Raising Children in Challenging Times

[Music] uh hello everybody my name is avrami gurari and uh i feel privileged and honored to participate in this unite to heal event for a murder i am here with my brother i'm in new york i'm here with my brother mahal gurari rabbi mahali in australia first little something about me and why i'm here and then we'll talk about my brother just a little bit um unfortunately we tragically lost our daughter a year ago on december 22nd zion tavis and uh she had she struggled with an eating disorder and depression and unfortunately she took her life a year ago she was 24 years old her name is and as a result of that experience even before that since my daughter was so public about her struggles we were public as well our family and after her passing uh things intensified where i took on more of a activist royal if you if you want uh in the field of mental health so here we are talking to my brother rabbi mahal gurari in sydney australia my brother mahol is the founder and director of bina bina in sydney australia which is a large organization dedicated to adult jewish education he was born in south africa as i was and educated in the us and australia he is a passionate educator and speaker he lectures on a wide range of topics with a special emphasis on personal growth and self-development from a jewish tourist perspective mahal can you tell us anything else about you that kind of work you're involved in anything that i left out background about yourself and you work in australia well thank you first of all it's great to be interviewed by my own brother and i just want to acknowledge it the work that you've been doing over the last year in the context of your own painful journey but with tremendous strength and i also want to just say that it's just an honor to be part of the amudim event and the organization and thank them for inviting me to be part of this so yeah business started about 25 years ago and its main purpose was to provide jewish education for the very broad spectrum of the jewish community here in sydney but we've developed a stream over the years focusing specifically on personal growth character development which has evolved in so many different ways raising awareness um to do with issues to do with parenting and also helping people and educating people in the area of mental health and supporting them through their journey which i suppose is what brings us here today all right thank you so let's get right into it um amurim is an organization that focuses on responding to a whole wide range of mental health issues what is your involvement in the area of mental health are you just a rabbi just a rabbi that helps out or are you a qualified counselor or therapist okay so i'm definitely not a qualified therapist i'm not a counselor i am just a rabbi um a rabbi that enjoys and is involved and has read extensively on psychological issues but i i understand my role and my role is just it's just a rabbi but i do help many many people in a counseling capacity from a rabbi perspective uh never pretend to be a substitute for any critical and necessary intervention but helping people through their journey i believe that there's a puzzle and a puzzle has a number of different pieces to it um therapists parents medical professionals and so on and so forth but that puzzle i think needs to include a rav a mashpia a mentor how do you want to describe it someone that's there to help and support people with a torah perspective um and a torah outlaw which i think is very very critical and i i want to just say i suppose in our discussion now i'm going to share things from my perspective my experience here in sydney um i suspect that it's not very different around the world but i'm not that familiar with happens other places but i i can share a little bit of my experience here working with people over the last 20 25 years thank you uh next question so focusing specifically on your on your rabbinic role what is the role of a rabbi in a mental health crisis or challenge and how does that go together with regular therapy or other interventions and i want to just add to that um because it seems to be some kind of confusion in the firm world uh who does one go to first you go to your rabbi first do you go to psychologist first you're a psychiatrist what is the role of the rabbi where does it start where does it stop let's talk about that just a little bit so that's a great question so very often actually people do come to the rabbi first and that's my that's my experience particularly with people i have a relationship with you guys sorry do you think that's a good thing where should they go you tell me what they do actually do but where should they go first so i'm not sure i'm just i'm just dealing with with with the reality and the fact is that sometimes they feel supported i think they feel that by someone that can they familiar with they comfortable with they feel safe with perhaps if they really have a relationship or they know someone that has a relationship with me for example and therefore they will very often come sometimes not expecting that i will actually direct them somewhere else but um i will say sometimes people come to rabbi thinking the rabbi is the last stop and they will be able to provide the solution which isn't which isn't the case they can certainly help they can be part of the journey but they won't be able to provide the solution um so let's just break it down a little bit if that's the case so i think it's fair to say mental health is very very complex with so many different components that work together affecting each other and of course every case is different now we know that sometimes there are purely physiological imbalance issues that require medical intervention sometimes there's deep emotional issues which require particular expertise particular qualifications professionals and also something that could be ongoing i don't i don't even even in a rabbi counseling position i i'll stay with a person throughout the journey but i don't often i don't offer i should say um ongoing counseling and not as any role i think but nevertheless i think a rob or a mentor my spear can be incredible helpful incredibly helpful on a number of levels so let me just give you a couple of examples first of all sometimes it's the authority that that that helps i'll give you an example just now i'm dealing with a family who clearly needs to go for grief counseling grief guns saying that i cannot provide i don't have the expertise it needs to be someone that really is good and and it's a really serious situation but i now through a friend and through discussion they've agreed to go but only if they speak to me first and i will support them going to that form of form of therapy so i'll i'll be in that position to direct them in the right direction right another example of where the rabbi comes into the team and is part of the journey is allah guidance sometimes you need to assure a family or a patient um where it's okay to be makeled okay to be lenient okay there's different things it might be uh yom kippur with eating disorders it might be uh not doing certain mitzvas when it comes to cultural disorders right sorry castro's and eating disorders as well gastroism eating disorders when exactly um it might be um not doing certain mixes when it comes to obsession ocd for example and and part of that direction is not just giving the suck but it's also supporting him and removing the guilt and removing the uh the uncertainty about you know what what will happen if i do this and and is are you sure it's okay and things