B'ezrat Hashem, today's parenting tip is control versus chinuch. We've just come off of Chanukah. Reb Wolbe says that chinuch can be compared to lighting the candles on Chanukah. The halacha (Jewish law) is that when you light the candles, if you take your candle away while the candle is flickering and flickering, it's not yet lit; you haven't lit the candles. You have to keep your candle there until the candle you have lit is lit. Then you've lit it. So I hope that was correct grammar. If not, it sounded good. You get the idea. The idea is that chinuch is the same thing: the goal is for him to do on his own what he has to do. That's the example, what we learn from the parable.
So how does that apply to regular chinuch, to our parenting? Control versus chinuch. What does it mean? It means that if everything is based on my control and my being in charge of the situation, and that's the only way things get done around here, then it's not chinuch.
Let me take an example from you to make it practical: sibling rivalry. Ah, don't you love sibling rivalry? I'm sure you have an abundance of sibling rivalry. The blessing of sibling rivalry in your home is probably flowing and growing. And you just love it, right? Wrong. So how do you try to stop sibling rivalry? You have a no-tolerance policy for fighting in your home. Anybody who fights in your home, you're going to stop it. You will obliterate fighting. Your home will be a haven of peace, a haven of peace, a place where strife does not exist. It's bad enough that in the outside world there's fighting and there's Machloket (strife), but at home, my home, my home will be a place where fighting does not exist. And if you, dear, touch your brother, you will go into your room for three days and only eat bread and water. Hmm. I hope you understand that. And you're not getting another chance. Okay, this is the last time I'm going to tell you this. Okay. Okay. Okay, so you give them another chance, but you're very serious about this no-tolerance policy for fighting. Isn't that great? No. What do you mean?
Every time I watch them like a hawk, somebody goes, “Oh, you're trying to fight!” Ho, now it's a little bit of a problem because you also have to do cooking and cleaning, and you may have to do homework, and you also have to stop the fighting. So you make some adjustments and improvements to your policy. What are your adjustments and improvements? Anybody who fights comes over to mommy, and mommy will take care of it and referee the fight and decide who's right and who's wrong. So you're refereeing all day long, judging and punishing and making sure there's no fighting in your home. And if there's fighting and it got in without your noticing it, you're going to referee and judge and make sure and decide and give your verdict. It's an entire-day affair, every day, in and out. That's not chinuch. Why not? It's control. You're controlling the situation. You're making sure. You are policing it with a no-tolerance policy. That's what you're doing. It's not going to happen in your home.
You say, “What is chinuch?” Chinuch is not that you do it. Chinuch is that you teach them to do it. You hold the candle, but their candle gets lit, and then you take away your candle and let go. That's chinuch.
We can compare it to riding a bicycle. Have you ever taught your children to ride a bicycle? Sure. How do you do it? So the controlling parent, of course in this example, you'll laugh at me. You'll tell me it's ridiculous. But nobody would do that, although we do it in other areas. So let's see. When you teach your child to ride a bicycle, you hold on, right? Take away the training wheels, and now you're holding on. The child is riding the bicycle. And now what do you do? This terrible, cruel thing: you let go. “Okay, son, now it's up to you. Okay, Moshe, you're on your own.” And he falls flat on his face. “Mommy, you don't care about me. You let me fall on my face. You want me to get hurt. Why didn't you hold on?”
So the controlling parent will hold on and hold on and hold on and not let go, and Moshe will be an older man with a family of eight and a beard down to the floor, and mommy's still holding on with her cane, walking along with Moshe, making sure he doesn't fall. And you think I'm exaggerating. I am, but I will tell you that my daughter once went to a parenting workshop, and one of the mothers in the workshop said that she makes sure her son, who's 17 years old and is in Yeshiva Gedolah, goes to the bathroom when he comes home. But sometimes he doesn't go to the bathroom and holds it in, so she makes sure: “Did you go to the bathroom today?” What's wrong with that? I told this at one of the workshops I gave, and one of the mothers said she knows a girl like that, around, I guess, 17 or 18, whose mother asks every day, “Did you go to the bathroom?” Maybe we could make a shidduch (match) from these two, and imagine they'll just get married in a sheva berachot (seven blessings)? Who is it? Oh, it's your dad. Your mom, excuse me. “Did you go yet?” Can you imagine? That's called control parenting: you hold on and you don't let go.
Now what in the world are you supposed to do with sibling rivalry? Just let them fight and beat each other up and send each other to the hospital and be a bunch of wild animals and live lives of strife? Heaven forbid. No. Be mechanech (educate) them. Do chinuch. What is chinuch? Letting go is not chinuch. Letting go enables you to do chinuch. Letting go means letting go of control. But now you have to replace it with chinuch. What's chinuch? Teaching the child, giving him tools, and motivating him to use those tools. So you need three steps in order to do chinuch. Step one: pull back and let go of control. Step two: show him how to do it; give him the tools to do whatever you're thinking about. And step three: motivate him. Motivate her.
