We’re continuing our parenting series, Baruch Hashem (thank God). We’re still working from this one page of notes, but I hope to type up a whole new set of notes for us after the vacation. That’s what I’ll be working on during the vacation. But B’ezrat Hashem (with Hashem’s help), there’s always more to do, and we should have success with our children.
We’re going to start today with point 17 on our list: keep your demands and expectations in line with reality in order to help your child succeed. How much should I expect from my child? How much is too much, and how much is not enough? There’s a perfect line, and it’s hard to know where it is. What we want to do is encourage our child to reach their potential. The problem is that we can never be quite sure, 100%, that we’re right or that we know their full potential. Who knows what our own full potential is? So how do we help our child reach that potential? We always have to strive a little further, a little beyond what the child thinks they can do. But as parents, we have to try to choose something that, even though it’s a little beyond what the child thinks they can do, we really expect the child can do.
Our goal is for the child to succeed, not to fail. When a child succeeds, it gives them the motivation to do more and succeed again. It pushes them a little further. Failure is a hard blow. It’s something we have to come to terms with and learn how to handle, because it happens in life. But as mothers, we should want to show our children their successes. They’ll see their failures when they compete at school and come up against their peers. They’ll have to deal with that. At home, we don’t want to frustrate them beyond their capability. So we have to be careful that we’re pushing to a certain degree, while knowing they can do it.
Sometimes a parent thinks too much of their child, or expects more than the child is ready for, and pushes them to do things that aren’t even age-appropriate.
I was laughing with my daughter because we were walking in the street and saw a woman. I think she was a caretaker, not the mother. She had a stroller with a beautiful pink snowsuit and a blanket over it. She picked up the blanket from the floor, put it back on the child, and explained, “You can’t keep throwing your blanket on the floor. It’s getting dirty.” She was yelling at this little kid. I was watching, and when I turned around, the child was maybe seven or eight months old. I had to laugh because the woman was giving a whole explanation of why this child shouldn’t throw the blanket on the floor. What are you doing? What are you thinking? My daughter and I were laughing because it’s a baby. Of course she’s going to kick the blanket off. What are you thinking?
This woman was upset and had already told the baby not to throw the blanket on the floor. To an extent, we all do that. That was a silly extreme, and I hope we’re not that silly, but to an extent, we all do it. We expect things from our children before they’re really up to it because we want them to be up to it. It’s easier for us if they are. We need them to be at a certain level because we’re busy and, Baruch Hashem, we have other children and too much to do. We want them to be mature already and to know, “I told you that already. Why do I have to tell you again?”
But the truth is, we have to be careful not to frustrate our children with things they’re really not ready to accomplish, or in ways they’re not ready to do them. Sometimes we expect too much too early in our children’s lives. We don’t want to expect nothing from them. We want to push them. I understand, and I agree: we want to motivate them. The way to motivate them is to encourage them and show them that they can succeed. If we frustrate them, they’re going to feel inadequate, and it’s going to hurt their self-esteem. Success breeds success. The more they succeed, the more motivated they are to succeed again. Failure is very difficult on self-esteem. It’s debilitating. It weighs you down and makes your next task that much harder.
As parents, we have to try to give our children projects that we think they can succeed at. First, that means evaluating what’s age-appropriate. If you’re not sure, ask someone who’s been through it and has sechel (good judgment). Ask, “Is it age-appropriate to want my three-year-old to organize the basement toys? How much should I ask of him? How much is correct, and how much is not?”
First, we have to figure out what’s age-appropriate. Then we have to figure out how much our own child can do. What are their particular skills and personality? What are their particular problems? Is this something they can handle, or something they can’t?
Once we give our child a task, we have to be very specific about what we want done. If we assume the child knows what we meant, we’re setting them up for failure and hurting them. That’s totally unfair. If I say, “Clean your room,” and come back and say, “That’s not clean,” the child is hurt. They cleaned the room, but they didn’t do what I wanted them to do, and I didn’t tell them what I wanted. If I want a certain standard of cleaning and a certain number of things or jobs done, I should say so explicitly. If I’ve said it before, fine. You can make charts showing what “cleaning the room” involves, or what “putting away the toys” means.
“Clean” means different things to different people. Even in my own house, is it clean or not? This is hypothetical, everybody. To some people, clean means straightened up so they don’t see anything. To others, it means even the closets are clean. Someone else might say it’s clean if they can take a white glove to it. When I say I cleaned my house, I might mean I put away the things you can see, and by my standards, that’s clean. Unless I list exactly what I mean, it isn’t fair to say to the child, “You didn’t do it.” He did it to the extent he understood.
