Category: Parenting

Today I had several conversations about the long term dangers of using control as an educational/motivational method – one with a young adult in the midst of experiencing this, one with the parent of high school aged daughters, and one with the mother of a nineteen year old who is choosing a different life path than his parents.

Control is when someone tries to impose his will upon someone else to get a desired outcome.  It’s very commonly used and sadly, is too commonly taught to parents.

Trying to control your child is an approach to human interactions that makes behavior more important than relationship and works against a child’s best interests in a number of ways.  It undermines the development of intrinsic motivation by suppressing a sense of competence and autonomy.

In simple words, you take away a person’s desire to act in the way you want without you being on top of them.  When you try to control someone, they react by either resentfully submitting to your will or with visible defiance.

I’m going to be speaking in various locations in the coming weeks and while the specifics of each talk will vary somewhat, the common thread underlying each presentation will be the discussion of the most important factors in raising/educating a child.  (**I have an opening to speak in Tzfat on July 27 or 28 – if this is something you would like to help set up, please be in touch with me!**)

Too often, parents and teachers want to know how to get a child to behave, but they don’t realize that they need to approach a child in a way that support his long term growth. This is unfamiliar to many of us and we resort to what we already know, using techniques that seem to give us fast and good results.  But short cuts in parenting almost always backfire and create long term detours.

The most effective thing a parent can do is take time to learn how to support a child, how to connect with him and how to appropriately create healthy boundaries.  It’s not easy but it’s worth the time spent learning and applying a new paradigm to get real results that will last a lifetime.

Avivah

We’ve just celebrated our third son becoming bar mitzva. Each of the three bar mitzvas have been very different and I’ll share with you what we did this time and why we did it this way!

Several months ago we talked to our then twelve year old son about beginning bar mitzva lessons so he would be able to read the Torah portion in synagogue the week of his bar mitzva.  He told us then he didn’t want to do it.  I told him everyone is nervous in the beginning and that’s okay; he would learn what he needed to learn, practice and it would be fine.

He went to lessons.  He occasionally would say he didn’t want to read the Torah portion in synagogue.  I told him I understood he was nervous but encouraged him that he would do fine.  After all, dh, ds21 and ds16 have often served as the baal koreh (Torah reader) in addition to leading the davening (prayer services).  It’s something the males in our family are comfortable with and enjoy doing.

When we moved dh took ds to a local bar mitzva teacher to continue his lessons.  The teacher asked him what he wanted to do, and ds emphatically said he didn’t want to read the portion in public.  At that point, it was clear to us that he wasn’t saying this because he was unprepared, and dh and I reevaluated.  We spoke to a rav who agreed there is no reason he needs to lein his bar mitzva parsha.  If and when he wants to read the Torah portion at a later time in life, the opportunity will wait for him.

As parents it can be a challenge to recognize when your child needs an encouraging push and when that push is too far beyond his comfort zone.   Sometimes your ego can get in the way and blur the lines.  In this case we recognized the line and discussed with ds what would make his bar mitzva special and meaningful for him.  He chose to do extra learning of mishnayos and learned the laws of tefillin in depth in addition to what he was already doing.

How do you celebrate when a bar mitzva boy doesn’t take an active role in the prayer service?

On the day of his actual birthday, dh went with all of our boys and visiting male friends and family members to the Kotel (Western Wall) for the morning prayer service.

This was followed by a dairy brunch in our home.  We initially planned to have this at a restaurant but ds said he preferred it at our home.  It was a great choice on his part since it ended up being more personal, abundant and enjoyable for everyone of every age.

After everyone ate, we went around the room and each person shared something they appreciated about ds13.  This is something we do on every birthday but for the bar mitzva it was more extensive and the older kids each spoke a few minutes about their younger brother.  Almost everyone shared about his good heart, his humility, and his comfort with who he is without a need to impress others.

I spoke last and talked about some of his special qualities that hadn’t yet been touched on – qualities like thinking and feeling deeply, persistence and courage in sticking through difficult situations.  I got teary eyed talking about this and afterwards the kids told me that most of the people in the room were as well.  (Even an 11 year old guest later said he went out to the porch at this point so he wouldn’t cry.)

Later that day he went to shul where the rabbi and some other men and family members danced with him.

The following morning he was called up to make a blessing on the Torah in shul.

We opted to skip a kiddush on Shabbos since it would highlight what he didn’t do rather than what he did do.  Since we’re new here and don’t yet know many people, having a large meal for local friends wasn’t necessary.  Instead, we had a special Shabbos spent with extended family members joining us for the entire weekend in honor of ds.

I wasn’t going to share the picture we took right before Shabbos since the camera was held at an angle and it caused a misrepresentation of our heights.  But then I thought you might  appreciate seeing it anyway.

It has been such a deeply meaningful experience for me as a parent to watch ds13 emerge into the wonderful young man he is.  The maturation process is amazing to watch; when given time, acceptance and support – and our belief in them – our children will amaze us with the people they become.

Avivah

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and if I hadn’t popped onto Facebook, I would have been oblivious to the date.  I mentioned it to my husband, and my younger boys heard me and asked what that meant.

I told them it’s a day that people try to be nicer to their mother than usual.

How did our family celebrate?

We didn’t.

None of my children made me cards or special meals, bought me flowers, took me out or shared any special wishes for the day.  No one posted pictures on social media with comments to the world at large about how they have the best mother in the world.