like that and sometimes the therapist is not able to do that because they don't have the halachic or spiritual authority where they're off cam um i think also most importantly probably is that the the rabbi needs to needs to create a partnership i think a partnership with a therapist the parents a partnership with the rest of the team and that partnership affects many different areas for example culture right often especially in australia we don't have a lot of religious therapists for example often therapist doesn't understand the culture of the family doesn't understand the values of the family um just recently i dealt with the case to give you an example which for me it was clear that it was an against torah values where someone was having someone who's married having problems with their parents you know realizing that their parents sort of didn't provide the right positive parenting that they would have wished for and so on and so forth and there was tension and conflict and the therapists very much in line with a lot of modern society sort of perspective was guiding the this particular woman on breaking off ties with her parents or putting very strict conditions with with her mother and and if they don't keep those conditions coming around come come completely which i'm completely convinced that that's against torah it's against her values and it's completely unhealthy and i tell them and i will tell them and i will continue to tell them that i think that's now there can be boundaries there can be modified relationships and so on and so forth depending on the case but it's not healthy for them and it's not healthy for their own children and sometimes what will happen is that their own children respond to them the way they're responding to their parents and and therefore that's kind of the cultural or halachic religious perspective that the rabbi can bring to the team if they're working together with the therapist or with the counselor um the role of the rabbi also is oh general overwhelm overall sorry overall overall well-being um including just bringing in a rookie stick a spiritual component to the to the whole journey you seem to be describing a utopian process where it should be what the what the contribution of the rabbi is and the contribution of the therapist what if there's resistance what if the patient decides um either you're right and they wrong both both of these scenarios are not good scenarios so for example they'll only take your advice as opposed to the therapist or they'll say to you the therapist is right and you're wrong is there a point where you kind of get off the bus and you say i no longer take responsibility rabbinically in this case and we have to part way to this point yeah sometimes so what so what i will often do is if i really feel that the person needs the assistance and the support of a professional i'll be very clear that my role is limited and i'm not prepared i mean i'm always prepared to talk to a person i'm always prepared to be nice to a person and support them but i'll be very clear about the support that i can and cannot give and if i think it's particularly in cases where it's physically or emotionally psychologically dangerous i'll be very clear either to the person or their family that my responsibility ends because i'm not prepared to support through a process if the team isn't complete and what i'll often encourage people to do is to actually give permission to a professional to talk to me so that it can actually create a team and i've often had discussions with the therapist on on the phone about a particular case with permission of course because that's the laws and so on but um we're creating that team and respect mutual respect for each other becomes very beneficial so just to give you like another example of a role i think you know sometimes it's very important for a role also to add together with the journey of therapy or professional intervention that sort of rookie mistake a meaningful aspect as a support and to get advice by the way the the relationship is mutual is not only i tell the therapist what the culture is they tell me also what is what is beneficial and what isn't beneficial right so that i know the limitations of my role but having said that so just to share with you avoid often what happens is people let go of toxic stuff or they let go of stuff that they've been involved in but then what they create a vacuum and that vacuum could attract other negative things so there has to be that sort of synthesis that has to be that combination and often the role of the rob is to the role of the therapist is to help the person let go of toxicity but what is it going to be filled with what's that void going to be filled with and maybe sometimes that's the role of the robe and that that sort of combination is very important you know in the writings of the lubavitcher who wrote extensively in response to people who sought advice for emotional turmoil or anxiety or other mental health issues and when it was mild that it would give spiritual advice but very often in letters that ever would uh advise people to seek seek advice and seek intervention that it would always create this like combination between three things one was seeking professional advice and and following the doctor's orders and following the therapist orders and so on and so forth the other was purely spiritual support like checking a mezuzah or increasing incarceration whatever the the case was and then often it was also about studying and engaging in in meaningful meaningful things like present or strengthening bittorrent or and things like that so there's that partnership which we find on many levels which is so important thank you mental health illness and challenges seem to be on the rise in the last number of decades i can tell you that i researched this after you have passed away that the suicide rate is actually you know documented uh i think since 2007 and and for the last 16 15 16 years have gone up about 60 percent in young adults mostly women is this just a fact of life can it be slowed down or prevented in other words is prevention even a possibility let me just add to that we have to treat mental health in its acute and chronic stages at the same time we have to prevent the very kind of lifestyle choices or life choices that people make that may perhaps bring to these uh you know present with these problems uh you're correct what you said earlier that's also a possibility of some chemical things going on but let's say there's environmental issues uh so what's more important prevention or cure or both uh and are we giving enough i i think that we're not giving enough attention to prevention uh in the very early stages of life and we can even go before that uh parenting before you even have a child maybe you know someone should each each couple should should go for training and how to be a good parent so let's speak about that a little bit so yeah there's a lot of different aspects of your question but first of all i have to agree with you i think i think the world is amazing um in response to crisis there are so many different organizations responding to crisis trying to fix crises trying to intervene into crises and so on and so forth and not nearly enough or not nearly enough thought or resources or thinking is given to prevention so i don't claim to be an expert but let me tell you what i've discussed with others and sort of my perspective on the whole concept of prevention so first of all just to echo and just to emphasize the point that you made that i referenced earlier i like to look at this