Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • Ds12 first time putting on tefillin

    In traditional Judaism, a young man puts on tefillin (phylacteries) for the first time a month before his bar mitzva.  Today was that day for ds12.

    Dh took him to buy the tefillin in Bnei Brak several weeks ago, and yesterday afternoon they took them out so ds could practice how to put them on.  At that point, they realized that something had been tied according to a different custom than ours ( tied to wrap going out, rather than in), so they went out to find someone who could help them in the short time they had.  Fortunately, dh had met someone here who is a sofer (scribe) and was able to quickly remedy the issue.

    Dh went with ds12 to the morning service, where he put on tefillin for the first time.  To celebrate, they took a few bottles of soft drinks and lots of homemade baked goods to share with the other people in the minyan (mostly the classmates and teachers of ds12, hence the horrifying amounts of sugar): doughnuts (chocolate and plain glazed) – in honor of Chanukah, cinnamon rolls, swirl cookies, chocolate cake – he’s lucky he had older sisters who wanted him to have something nice to put out!

    Here’s the young man of the hour:

    Dr. Gordon Neufeld, author of Hold On To Your Kids, has lamented that in Western culture, there are no rituals to mark the passage from child to adult. The exception, he notes, is in the Jewish religion, where boys and girls mark this passage with the bar/bas mitzva celebration, as they accept on themselves a Torah lifestyle of their own desire and volition.

    This has practical ramifications – once bar mitzva, ds will be able to fulfill a minyan (prayer quorum) just as an adult man can.  This is going to make the person who has a synagogue a few doors away happy since he’s called in the past for ds to come complete the minyan, and been surprised (since he looks older) and disappointed that he couldn’t come.

    But for parents as well, it’s good to have something like this to remind you that your child is moving towards adulthood, and to treat them accordingly.  I every so often recently when talking about bar mitzva preparations,  have been giving an exaggerated sniff and saying in a falsetto weepy voice: “My baby is growing up.”  Though I do it jokingly, it’s true, he really is growing up.  I clearly remember when ds18 was at this stage, wondering how he got to this point so quickly.  And with ds18 now not living at home anymore, I’m very, very aware of how fast the time flies by.

    In other news, ds12 and I measured against one another back to back tonight.  He is now definitely taller than me.  Ds18 was 5’8″ when he was bar mitzva, and since I’m a little short of 5’9″, he passed me soon after.  But ds12 has already passed me, which reminded me of something I told my oldest a few years ago when he was wrestling with his brother: “One day, he’s going to be bigger and stronger than you, so you better be nice to him!”  🙂  Ds18 is almost six feet, and he’s no wimp, but tonight he came home and when he saw ds12, he told him that he’s on track to be bigger than him.  ‘But’, he continued, ‘you have to be able to learn more gemaras (Talmud) than I can to really be bigger than me!’

    Avivah

  • A gift-free holiday season

    Has anyone noticed that I haven’t mentioned the holiday season even the tiniest bit?  I haven’t been purposely ignoring it as much as not really thinking much about it.

    Usually, I’m pretty aware of the holidays coming up – I use the advance time to stockpile gifts for all of our family members that they’ll appreciate at prices that my wallet appreciates!  Sometimes this has been buying things at thrift stores or yard sales, sometimes it’s meant making gifts.  But whatever I did, I needed to think ahead to be ready.  (Here’s a post I wrote about my approach to holiday shopping.)

    Though we’ve always made a very conscious effort to keep things simple in the gift giving arena, when you have so many children buying and making gifts for one another, things begin to take on a life of their own and it gets harder and harder to keep it simple!  (You can read about preparations for past Chanukahs – do a search for ‘chanukah’ or ‘chanuka’ in the search bar – as well as one of our favorite gifts of the last night of Chanukah that has become a family memory to be treasured!)  And of course we were living close to grandparents who were eager to come by with the goodies they had for the kids.  And even though the gifts we purchased weren’t expensive and were often things we would have bought them in any case, but saved them until Chanukah to give, there were still gifts, and it was hard for a certain degree of focus to not be on presents.

    I think we did a good job of straddling gift giving and finding meaning in the holiday, but now we’ve decided that we’d like to use our recent move as an opportunity to reset our family expectations and focus more on what the celebration of this holiday is about.  So we’ve agreed to totally cut out the presents.

    Tonight was the first night of Chanukah, and it was lovely!  Though everyone in the past had their own unique menorahs, we only brought my husband’s menorah with us (yep, the luggage limit thing again!).   We bought inexpensive tin menorahs for everyone; ds4 brought one home from gan (preschool) today, and he lit for the first time with us all.

    The first night of Chanukah in our home

    After candlelighting in front of the window that overlooks our street, we sang together and my husband and all of the kids danced (I don’t know why, but somehow I usually prefer to sit and watch them!).  After that, ds12 prepared latkes (potato pancakes) for dinner, while dh played Chanukah tunes on his guitar and dd15 played her flute – they started working on a Chanukah song that they can play together.  I was really glad we brought the guitar along!

    Last night dd11 and I attended her school performance, which consisted on several dances and songs by the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade girls, followed by a one woman act, a play about the Inquisition.  Wow, was she talented!  I enjoyed it very much, and periodically whispered explanations in dd’s ear about what was going on.  I heard today that many of the Israeli girls for whom language wasn’t a barrier didn’t understand the concept of the Inquisition and the forced conversion of the Jews to Christianity, never having been exposed to that time in history, and weren’t able to follow the play.

    That evening was the beginning of the active Chanukah season!  As I said, today ds4 came home with a menorah, a box of candles, and a dreidel from school, and tomorrow all of the kids (except maybe ds12, not so sure about his school) will be having Chanukah parties on their last day before vacation begins!

    Thursday morning ds12 will be putting on tefillin for the first time and we’re sending homemade doughnuts and other baked goodies to the minyan (prayer service) that he’ll be attending.  Mid day we’ll be attending a bat mitva, and I hope that around 5 pm, ds18 will be coming home for Shabbos (after being gone for a couple of months) and bringing a friend.  A couple of hours after he gets home, we’ll be attending a local hachnasas Sefer Torah (dedication of a new Torah scroll) that will be attended by one of the leading Torah sages of this generation.

