Welcome to Parenting Class Number 3. Last week, we began speaking about praise and how important it is to fill your home with a positive attitude. Fill your home with a positive feeling, so that your positive attitude in life should overflow to your children. You should look to praise, not criticize. You should look for the good in them and show them the good that you see. Through that attitude, you’ll fill their lives with happiness, self-esteem, and self-confidence. You’ll teach them to look at the world in a positive way. It’s so important for them to have that attitude in life, and they learn it from you. They learn it from you. They learn how to look at the world through your eyes. When you’re the one saying how beautiful the day is, how pretty the trees look in the fall, and how lucky we are.
Every time I walk into my house on these freezing cold days and feel the warmth, Baruch Hashem (Blessed is Hashem), Bli Ayin Hara (without the evil eye), please let my, you know, my work, my steam work, you know. But you walk in from the cold into a warm house. That’s not something to take for granted. There are really people out there who have so much less than we do. When you walk into a warm house, it’s so nice. It’s so cozy. When you walk in and say, “Thank you, Hashem, for this, that there’s warmth in our house. Thank you, Hashem.” The children hear that. They grow up with that. They feel that. And that’s what we want to give them.
You have to set that tone. We have to set that tone. We have to be the role models our children learn from when they look at the world. Instead of coming into the house saying, “It’s horrible out. I can’t take it. It’s so cold,” they’re going to walk in and say, “Thank you, Hashem. It’s so warm in here.” You can say either. You can look at either. The truth is, it is very cold outside, and it can be difficult. But at the same time, you have to see the good and appreciate it. When we praise our children, we often set that atmosphere in the home, and we really do teach them how to praise.
But the correct way to praise is also very important. The correct way to praise is to be descriptive. For praise to really reach the mark, and for a person to really accept it as true, it has to be descriptive. If I just tell my child, “You’re the best,” okay, it’s nice. First of all, you get some sharp ones who ask for clarification: “Do you mean I’m better than my brother?” Exactly. What do you mean by “the best”? The best of who? The best at what? Some children say that, and some children just think it: “Yeah, right. Mommy says I’m the best.”
But if you praise by actually saying, “That was so sharp, how you answered,” or, “That was so good, that report you did in school. I really enjoyed this part of it the most,” that’s different. Even as a teacher, when I’m marking papers, you can just mark the paper and put the mark at the top of the page. But when you put little comments—and now as a student in college also, when they put little comments by each part—not each part, but some parts—you can tell that they’re really reading it and really involved. It’s a different kind of praise. It’s a different kind of evaluation. It means they cared enough to see the details. They cared enough to really be involved in it.
So when you praise, try to be descriptive. As a little child, if you’re saying, “It’s a beautiful picture,” add, “I love the colors you used. How did you make such round circles?” or whatever it is you’re going to say. With an older child, you’re also going to point out their strengths. You’re going to be more descriptive. Don’t give what they call backhanded compliments and praise. Backhanded means that you think you’re praising, but you’re really not.
Did you ever get a comment from someone who says, “You lost so much weight”? I get insulted when somebody tells me that. What do you mean, I lost so much weight? How fat was I? I don’t remember losing so much weight. Okay, my weight goes from here to there, but “so much”? That’s the kind of thing where they say, “You look really good.” Okay, fine, nice—but “you lost so much weight”? Or, “You look so good, I couldn’t recognize you. What did you do to yourself?” You look so good, you want to go home and cry. She thinks she gave you a compliment, but you’re thinking, “What did I look like yesterday? I thought I was okay.” It’s a little bit of a backhanded compliment to say, “I didn’t recognize you.”
I recently said that to somebody, but I qualified what I said because I told her, “I’m not used to seeing you all dressed up.” She was at a wedding, so her hair and makeup were done differently. I said, “You look so pretty,” because I almost passed by her without saying hello. I said, “I didn’t recognize you.” She was a student I usually see in a ponytail, and here she was all dressed up and looked different. So try not to give a compliment...