If you said it before, that’s not enough. Why do I say it’s not enough? Because we’re not so good at hearing a command once and then doing it. We’re not good at hearing something and following through. It’s not so simple to say, “But you heard it already.” There’s a lesson about this even from the Torah. We’re told that when Hashem told Moshe to tell B’nai Yisrael that for three days they shouldn’t touch the mountain of Har Sinai, because anyone who touched it would die, Moshe Rabbeinu came up to Har Sinai and Hashem said, “Go down and tell them not to touch the mountain.” Moshe said, “But I told them already.” Hashem said, “It doesn’t matter. Just tell them again. Go back and tell them again.” They say that you have to repeat a message very often. Very often, we need the repetition right as we’re about to do something.
Think of the times you’ve told your husband things. He’s an adult, right? You tell him to do something, and then you still have to say it again: “Honey, by the way, remember when I wanted you to do—now go, please. When you do that, make sure you also take this, that, and the other, because that’s what you meant when you said it.” You shouldn’t expect even your husband to remember and do all the things you expected. Kal vachomer (all the more so), the children. So first, figure out what’s age-appropriate, then determine your own child’s specific abilities, and then be specific about what you want.
What’s age-appropriate for getting dressed on your own? Watch the child and see what they can do. Ask them to do a little bit more, but don’t ask them to do the whole thing. Sometimes we underestimate them. We’re dressing them, and they’re ready to do it themselves. They get annoyed: “Why are you doing this? Get out of here!” Let them try, but let them try one thing at a time. Let them see if they can get their pants on, and then watch. That’s great; that’s wonderful. “You did that so well. You really put them on well. Let me see how you do your shirt.” You’ve seen them do it once before, so you know they can do it, but they get frustrated easily. Should you encourage them? Yes. “You do one button, I’ll do one button.” Encourage them, be there for them, help them through it, and show them they can do it. Once they do one button and you do the other, next time they can do the button themselves. If you can find something motivating for them, that can help too. “You put your hands up, and I’ll pull it over,” if that’s what you need to do the first time. The second time, they can do a little bit more. We’re looking for gradual steps of improvement, not the whole jump. If you say, “I told you to get dressed,” the little kid may be overwhelmed and flabbergasted. He’s six years old and he just…
One parent said, “I have time, and he has to be in school already. I’m patient until the point where I’m like, ‘I can’t drive.’ It’s 8:30.” Right. Then it’s not about what’s age-appropriate. It’s about his tendency to procrastinate and the fact that school is coming. So what can you do? How do you avoid repeating yourself? A timer. I like a timer. Letting him do it for himself: “Yesterday it took you six minutes; today it only took you four.” I’m not talking specifically about the minutes. I mean the idea of making it a challenge. I would try that with a six-year-old who has a tendency not to get the job done, instead of letting things get to that frustrating yelling of, “What do you know?”
If possible, try a more positive approach: “You know, this time it took this many minutes. How many things?” Make a game, give prizes, and find ways to stimulate him. Don’t say, “You and your brother, who can get dressed faster?” because we said we don’t like that. Make it a race against himself, so he can improve his own time. That’s what I would say, because a six-year-old is ready to get dressed. And yet they’re sweet and cute. We have all kinds.
One parent said, “Why are you fixing your shoes? Forget your shoes.” Another said, “I’m fixing my drawer or something, and I’m like, ‘That’s not important.’ I’m trying to teach him priorities, what’s important. He gets mad at me when I tell him no.” We’re working with different temperaments and personalities. Very often, they don’t coincide with our own personality, and that’s when it gets hard. We clash. Oh, I just want to clash. When we clash in personality and temperament, it takes extra patience. It’s not his disposition. You have to think in terms of not breaking his character or temperament, but working with it. What does he need to stimulate him? Not what would stimulate you, because you have a different temperament. What would help and motivate him? You should be thinking in terms of teaching skills, more than just getting the job done.
They also say that sometimes, if you’re the same type, it’s harder to tolerate him because you see your own weaknesses. One parent said, “If he’s like me, I have to—if he’s wearing his shoes, I change them in the morning when I should have told myself, ‘Let me get dressed first.’ I’m like that, and I see it in him, and I’m like, ‘He’s a boy. I don’t want him to be that way. I want him to…’ But not to the point where he can’t do anything else except that. Until that gets done, you can’t do B; you can’t do A first.”
