Then and Now

Mrs. Grama, whose sensible view I've quoted before here, wrote another sensible piece in Inyan magazine that began with her relating three incidents.

In the first incident, a father takes his three year old to the Steipler Gaon and says, "He still doesn't talk."

The Steipler asked him, "Can he say at least one word?"

The father said yes, he says Abba.

The Steipler said, then don't worry, with Hashem's help he will talk.

In the second incident, a young father asked Rabbi Nissim Karelitz what to do about his four and six year olds who constantly fought.

R' Karelitz said, Tell them stories [that emphasize good middos]."

Third incident - an 11 year old boy's principal asked the mother to come down to the school where he told her that her son was brazenly breaking the rules and was having trouble concentrating in class.

The mother consulted with an experienced and successful mother of a large family who knew her and her son well and was told she must do a better job protecting her son from being bullied by his older brother, a child needs to feel safe in his own home, and told her how.

Mrs. Grama says the three stories ended well. She points out that nowadays, with these situations, most people would have consulted with a speech pathologist, a behavioral psychologist and a psychiatrist who would likely have:

asked the parents why they hadn't started intervention earlier and advised immediate speech therapy

discussed sibling rivalry and appropriate parental intervention followed by behavioral therapy

prescribed medication to calm the child followed by therapy.

She asks, are we made differently nowadays? Or is it our way of thinking that has become corrupted?