What Sort of Virtues?

Slovie Wolff wonders whether parents these days are producing kids with "resume virtues" instead of giving them "eulogy virtues."

By that she means, many parents seek to provide their children with numerous extra-curricular activities (music, sports, art, martial arts) to broaden their experiences, develop their talents, and ultimately, look good good on their college resumes. But none of those activities are important, in and of themselves.

Rather, parents should be cultivating children who are idealistic, who want to make a positive difference in the world, who see a need and rise to the occasion and fill it.

She was addressing a general Jewish readership on Aish.com. The same applies to those who are religiously observant. Resume virtues for shidduchim include which great schools the boy/girl attended, which camps, and for girls - if they were the heads of anything in school or had prestigious jobs in camp.

Eulogy virtues would include middos tovos, erlichkeit, ahavas Yisrael.

I sometimes read tributes-obituaries in the Jewish paper and am amazed by the wonderful people we had among us, with eulogy virtues that include things like devotion to family, devotion to G-d, and kindness for fellow Jews.

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?

Having a Life

Overheard from two women who each have two children around the same ages.

Lady 1: I am older already, in my thirties, and I got married later.

Lady 2: I got married at 19. Right after high school.  I'm 24.

Lady 1: So you haven't had a life.

Lady 2: Basically ...

***
Lady 1 meant that Lady 2 went directly from her obligations at school to her obligations as a wife and mother, without having years to "do her own thing," which usually includes studying a profession, work, some travel.

I understand that, but it still sounded awful.  Maybe I should have piped up and asked, "Why do you think being a wife and mother isn't a life?" and seen where that went.  She may have said, I did not have any time for myself.  I might have responded, why then did you choose to meet someone and get married when you did? I don't know what she would have said.  I might have had the opportunity to say, if you want to study a field, you still can.  If you want to work, that is still possible (and I think she was working in the store I was in). So what do you think you missed out on that you cannot do now? She might say, a sense of freedom, being able to come and go and explore my interests. I might then say, there are hundreds, thousands of frum single girls who do just that.  Many get married along the way. Too many do not.  What do you think is more important than raising Yiddishe children?

Disengagement Not Possible

In this week's parsha, Ki Seitzei 22:15, on the words, "the father of the girl and her mother," Rashi says that the ones who raised bad offspring should be put to shame because of her.

There are those who like to attempt disconnecting from their children.  Their line is, their children have bechira and it's their lives.  They don't take the blame if the children don't turn out well, and presumably, if they're consistent, they don't take any credit if the children turn out well.

The problem with this is, we can never disconnect from our children as our children are part of us in every way.  Children are a reflection of their parents, for better and for worse.  We have nachas and deserve credit when they turn out well, and as Rashi says, if G-d forbid they don't turn out well, it's to the parents' shame.

Who Says Children Need Parents Anyway ...

continued from previous post

This rosh yeshiva made it into my "bad book" when I read an interview with a woman who turned to him for advice.  The woman said with pride about her daycare center, “We introduced the option of starting earlier and ending later …” and this is for babies and toddlers! She did this after consulting with the rosh yeshiva who gave her his approval.  The longer hours make it unnecessary for the babies' fathers (the mothers are out working) to pick up the children.  Why should the parents take care of their own children when they have more important things to do?

The woman went on to describe a program she was excited about, which she wanted to study, but she was reluctant (surprisingly) to travel and leave her young children without her.  The same rosh yeshiva told her to go ahead, to do it while she was excited about it.

So with the latest thing I heard from this rosh yeshiva, that's three strikes.  He's out.

Full Time Working Foster Parents

There was an article about a frum couple whose children were grown, who decided to become foster parents.  Both husband and wife work full time.  That made me pause.

If they went on to foster school aged children, okay.  But their first fostering experience was a two year old.  What is the point in having a two year old placed in daycare all day in a fostering situation? Is it because there are not enough frum foster parents that this was done?

All two year olds need mothers to care for them and not work full time.  All the more so does this child, who was pulled from his home for reasons of neglect or abuse, need extra care! All day daycare is detrimental for two years olds from normal homes; for a foster child, who needs extra nurturing, it's even worse.