We have to be tolerant, but also motivate them to be the best they can be. It’s a hard job. It’s not simple or easy. What I’m saying is that if we focus a little more on motivating them to succeed in positive ways, rather than demeaning ways, then criticizing and scolding them for not doing what we told them can weigh them down instead of picking them up. Try to be more positive: “Okay, this is what we did today. Fine. But tomorrow, let’s see if we can do a little bit better. Tomorrow we can be a little quicker. And you know what? If we finish by a certain time and there’s still a little time, we’ll have time for that activity you love so much.”
A parent said, “My son is two and a half, and we’re toilet training him. At first, I wasn’t yelling, but I lectured him every time he went on the floor. It wasn’t working because he was like, ‘Mom, he still loves you.’ I heard that it was bringing him down. So I stopped. But I think they do it at school, and I think my mother does it. I’ve spoken to them, but I think they still do it because he makes a mess all over the place and they get frustrated. How can I speak to his caretakers in a way that will get them to change? I don’t know if I can.”
The theory of toilet training has changed a lot since I raised my children. I’ve really accepted my daughter’s opinion of what toilet training means at this point. When I was raising my children, over 20 years ago, between 20 and 30 years ago, we trained them very young. We trained them very early, and it was extremely important. Grandma makes fun of me that my daughter is two and isn’t toilet-trained.
In the past, diapers had to be washed and weren’t as good as they are today. Today, it’s like nobody cares anymore. It’s easy and convenient. But the point is, people are tending toward better psychological health for the child by waiting longer. They’ll even say, especially with boys, not to start until the age of three, which to me is very… The school has expectations about when the children should be toilet-trained. But there are biological factors involved in being able to wait and control it, and we can’t really tell whether the child is doing it purposely or not. Even if it seems that they’re doing it purposely, we can’t be sure they’re biologically ready. Pushing it isn’t good.
I think my mistake with my first child was starting toilet training too young. I’ll give myself the excuse that she was training herself. She told me she wanted to go on the toilet. She was very verbal and very young, under two. She kept saying she wanted to go on the toilet, and every time I put her on, she went. Her diaper stayed clean. I asked my friends who had older children what to do, since it was my first. They said, “What do you mean, what do you do? Then train her. Put her in panties.” As soon as I put her in panties, she changed her mind and wasn’t happy with it anymore. But I thought, “This was my mistake. There’s no turning back. You did this; you have to continue.” We fought and had a power struggle and drove each other up the wall until she was ready. She’s the only child whose toilet-training experience I remember. If you ask me what happened with any of my other children, I don’t even remember. That first one, I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
It was my mistake not to turn around and say, “You’re not ready, honey. We’re putting the diaper back on, and when you’re ready, we’ll do it.” I should have stopped fighting with her and scolding her. She wasn’t ready. She had turned two. I thought she was ready, and she thought she was ready, but she wasn’t. I didn’t have to fight with her for as long as I did. That was wrong. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t do it that way.
There’s no problem with turning around and saying, “I don’t know your particular situation or when the school wants them to be trained, but you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to say, ‘We tried it, honey. It’s too hard for you, and it’s too hard for me. Let’s wait a few months. We’ll try again in the spring,’ or whatever.” It doesn’t have to be, “But I said it already once, so I have to do it. I can’t go back on my word. I can’t go back. Then she’s going to think she won.” Then it becomes a power thing. No. “We tried it, honey. It’s hard for you, and it’s hard for me. Let’s skip it for a while.” You can do that.
It’s a very hard topic. It isn’t a basic learning experience, because there’s biology involved, and I’m not sure the child is ready. There’s a very strong psychological element too. Toilet training is one of the most difficult things in a child’s development. We should be very careful not to thrust it upon them when they’re not ready. When they’re going on the floor, it means they’re not ready.
A parent said, “We started at two and thought he wasn’t ready, so we stopped. Now he’s two and a half, and we’re starting again. We’ve had some successes, some failures, and some struggles. Is it sending a mixed message to stop after the second time and wait a few more months?” I don’t think so. There are no mixed messages. We’re trying until you’re ready. I think it’s very important to do it with as little tension as possible. It’s hard for the child and for the parents. There should be as little stress as possible.