as to give an analogy of physical illness right physical ills unfortunately for ways that we don't understand mysterious hashem we don't always understand the ways of hashem can strike anything anyone can die from a heart attack god forbid anyone can die from cancer no matter how fit or healthy they might be right however the pasta does tell us a secret should live in a healthy way because we know that although it's not always preventable although it's not always possible and to prevent illness and illness can strike any family any environment any stage of a person's life and so on and so forth but we do know that living a healthy life minimizes risk of of physical illness right um if you live a healthy life you less you know if you eat healthy or you do exercise you're less likely to get a heart attack simply simply put it doesn't guarantee but it's less likely so i think the same is with mental illness i think that as you say sometimes it's a pure pure illness that could be genetic it could be given by god in in whatever way whatever format of a context and whatever you do in the best family the best environment the best resource the best education it will still strike but having said that there are ways to live healthy and there are ways definitely to prevent and i think there's many things happening in our society today that is exacerbating and definitely contributing to the increase of mental illness anxiety depression and so many other forms of illness one of the people who i like listening to who i would consider and i've spoken to many times or i consider somewhat of a mentor and i hope it doesn't mind me saying that is dr pelkovitz and there's an expression that he uses that i've used many times when he talks about depression he talks about depression with a small d or the pressure of the big d um and i've kind of extended that to anxiety like anxiety with a small a or explained with a big a right what that means is a big t right trauma with the big t problem with a small d exactly so the difference between these things when the small letters or big letters is that depression with a big d or trauma with a big t or anxiety with a big a means that it's it's bad enough and it's clinical and it's really sort of out of the control of the person and the person needs support right it's not that the person has a choice anymore so much they have a choice to get help but they don't have a choice to help themselves they need other people to support their help however very often the two get blurred a little bit and very often every person i would say or lots of people most people go through stages of their life where there's at least the pressure with a small d or anxiety with a small a i mean we're jewish right we anxiety is part of our dna um we worry a lot and so on and so forth or we suffer a little bit of trauma or people looked at us the wrong way and so on and so forth and i think sometimes we lack the skill or our children lack the skill to deal with the stuff on the small d or the small layer the small t and if we don't deal with it properly what can happen is i think it can evolve into the big d and the big a where it's a bit late already where it needs a whole another response and a whole another intervention and then it's already a response to a crisis so i think what we do need to do is we do need to put a lot of effort and i think particularly when our children are young to build strong people right part of that is building a healthy mind we know that you know particularly a lot of modern psychology but a lot of positive psychology for example is very much based on the way the mind interprets what is happening around us um you know cognitive behavioral therapy is based on that a lot of therapies are based on using the positivity of the mind or using reframing or using the way we interpret the mind to control the way we feel so mental weakness or mental struggle often happens in the heart in other words more emotional than cognitive but nevertheless it is driven by cognition it's driven by the way we think now although this is very much a part of modern positive psychology but it's an old torah concept the book of tanya for example is is completely based on the simple principle of maya shalit al-aleid that the brain rules the heart the way we think will determine ultimately or at least influence the way we feel so i think we know that uh building a strong mind is so important i just recently i i do a personal growth class every thursday and i do it in series of six weeks and recently i just gave a series based on a secular book called 13 things mentally strong people don't do um and it's all about the mind it's all about the perception it's all about your perspective it's all about the way you think about what people have done what people have said the what the reason things have happened the reason things have happened to you the reason the way you you respond to them and so on and so forth so i think prevention has a lot to do with how we yes how we bring up children really um with the proper values the torah values building struck to put it in summary building strong minds building people who are mentally strong to be able to deal with challenge to emotion that comes later on will it always help of course not but i think a lot of it can be done which could then definitely slow it down if it's done in the right way with the right perspective or the right values so let's uh talk a couple of examples because this might be easier i would think on the surface to talk to a teenager or a young adult you know explain about murkshot alive and so on but they have to be subtle for instances in very young children um four or five years old let's talk about a couple of examples that are not good as a parent and conversely what is a positive parenting step okay so i think at every age at every stage of parenting this will manifest itself in a different way right but i think we also know that the formative years of a person is critical that's when we shape the minds and the perspectives of our children my education will tell us also that the impact of children even before they're born has an effect on what will happen later so i think we probably need to raise awareness and talk more about how parents are building the minds and the hearts of children from a very very young age in a torah context to summarize it i think we need to help people raise awareness with people and give them the ability as parents and as educators not just parents but teachers as well to build let me just summarize this i think to build strong healthy resilient children who will pursue meaning and purpose in their life right now let's just summarize how that happens i think i mean there's not one answer for every question but this is the way i like to look at it um there are two things that will do this as parents and as educators right and these two things unfortunately people often view as being two opposite concepts and or mutually exclusive and they're not they're actually critically important to be and to work together um and i'm going to use a sort of a kabbalistic formula um which which talks about the the the primary emotions of a person and i'm going to use two words which i need to clarify and explain the two words which are often misunderstood mistranslated as kindness and or which is hesitant which is often translated as harshness or or severity which is not true what i mean by mo ba hassan is it is the whole concept of love and acceptance where is the concept of firmness or assertiveness right so the truth sorry or accountability or accountability