So let's take the parable of riding a bike. If you're not a control parent, you let go of the bike. But before you let go of the bike, show him how to do it. “This is how you do it. This is how you ride. You're going to fall. It's okay. You do it again.” And then you let go, and he rides for 10 seconds until he falls flat on his face, and you cheer him. You say, “That was fantastic. You held your balance for 10 seconds,” and you'll do it again. The next time will be 15 seconds, and then you'll do it again in 20 seconds. A week later he's riding for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and he loves riding.
With sibling rivalry, what does it look like? Instead of making a no-tolerance policy for your children, you pull back and let them fight. I'm sorry to say that, but teach them. Call them into your room and practice with them how to work it out when they have had a fight. Let's say you call them into a room. Let's say they had a fight today, so two or three hours after the fight you call them into the room. Say, “Kids, what were you fighting about? Let's try to work this out so we can learn to work this out instead of fighting it out.” You see? Now write down what they've done. Let's say you hear each side and come to a solution that can be used the next time. Write it down, and praise them. Praise them for coming to the negotiating table. Praise them for being interested in working it out. Praise them for coming to a conclusion, even if you had to help it along. Then the next time they use the idea and apply it, build them up to the sky and celebrate. That's called motivating your children. Now, it's not as easy as that. I simplified it for you, but this is a very practical tool. And it's a totally different way of parenting. You have control with regards to sibling rivalry. You have chinuch with regards to sibling rivalry.
Let's take another area which is very prevalent. You ready? Chutzpah (nerve and disrespect). Sound familiar? Chutzpah. Very common word today. The chutzpah we're seeing today has reached proportions that are unprecedented, I would say, in the history of the world. I haven't been around that long, but can you imagine what's going on today? So your child comes to you and says they don't like what you did to them. “Mommy, can I have this and can I have that, or can I go to my friend today and sleep over?” And you say no. “Mommy, you're mean. You're disgusting.” I don't want to go into all the things your kids say. You know better than me what your kids say to you. But let's say your child calls you a name. “Okay. Hmm. So I'm a name, right?” Hmm. You know what? You're going to learn your lesson. You open your big mouth with that chutzpah, you don't learn the Aseret Hadibrot, doesn't exist in your mind—well, you can, okay—so you're not going to your big event tomorrow night. You've been looking forward to it for the last three months. You're not going. Now you understand who you're dealing with? Not to be chutzpahdik (insolent); you're dealing with me. I'm not a pushover. So that's controlling the chutzpah. You have a zero-tolerance policy for chutzpah. If they open their mouths and talk to you and give you attitude and don't like it, too bad. You're going to show them who's boss and control it, make sure it doesn't happen. But what does chinuch do? Control will, at best, get your results to your face. But your daughter is going to walk away and, behind your back, not say the most flattering things about you.
My mother told us she took her seven-year-old who was tantruming in the living room. She grabbed him by the neck, where they have thick skin. You grab it. She grabbed him and threw him into the room. “Ha! You don't tantrum in here.” Of course, she's right. Her son is tantruming. You can't tantrum in the living room. So he just stood there and cursed his mother out for the next 10 minutes. What are you going to do? Put soap in his mouth?
Then one mother told me that her son was chutzpahdik to her, or he said something, and she put a little bit of pepper in his mouth. You know what he did? A ten-year-old boy, I think. “Mmm, delicious. Mmm.” So she got so frustrated, she dumped the pepper into his mouth. His mouth was full of pepper. “Mmm.” He just kept smiling and saying how delicious it was, although he couldn't talk. So that's control parenting. What are you supposed to do? First, drop the control. Don't throw the pepper into his mouth. Don't take away her event. And maybe start considering her feelings. I didn't say you should let her go to the sleepover. You shouldn't. No. If you have a policy not to let a girl go to a sleepover, don't. But maybe hear her out. “It really bothers you that you can't go to the sleepover?” “Yeah, and anything I do, you never care about what it is.” “Tell me how you feel and why you feel like that. And maybe we could work something out.” Maybe you can't go for a sleepover tonight. Maybe during vacation time, vacation is coming up, we could work something out. Maybe, but the very— But she's chutzpahdik. I can't tolerate this. This nerve and disrespect. When you hear your child's feelings and show that you care about them, they automatically are less disrespectful to you. That brings them to respect you more. You see how it works? There's control parenting that controls it. And then there's chinuch that helps the child to want to do it and to do it on his own. That's what we should focus on.