Okay, good morning, and welcome to our parenting class. Before I wanted to start with the notes that I actually printed out for you today, I wanted to clarify or continue on a point and a thought that continued with me outside when we left this class last week. Last week I had said, I gave an example probably of problem-solving: my grandson, God bless him, is very competitive and doesn’t lose easily. I said that part of our problem-solving would be to acknowledge his feelings, talk about them, discuss the goal and what he needs to do in his life to change things, and then brainstorm ideas.
I brought up one of the suggestions that maybe I would offer him a prize every time he lost instead of every time he won, just to help him get over the terrible feeling he has about losing. He feels that if he loses, he’s somehow incompetent.
A participant said, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why.” I said, “I was going to ask you that question. What was your question?”
She said, “I went home and told my husband, and he was like, ‘What do you mean? You can’t. That’s life. They lose, it came up, whatever they want,’ right?”
I said that, first of all, when it came up, it came up in terms of looking for different options and solutions, and then deciding for yourself which is a good option for you and which one works well for you.
What I wanted to discuss with my grandson—and I would discuss it with him—is that he’s very bright, he’s nine and very, very bright, and he’s very competitive. He’s a firstborn and very much a perfectionist. I would want to teach him how to react to losing in a more positive, more productive way. We all have to learn how to lose. You have to learn how to win; you also have to learn how to lose, to accept that I’m not always going to be at the top. Striving for the top is good, and that’s where I was going to come back to what I wanted to tell you.
In and of itself, I don’t think that’s wrong. For my particular grandson, with his particular aversion to being anything but the top, I think he needs help finding peace with somebody else in the class being on top. He’s so used to being on top. He is at the top of his class, and it’s so important to him. That’s great in one way, but when he loses a game, he gives up his ability to be friends with people because he can’t handle the loss. That’s something he has to get over.
Someone asked, “So you think it’s rewarding him for that?” I said, “No, but I would explain to him that this is a tool we’re going to use to help him overcome his terrible feelings of competition, which are overdone. It’s an overdoing. Knowing my grandson, knowing his mind, understanding how he works and how he ticks, I could explain that I want to help him balance it out, which is really what I wanted to discuss.”
Someone said, “It’s very funny you say this. I have an 11-year-old who is exactly—she’s a female version of yourself, a perfectionist genius off the charts. When she bumped into something she couldn’t master—and for her, mastering isn’t just 100, it’s 105—she was so shocked that she said, ‘Okay, I’m not trying anymore.’ That bothered me. First of all, to be a well-rounded person, you have to be able to deal with not being perfect, with nothing being perfect. She was so used to always mastering whatever came her way, not just academics. When she finally had this bump in the road, she said, ‘Okay, I’m never going to deal with this ever again.’ I said, ‘Wait, this is really not good. You’re not going to master everything. At some point in life you’re going to bump into somebody with a higher IQ than you, or who is more athletic or more artistic, or whatever it is.’”
She continued, “So is it funny that you’re saying this? It’s so true, because until she understood the concept that you’re going to stumble and it’s okay to stumble, but you’ve got to try again—and if you don’t master it, that’s even better. ‘Come to your own.’ She had to learn that. She wasn’t a perfectionist. She wasn’t the perfect thing. And now she’s a better person. I feel like she’s learned to deal with it.”
In psychology, they’ll tell us that children have false assumptions, that only perfection is good enough. We’re always saying, “Well, you go get…” We all grow up with beliefs that we bring into ourselves, into our own psyche and our own minds, based on our childhood experiences. Sometimes we tell ourselves, “I am only worthy of value if I am perfect.” Sometimes we have to balance that out so the child can feel loved, worthy, and accomplished even if they’re not perfect, even if they fall a little short of perfection.
I think she might feel more okay with the concept of giving her a reward if it doesn’t have to be presents. It could be a reward like, “If she writes a book, I’ll buy her a book.” She likes going to see a museum. I think that when they get older, they might take it to another level and think, “Okay, not in that situation, but if I don’t do it, it’s going to be okay.”
That’s where I was going to bring this in today, even though it’s not in my notes. It’s something I wanted to continue because it’s important. What I like to teach my children and my grandchildren—Baruch Hashem (blessed is Hashem), Hashem blessed me that I should be very much involved with my grandchildren—is to be able to balance our lives. That means seeing the good in everything.
Now, the word middot, the Jewish language is the language of Torah, it's the language of Hashem. There is tremendous beauty and tremendous wisdom in every word. The word for character traits is middot, but middot means measurement. Middot doesn’t really mean character. Middot are measurements. A character trait is the ability to use that personality trait to the right degree, with the right measurement. Everything has a balance.
Everything that Hashem gives to us, to our children, to every single person in the world, every trait can be used for good. It’s a matter of balancing it, knowing how much to use at which time and what the proper place is for that trait. What I want my children and grandchildren to feel about themselves and see is that every single trait of theirs can be used for good, and that there is a balance in every trait. They should find it and find what Hashem wanted them to do with it. There is a reason for that trait. You have tremendous competitiveness in you. That is a positive thing. It’s something that will help you achieve great things in your life, because you will always want to do better and better and better. When does it become unbalanced? When it makes you miserable. If it makes you miserable or unable to have friends, then you’ve taken that midah, that measurement of a trait, too far. You have to go back to the balance. There is a balance.