But since it's taboo to say that all daycare is bad, that is what the foster child will get.  Because that's what many (most?) two year olds are getting.

Pills are Easier

A letter writer once irately wrote to a frum magazine, saying that of course, no parents want their children on ADD/ADHD medication unless it's absolutely warranted and all other options are explored.  She was quite adamant about that, though one could wonder how she knows that and whether she might just have projected her feelings onto others.

Mrs. B Grama writes a column for Hamodia's Inyan magazine.  She repudiated this view.  She writes:

"It has become quite common nowadays for us to open our weekly community magazines and find as many as a dozen ads for different therapy centers for children and adults, each one with a full staff of therapists ... Should we ooh and aah about it, or should we wonder why we are raising (or have ourselves become) a helpless, crippled generation that cannot seem to 'swim' on our own? Never before has there been such vast numbers of children who need outside help just to grow up (and vast numbers of parents who need assistance to raise them)."

She goes on to describe a woman who was diagnosed as suffering from "social anxiety" and thinks the woman is simply shy by nature.  Then she wrote about a man who was diagnosed with depression following his father's illness and watching his father suffer and fade away.  She wonders, isn't it normal to feel dejected under those circumstances? He needed support and encouragement from family and friends, not a medical diagnosis.

Worst example of all is about "Shaya's" mother who had a baby and whose father got a promotion so he came home later at night.  Shaya greatly missed all the times he used to speak to his parents after school every day.  "He became restless and unfocused in class and his behavior became problematic.  A psychologist was consulted and Shaya was put on medication to help improve his concentration and behavior."

When Mrs. Grama was consulted she asked the mother, "Wouldn't it be much simpler if you'd just make talking to and spending time with Shaya for about a half an hour at night your first priority?" To her shock, the mother said, "I know, but it's too hard; pills are easier."

So much for parents medicating their kids only as a last resort.

Societal Realities

In a recent Family First article about kids at risk and grandparents, it says, "... Grandparents may feel entitled to an opinion; after all, their children didn't go off [the derech]! This thinking is flawed, rejoins the younger generation, because the absence of 1970s children-in-crisis probably had more to do with societal realities than exemplary parenting."

Case dismissed.

No explanation about what "societal realities" are being referred to.

No hard data to back up the statement.

Do the "societal realities" include the fact that babies weren't sent out to babysitters? That most mothers were home to send their children off to school and greet them when they came home and that most either worked part time or not at all?

Are there "societal realities" of the 1970's that we can reclaim in this decade?

I'd like an article on that subject.

Children are People Too

There were two frum women on the train with their toddlers in carriages.  They spoke to another and were seated opposite me so I could hear some of what they were saying.

One said that a person commented to her, "Your daughter's hair color is nice."  She said, "She said it as a compliment but it's not so, her hair is not a nice color."

She was right.  Her daughter's hair was ordinary brown.  But why was she saying this in front of her daughter? Just because her daughter was so young?

It's a mistake for parents to say negative things about their children, whether about their looks, character, abilities, in front of their children.  Even if it's not said in front of their children, they have to think twice before discussing their children's drawbacks, but in front of them?!

We Think We Know

The mother of one of the Columbine high school killers has lived with grief and shame since the massacre. 

“I think we like to believe that our love and our understanding is protective, and that ‘If anything were wrong with my kids, I would know.’ But I didn’t know, and it’s very hard to live with that,” she said.

“I felt that I was a good mom ... That he would, he could talk to me about anything,” she continued. “Part of the shock of this was that learning that what I believed and how I lived and how I parented was an invention in my own mind. That it was a completely different world that he was living in.”

***

Now that's a sobering thought.  How many parents think they know but are so way off base?

 

A Modest Proposal

A few weeks ago there was an article and a follow-up letter in Mishpacha by a kollel wife in which she explains how she supports her husband's learning.  Among the details, she writes that she pays for full-time childcare since she is out of the house ten hours a day.  Without skipping a beat she goes on to write about other expenses and how she manages.