Someone asked, “When you’re training, aren’t there always going to be successes and not successes? When do you know when you should stop?” You’re going to have to figure out at what point. But the tension is very important. If it’s so strong that there’s a lot of negativity, then it’s worth stopping. If you’re handling the accidents calmly and in a relaxed way, and both you and the child are handling it, you can continue despite the accidents. That’s not a problem. But when it becomes a horrible experience, it’s time to turn around. That’s what I think.
One parent said, “My last two are boys, and my older one was still having that issue. He was like, ‘How come you’re not? Everybody’s doing it.’ He told me—I mean, he’s still almost 10, and I still have…” Another parent said, “My children are six years apart. I told them, ‘I’m getting older. I’m waiting.’ How could you wait? He’s the baby. He was just about three. His uncle comes down and says, ‘How come you’re not?’ He told himself, so there’s no tension with anybody.”
I thought that if you’re not ready, don’t push it. That’s what I’m learning from my children. I think it’s important to keep our antennae sharp for when the tension gets too great. Then it’s time to turn around. We’re allowed to back up, and it isn’t giving in to a power struggle. It’s not about a power struggle. It should be when the child is ready and it’s good for both of you.
Someone asked, “How can I handle it well?” I don’t know whether the caretakers are handling it, because they’re the ones taking care of the children and cleaning up. If you’re not there during the day, they’re dealing with it. My daughter, God bless her, left me her children. One of them was supposed to be trained already, was in school, and had been trained for a while, but then started having accidents. My daughter handles it very nicely. She’s very good with it. But then it was my turn. I got all four dressed and was taking them to their respective schools, and he got wet before we even got out the door. They would have to dress him all over again. I thought, “This is no good. This isn’t going to work.” So I dressed him again and took everyone to school. He came home from school wet. I put a pull-up on him because there was no more school then; it was over the weekend or whatever. I said, “When Mommy comes home, she’ll deal with it.” I couldn’t do what my daughter could do, because it was too hard for me. I’m not saying that’s what your caretaker should do. I’m just telling you that sometimes, when you’re not the mother, there’s a different standard you want.
You have to find someone who’s willing to work with your standards or listen to you; otherwise, you may have to make other arrangements. When I ran my playgroup, children were allowed to come in diapers, and I changed them there. When they were toilet training, that was the worst part. I’d rather they be in a diaper, because once they start training, it becomes difficult for me. You have to know who you’re working with. Either find someone who will work to your standards, or you may have to change your own standards because of that.
I want to move on to other things, but it’s very important to keep the stress level down, and to avoid power struggles and tension between us and our children, whatever the reason. When we notice that tension starting to build, change the process. When getting dressed in the morning is turning into a head-on collision every morning, do something different.
My husband always tells me, “Play games with him.” I say, “You see him on Saturday and Sunday. You have the patience to play games. I can’t think of games every few seconds. It’s harder for me.” But the screaming is harder. The yelling and fighting are harder than thinking of those things in advance. If you wait until there’s tension to start thinking of other ways to deal with things, you won’t want to. You’ll already be too upset to think of a game. The last thing you’ll want to do is motivate this child. You’ll just want to strangle him. You have to have a plan ready before the tension starts.
While you’re calm and the children are at school and nobody’s bothering you, say, “Tomorrow, when it’s time to get dressed, I’m going to put a timer in his room, and we’ll see,” or decide on a particular way of doing it. Plan your strategy while you’re calm and implement it before you get to the point where you can’t think clearly. Think of a plan. Don’t wait until you’re in a stressful situation and suddenly need one. You won’t be able to come up with it then.
Someone asked, “A child who’s five, six, or seven doesn’t understand the concept of time. You say, ‘You have to leave at 8:30. You’re going to be late. Finish now.’ What’s 8:30? Are they all the same when I say, ‘You have 10 minutes, let’s go right now’?” They, they. Okay. Yeah, he’ll be fine. But you shouldn’t go to the Kollel. I’d rather she disturb me than the Kollel. Could you tell her that? Okay. I don’t want to embarrass her or anything, but the Kollel out there, they don’t appreciate that either. Okay. So can they understand time or no?
Children have a very hard time understanding the concept of time, and that’s why I find that timers help. When my grandchildren were looking at my digital timer, they saw the numbers going and wanted to know, “Is it time yet?” I’d send them back to the clock: “Go look at the numbers. When it says 7, it’s okay. When it says this, that’s the time.” That’s where timers help: they make time more concrete, something children can understand and grasp. When the bell rings, they can understand that. But they can’t understand 8:30. What does 8:30 mean? It doesn’t mean anything to them. It’s not something they understand.