I don’t want to take my children’s competitiveness away from them because it’s an amazing midah. To be competitive is to grow. To be competitive is to strive ever higher and higher. I want them to succeed and to be their best, but also to be well-rounded, to get along with other people, to have friends, and to be happy with their friends’ success. If you’re too competitive, you can’t be happy with your friend’s success. You got a hundred, but she got a hundred and three. Can you be happy for her? She got engaged before you. Her house is a little bit bigger than your house. Whatever those things are in life, we have to be able to be happy for our friends. We have to be able to accept our portion in life while also being as competitive as it’s right to be in order to grow. I have to teach my children that it’s not all or nothing. It’s a midah. It’s a measurement, and everything Hashem gives us is for good.
When you have that ADHD, ADD kid, or the ADHD kid who’s bouncing off the ceiling, you’re going to tell him that this is a gift from Hashem. It’s energy. Who doesn’t want that energy? I wish I could have it now. Who doesn’t want to be able to keep going without ever feeling like something—it's always my problem that I need more energy. You tell this child, “You’re going to be able to use this midah as a strength. You’re going to use it to be the leader of the generation. You’re going to use it to be the head of the chesed (kindness) group. You’re going to use it to build projects that will benefit people.” The biggest activists in our communities are probably our ADD kids when they were little. They were those guys who couldn’t stop moving, and now they don’t stop moving—but God bless them, Hashem should continue to give them that energy and that strength—they’re doing it in a productive way.
But we tell our children, but right now when you're sitting in the Rebbe (teacher)'s class and you need to sit still, it's going to be a time where you have to take that midah and hold it, but know that what you have is good, know that what you have to teach them.
When I ran my playgroup for many, many years, I had a child who was extremely loud. There was one gorgeous kid—God bless them, they’re all gorgeous. I loved everyone who walked into my door—and he had the loudest voice you ever heard. When he was screaming, he would just come in and scream sometimes. I would get him to sing a song, and I would let him sing as loud as he wanted. I would try to channel that midah of loudness. If he were my child, I would tell him, “I wonder what you’re going to be when you grow up. You’re going to be a speaker, you’re going to be a chazan (cantor). Hashem gave you this trait. Maybe you’re going to use it somewhere. Maybe you’ll be someone who needs to project their voice, and Hashem gave you that voice.” But sometimes in class you have to be quiet.
You teach them what it means to have a midah. I have a granddaughter who’s so sensitive that it drives her mother crazy. She cries at the drop of a hat. She’s always crying, always nagging, always upset. What do you tell this child? You tell her, “Hashem gave you such a trait of sensitivity. I wonder how you’re going to use it. I wonder if you’re going to be a teacher or a therapist. I wonder how you’re going to use that sensitivity.” And yet you tell her how to deal with it in her life, that she shouldn’t be such a nag and should try to look at the positive side of things. I wouldn’t use the word “nag,” okay? But what I’m saying is that first we tell them that what they are has a positive side. That midah is positive because it’s from Hashem. Hashem only does things that are positive. He gives us positive traits, and then He wants us to use them for the positive. They can be used for good or for bad; they can be used in any way.
The laid-back kid whom you can’t get to dress in the morning, move, do his homework, or do anything—you’re going to wring his neck. You say, “Baruch Hashem, he’s so…” You say, “You know something? Hashem gave you such a peaceful nature. You have such a calmness to you. One day it’s going to help you when your kids are bouncing off the walls and you’re able to handle it. One day it’s going to help you when your wife is getting nervous but you can stay calm. One day it’s going to help you.” It’s a nice thing to be calm, to be laid-back. We’re so high-strung that when we see somebody laid-back, it drives us crazy. Even if I’m not in a hurry, if I see someone going slowly, I can’t handle it. Why can’t you handle it? You have nowhere to go. You’re okay. But we’re so high-strung that if we see someone a little more laid-back, it irks and annoys us.
But is it a terrible midah? There are times when it’s a midah that will be good, a time when it will be helpful for the person to stay calm. So we should teach our children to see that midah positively. You have to learn to see your children in a positive way. Look at them and say, “This is good, but right now it’s not being used properly.” Don’t look at it as bad. Nothing is bad in itself. It’s good. Be creative, because if the child feels that anything they have can be used for good, they won’t feel negative about themselves. They’ll feel, “I was misdirecting something great that Hashem gave me, and if I direct it the right way, I’m great.” That’s what we want them to feel.
I wanted to explain that idea, that concept. What I was trying to give my grandson is the balance: competition is great, and the fact that you’re so competitive is going to bring you many successes in your life, but you have to balance it by understanding that you also have to be able to enjoy the success of others. You have to be able to accept when you’re not number one. You have to learn to do that. There is a balance. Middot is about balance. Everything Hashem gave us is for good. We have to look at our children with that goodness in mind and know that they’re all different and can’t all be the same. Everyone’s personality is there from Hashem for a good reason if it’s used right. That’s what we should convey to our children. That’s what we should give them and help them bring out in themselves.