Another way of giving a compliment that we would call backhanded is comparing it to past failures: “You did so well, not like last time,” bringing up the failure again. That hurts. “Let it go, Ma,” you know? Encourage for the future: “I’m so proud of you that you did more than you did before.” Just make sure it doesn’t sound negative. We can also be negative about the future and say, “Okay, this time you did your room, and it looks nice. But you better be doing it in the future.” It’s sort of a negative way to compliment, and that’s wrong. We take away some of the effect of our compliment when we give it in a negative way. We have to try to keep the praise as positive and happy as possible. We want the child to feel good about themselves.
When you add the word “but” to a compliment, you tell a child, “You cleaned up nicely. You cleaned up so well, but you still didn’t do this.” Everything is going to have a “but.” We’re never satisfied. I want you to know that the children will say—I teach post-high-school girls—that their main complaint is that their parents criticize, criticize, criticize. The girls tell me they will never please them. The mother is thinking very positively about the child. She’s thinking, “Great,” like when you say, “You did too much. Now, next time you can do three buttons. Maybe next time you’ll do four buttons.” You’re thinking of it as building them up. In the child’s mind—and I’m talking about an older child, not one at that level—they might be thinking, “She will never be satisfied. There’s nothing I can do to please her. No matter what I do, she will always want more. She’ll always see what I didn’t do instead of seeing what I did do.”
So the older the child is, the more sensitive we have to be about letting the compliment stand on its own and not grabbing for the next level so fast. Let the child go to the next level because they’re feeling good about the praise and want the next bit of praise. Leave it. They understand where we want them to go. If we want to tell them to go to the next level, do it at a different time. Don’t connect it to the praise. Give it a day or two. Let it pass. Keep it in mind. They did that very nicely, and now I would like them to improve in the next subject. Say it, but don’t connect it. Give them the feeling that you’re truly satisfied with the improvement, so they can feel good about themselves.
Girls I deal with very often feel that they just can’t please their parents, and they almost feel like they don’t want to try anymore. “Why should I bother? She’s not going to be happy. Why should I bother? She’s going to find some fault in what I did anyway.” And it’s a sad thing. The mother thinks she’s doing her best because she wants to bring out the best in the child. So she wants to keep fine-tuning and fine-tuning and fine-tuning. It’s not a good way to do it.
We can teach. Now we’re going to ask how to teach and how to correct. That’s going to be next. We have to be careful with our tone of voice and facial expressions. We have to mean it from our heart. We have to appreciate it. We have to appreciate their effort. When we don’t appreciate it, if we’re perfectionists and we’re really not happy with the job done, it’s going to come out. The praise is going to sound phony and unreal, and the child is going to pick up on it. It’s not going to work.
Some mothers say, “I do praise, and it doesn’t work.” They’re praising wrong. There could be other situations and other reasons, too. The child could have their own problems. But many times, when a mother says she’s praising, she’s praising wrong. She’s praising and criticizing in the same sentence. She’s praising and reminding the child of their faults as she praises. Or she’s praising with a negative attitude, or with a tone of voice or facial expression that takes all the praise away. It doesn’t come out as real, and it doesn’t work. Our praise should be specific, without any backhandedness and without any criticism connected to it whatsoever, and with a pleasant, sincere facial expression and tone of voice. Then it will come out the way we want it to.
So now we’re up to how we correct our child. If we only praise and don’t want to criticize, how do we correct? A parent’s role very much includes correcting. We can’t let them do whatever they want. That would be a very, very neglectful parent, and we would not be doing our role or our job. We have to teach our children. It’s very, very important to teach our children.
I want to give you a little understanding and an attitude about teaching our children. We don’t want to control them. We want to teach them. There’s a difference between control and teaching. Control really means, “I want obedience. I want them to listen. I want them to listen now.” That’s control. I say it; you do it. End of story. That is not teaching. That’s control. That’s control.
Teaching means it’s my role as a mother to teach my child the right way in life. They’re not going to do it right away. It’s going to take a lot of repetition, a lot of patience, a lot of role-playing, and role modeling on my part. But I want to teach them what will be beneficial to them in the long run. Sometimes when we want control, it’s for our own benefit. You want quiet now. You need help cleaning up. The emphasis is more on what I need. But there’s another emphasis: What’s my role in teaching my child? The focus is all on what the child needs, and not so much on what you need. That’s a difference, too.
We are going to correct and teach our children. But I’m going to try to say that criticism is not the way to do it. Correcting does not have to be criticism. Correcting can also come in a positive way. I can correct my child by—let me give you an example.