    Then on Friday, friends will be coming from the Jerusalem area with their family to spend a few days with us, and that evening and the next day we’ll be joined for meals by a young family of four visiting from Germany.  Then sometime on Sunday a blog reader visiting Karmiel will stop by with her family and we’ll get to meet in person.  So we’ll have a nice full house to enjoy Chanukah with!

    It’s really nice to see how the chief rabbi of the city has worked to ensure that there will be Chanukah events suitable for the religious public here.  We’ll be missing the puppet show on Thursday afternoon in order to attend the bat mitzva of a friend’s daughter, but on Sunday there will be an all day Chanukah event at a local park, and that evening is a special performance for women that I’m looking forward to attending with the older girls.  (Unfortunately, they didn’t go with us last night.)  There’s also an event for men the following evening.  I’m sure we’ll hear about more things that are planned as the week goes on.

    It already feels like a wonderful holiday, and it’s only the first night!

    What is your position on gift giving during the holiday season?  What are things you’ve done to keep the focus on things that are more meaningful, such as family time or spiritual traditions?

    Avivah

  • Parent teacher conferences

    The first few days of this week were full, full, full of parent teacher meetings!  Today I’ll share a little bit about this as part of our aliyah process.

    Dh went on Sunday night to meet with ds12’s teacher.  I think the expectations in this school of olim aren’t realistic because they have had so little experience with new immigrant, and it shows when they say what their expectations are.  It was recommended that we get additional tutoring for ds12 (his school is the only one that provides no support for olim/new immigrants), but I don’t think it’s necessary since ds is doing amazingly well, dh is working with him a lot, and since he’s probably going to repeat this grade in the coming year, anything he misses now will be caught then.

    The next day began my meetings.  Officially the first one was just to go to the girls’ high school and meet ith dd15’s teacher, but additionally, I spoke with the principal, school advisor, and English teacher.  I spoke to their tutor on the phone the night beforehand since she wasn’t going to be there, and unfortunately missed speaking to dd17’s teacher – I didn’t make an app0intment to speak to her, and got to the school just a couple of minutes after she had left for the evening, which was fine since we can speak on the phone.

    Of course, it was all just as I told dd15 it would be before I went – they all told me what a fine girl she is, how hard she’s working, etc.  Two of them were impressed that dd keeps a little notebook where she writes down words that she hears during the day (and every night she asks me to tell her what they mean!).   A couple of the teachers were extremely glowing about dd17 and dd15, and said it’s all a credit to how they were raised, but as nice as it is to hear, this kind of comment makes me uncomfortable.  I don’t think it’s honest to accept compliments like that which really aren’t mine, and I told the teachers that my kids deserve credit for the work they’ve done on themselves.  As a parent you can do your best, but how it turns out isn’t in your hands.  That’s not false humility – that’s the truth!

    While there I took the opportunity to ask the homeroom teacher about some social dynamics in the classroom and how they were being dealt with – dd is in the most difficult class this school has ever had and the administration is struggling to figure out how to handle them.  Within less than two weeks of school beginning, I was already researching other options and seriously considering transferring her out, but after we discussed the options, dd decided she wants to stay where she is.  She’s getting a real education about what goes on in school, and has told me she wishes she could speak on the teen panel for the Torah Home Education conference now, after having been in school (she was on it this past summer) – she has plenty of perspective to share!   There are a lot of things that homeschooled kids take for granted about being homeschooled until they’re in a different framework where everyone hasn’t had that, and it’s nice for me that she can look back and now appreciate some aspects of our approach to learning that she wouldn’t have considered noteworthy before this.

    The next morning I went to dd11’s school to speak with her teacher.  I had received a note about parent teacher conferences being scheduled for Tuesday evening, but those who wanted to could make appointments for limited slots in the morning.  I chose the morning knowing that it was likely to be more relaxed and with less waiting, while simultaneously ensuring I would be home in the evening for dinner and bedtime.

    Her teacher mentioned that she thinks dd11 is having trouble because she was homeschooled until now.  “Really?”  I ask.  “What kind of difficulty?”  Well, she tells me, she is very well-behaved, attentive, pleasant, smiles at the girls and plays with them at recess, but she’s holding back by not speaking much to them.  Is she so closed at home also?  Ahem.  “Don’t you think it’s possible,” I suggest, “that she’s not speaking to them because she can’t speak the language yet?”   Oh, right.  “And don’t you think it indicates a degree of social confidence,” I asked, “that she’s interacting with girls that she can’t talk to, rather than sit to the side?”  Oh, yes, definitely, that’s a very good thing.

    Then I told her that in my opinion, it’s because she was homeschooled that she’s made the transition so well.  Then the teacher began asking me all about homeschooling.  I avoided discussions of this sort when I first moved here; I had no interest in immediately becoming known as the person who was different.  But now I feel like people see who I am and I can discuss it in the proper context, without the ‘weirdo’ label attached to homeschooling or to our family.  After answering lots of her questions, I finally laughed and told her that I had come to talk about dd and her school experience, not homeschooling!

    While I was in the school office, I learned that I had an appointment with ds9’s teacher that evening.  Ds9  had given the note to dh instead of me, and dh had forgotten to mention it to me, so I didn’t know about it.  The secretary told me she thought it was strange that I scheduled one meeting for the morning and one for the evening, instead of coming for both at the same time!  My efforts to avoid going out in the evening clearly didn’t work out as planned, and so I headed to ds9’s school that evening.

    While waiting to speak with his teacher (the line was backed up), I meandered around into the girl’s school next door, and happened to meet dd11’s tutor.  As soon as she realized who I was, she told me, ‘Your daughter doesn’t like working hard.”  This doesn’t match dd11, so I asked her to clarify.  She told me that dd11 was very resistant to  the learning she tried to do with her, and that she doesn’t like to extend herself to learn.

    Now, I had seen the homework dd was bringing home from this tutor and was dismayed that it flew in the face of the approach I had agreed upon at the beginning of the year with the principal and teachers – the focus this year is for her to learn the language so that she can communicate and understand what’s going on.  Dd is not going to be expected to participate in class, be tested, have to do homework, etc, for the first half a year.