A lazy child is not a lazy child. He’s a calm, peaceful child, and we’re trying to rile him up. The wild kid is not a bad kid. He has a lot of energy that Hashem wants him to use. Everyone has to find the goodness Hashem put in them and use it in the right way.
I wanted to clarify that for myself and come back to it from last week’s class before we go on to this week’s notes. There are still some notes here if anybody wants to come take them. When they’re gone, they’re gone.
Someone asked, “Is it two separate, or is it the same?” I said, “No, the same one. I just spread them out.”
Using that as an introduction and a backdrop to what we’re going to be doing, we’re going to talk about sibling rivalry, how to deal with it, and how best to deal with it. What are our parenting goals, and how do they affect us in sibling rivalry?
First, the parenting goals are something we might have discussed already, but I’m going to keep them in mind because we should always have our goal in mind as we discipline or deal with our children. There are long-term goals and short-term goals. Most of our lives, we’re only thinking about short-term goals. The short-term goals are getting through your day, getting out on time, being where you need to be, having some peace and quiet, and having some order and cleanliness in your life. Those are your short-term goals: that the children shouldn’t be fighting and that you get through the day. But what are our long-term goals as parents?
We discussed it in the first class, I believe: to teach our children to love Hashem and Torah, to help them reach their potential, and to teach them to love other people. There are big things in life that we really want to teach our children. We sometimes forget that. And we want to give them Simcha (happiness) in their lives. I’m thinking now: we want to help them be positive people and have simcha, have happiness. Happiness doesn’t mean they get what they want. Happiness means they’re happy with what they have. They have a good eye. They look at the world positively. They see the good in things. I have to teach them that.
There are goals that are more important than the immediate short-term goals. We want to be very careful that when we concentrate on our short-term goals, we don’t sacrifice our long-term goals. When I want quiet and nothing but quiet, and I give up the simcha in our lives because of it, I sacrifice my long-term goals. When I want an orderly, clean home and that’s my main goal in life, and I give up the relationship between me and my children, I sacrifice my long-term goals. When I want obedience from my children and I sacrifice their love of Torah and Mitzvot (commandments) because I’m coming down too hard on them, I have to realize that, yes, I have short-term goals. I have to get through my day, and I want a quiet, orderly house and disciplined children. But I can’t do it at the risk of losing my long-term goals. My long-term goals have to be very much in my mind even as I go through my regular, normal day.
I’m a teacher to my children. We are teachers to our children. We want to teach them how to go through life. We expect and accept misbehavior at the same time that we teach them to be well-behaved. You have to understand that concept to listen to my parenting class, because I am not saying that we don’t teach behavior. We teach behavior. That’s our job as parents: to teach them to be well-behaved. But I don’t expect them to be well-behaved—not until they’re married. I don’t expect them to be well-behaved. I’m not surprised when they don’t listen, even if I told them 20 times. I’m not surprised. Do I give them consequences? Do I make charts? Do I teach them that I expect them to behave? Yes. In my heart of hearts, do I expect them to behave? No, because they’re children, and they’re growing, testing, feeling their own middot, and figuring out how to get to that middle balance. If I expect it, I’m going to be thrown for a loop, all my good parenting skills are going to go out the door, and I’m going to parent through emotion alone. “Why didn’t they listen? How come they don’t listen to me?” They don’t listen to you because they’re children. They don’t listen to you because of the stage of life they’re at. It’s your job to continue to teach and guide them. Don’t expect it. If you expect it, you’re at a loss. Be happy and surprised when they listen.
When you ask them to clean the toys up, don't expect that when you walk back into the room it's going to be done, so that when you walk back into the room, it's not done, and you go, oh my gosh, it's not done. You tell them to do it, try to give them incentives to pick up the toys, and prepare yourself before you come back in: “Okay, I’m going back into the living room. It is not going to be picked up. How am I going to deal with it?” You expect that. You come back in and say, “Okay, maybe a few things were put away. I’ll give you another five minutes on the timer.” My kids love timers. If I time anything, all of a sudden they stop moving. They love timers. “Let’s see how many things you can put away by the time the timer bell goes off.” But I walk in there not ready to get overwhelmed or taken by it, not ready to feel that all of a sudden I can’t handle it anymore because they didn’t listen. I expect it, but I’m going to deal with it and teach them. If I feel they need a consequence, I can say, “Because you did that, now I’m going to put these toys away.” But I’m not shocked by it. I’m talking about your inner understanding and expectations, not what you portray to the child. You still have a right to portray to the child that you expected it to be done, but inside you really didn’t expect it to be done. Is everybody understanding and okay with that, or does anybody have questions? I think it’s very important.
There’s a difference between control and teaching. It’s also a fundamental understanding of parenting. We are teachers. We are not controlling. Controlling is, “I said it, do it. Don’t ask questions. I expect it to be done. I want control. I want obedience. I said it. I’m the mother. You have to listen. That’s it.”