Someone suggested, “Put all your clocks 10 minutes ahead.” I’m serious; it works—in your house. If it doesn’t work, they’ll be great at math because they’ll be subtracting 10 from everything. My husband used to do that to me. He used to put everything eight minutes ahead, so I had to subtract eight from the time every time I looked at the clock. I’m very punctual, and I want to know the real time. Don’t give me those eight minutes; I’ll be eight minutes early. Don’t do that to me. Every time I looked at the clock, I subtracted eight. You have nothing to lose: either they get very good at math, or you have that extra 10 minutes.
Someone said, “I think everything in my house is 10 minutes ahead. One thing is five minutes ahead, so I know I have five minutes extra to do my things. They still don’t know unless they pick up the cell phone or something.” If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it’s a mathematical experience. For me, once I realized it was 10 minutes slow, it was pointless; it was just a matter of adjusting it. But it does work for some people. It definitely works for some people.
You have to see what works: motivate them to do their best, but don’t frustrate them so that they fail. If we always push them beyond what they can do, to the point where we make them fail, we’re frustrating them. They won’t want to try or succeed. They’ll feel that they can succeed. As we said, you have to try it out with each individual child.
A three-year-old is doing great. I think he’s doing great, and we can’t expect him to do it even faster. He’s three. Let him do it, but give yourself more time. Don’t wait until the last minute. Help him if he needs help. Encourage him, motivate him, and give him prizes for doing it a little faster, but don’t frustrate him. What he’s doing is something many three-year-olds can’t do at all.
Someone asked, “Did you put a timer on for that age, three- or four-year-olds?” Yes, if they like it. Some children like it a lot. It becomes a game and reminds them to go a little faster when they start dilly-dallying. You can just say, “Oh, remember the timer,” and that will help them get back on focus. He’s young and doing a great job. You have to understand that. You can’t expect more. That’s not his problem or his fault. We often make our oldest children grow up too quickly, and hold on to our youngest as babies for too long. That’s what we do. But we have to understand, at least intellectually, that a three-year-old who dresses himself slowly is doing a great job. You can motivate him, but don’t frustrate him. It’s inappropriate to be upset or frustrated with him at that age. That’s exactly what I’m saying we shouldn’t do.
What he’s doing is a chesed. That’s an extra. It’s not what he’s obligated to do at that point. You can’t turn it into something negative when it was supposed to be positive. We have to do that with our children.
Even in my own learning, I want to know that I’m striving a little forward and that the material is a little hard for me. I don’t want to be in a class that’s so easy that I don’t feel I’m gaining from it. It has to be hard and challenging. But if it’s so overwhelmingly challenging that I don’t think I’ll ever manage it or that I can do it, it might be too much, and I might not be able to handle it.
We have to try to motivate our children to succeed. Success breeds success. We do that by evaluating whether something is age-appropriate, then evaluating our own child and watching what they can do. Then we go a step ahead, and another step ahead, in small steps, so we know they can do it. When we give them a task, we should be extremely explicit about what we mean, so we don’t come back and tell them they didn’t do it or succeed. If everything is clear and exactly what we wanted, it’s easier for them to succeed.
Someone asked about being explicit: “When you realize you don’t have any more socks or shirts, but you’ve been telling him every day to bring down his laundry—no, this is after many years. I didn’t go up and take it down this year. My son—we’re not going to do it, but still nobody… silly empty closet. Then I have that problem on my own. So what should I do? I live like that.”
If it’s an ongoing issue and you’ve tried other things, I’d say this might be a situation to problem-solve together. You could say, “There’s a problem. I want you to bring the laundry down. You don’t seem to care to do that.” You know why he doesn’t bring it down. What’s your objection to the situation as it is now—that he brings it down, you don’t bring it down? Is it too hard? If he needs it at the end of the week, okay. If you’ve been okay with it, leave it. It’s okay.
When he gets more particular about his things and wants them a little better, he’ll realize they have to come down earlier. If you’re okay with it, that’s what I wanted to know. You’ve come to a conclusion that works for both of you. It’s a compromise that works for both of you, and that’s what problem-solving is. With a 14-year-old, that’s great. Don’t make an issue out of it. You’ve found some common ground. Leave it at that. He’ll deal with it. He’s 14; he has time. He’ll deal with it when he gets to it.