    During our conversation I learned that this very nice and well-meaning tutor wasn’t told about this, nor did she have any idea of what dd’s spoken Hebrew was like (basically non existent).  And so she went about tutoring her the way she would have tutored girls who were living here for a year or two and were already fluent in the language!  She felt it was critical for dd to be able to stay on par with her class, so she was teaching her Biblical Hebrew, isolated words that had absolutely no daily application, and dd11 was struggling to remember words that didn’t connect to anything.

    Also unfortunately, the tutor doesn’t speak English.  She told me that was no problem because she would have dd look up the words in the dictionary.   When dd had first showed me the work she was doing with this tutor, I decided not to make an issue of this, since I knew it was a short term arrangement and someone very good would be replacing her soon, and dd was getting concrete assistance from her other tutor.  I realized while speaking to the tutor how much she really didn’t understand of the situation.  But it bothered me that she was still unfairly categorizing dd.

    So I explained to her that dd11 can’t even say or understand more than the most simple of sentences, and didn’t understand most of what the tutor was telling her.  I told her that what she did was like teaching Shakespeare to a child who doesn’t yet know how to read .  And because the tutor didn’t speak English, dd had no way to express to her that it was all way over her head.

    Her tutor felt so badly after we spoke and kept saying she wish she had understood all these things before, because it was clear to her how unhelpful her approach had been.  (I told her not to feel badly, that it was just how the circumstances were and no one’s fault.)  Then she told me that she saw during one of their very last lessons, she had given dd easy words, of colors and numbers, and all of a sudden she perked up and was involved – and it was only as she told me this that she realized that dd hadn’t been more involved then because she was lazy, but because it was finally something on her level!

    If I had any inkling that no one had told her about how to approach learning with dd (this is arranged through the school, during school hours), I would have spoken to her.  But I had spoken to the other tutor, and the principal, and the teacher, and the new tutor, and everyone was on the same page with me, and I assumed this tutor was teaching in this way because it was her approach.  I don’t think it’s appropriate to tell people how to do their job, once they know what their job is – but she didn’t know what the job was, unfortunately.  I learned that over- verifying isn’t a bad thing to do.

    I was really glad to have bumped into her and straightened that out, and then I went back to the boy’s school and met the math teacher of ds9.  She told me to tell him that she understands English well, though she can’t speak it, and that he can answer questions that are asked in English.  She also told me she sees he understands not only the math, but the Hebrew, and shared the following example with me: she asked the class a question, and ds’s seat partner answered it very quickly. She asked him how he figured out the answer so fast, and he told her that ds had written down the answer on the paper and showed it to him!

    It was interesting speaking to her, since she came to Israel from Russia at the age of 13 (she’s in her twenties now), and understands exactly how hard it is to be a new immigrant.  It was nice to have someone right away get it, without me having to explain the obvious (eg the above examples regarding dd of the reality of not being able to talk to those around her).

    Then I met the music teacher.  I had learned just a few days before that ds9 is the only boy in the class without a recorder, and asked the teacher about this.  She immigrated from Russia at my stage of life, with school age children, and she also was very understanding of the difficulties for a child his age.   I told her that I’d like him to have a recorder, and would send money to buy one at the office the next day (after learning that parents are supposed to buy one – I had never been notified about this).  She told me that she had given him a recorder to use on several occasions, but feels that he has so much to adjust to in learning Hebrew, that she doesn’t want to pressure him more.  She explained that music is like a second language, and felt that since next year this class won’t be having the recorder, it was better for him to not have the added expectation of himself to learn how to read music and how to play the recorder.

    I appreciated her thoughtfulness, though I thought ds9 would feel left out continuing to be the only one in the class without an instrument.  But when I asked him about it, he told me he’d rather not play and is happy to sit and watch.

    Then I finally spoke with his teacher (I got in about an hour or more after my scheduled appointment), who is such a caring and devoted teacher.  He asked me what our expectations of him are – isn’t that a thought provoking question?  I told him that some things are simply going to take time to improve, until ds can speak Hebrew.  He wanted suggestions for the ways I felt it would be best to engage ds in class – he doesn’t want to ask of him something that’s too much, but he doesn’t want to ignore him, either.  He understands English though ds doesn’t seem comfortable speaking to people in English unless they speak to him in English also.  Definitely limiting!

    All in all, I enjoyed all of my meetings.  All of the kids’ teachers are good people who want them to succeed, and I feel like we’re working on the same goals.

    For those of you who have moved overseas with children (or been children) who are in school, does any of this sound typical?  Better or worse than usual?  Any suggestions or tips you’ve learned along the way to make the system work better for your children?

    Avivah

  • Illustrating recipes to make it easy for kids to help

    Last night we had vegetable stew and cornbread for dinner, and guess who did almost all of the cooking?  Ds5!  This was thanks to the efforts of dd17, who involved him and found a way for him to independently prepare most of dinner.  You should have seen how proud he was, as he kept telling everyone during dinner that he made almost everything himself and dd17 hardly helped him!

    Here’s what dd17 did.  (I was considering taking a picture of this to show you, but didn’t think it would show up well.)  She fully illustrated the cornbread recipe for ds5!  To start, at the top of the page she drew an ear of corn + a loaf of bread, then asked him what that was – to which he quickly answered, “Cornbread!”

    She went on to draw each item – when it called for two cups of something, she drew two cups and then the item that needed to be measured out.  For tablespoons, she drew big spoons; for teaspoons, she drew small spoons.  She numbered the instructions, which was important for the next step.

    When she wrote out the instructions, she wrote, “1, 2, 3, 5, 6” and illustrated that it was supposed to be mixed.  Then she wrote the numbers that were involved in the next step.  Thanks to these very clear instructions (which she explained to him to be sure he understood them all before he began), he was able to make the entire pan of cornbread by himself.

    As far as the stew, he already knows how to peel and chop vegetables (yes, with a sharp knife – ds2.5 also peels vegetables, but doesn’t yet use a sharp knife), so that was mostly just a matter of putting it in a pot and dd adding the necessary liquid.