A teacher explains, repeats, and goes over it. A good teacher will repeat as many times as a child needs to hear it for the lesson to be learned. When Moshe Rabbeinu was told by Hashem at Har Sinai to tell the people to prepare themselves for three days, not to let anybody come close to the mountain, and not to let anybody touch the mountain, Moshe went up to Har Sinai, and Hashem told him to go down and tell the people again to be careful not to touch the mountain. Moshe said, “I told them already.” Hashem said, “I know you told them already. Go down and tell them again,” because teaching is repetition, and they’re not going to get it on the first try or right away. We can’t look to be controlling. We want to be teaching. A teacher does it, hopefully, please Hashem, with love, softly, and with patience. You must have a lot of patience to repeat the lesson as many times as it needs to be repeated.
Who do we want to control? Ourselves. We want to control ourselves and teach our children. We don’t want to teach ourselves how to control our children. Control ourselves; teach our children. That’s what we need to do.
With sibling rivalry, we have short-term and long-term goals too. We have a short-term goal of no fighting. Oh, please, do we want no fighting? Can’t we have no fighting? Why do they have to fight? It drives us crazy. But what are our long-term goals? What are our long-term goals? What relationship do we want between those siblings? We want a lifetime relationship of love, of being there for each other. Baruch Hashem, the most important people in my life are my sisters and my brother, God bless them, and my daughters with their sisters. There’s a relationship you want to last forever, and not every family has it. Don’t take it for granted that siblings are siblings and they’ll always love each other and always be there for each other. You have to teach them that. You have to raise them in a way that doesn’t take away their love for each other or that special relationship.
The first thing we have to do is model that kind of relationship. What relationship do you have with your siblings? Do you show your children that you would do anything for your sister? Someone said, “You don’t have one?” I said, “No, I’m just saying that the kids see what the parents do, and that’s what they learn. If they see other kids whose parents aren’t doing that, they say, ‘Listen, what happened with those cousins of ours?’” We have to model the right sibling relationships with our own siblings.
Does money get in our way? If one brother makes more money in the business than the other brother, does it mean we don’t talk to him, we hate him, we don’t go to him, and there’s animosity? It’s so common. It frightens me. Money is nothing. God forbid, after 120 years, when the parents pass away, families fall apart because they were taught in their lives that money is more important than people. Money is not more important than people.
Every time somebody mentions something to impress me—if I go into a store and they’re trying to impress me with the name of the pocketbook or the name of the clothes—I say, “People have names, you know. My clothes don’t have names.” I say it in front of my children, and they know what I mean. Don’t try to impress me by giving my pocketbook a name. I don’t need it. If it has the compartments I need for my cell phone, my keys, and my things, I like it. It’s good; I’m going to carry it. Don’t tell me it has a name. People have names. Money is not more important than people, and we don’t give up our relationships with our family because of money. You have to feel that in your heart and express it to your children in a very real way, because unless we have it, we can’t portray it or give it over.
Someone said, “The reverse situation: I’m one of seven, and we’re very close. My siblings’ husband’s family is just three, and we’re very close, except I have one sister who is a little bit insanely jealous, to the point that I’ve actually had to cut off a relationship with this person because you couldn’t have a conversation with her. Whatever went on in my house, she felt she always had to one-up me. All my kids were hearing, ‘Oh, she’s not so good at this because I can make this better.’ Whatever I did was never good. My kids are older now, and they ask, ‘How come we don’t hang out with this relative as much?’ It’s true, I really don’t. It’s just holidays. I have to, because this person has had such negative impacts. I can’t say to my kids, ‘Listen, she’s a horrible person. She’s very negative.’ I never really know what to say to them. Instead of focusing on the nine other relatives who are over constantly, it bothers them. They see this one. I try to get her kids to come without her. I tell my brother-in-law to come over, but they always notice the friction, especially when every other relationship is so perfect. This one looks just horrible. What do I say without bad-mouthing this person?”
I think that what we have to do is, where we can, show the beauty of relationships and show the beauty of being happy with what you have, and that money is not important and that things are not important. That’s that midah. You have to be able to say, “Not every situation is perfect, and right now we do the best we can. Maybe one day…” But the truth of life is that many families break up because of jealousy. It breaks up the family.
I said, “Much more than the parents do the kids notice that, right?” Someone said, “We notice it, but we notice it, but they express it.” I said, “Exactly. They express it, and they’re concerned with it. They’re trying to figure it out in their life. They’re trying to figure things out.” We have to show them how destructive jealousy is, how important family is, and how important it is not to let jealousy break us up, if they’re old enough to understand. I don’t know the exact situation, so I don’t want to say anything without knowing, and I don’t want to get into it. But modeling good sibling behavior is very important. The worst things for our relationships are the desire for money above all else and jealousy that destroys our families.
Someone said, “I have something to say on the opposite, on a positive note. I grew up in Mexico, and when I was 11 years old, we moved here. Whenever we asked my parents, there was a lot of reasons why we moved, but one of the main reasons was that my parents felt it was very important for us to see the relationship my mother had with her siblings. For my son, it’s a very, very close family. They wanted us to see that. That was one of the main reasons to move to a different country, just for us to see their models.”