You want to teach your child to be more organized. They’re a mess. Their papers are all over the place. Their assignments at work and homework are never done on time. They never know; they don’t bring home the right books or the right things. They are not very disorganized. Criticizing would be pointing out all of those things: “You are such a mess. Why can’t you bring home your books on time? Why can’t you write down your homework assignment? Everybody else writes it down. Why do you wait until the last minute? Why do you not have...” I mean, look, it happens, right?
Correcting would be, “Honey, obviously this is a problem. Obviously this is not getting you the best marks in school, or what you need to be handling in school. Let’s work out a better system.” Solutions. You’re looking for solutions. You’re not belittling them, and you’re not putting them down. You’re looking for solutions. “This system is not working. Together, let’s figure out a system that will work better.”
Why am I stressing the word “together”? Because a parent should involve their children in the process of teaching them, and should involve their children in the rewards and even sometimes in the punishments. When children feel that you’re involving them, they’re more apt to follow the directions. They had a part in it. They had a part in the solution. They’re going to be better at it. They’re going to be better at it.
If you say, “This is what you’re going to do from now on. You’re going to put everything in this box. You’re going to do this. You’re going to do that,” the child feels a little defensive, a little resentment, a little, “Who is she to tell me what to do?” Even though you are his mother or her mother, and obviously that is who you are—to tell them what to do—they have that defensive mechanism there, that independence that wants to be in control, and they might not listen so well.
But if you say, “What do you think we should do?” and come up with some solutions together, and let them put in some input, they can contribute. If they’re not the type to say, “I don’t know, Mom. Maybe if I get an organizer, it will help,” or, “Maybe if I get this...” If they’re not the type to put in their information, give them choices and ask the question. Don’t be a know-it-all. I think it’s a bad relationship when a mother wants to say, “I know everything. I have the answers. Just listen to me. You’ll be fine.”
You will have children who, at very young ages, want to do things their own way. They have that need to be independent. It’s inborn. There’s an inborn need to be who you are, and not who your parent is. As much as you love your parent, there’s a feeling of wanting to break away because there was such a tie. The child needs to really find for himself his own identity, his own place in the world. As much as he loves his mother, he needs to be independent. He loves his parents. Part of growing up and maturing is breaking away from my parents, being different from my parents, and not doing things the way they want to do them. You have to allow for that. You have to allow that flexibility, so you don’t stifle them.
So you have to be able to say, “What do you think about that? Do you think getting an organizer would help? Maybe.” Not, “An organizer will help. You will put this here. You will do that there.” Ask, “What do you think of an organizer? Do you think maybe if I got you different-colored folders, and each folder was for a different subject, and we color-coordinated them? Or what about putting cubbies in the room, and the cubbies will be... Or you’ll have a friend that we’ll keep contact with.” Whatever you’re going to figure out together, say it in a way that involves the child and lets them pick the things they want to do—the solutions they’re comfortable with and that might work for them.
“You know what I used to do when I was younger”—is that comparing yourself? That’s okay. What’s better than saying, “You know what I used to do when I was younger,” is to empathize with them and say, “I remember how confusing it was in school, trying to get it all together. I remember being disorganized myself. The truth is, they throw a lot at you at one time, and every teacher gives you more papers.” Sympathize and empathize with them, and then say, “Well, you know, it helped me. I don’t know for sure if this would help you, but it helped me when I started doing A, B, and C.”
It helped me to bring a hole puncher with me to school because every teacher gives you these handouts, handouts, handouts. We have papers all over the place. I want to automatically punch holes in them and put them in the loose sleeve where they belong, so they’re not flying out of my briefcase all over the place and I don’t have the papers I need. I want to have the papers I need where I need them.
So it’s right to tell them what you did, but it’s better to first explain, “I know what you’re going through. I remember having that situation.” It might be that you’ve worked things out in a certain way. That’s a good thing to tell a child. They’re having trouble with friends. Friends are picking on them. Everyone else got invited; she didn’t get invited. Kids get older, and that’s the next stage of their problems. Those are real problems. A boy didn’t get picked for the basketball team, and all his friends are there.