    Do you know how much it builds kids up to be able to do something they view as ‘big people’ work, and do it well?  Ds5 was hearing “thank you”s and compliments all dinner long!  Getting your kids involved in the kitchen is an easy and natural step to helping them develop important home management skills.

    Dd15 was telling me recently that she never understood why so many people were taken aback about her baking and cooking so well, until she saw how uncommon it is even for teenagers to be involved in the kitchen.  (She told me about a teenager who proudly told her about the cake she had made ‘by herself’ – the mother had measured the ingredients into the bowl, and the teenager had mixed it and poured it into a pan.)  And also, she’s now heard enough comments to realize that many people view cooking from scratch as a very difficult thing.   But for us, it’s just how we’ve always cooked, so it’s normal to our kids.

    It definitely takes more time to get your kids involved when they’re young, because it’s easier and faster to do it all yourself.  It’s in the long run that it pays off, when your kids can prepare anything that needs to be made – I think by 12 a child is basically capable of mastering all of the chores that are part of running a home, but that doesn’t mean they want to do it or know how to do it.  They have to be taught, and it has to be something they’re given the opportunity to do – they won’t learn by osmosis! I’ve found that when I view the time I spend preparing your meals as an activity I’m doing with my kids, I don’t mind that it takes longer.  They’re busy having fun while being productive and learning important skills, while you’re getting something done!

    Avivah

  • The Best and Easiest Chocolate Cake

    We made this recipe the last few weeks, and we had requests for this specific recipe from two of the three families who had it when they were at our home during that time.  What’s really nice about this recipe is that it’s really, really easy.  And that means that your child can make it by himself, and have the fun of serving it and impressing your family and friends!

    Ds12 made this the first week, and then I had ds9 prepare this, who has very little kitchen experience.  When kids first begin learning to cook, you have to remember not to give them just the preparatory work (eg peeling, measuring), but to let them put together enough of it that they have pride in the final product.  It’s the gratification and pride that makes them want to be involved in cooking in the future.  In this case, they can put together the entire thing themselves with very little help.

    So here’s the recipe!

    The Best and Easiest Chocolate Cake

    • 1 3/4 c. flour
    • 2 c. sugar
    • 3/4 c. cocoa
    • 1 1/2 t. baking powder
    • 1 1/2 t. baking soda
    • 1 t. salt
    • 2 eggs
    • 1 c. milk (you can substitute water, coconut milk, or any non-dairy milk)
    • ** 1 T. vinegar (if you’re using Dutch cocoa – see explanation below)
    • 1/2 c. oil
    • 1 1/2 t. vanilla
    • 1 c. boiling water

    Mix all the dry ingredients.  Then add in the eggs, milk, and remaining liquid ingredients in the order listed.  Pour into a 9 x 13 baking pan, and bake at 350 degrees for 30 – 35 minutes.

    ***Here’s some interesting information about cocoa that I learned about from the woman who used to be the Girl Scout troop leader years ago for dd17.  This is especially relevant for those who are using US recipes but aren’t living in the US.  In the US, the standard cocoa used is natural and therefore acidic -Hershey’s cocoa is typical of the standard cocoa in the US.  In other parts of the world, Dutch cocoa is the standard, and this means it is alkalinized.  What this means is that though people in different countries are calling cocoa by the same name, the natural and Dutch cocoa actually work somewhat differently.  Since I’m now using Dutch cocoa for baking but this was a US recipe, adding 1 T. vinegar compensates for the missing acidity.

    Avivah

     

  • The scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life

    My ds2.5 has been under the weather the last couple of days – a mild fever, very lethargic, wanting to be held all the time.  Your typical cold.

    Yesterday afternoon, ds12 was holding ds2 and reading to him, and then asked him if he wanted to lay down on my bed.  Ds2 told him yes, so he put him down and continued reading to him.  A minute later looked over and was horrified to see him shaking while staring straight ahead.  He quickly called my dh, and they brought him out to me, telling me he wasn’t breathing and was choking.

    His face was a pale gray and his lips were turning blue; I grabbed him and tried to the do the Heimlich manuever a couple of times.  Nothing.  I told dh to run to the retired nurse across the street for help, and told one of the kids to run to a neighbor to call an ambulance.  Meanwhile, I tried to sweep my finger in his mouth to see what could be stuck there, but his teeth were clenched so tightly that I couldn’t pry them apart even a tiny bit.

    His face was turning purple, and I grabbed him and ran out of our apartment building, planning to run to the emergency center with him that’s a few minutes away.  Just then, I saw the nurse hurrying with dh out of her house to come to us.  As long as I live I’ll never forget the desperate feeling of running with ds’s totally limp and unresponsive body in my arms, thinking he wasn’t going to make it.

    I said urgently to her, “He’s not breathing!” and she took ds from me and did the Heimlich manuever.   Nothing.   While she told her husband to call emergency medical help, I took ds back on my lap and thought how terrifying this would be for him if he was aware of it at any level, so I repeatedly stroked his face and told him he’d be okay.

    Slowly, he started to breathe with a heavy gurgle, like the air had to squeeze by a big obstruction in his throat. His teeth began to unclench, his face started fading to light blue, and gradually he was just very pale.  I could see his eyes starting to refocus – he had been staring through us before without seeing anything.

    I didn’t know what caused him to start breathing again  –  I thought maybe what was stuck in his throat passed down, somehow.  The nurse told us to stay there until they found a doctor to send us to, but after waiting a little while, I told them my kids were probably terrified and I needed to let them know how ds2 was doing.  (The emergency clinic was closed because it was Wednesday evening, the health clinics were closed between 6 – 8 pm, the neighbor ds12 went to for help in calling an ambulance wasn’t home, and we couldn’t get any doctors on the phone.  An hour later I learned about an EMT who lives locally, but he was out of town until 1 am; he told us to call even in the early hours of the morning if we needed him and he’d be there within a couple of minutes. Fortunately, G-d is around all hours of the day!)