I said, “Right, right. On a smaller note, my sister used to live in Jersey for a while, and I desperately wanted them to move back to Brooklyn. At one point they were going to move from one section of Jersey to another, and I said, ‘If you’re moving, you’re coming back.’ They were in my house, and all the cousins were little. They were playing in my shared concrete driveway, all the cousins together, God bless them, running bases or whatever they were doing. They were together and laughing. I took my brother-in-law to the window and showed him. I said, ‘You see that? You could take your grass and lawns and acres and everything you own and give me my little concrete with all the cousins together.’ They moved back. We are so close that it doesn’t matter. You could have a bigger house if you move away. You could have a lawn. You could have this or that. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s people and relationships that count in life. We can’t be so wrapped up in money, materialism, and things that we throw away what’s really important in life.”
This is what we teach our children. We want to be careful that we have a house where we can allow them to be good siblings to each other in the long term. In the short term, they’re going to fight. Expect it. Accept it. But teach them what it means to be sisters and brothers forever. Show them that you’ll do anything for your sister and anything for your brother. My children, that's our company, you know. To have the cousins over, to have the uncles and aunts over, that's like the biggest joy in our life.
My girls were an unbelievable help to me when we were in the house together. Having company was a family project. My daughters made desserts, set the table, and helped me clean up. We didn’t have help in the house; we didn’t have a maid, and I love that we didn’t, because, Baruch Hashem, we worked hand in hand, singing while we worked.
When I was going to invite all the cousins and aunts over for Shabbat afternoon lunch, I’d ask my girls first if it was okay with them and if it was a good time for them, because it was going to be a joint project. I wasn’t going to say, “It’s a good time for me; I want my company to come,” and then tell my kids, “You do this, you do this, you do this.” Maybe they were in the middle of midterms or had practices for their production, and it wasn’t such a great time that week. Maybe the next week would be better. I could respect them and say, “Hey, I feel like having company. Is it a good time for you?” God bless them, they almost always said it was, because they wanted it as much as I did. We have to make the atmosphere in our home conducive to love between siblings.
Someone said, “I’m sorry. Can I say something about jealousy? I was living this situation. My mother and her sister-in-law had a very bad relationship. But what was good in our case was that, although my mother had a very bad relationship with her sister-in-law, she let my father take us to have a relationship with this aunt. It was directed toward my mother, not toward us or our cousins. When they both passed away—she passed away the year after my mother, a day later—her daughter told me, ‘See, Gloria, it’s interesting she died a day after. What a message she gave. They’re connected.’ What she allowed means that now, as cousins, we have a good relationship. We’re close. So although they had that, it’s good to leave the relationship for the children. I mean, you might not have a relationship with them because it bothers you, but your children should.”
I said, “Right. Every situation is different, but we have to try our best to see that we’re giving over the right messages. That’s what I want to do.”
Sibling rivalry is a fact of life. If we expect it not to happen, it’s going to destroy us, throw us off balance, and make us unable to deal with it. “Why can’t they get along? Why can’t they play nicely?” Because kids don’t. Get over that and deal with reality. Reality is sibling rivalry. How are we going to work it in a proper way? I expect sibling rivalry. It is a fact of life. It’s part of our makeup, from Kayin and Hevel, from the very first sibling rivalry there ever was, lo aleinu (God forbid), which should never come to horrible things like that. It’s been there from the beginning of time. It’s nothing new, nothing unique, nothing different. Sibling rivalry is a fact of life, and it’s something the children will have to learn to deal with. You can’t eliminate it, but you try to minimize it and manage it. You can’t eliminate it; it’s impossible. Sibling rivalry will exist.
First of all, you can’t make them love each other. I know that’s not what you meant. But the way they put it somewhere in these seven pages of notes I printed out this morning is that when we insist on good relationships between the children, we actually cause them not to get along. When we allow for those negative feelings and accept them, we allow them to be close.
What’s going to happen is that one will say, “I hate you.” Don’t tell them, “Don’t ever say that. Now you tell him you love him. Right now, you tell him you love him.” That’s not going to work. He’s going to say it through gritted teeth, and he’s going to hate him even more because you made him say it. But you can say, “He really gets you angry.” When he says, “I hate you,” he doesn’t mean “I hate you.” In one of the other classes, I said we have to interpret what they said and rephrase it to what they really meant. He doesn’t hate him. He’ll be playing with him in another minute. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.” Then, “Could you come play with him? We want to do this.” Even with friends, when the kids are little, it’s, “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. Ma, could she come over?” What do you mean, could she come over? They don’t mean, “I hate her.” You can rephrase it and accept his feelings: “It’s very frustrating when he does that to you. It makes you very angry when that happens.” You don’t have to say it in a phony-baloney way. Just change the word “hate” into what it really is, and say it in a way that shows you understand his feelings. “Wow, it really gets you upset when he does that to you. It really bothers you. It’s really frustrating.” Let them talk about it.
Don’t tell him, “No, you really love him.” He really does love him. You don’t have to tell him that. He’s frustrated, and the way he reacts to his frustration is by saying, “I hate you.” He doesn’t mean it. Don’t get hung up on the word.
Someone said, “I’m not hung up. I usually let them deal with it, and then one second later they’re playing again. Should I interfere? Should I say something?”