right the truth is this these two concepts are actually critical in all relationships right even even in marriage for example right we know that love is the glue of relationships but respect which often actually is a govura idea which means it's holding back giving the person space creating boundaries what is okay to say what is not okay to say which mushroom thing is is also important that that's concept and that's important all relationships but when it comes to parenting ever and i always say that parenting and it's important for parents to understand this when you start parenting it's actually not just about your children it's about a new critical stage in your own personal growth because when you parent you suddenly realize or perhaps or you should realize or hopefully will realize that parenting needs parents to have two opposite emotional approaches working at the same time right which is difficult because most people have a disposition to one or the other so what i mean by that in in summary is the following so first of all there's got to be working together what i mean by that briefly is this kasich means if you want to build strong children they need to grow up in a safe environment they need to grow up in a loving environment so there's got to be unconditional love unconditional love means whatever your child is going to do or be or say he or she remains your child it is your child that you have to just accept and love whatever happens you need to express that love we need to create a positive environment of warmth of calmness of happiness of fun even we need to nurture the relationships with our children we need to accept the individuality of our children right that's the that that will build each child in their own way every child is different we get to decide the values but they are each different from each other and we'll express those values a bit differently we need to build communication we need to build tolerance it needs to be open communication at the same time we need to give children the safety of having boundaries predictability um articulated boundaries sometimes firmness sometimes even consequence all done in the context of warmth and respect and positivity but parents need to be able to parents to build strong to build strong children we know that if one of those two things are missing the parenting model falls apart the children do not feel safe i often tell parents the the children that find it that challenge the discipline the most are the one that are actually craving for it children one structure cruel children one direction children want values they just don't know how to articulate it they challenge it they they test it but they do want that right so those two concepts has to be that's as a foundation now what that does what that leads to what that needs to lead to is that has to be the vehicle that has to be the formula through which we teach values to our children i'm talking about particularly torah values many of which unfortunately go against modern trends and i'll give you a couple of examples right give me an example for a child that's four years old that's a great question a child is four years old so we live today in a very me world right to use the uh a beautiful expression for by sex that we've moved the society has moved away from we to me right and he says we have to reverse that um what society has done is given people an amazing sense of entitlement we have we live in a generation of entitlement as we say in yiddish alts right that's that's the perspective now we need to give and shower our children with many things and love but the way we get rid of that sense of entitlement entitlement which is evil and bad and selfish and for sure and ultimately builds tremendous weakness and and unnecessary vulnerability because then as soon as as soon as i don't get what i want i fall apart it starts from four years old it starts from delayed gratification it starts starts from boundaries it starts with in a loving way it doesn't have to be in a strict harsh streaming way but it starts with training children and even when at four years old you don't need to get whatever you want when you want right and so on and so forth so that's a great example and that starts from very very young age it starts from certain boundaries it starts from things again not handed down in a harsh way but they're certain things are acceptable certain things aren't acceptable um things like control talking about and again this also starts from four years old maybe a child doesn't understand it on that level but as they get started to get older talking about the fact that we don't control everything talking about and surrendering to hashem the things we say to children at three or four years old has an effect um as they get older training them and this is this is a big one we you know the we the me world that we live in also breeds a lot of victimhood i just want to share with you in australia at the moment it was just recently a person passed away his name was eddie jaku a holocaust survivor he passed away um over a hundred he wrote a book um i think when he was 100 already or close to it he wrote a book called the happiest man on earth he had this thing where he gave himself he crowned himself with the title of being the happiest man on earth and um he wrote he wrote it's a beautiful book and and it's worth reading it's not a particularly terrible book but it's just it's just it's just an amazing story where he refused to walk he had gone through the holocaust the horrors of the holocaust and yet refused to hate refused to blame refused to be a victim essentially right he had every reason to be a victim legitimate reason to be a victim but nevertheless chose not to i want to come back to the five-year-old please um because i think these are very lofty uh academic concepts but you know as the rebels said that uh russia is for bahamas mecca right that five role can understand um right what so these are all you know technical things that all make a lot of sense but how do you for example if you want to say no to a five-year-old how can you say it in such a way that the five-year-old will understand that it's for their own well-being and not because that not because the parent wants control but rather i'm saying no for your own well-being because i love you because i want you to be a good person how would a five-year-old understand that i want this candy no you can't have it and here's why explain to a five-year-old so my view is that not always you have to explain it's how you do it children have a different way of communication very young children maybe as they get older they ask you why it's good to explain but i've actually my parenting theory is that you don't always have to answer the question why but what you do have to do is your language your body language both your your explicit language and the way or your demeanor and this i'm coming back to the hustle and bury thing so when you say no like when you want to train a five-year-old i'm using that example right but it's about the broader context of creating strength and self-control and and you know personal responsibility when you want to explain to a child that not everything you want now you have to get it's not about explaining it's about saying no you can't have it all or you could have it later but it's the way you say it it's if you say it with firmness and with love the child picks up on it they might cry they might even throw a tantrum and that's fine as long as you don't come down harsh as long as it doesn't become about you as soon as as soon as a parent