Sometimes that empathy—saying, “It hurts so much. The truth is, I remember that, and it hurts so much”—can come first. Then say, “What steps do you think we should take? Would you want to invite some of the girls over? Maybe if we make the effort, maybe if we start it that way, maybe I’ll make a party and we’ll get friendly with the girls.” Maybe this boy needs a little coaching in some of the sports, because he’s not good at them and they’re not being good with him.
You always understand, even if you yourself didn’t go through that, and just tell them, “That must really be hard. How did you handle it?” It was difficult. Not, “Oh, come on. All kids are like that. Smile. Things will be better tomorrow.” Right away you push their feelings away and say, “Oh, so the basketball team is not so important. You have better things than them.” That’s not understanding what they’re going through. That’s not understanding their feelings.
Right away they’re rolling their eyes, like, “She has no clue. She has no clue what it means to be left out.” The truth is, if you think about it, you do know what it feels like to be left out. You do know what it feels like to want to be there and have them not include you. So your first response really should be to show them a little sympathy and empathy. You might have your own situation: “Oh my gosh, it reminds me of something that happened to me and how I felt about it.” Make that connection, and then ask them, “How could we...? What could we do? What do you think? What would you want to do differently?” Even role-play that whole situation. She said something wrong. What would be the better situation?
But let them be involved in the decisions, the solutions, and thinking it out. Let them learn to think it out, too. It shows the child that you respect them. The child walks away from that conversation feeling respected, feeling like, “My mother cares. She really listens. She’s not just shoving me away, giving me the quick solution and saying, ‘Oh, stop it. You don’t need that anyway,’ and passing it on. She’s listening, so she cares. She listens, and she trusts me to come up with something better.” That’s what you should do.
Solutions: put them into the solution. Let them help you. From the age of 2 to the age of 100, whenever they come to you and ask for advice, always think of their feelings. Reflect what they’re going through. In their opinion, how should we handle it? What do you think we should do? Let your children come up with some kind of a solution. If you have to, then you’ll suggest solutions. But let them pick. Let them be involved in it. Let them be there with you in the solutions.
That’s not criticism. You walk in and see something they did that wasn’t the way you wanted it done. They cleaned up, and they were irresponsible about it. You could walk in, look around, and describe what you see. You could say, “The place is a mess. It’s got to be cleaned up. I have a student coming in half an hour. It cannot look like this, so do what you have to do.” That’s it. You don’t have to be screaming and yelling, “How could you do this? How irresponsible are you?” It’s still correcting, and it’s still trying to teach them for the future, but it’s not in a negative way.
When we have to correct and teach, we should still be trying to be positive about it. Of course, it’s hard when you’re under pressure, and your gut reaction is just going to come out. We’re going to try. We’re going to try to think before we speak. We’re going to try to think before we react. We should be positive and not negative.
You see a child who’s—I'm thinking of something difficult for a parent sometimes: when they have an older child who’s, let’s say, overweight and eating too much, and you see them eating the wrong things. They’re already teenagers, and it’s caused... The more you nag, the worse the situation gets, and it’s not helping. You want to teach; you don’t want to nag, and you don’t want to control. It’s very, very hard.
Again, you’re going to have to try to say, “You know, honey, I’m noticing that you’re putting on weight, and it probably is hard for you. Maybe we could sit down together. Would you like me to cook differently? Would you like me to prepare lunches for you to take to school so you don’t have to go for pizza? Would you like me to...? Maybe you can join an exercise program. Maybe we’ll do it together.” It depends on where you’re up to in your life, what you can do, and what... Maybe we’ll be able to marry you off. People will say things like that. And, yes, right, right, okay.
I also want to preface this with the idea that I believe in discussing it as health, not as the way we look. Even though, you know, those are two very different issues, I like to—and I always tell my daughters—I’m just as worried about the skinny, skinny, skinny one as I am about the one who’s getting a little bit heavy. Is she getting enough exercise? Is she getting enough vitamins? Is she eating properly? I had one daughter, God bless her, who, if I didn’t remind her to eat when she was older, if I was busy, would be falling apart on me. I’d see her withering on the couch and ask, “Did you eat anything today?” She’d say, “Oh, no.” She’s a tiny little thing, and her kids are now so tiny that I get so scared for them. “Are you sure you checked with the doctor and everything?” Little teeny little things.