One second! Ten hours a day out of the house?

How long are her children awake and what part of that time is spent with their mother? She's not talking about school aged children who are not with their mothers because they are old enough to attend school for many hours of the day.

There are frum couples who are don't have children of their own, and even those who do, who would love to adopt and raise Jewish, healthy children not their own.  Perhaps this couple, and all those who live a similar lifestyle, should consider giving their children to a woman who will actually mother them, to someone who is not a paid employee (as wonderful and loving as those employees might be).  A formal adoption will free the birth parents from the expenses and difficulties in raising their children and will enable the woman to work and the husband to learn in peace, while providing their children with a normal home.

Self-Contradictory Views

I've noticed the following.  People want it both ways.  They will say that children grow up just the same whether they have a stay-at-home mother or are babysat.  The very same people will say that the mother or grandmother are best for the baby.

So which is it?

They seem to realize that under normal conditions, the mother or close relative are best for the baby.  At the same time, they don't want to concede that children at babysitters are at a disadvantage!

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is "the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values."  But they don't see they are espousing contradictory views!

No Title

A girl a year out of seminary gets married.  She is in the middle of pursuing an education for a profession, so she can support her husband's Torah study, and has two years of schooling to go. 

Mazal Tov.  She has a baby ten months later.

Ten days after the birth, she is back in school.  Five days a week.  All day. With travel time.

It's bein ha'zemanim, husband can help with the baby.  Grandma can help out.

Two months after the birth, the baby is at a babysitter all day.  First at the morning babysitter, then at the afternoon babysitter.  The father takes his baby from one sitter to the other.

I will restrain myself.  I think the facts speak for themselves.

related posts:

here

here

here

here

Just Say No

Overheard today:

A mother says to her little boy, about 4 years old, "Your behavior was unacceptable ... right?"

Sigh.

It's like the parent who says, "Come inside for supper, okay?"

You want the child's approval? agreement?

Then I came across this, by Rabbi Avrohom Birnbaum:

"It happened in a seforim store.  A prominent cheder menahel was browsing the aisles when a young man timidly approached.

"Rabbi K," he ventured.  "Would it be possible to ask you a question.

"Certainly," Rabbi K replied.
   

“My five-year-old son over there wants me to buy him a pair of those fake tefillin,” said the man. “I am not sure if having ‘play tefillin’ sends a good chinuch message. Somehow, I feel that to a child, tefillin should be a hallowed mitzvah that he will merit to fulfill when he becomes bar mitzvah and not used as a toy.”

 

Rabbi K. thought about it and agreed with the father.

 

“Okay. Thanks so much!” the father said, promptly returning to his son.

 

A few minutes later, Rabbi K. again heard someone behind him.

 

“Rabbi K., can I ask you another question?”

 

It was the same father.

 

“Sure,” Rabbi K. answered.

 

“My son really wants the tefillin. What should I tell him?” asked the father.

 

Rabbi K., looking directly at the father, said, “Tell him, ‘No.’”

 

The father looked at Rabbi K. startled. Then, as if a light bulb had gone off in his head, he responded, “Ohhh.” And he walked away."

Then and Now 2

continued from previous post

When the frum world talks about the tremendous changes in our society, technology is usually the focus.  And cell phones and the Internet have certainly drastically changed our lives.  But the shift in life at home is not often discussed.  It is deemed too sensitive a subject.  Working mothers will feel bad. 

 

And yet, the reality hasn't changed from R' Weiss' description back in 2000 of unavailable mothers.    The yiras shomayim and emotional well-being of children being raised in frum homes today haven't improved since 2000.  As someone who attends Lakewood yeshiva said, there is an off the derech child in most homes in Lakewood.  Is this true? An exaggeration? I can't tell you.  But even if it's not accurate, it's prevalent enough to seem that way.

 

There was an impressive article a while ago in Mishpacha in which a woman related that she and her husband decided that one of them will always be available to their children.  It's a priority for them and they do what it takes to make it work.  Most people can't or won't live this way.