    As I crossed the street with ds2 on the way back home, I won’t even try to describe the overwhelming sense of thankfulness and gratitude that filled me.  When I walked inside, I found all of my kids gathered together saying tehillim (Psalms).  I managed to say, “He’s okay” before totally breaking down into sobs.  They all looked very sober when I walked in, and I don’t know how they responded afterwards – I saw dd11 crying later on, and because dd15 and ds12 knew how serious it was, they must have had a tremendous amount of fear about the entire scenario. They weren’t able to really talk about it when I brought it up a few hours later, other than to nod when I said it must have been very frightening for them.

    I sat down with ds  and a few minutes later, I gave him a drink of milk.  He drank it slowly, then his first words were, “Thank you for buying milk, Mommy”, and everyone smiled kind of emotionally, and someone said, “That’s our Shimmy!”  (He’s always spontaneously thanking us for things.)

    He fell asleep on me, and I continued to hold him like that for two or three hours, while in my mind I tried to work backwards to figure out what had happened.  He clearly wasn’t breathing, but I checked with ds12, and ds2 hadn’t put anything in his mouth, so he wasn’t choking on any foreign objects.  I asked ds12 and dd15 to describe anything they had noticed during this incident (it was at this time that dd15 told me when I left the house with him that he looked like he was already gone).  As I had been running with him for help, it had flashed through my mind that he might be having a seizure, but I had dismissed that since his fever hadn’t been high, and he hadn’t had any recent vaccinations.

    At first my concern was meningitis, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought he might have had a febrile seizure.  Later in the evening when I finally put him down, I did some research to see if this was possible.

    Here’s a description from kidshealth.org (all of the sites I looked at had the same basic description):

    “Febrile seizures are full-body convulsions that can happen during a fever (febrile means “feverish”). They affect kids 6 months to 5 years old, and are most common in toddlers 12 to 18 months old. The seizures usually last for a few minutes and are accompanied by a fever above 100.4° F (38° C).

    While they can be frightening, febrile seizures usually end without treatment and don’t cause any other health problems. Having one doesn’t mean that a child will have epilepsy or brain damage.
    <During a febrile seizure, a child’s whole body may convulse, shake, and twitch, and he or she may moan or become unconscious. This type of seizure is usually over in a few minutes, but in rare cases can last up to 15 minutes.>
    Febrile seizures stop on their own, while the fever continues until it is treated. Some kids might feel sleepy afterwards; others feel no lingering effects.”

    The critical information I learned about these seizures is that they are caused by a rapid rise or drop in body temperature.  It’s not how high the temperature is that matters, but how quickly it changes.  My initial belief that it couldn’t have been a seizure because he had a low-grade fever was incorrect; even a quick rise or drop from 99 degrees and 101 degrees could trigger a febrile seizure.

    This experience was so intense that I wasn’t going to post about it here.  But then I thought that parents need to be aware of this possibility, that it can happen even in a healthy child.  This was the most terrifying situation of my life, but if you know what it is, it can be less frightening.  I found the following clip on Youtube of a one year old having a febrile seizure, and though initially I didn’t think I’d be able to watch it, I did.  The seizure was much shorter and less intense than ds2’s, but I was still able to see some similar features.

    I haven’t yet found any suggestions about what to do in our situation, for a child who has stopped breathing, other than call 911.  I don’t know if when ds2 lost consciousness it allowed him to start breathing again, if the change in air temperature when I ran outside affected something, or if he would have restarted breathing no matter what.  Based on anecdotal comments I’ve seen by parents whose children experienced febrile seizures, it seems that CPR is the next step when the paramedics arrive.

    Last night the following saying came to mind: “Having a child means your heart is walking around outside of your body.”  So, so true.

    I knew yesterday was going to be a good day, but I didn’t know how good!  “Hodu l’Hashem ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo” – “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, and His kindness endures forever.”

    Avivah

  • Teaching older kids to respond nicely

    >>I wanted to ask you for a reminder of how you respond to sassy comments or responses from a 10 y.o. who is generally pleasant until asked to do something he doesn’t like. Thanks!<<

    This is a common situation, since when our kids are basically pleasant, we don’t want to be overbearing and feel like we’re asking too much of them to require them to always be pleasant.   We feel like we’re being unreasonable to ask that of them.  But at the same time, it’s really unpleasant to deal with them when they’re balking at what you’re requesting, or doing it with attitude.

    I think it’s important that kids learn that they need to do as their parents tell them with a good attitude, not because they feel like it or agree with it, but because honoring one’s parents necessitates that.  And as a parent, I feel it’s my job to teach them to be respectful of me even if they don’t want to be (and even if I don’t care or think it’s a priority).  Remembering that it’s my responsibility as a parent keeps me from thinking that I’m being self-serving in teaching these behaviors.

    There are two aspects of how to deal with this, but I’m going to address the first very superficially, and will deal with the the second one in more depth.

    Firstly, you should be respectful of your child, and try to be a person they can respect.  Don’t put too many stumbling blocks in their way by being an irrational, unreasonable, overemotional witch on a daily basis (once in a while is normal, lol!), and then demanding that they treat you like a queen. And even if you’re being a basically nice parent, don’t ask them to do things from morning until night.  Even when you get compliance, their hearts aren’t going to be with you, and external compliance is of limited value if your kids can’t stand you.  But at the same time, don’t worry that you have to be perfect before you can expect your children to act respectfully, since if that was the case, no one alive would be deserving of respect from their children!

    On to the second aspect, of technically teaching them to do things with a good attitude.  In recent months, I let my middles get away with doing things begrudgingly, with grumpy faces, or even sometimes with verbal responses that weren’t acceptable.  To remedy this now (and in the past, when the oldest three were at just this stage – 9, 11, 12), here’s what I did.

    To jumpstart this reteaching aspect, I first let them know that when I ask them to do something, it would no longer be enough to just do it.  It had to be done with a reasonably good attitude – they don’t have to jump up and tell me how happy they are to fulfill my every wish, but they have to show what I consider willingness –  no negativity allowed.  No rolling of eyes, exaggerated sighs, arguing, questioning (although respectful discussion is okay), or pretending not to hear.  Smiling (or at least having a pleasant demeanor – a smile isn’t necessary) and doing it promptly is appropriate.