I like to present it to the family as a health issue, eating healthy. I don’t care how perfect your body is. I want healthy, nutritious things going into your body, and I want you to be healthy. I don’t want you to be a junk... It’s still not going to give you the nutrition that you need. First of all, I want it to be about health, and I want it to be across the board for all my children, no matter what they look like.
But it’s very, very hard to just wait if I see the child getting heavier and heavier and their habits are reinforcing that and adding to it. Waiting for her to come to me might be too hard for her, you know, to correct the problem at that point. I would be able to really wait. My daughter, one of them who had a little bit of a weight issue—which compared to other people we wouldn’t even call it—but she did come to me because she never got to the point where I was worried about her. But she did come to me, and that would be the better thing. If I saw it getting out of hand and she wasn’t coming to me, then I would want to bring up the subject in as gentle and nice a way as possible: what we look like, all right, and emphasizing eating the right foods for the whole family and having the right snacks for the whole family.
Where, like, you know, the apple chips—you know, my third one. I first, I always would start off—I mean, just the way I talk to my daughters or whatever would be, “Because I love you. But I feel that you’re hurting your body. You’re not giving your body the right nutrients, and you’re not taking care of yourself the way you should.” Also, you can’t just say, “Everybody eats chicken; you eat salad.” No. It should be health-oriented across the board for the whole family. “We don’t do junk.” Sometimes my daughters are sneaking the danishes, and they’re like this, and the kids come running: “What are you doing, Mom?” “Nothing.” They’re going to catch you. They’re always going to catch you. They are going to catch you.
Once in a while, a treat here and there, because I wanted them to be healthy. I have a sister, God bless her, whom I love so much, and she’s a junk-food addict. She just loves it. She’s the authority on junk food. If you want to know what’s the best junk to get, you ask her. She’s just great with that. I left my daughter with her, and she gave my daughter, I don’t know, something else. It was like a Yankee Doodle type of thing. My daughter was eating this cake with cream in the middle. She got to the cream and told my sister, when she was a little kid, “There’s yogurt inside.” My sister was horrified because I wanted them to be healthy, and I didn’t want to give them junk. They get older; they get junk on their own. They get it. They definitely get it.
So you can’t be so close-minded. Give them the treats for Shabbat. Make it a time when once in a while they’re going to have it. They have a little bit of... But it should be health across the board for the whole family, not just singling out the child. Even so, you could go on the diet with her, go to the exercise class together, get some friends together, or ask her what would help. Then back off if she’s really resenting it and she’s not going to listen, and all she’s going to do is hide it behind your back.
Then you have to back off, too. Have as many healthy things in the house as possible. Try to set up an environment that’s going to be conducive to it. You’re not going to have every kind of cookie in the closet and tell her not to eat it. I can’t do that for myself. I can’t do that. I’m getting guests to sleep over; someone has a wedding; out-of-town family is coming to my house. So I’m buying all this stuff that I don’t keep in the house. And trust me, they are not going to taste it, and I’m going to eat it. If it’s in my house, I eat it. If it’s not in my house, I don’t eat it. So I’m going to ask my kids to do what I can’t do? I’m going to ask my children to look in the closet? I can’t do that. If the cookies are there, I eat them. Maybe if they’re in the downstairs freezer in a Tupperware with a plastic bag around it, it might stop me, depending. In a snowstorm, nothing stops me. When there’s a snowstorm, I have the right to eat whatever I want. That’s my rule. If I’m going to get stuck in the snow, I can eat as many cookies as I want. So hopefully they’re not in the house.
Do it in a way that you’re helping her, but at the same time, you have to know when to back off, too. Just say, “I’m here for you when you want me. I’m here for you when you need me. I’ll do the things you want me to do. I’ll help you with it. I’ll go with you.” Then if she doesn’t want it, back off. You can’t nag. When nagging doesn’t work, definitely leave it alone if it’s not working, because you’re just going to ruin the relationship. Then you’ll have two problems: the problem of her nutrition and her weight, and the problem of the fighting and the relationship. God forbid. We don’t want that, too.
We’re thinking of solutions. We’re thinking of problem-solving. We’re looking to recognize what they’re going through, sympathize and empathize with them, and involve them in the decision-making and in coming up with the solution.