I said, “Whether or not we choose to interfere is another thing. Most of the time, they tell us to let it go and let them handle it. Most of the time, if we can ignore it and leave them alone, we’re better off. I feel that’s true to some extent, but I also want to give them skills and teach them a better way to deal with it. So there’s a balance. We don’t come in and preach problem-solving skills—‘Here’s Mommy again’—so they run out the door. But enough times, maybe they’ll realize there’s another way. Even if I just say, ‘Do what you want, and if you’re happy like this, fine, but there is another way.’ There might be other times when I say, ‘Come on, let’s think of other things we could do. It doesn’t have to be like this. Is this really how you want it to be?’ The more we can ignore it, the better, usually, because it’s going to get overwhelming for you, and they’ll get over it in a minute. They get over it; we don’t. But I want them to have some skills. Life isn’t black and white. It isn’t always ‘do this’ and ‘never do that.’ I can’t say I’m always going to ignore it, but it is good to ignore it.”
Someone said, “I find that they do certain things on purpose to annoy the other one. My son is doing his homework, and my daughter loves to sing. He can’t deal with it: ‘Please, Mom, make us stop. I can’t do it.’ And he cries. Then I say, ‘We’re not singing now.’ But then I think, ‘Singing is nice. What’s wrong with our singing? She can sing.’ Or she’s talking. I understand that he’s doing his homework, but she’s allowed to talk.”
I asked, “Is there another place for him to do his homework?” She said, “No, because I can’t do my work when there’s a distraction. Sometimes I’m taking a midterm because I’m in school. I’m doing algebraic quadratic equations, and somebody goes up to talk to the professor. The other day it was like, ‘You can’t do this to me.’ I don’t know if it’s my age or what, but I can’t do that. I can’t figure out where X and Y are supposed to be if you guys are talking. I feel for him. It might seem like he can’t be more tolerant, but if he’s doing his homework and it’s too distracting, I would want him to be in a quiet place.”
I said, “Either way, there are other rooms in the house. Maybe he likes doing homework in the middle of everything going on, but then he can’t expect it to be quiet.”
She said, “My question is, can I ask her to go to another room and sing there? If she will.” I said, “One of them has to move. He has to do his homework; she wants to sing. The fact that he needs quiet can be handled in different ways. It could be handled by quieting her or moving him. There are two sides to it. Which one works better for your family in your particular situation? Can she go sing somewhere else? Can he go do his homework somewhere else? I respect that. If a person can’t concentrate with distracting noise, that’s an issue and it has to be dealt with.”
Someone said, “Attention. She wants attention.” I said, “You could take her away and do something with her. Give her a puzzle or some coloring to do. She wants your attention.” The participant replied, “She doesn’t want your attention anymore.” I said, “Try to give her something to do if you have a project for her to get involved in while he’s doing his homework. Maybe there’s a little arts-and-crafts activity she could do, and she feels she’s getting your help and attention, so she might not be as distracting. That’s something you could try.”
Someone asked, “What about the teenagers when they get in a fight? You should ignore them because every time I should I'm trying to help them get bigger and bigger. What should I do with this?”
I said, “Accept their feelings. Even with the fighting and screaming, they’re not—God bless, my mother never knew anything about it.” Someone said, “No, no, no, she didn’t.” I said, “She was the opposite. My mother, God bless her, knew nothing about it. I don’t know if it was just a different generation, but she knew nothing about it. We practically ended up in the hospital sometimes.” Someone said, “I can’t forget.” I said, “But she never told us a thing.” Another person said, “She just threw it around. ‘Do whatever they want.’”
Being too involved is not good, and yet you have to encourage the right relationship between them by giving them values about family, not being jealous, and accepting people—not as a direct lesson in that particular situation, but as part of the family’s background feeling.
When they come to you and say, “I hate her,” “Get rid of her,” or “Can’t we do something about it? Can’t she go live somewhere else?” they love and care for each other. When someone is sick, they care for each other. So when they fight, as much as we can, we leave it alone. If they come to us with very negative words, we redefine them. Instead of saying, “Can’t we just get rid of her?” you can say, “It would be fun to be just you and me for a while, right? You feel like it would be nice to have some private time together, some quiet time together.” You redefine what they said in a more acceptable way, in the way they mean it. They don’t want you to get rid of her. They really don’t.
I think this is not even related, but when my mother had four daughters and then my brother Alan, Alan was a kid, maybe three or four years old, and my mother was pregnant again. My brother laid down the law. He must have been four. He said, “If it’s a boy, we’re keeping him, and if it’s a girl, we’re getting rid of her.” He said, “If it’s a girl, throw her away, and if it’s a boy, we’re keeping her.” My mother had a stillborn and came home without a baby. My brother asked about it, and the baby was a girl. He felt so bad and was crying. He said, “I didn’t mean it.” They never really mean it. They really don’t. I’m sure he got over it, and it wasn’t something he meant.