I guess I could feel like I was missing out.  That my children don’t really value my efforts.  That they don’t care about me.

But I didn’t feel that way.

What I value more than once a year celebrations or declarations of love are the ongoing interactions I have with my children.  Sometimes I get the bonus of mature children sharing their appreciation for how they were raised.

Ds21 recently told me that because I always believed in him growing up, it helped him to believe in himself.  Do you know how I agonized over this child?  As my oldest and first to be homeschooled, I used to lay awake at nights wondering if I was harming him irreparably by choosing an non-mainstream educational option.  I didn’t harm him – far from it.  He’s a thoughtful, intelligent, caring young man who I feel proud and grateful to have as my son.  But he didn’t call me for Mother’s Day.

My younger kids make me pictures and create things for me on a regular basis.  They make me smile and laugh, they ask me to play with them, they hold my hand when we take walks, and they thank me for little things – like letting them play an educational computer game, making them a meal they like or taking them on an outing.

My older kids end every phone conversation by telling me they love me.

They all do things just because they want to make me happy, even when it means more work and less fun for them.  They’ve cleaned, painted, renovated, babysat, cooked – without asking for payment or allowances.  They voluntarily bring food and drinks to me in my room when I’m tired or sick.  Daily they do tasks they don’t want to do because I ask them to do it.

Every day.

Not one of them mentioned Mother’s Day.

And I didn’t miss it a bit.

Avivah

Last night I attended a deeply powerful evening of talks to raise awareness about the dangers of sexual abuse.  The talks were given by a psychologist, a Beit Shemesh police officer in charge of sexual abuse investigations, and three survivors of abuse who each shared part of their personal stories.

I took notes to share with you what was said but to sum up each talk would take away from them all.  Instead, I’ll share what I felt the takeaway messages from the event were.

Sexual abuse is pervasive, it is deeply damaging, and it is only by becoming educated that we can combat this horrific scourge.

The first step towards protecting our children and community from sexual predators is understanding what the problem is.  Sexual predators are in every community, in every city and they don’t look like the pervert that you learned as a young child to stay away from – you know, the derelict wino with a bottle in a paper bag and grubby fingernails. They usually look just like the kind of person you’d trust your child with – they work very hard to cultivate this image because it’s this facade that gains them access to children.

80 – 90% of abusers are someone the child knows.  To me, this means that a big chunk of our efforts and awareness needs to go towards making sure that adults or older children whom our children spent time with don’t have have unsupervised one-on-one time together.  Please read what I wrote here about the grooming process; it’s critical to understand how predators operate.

Years ago when I was about 11, I remember a classmate sharing some information with me.  Being the age that I was, I heard what she described but wasn’t able to process what she was saying.  I now understand that she was raped in the public bathrooms on a class trip.  At that time, I told her to tell the teacher; she then shared with me that the teacher told her she was making it up and not to talk to anyone about it.

This response sounds really horrible – and it is.  And unfortunately it’s very common.

How in the world can we rub salt on the gaping emotional and physical wounds that abused children have already experienced by responding like this?

We deny what is uncomfortable because it’s easier to look away than to deal with the uncomfortable truths in front of us.   It’s easier to blame the victim than deal with the abuser, easier to say a child is making something up than to believe that someone we think is trustworthy is capable of horrendous actions.  This is part of what this evening was about, to get people to stop looking away and denying the pain of victims and start recognizing and taking steps to limit the damage of sexual predators.

The religious Jewish community has unfortunately historically been more supportive of abusers than victims, but this is changing as people become more educated. To make our communities safe for children we need to stop keeping sick and unhealthy secrets; we need to stop pretending that this doesn’t happen in our communities.  It does and it happens much more than it should because we’ve been focusing on looking good and keeping our image untarnished rather than on doing good and confronting evil.  Looking away empowers and protects predators and dramatically increases the risk for our children.

After hearing all of this information, it leaves a parent saying, “Okay, we understand how serious this is, but how in the world can we protect our kids from something so pervasive?” It’s frightening and overwhelming – after all, we can’t watch our kids every minute and it seems that short of that there’s no way to keep our kids safe.

A very helpful booklet filled with information was given out to attendees that covers prevention tips, red flag warning signs of potential sex offenders, boundaries, common tricks and lures, 10 proactive strategies for parents, facts and statistics, an explanation of grooming and more.  You can go to www.safelyeverafter.com to read more information.

The part I personally struggle with about talking to my kids about this is not scaring them.  As a parent I have to do my part to proactively protect them, but there are situations when I’m not around that they need to know what is appropriate or what isn’t, and how to respond when something doesn’t feel right to them.

I don’t want them to feel the world is filled with scary, dangerous people waiting to hurt them but I also don’t want to casually give over information and downplay it to the point that it seems I’m saying something unimportant.  So what to do?

Rather than this being a bigger conversation that takes place a couple of times a year, I think an ongoing conversation is a way to discuss this in a way that doesn’t feel so intense and scary.  Talking about it in this way also increases the likelihood that our kids will better internalize the information.  Our focus should be on how to empower our kids with this information.

I’ve always stressed to my kids to listen to their instincts even if logically they can’t understand why they feel that way.  I’ve also continually stressed to them to respect one another’s boundaries, that the parts of the body covered by a bathing suit are private and that if anyone tells them to keep a secret to tell me right away.   These are all included in the ten basic rules.  Something I haven’t done but after reading the handouts is to practice with them different responses they can use if they felt uncomfortable in a situation.

Avivah