Very often, with a very young child, you might say, “You did the wrong thing, and I told you this was not allowed. I do have to punish you. What do you think should be the punishment?” Sometimes they come up with something so harsh—you wouldn’t have been that harsh—and they get into it. They get into the punishment part. They’re like, “Okay, don’t go out for a week,” or whatever they’re going to say. It’s even more than you would want to say, but you can tone it down. I’m saying, let them even be involved in the punishment. Of course, you have to agree with it. But let them be involved. When they’re involved in the decision-making, they’ll follow the rules more.
When you tell an older child, “These are the rules of taking the car,” there are certain rules. Ask, “What other rules do you think there should be? What will happen if I don’t follow the rules?” Go back and forth a little bit. Let them be involved in it. Hear what they have to say. “What do you think should be the consequences of your actions? What do you think should be the consequences of getting a speeding ticket?” I think there are a lot of consequences to that. That’s a hard thing, and we could all get a speeding ticket sometimes because going the speed limit is hard. You don’t speed. I don’t speed. I’m not going 85, 90 miles an hour, hopefully, unless you’re on the Garden State and there’s nobody there. But you’re really trying to make them understand what the consequences are and what they think the consequences should be. If my insurance is going to go up for the next seven years, those are heavy consequences. The child has to understand that.
So we’re not letting them do whatever they want. We’re trying to be parents who praise and hold back criticism. We’re not letting them do anything they want, and we’re not neglecting our role as teachers. We’re trying to do it in a positive way instead of a negative way. We’re trying to speak to them and present things to them in a way that shows we respect them. We understand that people make mistakes. I make mistakes, too, and you can tell your child that. “I make mistakes, too. I don’t do everything right. I also make mistakes. Sometimes I have to pay for my mistakes. Sometimes there are consequences to my mistakes, and I have to live with that.” Don’t make them feel that Mommy is a know-it-all, meaning, “You’re perfect. Mommy knows. Mommy does. You can never make a mistake.” It’s not true. We make plenty of mistakes, and the children know it.
There’s another thing: sometimes we criticize our children or are strong with them because we have a low frustration tolerance level. I think that as a generation—whichever generation you’re in, mine or younger—as a generation, we have a low frustration tolerance level. That means we want things to be easy. We expect things to be easy, and when things aren’t going the way we want, we don’t handle it well. We don’t handle it well. We don’t handle it well. We don’t handle it well.
Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers never expected life to be easy. They never expected raising children to be quiet and neat and everything to be in order. They just didn’t. They knew that they had their work to do, and they did it. They didn’t have the same level of intolerance that we do. How much annoyance could we handle? To what level? When we push our button, it’s that instant-gratification type of generation that we’re living in. We want things to be quiet. We want things to be done. We want things to be neat. We don’t like waiting. We don’t like working up to something. We want it now. We want it done. We want to get on with it.
How much frustration can I tolerate? As an exercise, when things are getting very annoying, if we could stop and tell ourselves, “Take a little more. Take a little more. Take a little more.” I like time. How long it takes. You know, to strengthen that tolerance muscle. Strengthen it, so we’re not the type that flies off right away.
Frustration tolerance, to me, is also—I remember using it as an example, and this goes back to when the kids on my block were young and playing outside in the springtime on Shabbat in the afternoon. They were very loud. My bedroom was right in the front of the house, and if I wanted that afternoon Shabbat nap, I couldn’t get it. I couldn’t get it. Sometimes I was very happy if it rained on Saturday afternoon, so I could have that peace and quiet and fall asleep in the afternoon. But at one point, I had to tell myself to be more tolerant and understand: you can’t get the quiet you want, so deal with it. Stop nagging about it. Stop grumbling about it. Relax. You’re not going to fall asleep.
Now, of course, my husband, Mr. Practical Logical Solution Finder, says, “Go sleep in the back room.” I want to be in my bed. Okay, it’s not the same if I go into the bed in the back room. I want to be in my bed. Low frustration tolerance. I don’t want the other bed. I want my bed.
That’s a situation where you want your bed. But bedtime—I really want to hang myself. Bedtime for me, I cannot deal with it. I don’t know what to do. Low frustration tolerance. There are steps you can take to make bedtime work better in your house. But the main thing you should try to work on is letting it. Relax your standards. You work yourself up into a frenzy over having them in bed at a certain time. You need that, and you do. I’m not saying you don’t. You do. But when you work yourself up into a frenzy because you need that, you’re hurting yourself. You’re not going to be able to be at peace with it.
