas. I have non-ending gratitude for all of the wonderful people who have joined our family and each adds so much.

Does that sound warm and fuzzy and oh, so beautiful? All the amazing family togetherness, with everyone getting along?

It’s very special and I never take it for granted.

And it’s a huge amount of work.

I’m now taking some quiet time for myself to regroup. I’m assessing how much I can give and how much I want to give, regardless of what others want of me. There are things I’ve willingly stretched myself to do, and after the minimal or nonexistent recognition of those efforts, am choosing to stop stretching rather than become resentful. These adjustments aren’t likely to be welcomed by those who are used to being on the receiving end but they need to be made.

It’s a good thing to be concerned about the comfort and happiness of others. But it’s not a good thing to do so much that you compromise yourself and your own happiness. There’s no one at fault if you’re overextended and unappreciated. You’re the one who needs to create boundaries that protect yourself, you’re the one who has to take care of yourself, and by doing that, you teach others how to treat you.

Avivah