screams and shouts about them it's not about the child now we're not perfect we do that sometimes we all make mistakes that's fine but i'm talking about in theory right we we we should say no and we should be parents and not be scared but we need to do it with love it should be not about us and not about what we want they're not about because this is good for us it's about the well-being of the child and children have amazing antennas even very young children who can't speak or can't understand long explanations they can pick up where it's coming from they might always not smile and say yeah you're fantastic i know you mean my my well-being so of course i wanna have the candy no no they might actually throw a tantrum but doesn't matter it's a long-term effect as long as you as long as it's coming from the right place as long as coming from your love i think this is the issue you see sometimes people parents know they have to love and love and love and the way they understand that is that means i never say no i can't say no i can't be firm that's what i'm talking about otherwise that doesn't breed strong children that breeds entitled children right so so that's why that combination is so important so critical thank you that's well well answered thank you very much let's move on to a hotbot hot button topic and uh because it's a hot button topic and uh i've read a lot about it and i've spoken to a lot of people struggle with it and thought about it a lot so you're going to forgive me if the the question is a little bit long-winded and this is the area of technology so here's my here's my rant um the rabbit didn't like the concert of labels you know when it came when it comes to jews you know reform orthodox and the other for purposes of this discussion i'm going to use labels i'm going to divide the orthodox world into the ultra-orthodox and the modern orthodox and it's my contention that the ultra-orthodox world has done themselves and more importantly the modern orthodox world at this service by um the way they have presented the ills of the internet and electronic usage there was a major gathering some years ago called the internet icifer and the discussion was really about obscene obscenities obscene material violence and so on you know the kind of material where religious boy or girls should not have access to and so on and in truth the more i think about it the lost opportunity was that really has nothing to do with that or less to do with um being exposed to inappropriate material but rather it has to do with emotional well-being um you know especially with you know with girls and body image you know uh the amount of time spent on on internet on electronics a lack of connection i want to mention one of my favorite books uh lost connections by owen hurry and and the result was that they were kind of preaching to the choir because within the ultra-orthodox groups so those that were doing it anyways they kind of listened and they continued doing what they were supposed to do the rebels were you know didn't listen you know on the modern orthodox on the flip side i know even from the best best of educators in school they said ah that's for the fruma that's for the uh but ask our students our children who are 13 14 years old everyone can handle their smartphone um successfully and in truth it was not the case as i've observed in the years since i've been observing this now although i've read a lot about some studies about this although there's not we talk about causation and correlation there's definitely a correlation between between the ills of the internet electronic usage and mental health i don't think the studies are conclusive about causation in other words it's not like a a a scientific study that has been done that is concern can definitively say we have mental health this is the reason internet i mean it's obviously other reasons but whether the internet causes it we know there's correlation that we do know i'll i'll just end off this question but by telling you that i was interviewed for a for a documentary by a british psychotherapist by the name of dr raj prasad and told me the following and this is a both someone who's both a psychologist and a psychiatrist who told me he used the word dismissed that you that young people up until age of 25 you told me are unable to absorb that which is good for the internet and to the smith set which is bad so i think uh this is uh we're in the throes of this right now we don't really kind of realize what uh what you know the ills that is doing to ourselves and to our young children as they as they grow up both in terms of you know access to inappropriate material um the lack of human connection and all the other things that go along with it so i think i think uh psychologists talk about this uh you know ad nauseam and uh we can go on and on about that but let's talk about this from a torah perspective slash mental health uh what role does it play and what should we what is the messaging about internet electronic usage social media and so on okay that's a that's a huge question and i'm happy you're bringing it up and i'm happy we're talking about it i've personally um in the last number of years particularly started to talk about a lot in my parenting sessions and dealing with again from a prevention perspective um dealing with parents and the usage of their children with technology um and i think you're right not i'm not doing it so much from a obviously it contain has a very big religious component to it but it's not just a religious component um it's much deeper in that much broader than that um we have a everyone likes to talk about a pandemic today but you know now there's a new strain of the virus uh i'm in isolation now because i came from south africa last week but uh there's a much bigger pandemic and that is the pandemic of i won't say technology but misuse of technology technology essentially is a good thing i can't really comment on the communities in america um and each one it has their own hush coffee and other ways of doing things but uh the way i either way i see it particularly over here in australia and i've talked about it here in sydney and melbourne particularly is the horses bolted i mean 99.9 of families are all exposed to technology it's not a matter of should we have technology or not everyone has it everyone's exposed to it it's a matter now of managing it right now before before i address this question i want to just finish off the last question because it's going to be relevant to this question as well anyone that really wants to take seriously the strategies they use with their children is going to have a going to have to have a look at their own modeling as well right i mean just i mean i know it's a cliche but it's critical you simply cannot teach values unless you prepare to make changes in your own life right it's simple it's as simple as that and you know there's a verb that i once saw about the grooving on the on the orana kurdish so the curving we know had faces of children right and the oran was made miksha akhas it was made out of one piece of gold which uh moisture banana had difficulty with and i could just mark who had to show that throw the iron into fire and so on but before i should explain that the crew beam itself also was mick also came for one piece of world and the lesson behind that is that it's all one formula it's all one journey parents and children have to become one journey and if parents want to take this seriously the well-being of their child the emotional well-being of the child and the religious well-being of the child and every