If you could ignore a little, if you could hide yourself a little bit, relax a little bit, go read a book and ignore them, and turn it off and not hear them, that will go into the bedroom. I’m not telling you to ignore them to the point that they’re doing dangerous things. But some parents get so frustrated in that battle to keep them in bed that they’re standing over them, watching, or any little thing they do gets them wrapped up in it.
It has to do with feeling like you put in a hard day. You gave all that you can give. “This is your time. They need it.” Yeah, but that’s not what’s getting you so wrapped up. What’s getting you—I know because I felt it—is, “Enough already. I put in my time. It’s over. I need my time. I need to wind down. I need to relax.” Find ways that you can do that. “This is my time. I have to wind down. You don’t want to go to sleep? You can listen to a tape in your room. You can read a book. It has to be quiet, and I have to not see you or hear you.” If I don’t see you or hear you, and you’re quietly not doing dangerous things—certain things that they’re allowed to do quietly in their bed—relax your standards a little bit while still giving yourself time to relax. Accept more frustration. Accept more of not getting what you want when you want it.
It could be an older child who’s disrespectful, who’s not speaking to you the way they should speak to you. Now, that’s a very touchy subject because the parent feels that they should teach the child to speak with respect, and it’s disrespectful, and it’s halacha (Jewish law), and there’s a whole thing in that. But there’s frustration tolerance, too. If I jump on every little word they say and make it a power struggle between us, it’s not going to... You can relax your standards a little bit and continue to teach. You can say, “Honey, you know I don’t like when you speak to me like that, and I’m hoping you’re going to learn that that’s not the way to talk to me.”
When they’re little, I like to tell them, “When you’re big, you’re not going to do that anymore,” because they want to be big. I tell my granddaughter, who looks up at me, “I’m not worried, honey, because I know you’re really a good girl. When you’re a little bit bigger and learn a little bit more, you’re not going to talk to Grandma like that.” They catch it. They catch the whole thing. It’s the truth. She’s a good girl. She’s testing me out.
You have an older child. How much frustration can you tolerate? How much disobedience can you tolerate? We don’t want to tolerate it to the point that we’re not teaching. But how much does it get to us? You have to be teaching, but you also have to—there’s almost an external and internal reaction. Externally, you have to be teaching the right way. Internally, I can’t really let it affect me. At the same time that I’m saying, “You’re not allowed to talk to me like that,” inside I’m saying, “Don’t worry, they’ll learn. Don’t worry, they really know. Don’t worry, it’s going to happen in the end.” Inside, I’m calming myself down; outside, I’m teaching. But if I’m really thinking, “How dare they? Who do they think they are? After all I do for them!”—you want this level of teaching, which is teaching from cool and controlled emotion. That’s a hard thing to do, but you have to be able to talk to yourself, reminding yourself that they’ll grow out of it. Definitely.
Pressure and stress and tiredness—being overtired—that’s also when you can’t handle things. And when you’re hungry. I’m back to food. I’m going to eat something. I used to feed my kids. Don’t have it in your mind that you’ll eat after you feed your children dinner, when you’re starving. You’re starving, but you’ll feed them first and then eat. Even eating dinner with them could be a little frustrating, because until you put everybody’s bowls down and fill them up and give everybody theirs, you’re doing it with an attitude: “I want mine already. I want mine already.”
Sometimes I’ll make sure to have Kiddush when I’m having Shabbat and my married couples are coming over, and my grandchildren are coming over. I’m a more pleasant person if I’ve made my own Kiddush before they come home and had something to eat beforehand. I’m not waiting, starving, while they’re talking to each other and chatting very nicely, but I’m starving and want to start, and they’re not starting. It makes me nervous, and I’m not being nice. I’m like, “Hello!” “Ma, relax. We’re having a good time.” You know what I’m saying?
Sometimes just feeding yourself first, in a physical way, makes you less stressed. Even resting, if that’s possible, or doing what you need for yourself puts you in a better position to tolerate more frustration. As a mother, we have to tolerate a lot of frustration. Most of our day is frustration. You clean up a mess, you say something, they don’t do it, and there’s a lot of frustration in being a mother. We have to be able to take that.