The word that is commonly used to describe today's mother is "juggling."  They juggle home and work and community commitments.  It is hard to see how we can go back to women's primary focus being the home, but then I read an article (Binah Jan. 2014) about a courageous woman who did just that. 

Financial security was important to her since she was a child.  She worked as a preschool teacher and supported the family.  Then her family grew and her husband left kollel to open a photography business.  It was a hard field to break into but between her steady income and his occasional jobs, they managed.  Financially.

But she faced the reality that although she was a superb teacher, she was a mediocre mother since she did not have the energy for own children after taking care of other people's children.  She just did the basics but no longer sang with them, read them books, or did craft projects with them.

This bothered her and she thought of quitting her job.  But she knew they needed her paycheck and could not manage on what her husband earned.  She asked other preschool teachers how they managed and found that some had more energy than she did, some had different parenting goals, and some confessed that they also felt guilty.

She ultimately decided to quit.  She knew they could always hire another teacher but her children had just one mother.  It was tremendously scary for her to let go of the financial security of her job but she was convinced she was doing the right thing. 

One week before school started, her husband received a terrific job offer from one of the most prestigious photographers in town with a salary that equaled their previous combined income.

It seems to illustrate the principle ( Gemara Makos 10b), ‘B’derech sh’adam rotzeh leilech buh, molichin oso’; the path that a person chooses to follow they bring him (and allow him) to go down that road. 

Daycare Postscript

One of Rebbetzin Feige's daughters, a working mother, wrote an article about the ins and outs of daycare and concluded by reassuring parents that their children will turn out fine despite being sent to daycare.  She wrote that her parents traveled for speaking engagements and she turned out just fine.

Someone wrote a letter to the editor asking whether mother and daughter disagreed on this topic.  The daughter responded and said she wasn't actually in daycare.  When her parents were away, which was not on a daily basis, she was under the care of a dear family friend who was like a surrogate grandmother.

She said, "My mother has counseled scores of women who, as a result of being a breadwinner, have no energy for homemaking and mothering and are struggling to be functioning wives.  I can personally attest to the struggle and strain caused by attempting to simultaneously balance one's career and motherhood.  None of us [Rebbetzin Twerski or her daughter] believes that sending your children to daycare will turn them into dysfunctional adults, but it is inarguable that children who are raised by other people, in conjunction with a mother who is distracted, barely there, and stressed out, are likely to reflect those limitations.

"My mother's article was about the ideal and mine was an exploration of the daycare system for when the ideal is not an option."

***
I wonder how "likely to reflect those limitations" manifests.  She and her mother don't think the daycare kids will become dysfunctional adults, but ... but what? Something is "inarguable" but she does not spell it out.  What limitations will these children have and why is she afraid to spell it out? Also, living in Israel, the daughter is in a society where daycare is considered the norm.  Children are sent to the metapelet and to the ma'on from infancy and then to gan.  Raising your own children is not considered the ideal.

More from Rebbetzin Feige

In the previous post, Rebbetzin Feige Twerski quoted roshei yeshiva about the importance of chinuch taking place at home, and mothers and extended family raising children.  In a more recent article from last month, I was pleasantly surprised to see her begin her weekly column in Ami with:

"My daughters know that I am a big advocate of mothers staying home and personally raising their children."

Rebbetzin Twerski is a rebbetzin, a public speaker, a writer, a counselor, all in addition to her being the mother of 11 children and numerous grandchildren.  When someone as bright and accomplished as she advocates mothers raising their children, it makes an impact. 

Of her seven daughters, not all of them are homemakers, she says.  She describes one of her daughters as multi-talented and exceedingly bright who stays at home to raise her children with great mesirus nefesh.  She doesn't describe what the mesirus nefesh entails.  I assume financial gain as well as the forgoing the utilization of her brains and talents in more challenging ways than changing diapers, toilet training, cooking meals and running her home.  Many women feel that hired help can do the work just as well if not better. 