Point number 18: Your relationship should not be one of excessive fear. Excessive fear isn’t something we should strive for. Fear won’t help us achieve the relationship we want with our children. To a certain extent, we need respect and obedience, and we need them to listen. But listening out of fear won’t give us the long-term effect we want. We want them to develop into children with good middot (character traits), who learn how to be responsible and fulfill their potential in life.
When parents treat their children with excessive fear, the children may be obedient for the moment while they’re under their parents’ supervision and guiding eye. But as soon as they break away from that atmosphere, they’ll go against it. Fear is something we want to pull away from. It’s something we reject. Excessive fear is not the way to raise a child, even if you feel you’re getting results. Those are short-term results, and they won’t work when the child is old enough to do what he wants, do things behind your back, or not have to deal with you because you’re not there to see what he’s doing.
Someone said, “Yes, excessive fear is a different point. The word ‘excessive’ is in there. Excessive fear is a household where the children shake when Daddy comes home. It’s the kind of home where the children almost stutter because they’re afraid they did something wrong. That’s a particular situation, and they know there’s a very bad consequence for doing that thing. Is that okay? Probably, without knowing the situation.”
The parent continued, “We tell him that if he wets the bed, and he’s almost gone already and it happens every other night, and it’s ridiculous, he’s really going to be punished if he does it. We don’t even care. I don’t think they feel they have any control over it.”
When a person is sleeping—you have to find out from the doctor. When a child is asleep, they’re not in control. You cannot punish them. Someone said, “They make a buzzer that buzzes when you start to—” It wakes them up, but it’s a physiological thing. It’s not something you can punish him for. You either get that device people work with, or use a pull-up until he’s past it. When a child is asleep, it’s something that a child—and every child reaches the stage where they know how to stay dry while asleep at a different age. Be careful with that.
Someone said, “I ate him, I ate my doctor. He said, ‘No, you just wake him up.’ So I ate him. I had this spray; the doctor gave me a spray. I put one spray here, one spray there, and that was it.” Someone else said the spray was in the nose. There are techniques. If your doctor’s only advice is to wake him up, find someone else to ask. Ask a specialist or someone who knows more. Your doctor should have better advice than “wake him up.” Even if a child doesn’t have control, waking them up isn’t such a great thing either. I think it teaches them to wake up when they weren’t spontaneously remembering to wake up. Ask someone who knows more than your own doctor. Your doctor isn’t giving you good advice.
But thinking that excessive fear is appropriate in this situation isn’t good. Someone said, “Like if he told me, ‘I love you,’ he goes, ‘You love me even though I need you.’” Oh my gosh. Fine. You can correct it. You don’t have to feel you’ve tortured him for life and that’s it. You should correct it now and talk to him. You can say, “I spoke to someone. They said it’s sometimes the way you’re developing, the way you’re growing, or the stage you’re going through. Sometimes it’s even an infection somewhere. There can be reasons for it.” I wouldn’t make it a matter of super-control and a terrible consequence. He doesn’t have control while he’s sleeping. Put on a pull-up or find another option.
Excessive fear isn’t a way to deal with children or teach them right from wrong. It only hurts the relationship between parent and child and may even lead them to act out against us when we’re not looking. Excessive fear isn’t the way to go. We have to be careful.
Some parents, especially some fathers, will think that’s the only way. You have to let them listen to tapes by Rabbi Horowitz. Sometimes they don’t want to read a book, but the tapes are great to listen to. When they listen to Rabbi Horowitz and Rabbi Brezak talking about parenting, there’s no excessive fear in their understanding of parenting skills. When our husbands listen to those tapes, we’re in good shape. Sometimes a husband doesn’t want to hear it from his wife. He thinks he knows best, thinks he knows how to do it, and doesn’t want to hear rebuke from his wife. But when he hears tapes by rabbis, he may say, “Oh, yeah, okay,” and it really makes an effect. It really has an effect on our husbands when they listen to or read the right things.
We can at least have the books around where they may pick them up, and sometimes listen to the tapes. Even if you’re driving together, you can say, “You know, I really wanted to listen to this Rabbi Horowitz tape. Do you mind if I put it on?” Listen to it together. I think once he gets into it, he’ll be happy to hear it and enjoy it. It makes a difference in his perspective because he thinks he’s right, and it helps him see there’s another way to do it. Excessive fear isn’t something we’re looking for.