    Then, I insisted on their responses being in line with the above.  And of course, at the beginning they never were.  So I modeled it for them, and then had them repeat it.  And I didn’t stop there.  They had to respond appropriately, and then once they got the tone down, I’d replay the entire scenario with them again, and again.  (I do this with the littles, too.)

    Here’s an example: Me – “Please clear off the plates from the table and put them next to the sink.”  Child – “Why do I have to?  I did it last time.  You never ask (another sibling).”  Or they do it, grumbling under their breath.  Me – “Hmm, that doesn’t sound so respectful.  I’d like to hear you respond pleasantly, ‘Okay, Mommy’, and then do it.”  Child (annoyed and trying to get it over with, in an annoyed voice): “Okay, Mommy.”

    Me – “Well, the words are right, but the tone needs some improvement.  This is what it should sound like (I demonstrate).  I’m going to make the same request now, and I’d like to hear you respond appropriately.”  Child: “Okay, Mommy” (some improvement, but still you can tell they’re inwardly rolling their eyes).  Me – “Better, but let’s try it again.”  (Replay scenario.)  Child then responds, “Okay, Mommy” and this time gets the tone right.  Me – “Great, that was just right.  Now let’s practice that three (or five, or whatever seems appropriate at that time) more times to be sure you’ve got it down.”

    You might be thinking your kids would go crazy if you did this, but by the end of the role playing session, they’re usually in a better mood than when they started.  I do this with a smile and pleasantly, not in a mean and hostile way.  But they get the message that this is the standard that’s expected, and they’ll be held to it. And every time after that there’s a response that doesn’t meet the standards of our home, I’ll have them repeat themselves until they get it right.  And I’ll stand there for thirty minutes doing this with them if I have to (sometimes kids think they can outlast you and you’ll give up if they’re resistant enough, but they quickly learn that it’s not worth it if you consisently show you are willing to see the issue through).

    If a child isn’t respectful or doesn’t do what he’s told, he goes nowhere and does nothing until that’s corrected.  (Well, not literally – they can still get drinks of water and go to the bathroom, but that’s about it.)  No books, phone calls, etc.  This doesn’t happen often – actually, it’s really, really rare – but it’s still a point worth mentioning, since your child has to see that you have staying power and you really mean what you say.

    I’m not looking just for a forced verbal response; I want them to practice responding kindly and lovingly, because what we say and do changes who we are.  (For example, when you smile, it makes you feel more upbeat, and when you feel out of sorts, acting as if you were happy will help you shift to actually feeling happy.)  This is a process of retraining their minds, literally recreating new pathways in their brains, and it takes time and consistency.  You can’t sometimes insist on this and sometimes let them get away with being inappropriate, or you’ll end up having to struggle with this issue out on a regular basis.

    Avivah

  • A chat with my downstairs neighbor

    At about 9:45 on Shabbos morning, my ds5 went out of the building to do an errand for me, and when he returned a few minutes later, he was very upset.  He said (and my daughters confirmed since they could hear from all the way up here) that the downstairs neighbor yelled at him – in English – to stop running around and making noise in our apartment.

    When he told me this, I didn’t say a word.  On Shabbos mornings, I like to sleep in late, but because I have young children, I don’t actually sleep.  What I do is stay in bed, and since I don’t want them running around unsupervised, they join me and we read and play together there.  From the time they woke up at 7 am until 9 or 9:30, this is where they were, and it wasn’t until then that I allowed them to run around and play with each other (in their bare feet, because shoes would make more noise).  I’ve tried to accomodate this neighbor and reduce our noise in a number of ways, but once my child was verbally accosted, a line had been crossed that was unacceptable to me.

    So I got up, got dressed, and still without saying a word, left our home.  But my desire to be prudent prevailed and I decided to get advice from a neighbor who was here for many years before speaking to the difficult neighbor.  I then learned that this neighbor has told others that they’re hoping to make us so miserable that we’ll move away, and also complained that it’s not bad enough that we have children, but that we even have guests over (the person who was told this was shocked they weren’t embarrassed to say these things out loud).  After speaking to her, my initial anger was over, but my desire to take care of this issue wasn’t.

    I’ve said before regarding discussions about homeschooling that I won’t have conversations in which I’m put on the defensive, and that means sometimes turning things around and putting others on the defense instead.  There’s probably a martial arts term for this.  🙂  And this is what I felt needed to be done now, because he was viewing our niceness and efforts to be accommodating as weakness and I was certain he would continue to escalate unless we showed him we wouldn’t tolerate any more.

    So I went to his apartment, and pounded on his door as hard as I could.  This was to let him know someone who was very serious about something was going to be on the other side.  As soon as he opened it, he started yelling at me for banging on his door, but he didn’t have much of a chance to talk, since I started yelling over him: “How dare you yell at my son!  If you have a problem, you come to me.  Don’t start up with my children, and don’t start up with me!”

    He told me how loud my eleven children are, starting from 5 am in the morning, and I shouted at him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that we don’t have eleven children, they certainly don’t wake up at 5 am, and most of my children are older and aren’t making noise that would disturb him at all – so he’s clearly saying things that don’t make any sense.

    He got a little embarrassed here, and said, well, how many children do you have?  I told him it’s irrelevant, and his complaints about us are ridiculous, and even the police he sent to our house could see it was absurd.  He told me how  we should go buy a private house and live there, that we could have bought a house for the price we paid for our apartment (as if!), and I told him I’d be happy to buy a house and move there as soon as he gave us two million shekels to do so.  And until then we’re staying put and have no plans to go anywhere.  I told him if he doesn’t like living in a building with other people, then he can sell his apartment and buy himself a house if he thinks that’s so simple, but otherwise he’s going to have to accept things as they are.

    Then he told me if our kids want to play, they can play outside at a public park, not in the house.  I told him our children are entitled to play in their own home, and they’ll continue to do so.  I said I was sure when his son was young that he didn’t forbid him from doing anything but walking quietly across a room.