When we say it, we don’t mean it. You have to redefine it for them: “Oh, you would really like a brother.” You’re going to redefine what they’re saying. “It would be very nice to have a brother, but it’s all in Hashem’s hands.” You just redefine it without preaching. You heard my “I would really love to have a brother,” not “Throw her in the garbage” or “Get rid of her.” You heard that sometimes it would be easier if you were alone, or if you had your own room. Whatever the underlying meaning is, you redefine it in a more acceptable way. Don’t tell them, “Don’t say it like that; say this.” Instead, show that you understand their feelings and express them in a more acceptable way.
Someone said, “Sometimes we do things that cause jealousy. My daughter lets my one-year-old—So I told him, ‘If you do your homework and get everything ready, then you can come back down and bake a muffin.’ My son, who’s a year younger than her, goes ballistic because ‘she’s nine beds at the same time,’ and then it’s not fair. I feel like she should have that private time once in a while. What’s wrong with that?”
I said, “Right, so he’s saying he also wants some private time. I think he’s right. So do you. You’re going to say, ‘You’re right, and we’re going to think of something we can do together.’ If it’s always your daughter baking with you in the kitchen and there’s no alternative for him, then yes, you’re causing friction that he’s jealous of. We accept that. It doesn’t mean he has to come down and make muffins with you right now. You can say, ‘Yeah, I hear you. That’s a good idea. I’m going to think of something good we can do together. You think of something, too. We’ll think of something you’d like to do, and at the right time we’re going to put it together.’”
“It’s not honest by itself. It’s not necessarily the wrong thing to say, but I wouldn’t make him wait a year. For a child, a year in a child’s life—to us, a year is a blink. You think of last November and this November and say, ‘How did that happen?’ But to a child, a year is almost a lifetime. How old are they? The percentage of their life that a year represents is a big percentage. I’d rather tell him more concretely, ‘Tomorrow maybe we could do this,’ or ‘On Friday when you come home early,’ or ‘On Sunday after school.’ Let’s think of something you and I could do. That’s a great idea. Let him go home and go to bed thinking, ‘Right now it’s her time, but before next year it will be my time too.’ So I accept that he feels that way, and I’ll say, ‘You’re right. Let’s think of it. That’s a great idea, and I’ll enjoy spending some alone time with you, too.’”
Someone said, “When you asked, ‘Do you tolerate hitting?’ my immediate response was no, until you mentioned the ages.” I said, “Right. The only thing you can do with that—you have to follow me on both ends. On one end, we accept and expect; on the other, we teach. A three-year-old will hit his one-year-old sister 99.9 percent of the time. You expect that. You accept that, but you protect her. It’s your job to protect her. As much as possible, wherever possible, you protect her. Yes, he will hit her. That is his innate nature. It’s built into the system. He will hit her. As a parent, you have to know that if I leave them alone, it’s going to happen. If it doesn’t happen, it was a mistake. He was distracted for the moment and forgot that his innate nature is to hit her.”
Someone asked, “How do you handle children hitting you or an older sibling?” I said, “They don’t understand, so you teach. I don’t know all the answers. I’m sitting here as if I know all the answers, but I really don’t. Please forgive me if it sounds like I do. We’re brainstorming together, and I’m using my experience to help. Overreacting isn’t good either. It’s a balance again. Overreacting might reinforce the negative attention they want, so you would have to try to distract them.”
A two-year-old still needs a lot of distraction. Too much force and too much discipline aren’t the right level for a two-year-old. It goes a little older than that, really. They’re very smart, but emotionally they’re still kids. You can say, “Mommy doesn’t like that, and I’m not going to do this,” and there might be consequences, but don’t overreact and blow it out of proportion. Two years old is very young.
I think that—I know that, you know, one of my daughters says that she really feels that it's—she ignores it as much as possible. But if—if you hit me, you know, my grandson hurt me. He’s little, but he kicked me, and he really hurt me. It was startling. He was kicking his feet around, mad and having a tantrum. Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he really kicked me, and it hurt. I took him outside with me onto the porch and said, “If you’re going to do that, you can’t be inside with everybody else.” But I stayed with him and told him, “I’ll be outside with you and stay with you until you calm down. But you can’t be inside if you do that, because you might hurt somebody else.”
At the same time that I was tough and took him outside, I wouldn’t let him go back in with his cousins, because we were at my house on a Shabbat afternoon. I stayed with him and said, “I’m here with you, but I’m going to stay with you. I want you to calm down, because you can’t go inside like that; you might hurt somebody else.” He took it well. This is a kid who’s a little scary. He understood that he needed to calm down, and I was trying to help him calm down. He knew that I felt in that situation he has to be separated from everybody else. In that particular situation, I felt it worked out well. I was tough with him. I dragged him out of the house. He’s not two; I think he’s four. A two-year-old needs distraction, cuddling, hugging, attention, and guidance. The guidance isn’t as effective at two years old. So it’s a balance.
Someone asked, “If you punish, you’re going to be punishing them all the time. Nothing works. You can’t ignore it, right?” I said, “As much as you can, be there to protect her and keep them apart. Keep the baby with you sometimes, wherever you’re involved with it and not right there with them, and keep him busy in a constructive way. Sometimes, if the children aren’t kept busy in a good way, they go back to that innate nature and figure, ‘Nothing better to do; I might as well hit her.’ He doesn’t know what to do with himself. Someone told me they saw a T-shirt on a kid that said, ‘I was planning to be good, but then I got bored.’ As you said, if it wasn’t on the child, she would have taken it.”