other aspect of well-being of the child we have to also look at our own consistency our own authenticity our own mixed messages or clarity of messages and our own modeling and things that our own behavior right which is true in all the things we mentioned before whether it's self-control or indulgence or materialism or pursuit of pleasure whatever the case might be but it's also particularly relevant to the area of technology and how it affects children there's a lot of resistance to co to confront this but the reality is that there's as you know yourself and as you've discovered over the last years you've shared that with me many times and i know this from talking to a lot of different people there's terrible stuff that is happening as a result of misuse of tech technology um and it needs to be addressed and the only way i think it can be addressed well i'm not talking about once the crisis is there because obviously there's a different response but in terms of prevention we need to start very very young so let's just go through the the issues very briefly obviously this is a very long discussion but let's let's try and go through the issues very briefly and i'll share with you my perspective and what i've been telling parents right um the harm of technology is multiple layered it's not even about inappropriate material though it is about inappropriate material obviously it brings uh addiction there's a lot of pornography a much higher percentage there should be a pornography addiction within the religious world that's a fact um some people don't like to notice it but it's there addiction to pornography is not a religious issue it's a functional issue people become dysfunctional from it people come depressed would be mental health is affected their whole relationships are are harmed because they have a whole warped perception of what of what intimacy is supposed to look like there are so many different effects of there's so many different effects of of of of addiction or screen addiction in general but pornography addiction in particular even if there's not even if there's not addiction overuse of screen is bad for people you know there are studies out there that the the levels of empathy which empathy by the way is a critical component of any relationship has dropped dramatically this there's a documented study which i saw whenever dr poper was his books actually which is which is an amazing study of how levels of empathy has actually dropped since smartphones have come into being right because people have stopped noticing other people they're on their phones all the time they're on the screen all the time they don't have human interaction they don't communicate properly they don't they're not aware of what's going on around them they they become very absorbed in their own bubble um warped realities of what things are supposed to look like like social media we have distorted pictures and photoshop images and and and very false images of what couples look like and what bliss looks like and what happiness looks like where you know the couples that commented i mean it's an amazing thing i mean i i i use social media because i use it for my organization particularly and i've seen people post things where i've canceled those people i know what's going on behind closed doors and they create this image of being the most amazingly happy happy people on on on screen creating and v creating insecurity and it's just it's just it's just unbelievable so there's so much harm and we very tempted particularly from a very young age to use technology as a babysitter we put kids in front of a screen often it's it's about because it's kosher it's okay it's uncle moshi videos uh it's it's it's this music is that really excessive screen time is bad for you it's documented it's a terrible thing and then as they get older then it becomes becomes much more much more much much more serious so i think again what i'm sharing with you is not a fiduce but i just think it's not spoken about enough that's why i'm passionately speaking about it i think that the way to begin is with two things parents number one have to be parents and it's very difficult sometimes because you're up against a lot of social pressure everyone every parent will will know that if the fourth grader comes in and says why can't i have a small but every child in my class has one that's where it begins and and from there just evolves one thing leads to another so we have to number one be parents and be strong respectfully nicely positively but be strong most but more importantly is as children do become exposed to technology which is inevitable in most societies most pro societies even we need to begin to have conversations and those conversations with our children have to be multiple and often right and the conversations have to you know what you're saying is conceding that the it's here to stay here but we have to have conversations and those conversations have to surround have to focus on two areas one is they have to be [Music] around the values that we hold dear in other words children as they get older need to understand why it could be very dangerous for them that's that's that's important particularly as they get a bit older you know i said before that five-year-olds don't need to know the reason for everything but as they get older nowadays particularly maybe it is important to have those conversations and explain even though they might not understand it properly but it's important to talk about values when you transmit any values really it's important to talk about it and talk about it with passion and talk about it repeatedly and those conversations have to be around guidelines and boundaries so i think as soon as you know as soon as you notice or even before you notice even before you this could be even after you notice that your child is too exposed to or you know too much on the phone or too much on on the ipad or too much on the laptop whatever the case is but maybe even more importantly before that happens we need to have conversations with our children that go something like this they have to be respectful calm conversations but but assertive things like we need to communicate things to children like i'm responsible for your well-being right things i ask you to do or i prevent you from doing you don't always like but it's for your well-being and i promise you i will never do something that's not in your interest right you need to acknowledge the children that temptation is normal right you know we it's a very important thing kids grow up and they have temptation they have to look at things they shouldn't look at that temptation to engage in things they shouldn't engage in and that needs to be acknowledged and it's normal but as a parent my job is to guide you my job is to ensure that you are engaging in safe behavior right um it takes time temptation is normal and the desire to engage is normal and the skill to engage positively and responsibly is is is important the analogy i always give is a car i'm not going to give you my car to drive cars are very good things and they can do amazing and they can accomplish amazing things but when you're too young you don't have a license because because you're not responsible enough to drive properly same thing with tech technology technology's not bad it's a good thing we know that today in the tarot world the amount of terror that is accessible i mean i use it in my own organization the amount of learning that that is done online and through technology is amazing but you have to have the skill to do it and that comes with age and it