    As we continued to talk, he started to back down, and told me that he didn’t really yell at my son, and when I said he did, he said that he doesn’t feel well and so he sometimes he gets upset.  I told him I don’t care how upset he is, maybe he needs to take aspirin or vitamins but there’s no excuse to yell at a little child not even doing anything wrong.  So he  apologized for yelling at him.

    As the conversation continued, he became more reasonable, and then it was finally possible to talk to him.  He told me someone in the past replaced the tiles on the floor of my apartment, and didn’t put in any sound proofing.  I told him I understood why that would be a problem, but this was the first I was hearing of it, and I couldn’t afford to retile the majority of our living space to change this.  But at the end of the conversation, I said that if he was willing to pay for half of the cost, I would pay the other half.  He told me it was my apartment and he wasn’t going to pay a penny, so I shrugged and said it didn’t make a difference to me, that I don’t have extra money to throw around and would rather not have to spend any money on this, but was making the offer as a concrete indication of our willingness to find a solution.

    He told me to try to be more understanding, and I told him that I couldn’t be any more understanding than I had already been, and that there was nothing more I could do.  I wanted to be sure when we finished the conversation that he was clear about this.  So we parted, not exactly amiably, but at least I had a good feeling that some things had been straightened out.

    A friend, learning about this later in the day, said she couldn’t imagine me yelling at someone.  The things we do for our kids.  😛  Really, a big part of why I felt this had to be done so my kids would know that I wouldn’t let people hurt them if it were in my power.

    Although I was yelling and looked and sounded upset, I was watching myself the entire time, almost from a distance.  I felt almost like I was in a play, and was doing a good job playing my part convincingly.  When I first left my home, I was planning to speak to him in English and let him puzzle out what I was saying, because when I feel pressured, I tend to forget some Hebrew vocabulary, and I didn’t want to be at a language disadvantage.  But since I wasn’t angry by the time I spoke to him, it was no problem to yell at him in Hebrew.  🙂

    I’m not naive enough to think this will end the situation with him – he has a long history of being a difficult neighbor.  But my kids can feel safe walking into our building now and that’s a big thing, and hopefully this conversation will help him to rethink attacking us next time he’s feeling upset about something.

    Avivah

  • Time for a major parenting workup

    On the third night of Sukkos (Friday night), my family was invited together with several others to the sukka of the rabbi of the city.  I stayed home with ds12 who was at the beginning of his chickenpox saga, but the rest of the family went and enjoyed themselves very much.  They told me the rabbi’s wife was very nice, and yesterday at synagogue (the first time I went out with the kids in a week, because they still have pox marks on their face), she saw dd15 and asked her if I was there , since we hadn’t had a chance to meet yet.

    So I finally met her, and she really is very, very nice!  I like her very much. She told me how impressed she was with our children – she couldn’t believe how nicely they behaved without a mother there to keep them in line – and I told her how nice that was to hear, since I think they need a serious workup in  behavior right now. 🙂

    Recently, my older kids complained to me about the behavior of the littles – they’ve told me that they’re on their way to becoming spoiled brats.  They’re a bit strong in how they’re phrasing it – they’re far from obnoxious little kids – but they’re right that there’s definitely plenty of room for improvement.  With six months of preparing for our move to Israel, and then two months of being so busy setting up our lives here, I’ve been mentally less focused on the family itself than usual.  And what that has meant is that I’ve let my standards for the kids’ behavior drop.

    I was conscious of making the choice at a very busy time to keep the time I was with the littles positive rather than sporadically discipline them (dd14 at the time was frequently watching them while I was making calls and organizing things, and I couldn’t ask her to do what I would have done), but my older kids saw this as letting the littles get away with things that I’d never have let them do. This was mostly about the attitude rather than actual behavior.  I believe it’s important to pick a standard of what’s acceptable in your home, and then to stick with it.  If you can’t stick with it, you’re compromising yourself, because your kids won’t trust that you mean what you say. And so I decided to let some things go rather than be inconsistent.

    I know quite well what’s involved with a major retraining process – I took on this process once before, six years ago.  At that time, I looked at the kids and thought, everyone thinks they’re so well-behaved, but it doesn’t feel like it to me, and is parenting supposed to be this hard?  I wasn’t enjoying being with them, and a big part of that it felt like I always had to correct someone about something, break up some argument, or whatever.  But that wasn’t their fault, it was mine because I hadn’t taught them better.  And I’ve recently been feeling the way I felt six years ago.

    This process of consciously raising the bar of your expectations for your family is very, very intense, and it’s the only thing you can plan on doing for about a week.  This has logistically been challenging since we were dealing with a few weeks of Jewish holidays, guests, and six kids with chickenpox, in addition to the usual stuff.  So you can understand my reluctance to start this process.

    And then it has to stay a high priority for about three months until the new standards become second nature, and of course you have to continue to maintain these standards.   Part of the approach is based on total focus, and I was unsure how well this would work with everyone in school; in fact, the last couple of days the littles went back to school and it’s slowing down the learning process (because there they see behavior and attitudes that are unacceptable in our home).

    The reason it take a huge amount of time, energy, and focus, is that during this stage I feel it’s critical to be 100% consistent to follow up with every single tiny issue.  Usually this level of consistency isn’t necessary as a parent, but when redefining boundaries, it’s very important.  This isn’t a common approach, but it’s my approach.

    And so the last few days have been very draining.  (Which is why I haven’t been blogging; I fall into bed exhausted at night! :P)   This process means a parent has to expect some major power struggles, the kind of thing that we otherwise don’t see.  I knew this, and that’s why I needed to be fully mentally present to deal with it all calmly, and not to be so busy that I couldn’t see it through.

    We had a guest for the last three days of yom tov (well, it was three days for her), and her time with us coincided with the first few days of this process.  She probably thought I was incredibly controlling and nitpicky (since I was insisting that things be done exactly as I asked, to teach them to listen to what they’re told).

    In the beginning,  there’s a good bit of resistance and testing from the littles.  They want to show me that they’ll do what they want, and I need to teach them that they need to listen to their parent.  So this process means I had to expect power struggles at a level never seen before.  And I mean never.  (The two power struggles from six years ago have now become the stuff of family lore. :)) But that’s okay, I actually welcome these because I see them as a chance to show them that I will calmly outlast them.  After holding ds4 for almost two hours straight of crying, screaming, kicking, hitting, and squirming – because I told him to stand next to me and he wanted to do it his way – I was exhausted.  But it’s okay, because once there’s one major blow up, it kind of gets it out of their system – they see you mean what you say and they don’t need to keep pushing you to see how long they have to tantrum before you give in.