“If they’re given the right stimulus in another direction, maybe he’s not involved in something else; he’s bored. He’s left to look at this little kid. Of course you have toys and things for him to play with, but they need direction. Little kids need so much of their time.”
Someone said, “She’ll just come near us and I’ll claw her, like I’ll just reach out and kill her.” I said, “Yeah, she disrupted his world. It was his kingdom, his empire, and it doesn’t work. If I ignore it, like I don’t—maybe she wrote, ‘This is like—’ This is from her to you. It’s something he has to get over, and Hashem should protect her, that she should get over it too. You’re going to do the best you can, and don’t overreact to it. But you have to balance it. You’re right to think you’ll be punishing him all the time, and you don’t want that because then he’ll resent her more, but you also don’t want her to get hurt. You have to work with distraction and protection and try to… Of course it passes.”
Now, about older kids who hit: that’s what I thought the question was in the beginning. Psychologists will say to ignore it, and I can’t do that. I can’t do that. My nature is that I cringe from violence. I can’t handle physical hitting. I’m not saying that’s the right thing. I’m saying psychologists tell you to ignore it, and they won’t really kill each other. I can’t handle that. Psychologists will tell you—well, you have to know your nature. If you can ignore it, then it’s the right thing to ignore it. I can’t even say the sentence without my stomach being in a knot. As I’m talking about it right now, I feel that I can’t ignore it because I can’t see it. I can’t watch a boxing match on television, God forbid, lo aleinu, or have anything to do with that. But I, at the time 20-30 years ago when I had a television and I saw violence, that type of fighting, I can't handle it. Don’t even make me look at it. It’s torture for me. I know I can’t see that. If they’re fighting somewhere else and I don’t know about it, maybe I could do it. But if I see it, it’s going to bother me. I might be able to tell my kids, ‘Look, I know that you love each other and you’re really okay with it, but I can’t watch it. I can’t see this happening. It hurts me too much, and I can’t deal with it.’ How much interference are you going to have in their fighting?
When older children fight, the books say it’s better to leave them alone and let them figure it out by themselves, and they’re really not going to kill each other. You learn this from this parasha. They say that when Yaakov had a fight with Esav and sent the malachim (angels) to Esav, they say that they didn’t want to make peace. When they came back and Yaakov and Esav met, “you accepted that they killed each other.” “Because by shaliach (messenger) they didn’t get it.” “And the opposite, they say that they had it each other.”
Sometimes you learn that you have to leave them alone. I really can’t say that I would leave them alone. When I’m there and there’s physical fighting, I separate them. They get back at each other, right? And sometimes they use you as somebody who will make the topic for them. But don’t judge the case. If you want to split them up or do anything about it, don’t judge the case or take sides. The younger one isn’t always right. The one you thought initiated it didn’t necessarily initiate it. Your own eyes can deceive you, even if you were watching it happen.
I learned that over the years when my daughters later told me, “Oh, Ma, I used to make her hit me. I used to walk—I used to think she was always to blame. It wasn’t really her.” It’s like, “Oh, great, thanks.” You don’t know. You have a total no-fault policy. I don’t care who started it or whose problem it is. You have to figure something out, make changes, and do it differently. Don’t tell me who started it. I don’t care whose fault it is or whose fault it isn’t.
The kid who keeps getting hit—not the one-year-old who has nowhere to go, but the kid who keeps getting hit—why are you there? Sometimes they put themselves right in the position, and they know they’re going to get hit, and they get hit, and then two minutes later they’re there again. Why are you there? Teach that child to where else? If you know he’s going to do that to you, why do you do that? Sometimes, from that point of view, the victim likes being the victim. She wants to keep going back to Mommy and saying, “He hit me.”
Someone asked, “You could be a consummate for all my children if they hit or if they can’t, because they have to realize that they can’t do that in relationships as they get older.” I said, “You could do that if you want. I don’t think anything is a clout. I don’t think anything is an absolute. I think every family has to deal with things as they can. I think that, yes, you might be able to have a chart system or a reward system, some kind of system, or a concept.” Someone agreed.
Basically, it might be a time-out kind of thing, like when I took my grandson outside. You can’t be with other people if you’re going to be violent. Or they can lose privileges. But I still wouldn’t want to judge the case, because when we judge the case, we’re going to be wrong. We don’t judge the case, but we try very hard—I try very hard—to stop it, separate them, and tell them to figure out a way to do it or be on their own. Either separate or figure out a way to do it, but this isn’t acceptable for me. Maybe it’s acceptable for you; it’s not acceptable for me. It’s not acceptable for me, and I’m going to use whatever tools I have, whether consequences, rewards, time-outs, or separations. Whatever I want to employ at that point is my option. There are many options, but I know I can’t handle it. I know I want to separate them, and I know I’m not going to judge who’s right and who’s wrong. They’re both responsible, and they both have to figure out a different way of dealing with the situation.
Be'ezrat Hashem (with Hashem’s help), next week we really will continue with the Sibling Rivalry Notes, because there’s a lot more here to do.