comes with maturity um so therefore you tell the child this is the conversation we're going to have and i want you to be part of the conversation and i want you to share your feelings but you need to know that i'm the parent and i'm going to make some of the decisions um and we're going to make some changes if it's ready to you know really too much we're going to make some changes or we're going to set some guidelines now part of that conversation has to be about some of the you know some of the some of the pitfalls some of the weaknesses or some of the damn dangers of technology but then we have to have conversations around boundaries and have to be respectful um but they have to be assertive we shouldn't be scared we have to have conversations with empathy we have to acknowledge the struggles and we have to have interactive conversations we have to listen to them as well we have to listen to why they want you know i want to tell you something like for example over here there's a big problem where um some parents want to limit the use of technology for their children a positive way and then their fifth grader will come and say well i don't know anything that's going on in my class and sometimes legitimate by the way because there's a whatsapp group in the class and they get left out they get completely lifted because they don't know what's going on because that parent doesn't want them to have whatsapp which i think is legitimate right so we'll talk about how to deal with that but this is all in the context of how we began this discussion this is critical because this will have a direct input on the emotional psychological and mental health and religious and spiritual well-being of the child as they grow older as they grow older so let's just i mean again this is this is a conversation in its own right about the type of boundaries but things like you know you say to the child right i'm the parent so when the time comes i am going to get you a a smartphone if you need but there's going to be guidelines you can't have it all day and all night i mean parents i know parents from parents that go to that at night their child goes to sleep with a smartphone has unfitted access to everything it's unbelievably dangerous that just can't happen right not as a not as an eight-year-old not as a 15 year old even so there needs to be a look at filters there's a lot of people that can advise that thing there needs to be people do research on the internet for homework anything like that that can be done in a public place a child should never be on a laptop in their own room doing their own stuff um and not that we need to do that secretly it needs to be we need to talk about it we need to extend it this is gonna this is gonna be the the the say that there's going to be the boundaries um it has to be an open door policy i'm happy for you to work on the laptop but i'm not happy for me to come into the room if you just suddenly close the laptop i want to be able to check your history i want to be able to know what you're going on there are very good filters out there they're very good monitoring systems and so on and so forth i'm just giving a couple of examples over these conversations are long and involved what i am saying is that the conversation needs to begin my feeling is my experiences the parents are hiding they're escaping they don't want to have the conversation because there's a difficult conversation because yes there's pushback yes there's tantrums sometimes yes there's there's all my friends do it why are you the only one etc etc we need to be parents we need to do it calmly never never never take the bait of a tantrum we need to do positively we need to always emphasize this for the good of the child i think very importantly also we need as parents to build alliances with other parents they're doing that now in new york i know there's a whole organization called i think it's called must musk or something which is the delaying children you know parents getting together and from not from the school not from the institutions but parents themselves building strong alliances together so children you know as long as young as eight can't say all my parents say well they don't because this ten parents have got together and they've decided to my cousin or by much lipscore who's uh he's involved in chronic i think in the childhood chapter of it right yeah yeah which is which is which is great so it's all that thing however i need to i need to go back to what the way i started this particular segment of our conversation that in order to do this parents are going to have to have a very hard look at the way they use technology themselves you cannot have this conversation with children and sit at a dinner table looking at your iphone right just gonna happen you can't um be secretive about what you're looking obviously we need to have our own boundaries we need to make sure that we have self-control some of us become addicted to our iphone not such terrible stuff sometimes but the other that's addictive we're always checking out what's always what you think the world's going to fall apart if we haven't checked the last message in the last seven minutes right so we need to look at our own modeling we need to share with children our own world sometimes we need to say to our children you know i think i've been a little bit too much on my own phone i'm gonna now when i come home i'm gonna actually put away my phone and i'm gonna sit with you and i'm not gonna actually open my phone for another hour and a half even to check my emails right and share with children how it's not easy for you either they need to we need to model that that effort to children so in short answer to your question i think technology is a very very important discussion in the context of prevention of mental health particularly and religious health and every other form of well-being and conversations need to begin parents need to find the strength not to be afraid and to engage positively if they don't know how to do it they need to reach out there's help out there people can help them people can advise them but it's something that every single parent today's age i think needs to take very seriously thank you to follow up on that on a practical level uh let's talk about uh cell phone policy in high schools and about midrashim and seminary's post high school and the reason i'm asking that because what i'm finding here in new york is what's going on that a lot of the very from schools are saying you can't have a smartphone only what they call a dumb phone and what inevitably takes place is that every girl and boy have two phones one's a smartphone and one's a dumb phone when they show the teacher when they keep in their back and their parents know about it by the way so uh and to me it's like it just kind of shows that the the policy doesn't work saying return it we can't we can do it um we have to kind of recognize like you said it's here to stay an educated you know educator or young about proper usage of the internet but just on a very practical level what would if you're a principal of a high school i think you were once right but before pre-phone days three fun days right if you're a principal of a high school you know what rules would you put in place for uh to prevent this very thing of having a dump phone and a smartphone secretly which we all know the things that are private but then the things that are secret which are just terrible so i'm going to ask that question a little bit differently because because look it's a hard one i think every school has a different community different