The Reason for Yeridas Ha'Doros

In the Pesach 2014 issue of Binah, Rebbetzin Feige Twerski writes:

"At a Torah Umesorah convention some years ago, R' Aharon Feldman, rosh yeshiva of Ner Israel, observed that children of our generation are not of the same caliber as those of his generation.  The reason for that, he asserted, is that children today are not being raised by their mothers.  They are, for the most part, consigned to a variety of daycare situations.  He quickly added that economic reasons necessitated this phenomenon that has affected the quality of offspring who, by right, should be in the loving environment provided by parents, grandparents, and extended family."

She goes on to say that in an address to mechanchim, R' Hutner spoke about Rabbi Yehoshua ben Gamla who instituted formal education.  Up until that time, Torah was transmitted directly from father to son while daughters learned from their mothers.  It came to a point where many children were uneducated which is why R' Yehoshua instituted a yeshiva system where children were taught outside the home.

R' Hutner pointed out that although R' Yehoshua is praised in the Gemara for doing what he did and he saved the day, it was nonetheless a tragedy for Klal Yisrael.  Why? Because ideally the Torah, "the art of living should flow from the same source as physical life.  The same parents who brought the children into the world, the parents, should be the ones who provide the Torah path in life."

R' Hutner gave an analogy to a country where, because the air was polluted, all babies had to be put in incubators if they were to survive.  This is not the ideal situation, of course, but if children can't breathe the natural air, we have to be grateful for incubators.

"Relegating our children to others to educate, shape, and form them is akin to placing them in incubators.  This is not the ideal, but we have no choice.  The Gemara praises R' Yehoshua ben Gamla.  Given the change in times, his was a heroic act."

Rebbetzin Twerski pointed out that Hashem puts us in a situation for the good, and the point is not to pine for yesteryear.  It's to acknowledge the reality of our situation and figure out how best to deal with it.

In Gantzen Nisht Nohrmal

In the Pesach 2014 issue of Mishpacha magazine, R' Henoch Plotnik, a rav and maggid shiur in Chicago, tells the following story:

"Before we decided to move from Lakewood to Chicago, over 25 years ago, I had the opportunity to visit with R' Elya Svei and chart out our plans.  What he said shook me to the core, and I have shared it with my own children and anyone else willing to hear it.  At the time, we were anticipating the birth of our bechor, and my wife was traveling from Lakewood to New York to work every day. 'What you are doing is in gantzen nisht nohrmal!" (completely abnormal) R' Elya admonished me.  He encouraged us to retain a semblance of normalcy in our respective roles and consequently our priorities."

What I find astonishing about the story is that this was before they had any children.  It wasn't even about abandoning one's babies with strangers.  It was the commuting pregnant wife that R' Svei considered crazy.

to be continued

Making a Mentch

I've heard of giving a child's teacher a gift for Chanuka and/or for Purim but today I heard something that goes way beyond that.  A mother of a 6th grade boy said she sends money (she did not specify how much) and a specially worded card every rosh chodesh!

I referred to it as a bribe and she unabashedly agreed, it is definitely a bribe.  She thinks the rebbi deserves it and needs it to handle her not so easy child.  She also said that her father-in-law used to do this and although it's not the "mesorah" on her side of the family, with only one son, she can afford to do it.

On a related note, she said that this child's English teacher is not frum, although Jewish.  He is a retired public school teacher.  Surprisingly, after so many years of experience, he asked in the beginning of the year whether her child is normal! Now, her child can be silly as 12 year old boys can be, but other than that, he is quite a normal and bright child.  She worked hard with her son over the school year and that, together with the fact that the teacher was really quite good and taught interesting things, made the child into quite a good student.

She had her son write this teacher a thank you note at the end of the year, in which he wrote about all he learned and how he became a mentch.  This was given to the teacher with a gift.  The teacher called and asked the mother, did you put your child on medication?

She said, not on your life! She would be the last person to do so, being quite opposed to even more ordinary medical practices.  He asked her several times, because he could not believe that the change in her son was due to parental involvement, hard work, his good teaching, and the child maturing.  I was surprised that a teacher with so much experience could not recognize a normal child from one who is not normal and couldn't believe that improvements can be made without drugs.  When I said so, the mother explained it by saying he is coming from the public school system so his frame of reference is different.