Respect their privacy. It’s an interesting question: at different stages of our children’s lives, what does it mean to respect their privacy? Are we allowed to go through their things? Should we? How much privacy is a child allowed to have, and how much should we respect? It’s wrong for a parent to feel, at one extreme, that there’s no such thing as privacy because “I’m the mother.”
At what point does it become an issue? From what I’ve learned in my ethical teaching and in learning about therapy, privacy means anything the client says to the therapist has to be kept confidential, except if they feel the child is going to hurt themselves or someone else, if they’re, chas veshalom (God forbid), contemplating suicide or anything terrible like that, or if they really feel it’s a medical issue that has to be dealt with. Other than that, confidentiality has to be kept. Our children’s privacy may not be to that degree, but it’s along those lines.
Our children have to feel that we respect their privacy. If they don’t want to tell us something, do they have to? When our children are teenagers and older, they may not want to share everything with us. It’s hard to know. But we should feel that our child deserves privacy, and we should trust them. We should let them feel that we won’t go into things we don’t have a right to.
Privacy also means not talking about them to other people—not talking about your children to your friends, relatives, sisters, mother, or mother-in-law, and telling them what your child did. That breaches their privacy. The child may feel they can’t trust you or tell you anything because you’re going to tell Auntie Joyce. They have to know you won’t. They have to be able to trust you with their secrets, and trust that if they don’t want to tell you something, you’ll respect that too.
I find that with married children, we have to respect their privacy almost 100%. With married children, it’s none of my business if they don’t want to tell me. People say to me, “What are you, crazy? That’s your daughter. What do you mean, it’s none of your business?” I say, “She’s a married woman, it’s her situation, and if she doesn’t want to discuss it with me, it’s none of my business.” It might hurt me very much. It might be very difficult not to know, and it might make my life miserable. But if she has her reasons for wanting to keep her privacy between her and her husband, it’s none of my business, and I can’t go against her privacy. Calling behind her back to find out what they’re doing and how they’re doing it would breach her privacy, and I shouldn’t do it. My children should trust that I wouldn’t do that.
The older our children get, the more we have to respect their privacy. It’s part of respecting them. If we feel, chas veshalom, that they’re in danger, we may have to breach their privacy. At that point, we have to act. And I would almost say, chas veshalom, lo aleinu, and it should be a hypothetical question that nobody has to ever deal with. But if I suspected there were drugs and wanted to check my child’s room, I’m saying this off the top of my head, but I think I might even wait until the child came home and say, “I have this reason to be suspicious. Someone told me they saw you with so-and-so doing such-and-such. I feel it’s important that we go together into your room and see if there’s any reason for me to see anything.” Don’t do it behind the child’s back. Do it with them and say, “I have to do this, and I will do this because I’m protecting you and I’m concerned about you. Normally I don’t go through your things, but I feel I have to.”
I think it would be better for the relationship to do it together, in front of them, rather than coming home with something and saying, “Look what I found in your drawer,” chas veshalom. We don’t want them to feel, “Mommy is manipulating and sneaky and tricky behind my back.” As our children get older and their situations change, we do have to respect their privacy, but we should also keep safety in mind. There’s a line: if we feel there’s a safety issue, we have to ask questions. But don’t be so quick to go through their private things. As they get older, they’ll resent it and be upset, and it might hurt the relationship more than you can fix.
Someone asked, “Let’s say one of your children tells you something. Is it okay to tell their father or not? It’s not dangerous, just personal. You want to share it with your husband because it’s your child.” It’s an interesting question how much we should share with our husbands. As wives, we want to share with them, and they may want to know. Sometimes they’d rather not know. It’s even considered halakhically whether it would be lashon hara (harmful speech). It’s interesting, because even if there’s no purpose in it and I’m talking only to my husband, it could still be considered lashon hara. That’s a scary thought, because we think there’s no such thing as lashon hara when it comes to our children. We think we can say anything we want, especially if they’re young. Who cares? Somehow, we think they’re our property and we can say whatever we want about them. But that isn’t true. Halakhically, there are questions, and it depends on whether there’s a purpose in telling. It also depends on whether my child would want me to tell their father.
Sometimes I can say that if I’m sure my sister told me something and would be happy for me to share it with you if she were sitting in the room, then I feel it wouldn’t be considered lashon hara. If she were there, she’d want me to say it. It would be fine. But if I wouldn’t say it in front of her because she wouldn’t want everybody to know, then I’d have to think twice.