    Then yesterday was ds2’s turn to escalate.  Ds2 is amazingly sweet and helpful, always running to do whatever I ask, even when I’m not asking him!  But yesterday he lost it over a pair of underwear.  I gave him a choice of two pairs, he chose the one he wanted – and then went to ds4’s drawer and started screaming for one of those. His tantrum was shorter – not quite an hour, but it sure felt like a long time!  I held him on my lap in a bear hug for the entire time, reminding him that he could wear the underwear he chose and that’s it.   What was interesting for both of these tantrums was that as soon as they finished screaming, they took a deep sigh, went off my lap, and then came back right away to sit on my lap, facing towards me with their arms around me, and stayed there for a long time.  Being strong and being loving aren’t contradictions; our kids need and want the security of knowing we can and will enforce what we say.

    This is a retraining for me, too, because this process isn’t mostly about discipline.  It’s about being with your kids, enjoying them, and spending lots of time doing stuff together.  Versus letting them play while you get the things you want done.  So it’s a lot of togetherness, and that takes adjusting to since over the years, my older kids have been so involved in the fun stuff with their younger siblings that I became less involved in the hands-on activities and did more of the not so fun stuff, like running the house.  But now the older kids aren’t around as much, and it’s a shift back to how it was years ago, when I didn’t have older kids around.  It’s a very significant shift for me.

    My hope is that I’ll have the strength and emotional fortitude to hold out for what I think our family can be, rather than letting it be whatever it turns into, and that G-d will give me the desire and ability to see it through.

    Avivah

  • Helping kids adjust to a house that isn’t yet furnished

    >>How have your kids responded to the time it has taken to set up a “homey home”?>>

    When you’re just a couple, you can enjoy the adventure of living with nothing, being in a new country, and soak up all the new experiences.  But for a family with children, it’s very disconcerting and unsettling to be living out of boxes, not have ready meals, etc, and that affects their ability to positively perceive all the new encounters they have in the course of a day.  The more children you have, the more difficult this aspect of things can be, and their unhappiness can quickly dominate the home environment.  Kids need to have the security of home being home before being able to more fully embrace other aspects of their new lives.

    Our priority was to get the most important things into place quickly so the kids would feel like we were living here, not like we were having a bad camping trip.  Part of why we elected to buy things at a second hand store that were overpriced and not exactly the quality we wanted was because we could get it quickly and we wanted the kids to have a sense of being settled.  It’s not a coincidence that the only furniture I haven’t yet purchased is what dh and I need; we don’t love not having beds or a place to store things, but we can manage without losing our bearings.

    Having said that, I’ll share what we did in advance to make this aspect of things a bit easier.  Before coming, we spoke to the kids about the reality of different things we’d be facing as soon as we got here.  I know that most people focus on the excitement and privilege of making aliyah, and that’s wonderful.  But there can be a huge disconnect and letdown when those people arrive and see that there are very real challenges in living here.

    I knew that an empty apartment would not be a welcoming place to live, and wanted our children to be aware of this in advance so they wouldn’t be disappointed by the difference between their expectations and reality.  I really tried to make sure they would have an accurate sense of the challenges we’d immediately have, and at the time I wondered if I might have been playing down the excitement of the move too much.  One time, ds12 said, “If everything is going to be so bad when we get there, why are we going???”  But I now see their amazingly smooth transition, and feel it was in large part because they were emotionally prepared for all of this, even though the time frame from the decision to move and the move itself were relatively short.

    One of the issues I knew we’d face immediately was that we would have no furniture or appliances, and explained what that would mean.  I told them that meals would be very, very simple – that we’d be buying bread, yogurts, and vegetables daily for very basic meals until we got a fridge and stove.  I stressed this meant no hot or cooked food, and told them that there are no takeout places in Karmiel (with what we consider a reliable kosher supervision) so we wouldn’t be able to go out for a change of pace.

    We used a large part of our precious luggage allotment (:)) to bring sleeping bags, to have a place for us to sleep until we got beds.  This wasn’t comfortable at all, but it was still a place to lay down, and we were able to tell the kids in advance that this is what would be happening so when they got here they were ready for that.

    Another thing that I did that was to anticipate how we would keep things organized in the absence of closets.  It’s very hard to live out of suitcases for an extended period of time, and not being able to organize your things and find what you need makes a move to a new place much harder.  In order to offset this, I chose to bring 18 gallon Rubbermaid storage containers.

    In the past, I had used these to organize clothing storage in the attic, and as I emptied the storage and gave things away, I stacked the emptied containers in a pile for use in our packing.  We filled each storage container with clothing or whatever else we were packing, then put each container inside a large box, and then packed things like sleeping bags or larger clothing in the space between the box and the container.  Almost every standard sized box that I packed was done in this way.

    When we got here, I unpacked everything the first night, sorting everything into personal containers for each person. Everyone was then given his box, and these were lined up along the wall in the room their sleeping bags were in.  It was definitely squished, with sleeping bags almost totally lining the floors, but instead of the general chaos you might expect, each of them then had a way to keep their stuff relatively contained until we bought freestanding clothing closets.

    This was a huge help in the house staying neat, and for all of us to find what we needed each morning.  As we’ve purchased closets for the kids, the emptied containers have been transferred to other uses around the house, so bringing them was helpful in the short and long term.

    When we did get furniture, the kids were so appreciative for each item.  They knew what it was like not having it, and saw how much effort I put into getting it.

    So emotional preparation was an important step for us.  The second aspect wasn’t about what we did in advance, but what we did when we got here.   Kids take their cues from us to a large degree, and we tried to focus on the positives of being here and not complain about the difficulties.  When things would happen that could have been very frustrating, I would think about how we were weaving a quilt of our aliyah memories that one day we’d enjoy reminiscing about!

    Avivah