expectations it's a very very complicated thing i know some schools what they do is they allow over here anyways should they allow child deaf smartphones because that's what they have anyway and they're not gonna and they don't want to go through that sort of secret process but they actually have to hand in their phones when they come to school because there's a general policy but there shouldn't be distractions during the day so for their phones during the day when you know at the end they can pick up their phone and leave it to the parents to guide the children about kind of fun but you know what i wanna i wanna share with you a thought that just came to mind which i i wrote an article about this once and i remember doing this because i really believe in this and this this i remember once in australia there's a big problem in in the non-jewish schools and and uh or non-religious schools even about children engaging in alcohol and substance abuse whatever the case is right and they keep on doing stuff which is clearly not not working so they bring these they bring in these lecturers to keep up talking about the the the dangers of drugs or the dangers of alcohol the dangers of this basis of that and it's clearly not working so they had this great chakra one day i heard in the radio i was driving in the car where they were contemplating um raising the age the legal limit of drinking from 18 to 21 like they do in america and i thought you know that's really dumb because it's not working in america it's definitely not going to work here either right it's not working the age limit i mean you got to be naive to think that that children want to drink can find a way around it right all these all these all these legal limits all that all they do is it makes harder for the organizers of the events you know it's okay so you're 20 and you have 21 so i kind of have your time or whatever the case is that that kind of thing it's not doing anything for the child really right so and i i said it's not it's not the drink it's the chocolate what i mean by that is children need their own internal gauge the children need a sense of decision making a pause in other words you know there's the famous um it's based on this based on viktor frankl and so on the the the the pause between stimulus and response right part of the world that we live in today is this immediate impulsive response to everything children grow up with a lack of ability to actually hold back on things that are tempting right where you build that mechanism to hold back up just to think for a second and say well i don't necessarily need to jump into what i'm what i want to do is not when they're 18 in high school or when they 21 in your shiva or when they 12 in a high school right or in preschool but other cases you build at very very young age there's that famous uh i don't remember who did the study with their famous marshmallow experiment it's a famous experiment they did with young young young children where they put some children in a room together and they and they uh put a marshmallow on they told them that if you if you eat the marshmallow that's okay but if you don't eat it for 15 minutes we'll give you two marshmallows and they went out the room and this left these five-year-olds and some had more natural self-control than others and it was actually a very very funny video and um some just sort of looked at it looked at it and they tracked these children throughout their life and they saw the ones that have an eternal ability for self-control the ones that were much more effective and successful and well-rounded and so on but we need to build that self-control it doesn't start it doesn't start with any sugar i mean look sometimes rules have to be made for whatever reason have to be made and i'm not going to comment on that but but if you wanted to be successful it's the five year old you've got to start with it's building that strength that inner strength that inner sense of decision-making self-control cabalis oil as we call it in the in the in the typical literature um from when they're very very young in a strong beautiful and nurturing way but yet in in in a firm way thank you i have a final question um before we we wrap this up and that is are you optimistic about the future of uh you know i hate this this term mental health awareness i mean we're all aware questions we're doing anything about it are you optimistic for the you know for future i'm optimistic because in the far term yeah i'm i'm concerned i think i think we need to need to react i think we need to do a lot more in area prevention but i'm optimistic because we also believe right we turn to jews or we believe in what tara tells us we're recording this on chanukah so we know that hanukkah is about one small flame not a big flame one small flame one little little candle each night as long as there's one more candle each night that's that's that's that's the idea and i think we shouldn't overwhelm ourselves i think every person that's listening to this every person that is involved in thinking about these these concepts just needs to do it a little bit um if it's parents they should do for their own children take it seriously it might be as a response it might be just being more aware of people around us reaching out to people finding out how they are we know there's so many stories of people just that not every not every story works but we know that lots of stories about people will help just by someone caring about them just something looking out for them someone telephoning them and just saying how you doing i haven't seen you for a while um in terms of prevention just little steps you know i'm saying with parents when i said about technology for example starting a conversation you're not going to get it right overnight you're not going to get it right right away but just keep doing it you know the the instead of the name of the rebel rashad and i heard once i read once at the time said a very similar thing and that is that parents need to spend half an hour each day about their children right before i had kids i didn't understand i thought it was an exaggeration half an hour today sometimes i think maybe half an hour isn't enough the concept here is just spend time thinking about it go to another parenting lecture i know when i was a parent of young children i'm a bit beyond that now but but um i used to love to go to parenting lectures even if i learned nothing new because every time i went it was just an energy again i would think about it again and try maybe something new or try or try revisit something that i've forgotten about we just need to keep keep thinking about it and keep doing little bits keep adding one heineken candle and we have to believe that and we'll push away lots of darkness with a little bit of light alrighty well i uh i want to thank you for doing this uh this has been fascinating and i want to thank uh like svglock a modern for giving us an opportunity to have this very important discussion and i wish you much luck in the important work that you're doing i wish much of slacker to a murim and the important work that they're doing and uh we should all hear uh good news uh in this area thank you and thank you for doing this it's been a pleasure i also want to just echo that thanks to to the organizers of this event and to our muddy my i haven't been involved with the money that much but i've gone on the web and i've looked at a lot of their stuff and i was doing very important work both in responding to crisis and in prevention um and i wish them lots of that okay thank you [Music] you