If my child is fine with me telling Daddy and sharing it with him, that’s not a problem. If my child wouldn’t want Daddy to know, I might think twice about sharing it, unless there’s a reason or benefit. That’s the only way I’d be able to answer that question.
Considering lashon hara when we talk to our own husbands is where we slip. People who are very good about not speaking lashon hara may slip when it comes to their husbands. They feel they don’t talk to anybody else about it, but they’d like to talk to their husband because they want to talk to someone. I think that’s a place where we slip, and we have to be more careful. I’m really talking about myself: that’s my issue, and I should be very careful about what I say to my husband. We feel our husband is part of us and there’s no difference between me and him, but there is, and halakhically there is.
Privacy applies with my husband too. If my children don’t mind and would want me to share something with him, that’s not a problem. If I feel there’s a reason to share it, for sure I’d say that’s no problem either. But just like that, I might not want to. If there’s something negative about my child and no reason to discuss it, I might just lower my husband’s opinion of the child. I might make him feel negatively about the child, when he doesn’t need to feel that negativity. It’s between me and the child, and I might not want that relationship to spill over to my husband. Why does my husband have to feel that negativity if it isn’t really his issue? I try to be careful about it, while understanding that people normally discuss things with their husbands. But if we try to think about it, it may raise the level of our conversation a little.
Someone said, “He told me it was really important that I do that with my husband, but I told my husband, ‘Don’t let him know that you know, because of that. I’m telling you because it wasn’t important to the situation.’ He didn’t let them know that I had shared it, because my son warned me not to tell. But after…”
So what do we do in this situation? A child, and we’re talking about an older child, a teenager, comes and says, “I’ll tell you something if you promise not to tell Daddy.” Before I make that promise, I have to put conditions on it, because I might not be able to keep it. I’ll have to discuss it a little before I say yes. I can’t just quickly say, “Okay, fine.” I definitely want to hear what the child has to say. I’m afraid that if it’s something I can’t tell Daddy, it sounds worse, but I want to know. I can’t promise not to tell if it’s something dangerous. I’d say, “Honey, what should I do if I’m really worried about what you’re telling me? Who can I tell? If you don’t want me to tell Daddy and I feel it’s dangerous, who can I ask? Who can I go to?”
If he says, “Mom, it’s not like that,” then okay. I’d say, “As long as you understand that if I feel it’s dangerous, I’m going to have to get help from somebody.” Or he might say, “It’s not like that. Don’t tell Daddy, but we could go to my teacher or Mr. So-and-so.” Okay. But you may have to go back on what you said. If we think about it now, when the situation isn’t at hand, don’t make promises without clarifying what you’ll do if it’s really dangerous. Ask, “What would you want me to do?” Maybe you have to say, “If you don’t want me to tell Daddy, I’m going to have to tell somebody.” Maybe it won’t be that bad, and the child will tell you something you can handle on your own. That’s fine. Or maybe you’ll need to tell somebody, and then you aren’t going back on your promise.
It’s good to discuss these things before they come up, because when they do, we may not be ready with an answer. We have to think of as many situations as we can so we’re prepared beforehand. The tools and ways we’re going to handle different situations have to be firm in our minds before the situation comes. Once it comes, we can’t think that fast or come up with a plan that fast.
Someone asked, “If you’re dealing with a teenager and you know he’s lying to you and might do things behind your back, do you still go into his room and search for things, or go through his cell phone to see what he has on it?”
It’s a very delicate issue. It depends on what you’re worried about and on the importance or severity of the concern. If your concerns are valid, I’d even say to ask before doing anything like that. I wouldn’t ask in general terms like this; I’d call someone specifically and say, “This is what I’m afraid of. This is what I’m thinking. This is what he’s doing, or this is what he has. What should I do now?” That could be Rabbi Brezak, Rabbi Horowitz, your rabbi, or someone who knows and is really good with volatile parent-child relationships. You don’t want things to get out of hand. Sometimes you do the wrong thing, and it can have ramifications for a very long time. You don’t want that.
Before you act, check it out very carefully. Don’t be quick to go through their things or look through their cell phone unless you’ve checked it out completely with someone professional in that field who will tell you the right steps to take. With a teenager, you could push them too far. We have to be very, very careful with that.
Hatzlacha, everybody. Good things. Next week there will not be a class.