The first part of taking it is accepting that it’s okay. It’s okay if things aren’t so pleasant. We don’t have that mentality. We say, “No, it’s not okay. What do you mean, it’s okay if they don’t listen to me?” I’m going the way I want them to go, and I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m saying that it’s about calming myself down, not being a perfectionist, and not expecting life to be easy. When life is not easy, we can’t tolerate it. I’m expecting to have what I want when I want it, and if I don’t get it when I want it, I can’t tolerate it. We can’t feel that way. It’s society. We don’t want the hard stuff. We want easy. We want fast. We want easy. That’s the world we’re living in. We have to train ourselves to be a little tougher. I don’t mean tougher in the way we treat our children. I mean tougher in handling a situation that doesn’t go our way, handling life, handling the snow, handling the cold. Hopefully getting stuck in the snow—it’s scary. That’s very frustrating. It’s extremely frustrating.
Certain people can handle frustration more than others. Some people are going to fly off the handle because they dropped something and have to pick it up, and it’s going to throw them off balance. How quickly do we go off balance? How much do we expect life to go the way we want it to go? How much do we expect life to go the way we want it to go?
We have to have that attitude with our children, too. We have to have that attitude with our children: not expecting them to listen, but teaching them and being a role model. We don’t give up on them, and we don’t say, “Let them.” At the same time, I tell them, “I expect you to put all your toys away when you finish. I expect you to put all your toys away when you finish,” or, “I expect you to come home at the hour I told you to.” I’m really not expecting it. I’m really not expecting it. I’m going to take steps, but I’m not thinking that this is really going to happen, because teaching takes a long time. Teaching takes a long time. It needs a lot of repetition, and sometimes it takes a lot of years. It takes maturity. It takes them being ready to be on the level to learn. It’s a very long, monotonous, steady process. Teaching has to be repeated and repeated and repeated in a loving, understanding way.
We have to teach our children, but we can’t try to control them. We have to expect that they’re not going to listen at the same time we’re asking them to listen. We have to expect that they’re going to come out of bed. We have to expect that they’re not going to do the things we told them to do, and calm our own reaction down because we were expecting it. It’s not intolerable. It’s not something I can’t handle. I really can handle it. I don’t want to handle it, but I can handle it. When you stop saying, “I can’t take that. It’s unacceptable,” and start relaxing with it a little bit, you’ll see a difference in the way you feel about it. You have to talk yourself out of that urgency, come up with different solutions, and loosen things up and lighten them a little.
“I just want to relax, and I can’t lie down on the couch or on the bed and relax. The baby’s crawling around everywhere. So I just think I’m going to sit, and she’ll like a bed and fall asleep. Is that a good thing? I want my own...”
If you need to rest, and you’re going to be a better mother by resting for half an hour while she’s playing in the crib or somewhere else safe, that’s absolutely the right thing to do.
“I know she’s lucky she’s going to sleep, but one time I remember I went to sleep for all night—I went to sleep for like two hours, almost. At about two o’clock I put her in, and she was still talking away in her crib. I woke up around four o’clock, and she was still talking, but I don’t think she even had a thought.”
Yeah, yeah. But she was fine. She was fine. If you needed it, you needed it. I think that’s fine. You put them in a safe place, and then you take the rest you need. It’s not a problem. It’s not a problem. Absolutely not a problem at all. If you were doing that for unimportant things repeatedly, and the child was getting no love and stimulation, you know, yeah—but you’re not talking about that. If you needed that nap, you needed that rest. You put her in a safe place, and you give her—I remember giving them anything, a bunch of toys and cookies and a bottle of whatever would work—because you’re at that point when you need to rest. If you need to rest, that’s the right thing to do, not the wrong thing to do. That’s the wrong thing to do. She was fine. She was fine. If you’re overtired, you’re going to do worse than dump her. I mean, I don’t know you particularly, and I don’t know with you; I’m talking about for myself. If I’m overtired, I’m going to be snapping at my kids instead of being nice with them. Just go to sleep for that half an hour, and then being nice to them the rest of the day is a whole different story. So that’s really what I would want to do. Thank you, everybody. Get home safe. Sleep well.