Do your children know WHO they are?

all right welcome everybody uh just to set the scene for those who are joining us uh on video we are at the iho at the above ebb and we've gathered here who's we alumni of the parenting from the inside out course uh graduates people have taken the course we have gathered here at the hell as a group to uh to davin for our families and to unite and strengthen each other as uh as parents and maybe to get a little bit of a refresher on some of the things that we've spoken about in the course some people took uh the course uh they just finished a month or two ago others finished already uh maybe i think four or five months ago uh some of us are in the monthly gizzard group i want to encourage anyone who uh is on the fence whether or not to join the monthly hazard group for those who are graduates this is only for alumni people who have taken the course but those who have done the six weeks we have a monthly group where we we meet on a zoom once a month and there's a an accompanying whatsapp group or whatsapp chat where um where we can ask questions and share parenting experiences from one monthly zoom meeting until until the next um okay so what i'm going to do here is sort of like a mini version of what we do in the monthly physic group but if you don't want to be on camera don't step anywhere behind here that's why i took out these two chairs so but the food is over here over here and the table's over here so you should be safe getting food and eating without ending up in the shot so what i want to do is sort of similar to the format that we do in the monthly hiza group but much shorter usually those are 90 minutes but i'm going to do this a lot shorter normally the format is i share with you something an idea that i have been thinking about regarding parenting and then we'll do a little q a back and forth interaction so we do the same type of thing but a little bit more compact this week is the beginning of a new safer we just finished safer boracious and we're going into safer schmeiche and the name of the parsha is the whole safer is called mice and this parsha this week is called schmeich and schmeis means names now it's interesting the content of safer schmeiche as a narrative as a story is all about gollus and gula it's about slavery and redemption in fact in english the english is really really taken from the greek they call the book exodus which makes a lot of sense because exodus means the exit so it makes sense that we call the book the english name makes sense exodus it's about going out of egypt it's about the exodus but uh the hebrew name is a little bit funny it's called schmeich why because in the first verse of of the first parsha it happens to mention these are the names of the jews who went down into egypt so because it happens to mention these are the names oh names that's the first unique word of the the first verse of the first parsha so we're stuck with that title names but names doesn't really seemingly doesn't really describe what the book is about the book is about redemption so what gives so uh i'll tell you something i don't know if people uh tigel did you post that meme that we made yesterday you put on status on the whatsapp status well you sent it out individually uh-huh okay by the way what's the number for the whatsapp the soul words what's up do you know what about no 516. should just mention it so people can subscribe to it two 516-495-3021-3021 five one six four nine five three zero two one and then you get the broadcast and you get all types of nice stuff and there's a status and all that stuff and yeah post that on status um so we we put out so did you po where did you post it on the women's uh is it group or where did you post it sent it out as a broadcast yeah okay so that everyone should have gotten it so if you have your soul words uh broadcast so you could pull up that meme that we sent out yesterday and uh without repeating it word for word it was saying something about um one of i'm gonna paraphrase my own words one of the hallmarks of of spiritual growth is when you begin to identify with yourself as a soul so much that you can actually realize that many of the things you chose to do in your life that you thought were in order to make you happy were actually self-betrayal which is a funny thing because i thought i was doing this for me in fact you know i thought i was flouting what uh but if you don't want to be in the shot don't walk behind me just say quickly okay all right just warning fair warning this is the splash zone like at sea world but it's in back of me it's funny because sometimes we do things where we think well this i got to do this for me you know uh i don't care what they say i don't care what the rules are i don't care what i'm supposed to do this is what i need to do right now for me and then as you grow you look back and you realize you know who who was i really doing that for um was that really what i wanted was that really what hit the spot did that really satisfy me in a in a soul-nourishing way or was that a distraction and and i understand i have to be compassionate on myself why i needed the distraction at the time but at the end of the day i have to even though i'm not condemning myself i have to be honest and say it was a distraction it wasn't really what i really needed it didn't really scratch the itch and so i realized that many of the things that i've done that i thought were in order to make me happy were really acts of self-betrayal and it's a very uh difficult to accept that that these things were self-betrayal because there's a mourning process there's a grieving process where you let go of things that you thought were for you and you realize that i don't even like these things it's not even really who i am and it's the process of grieving over letting go of those things that we thought were making us happy can be so such an intense feeling of loss that it can even be easier sometimes to cling to a false self concept to justify no no i really do like those things no that is what i like because it's easier to just you know move the goal posts and say no that's who i really am than it is to say no it's not who i am i missed the mark i totally cheated myself i betrayed myself and i gotta do different things now if i'm really gonna nurture myself so that's why um when i'm making mistakes when i'm making wrong choices it's probably not that important you know if you're trying to guide me if you're trying to help me it's probably not that important that you tell me what i've done is wrong i probably on some level know it's wrong already but i've justified it because i think i need it i need it so it's probably not so helpful to tell me that what i'm doing is wrong what's probably more helpful is to remind to remind me who i am remind me who i really am and encourage me encourage me to be true to myself and then intuitively i'll make better choices intuitively i'll choose things that are conducive with my soul's purpose in this world intuitively i'll understand that there are a lot of things that are fun distractions or numbing distractions but at the end of the day they're not really conducive to why i came down here they're not really they don't serve me the real me the real me so that was the the meme that we sent out maybe we'll uh yeah you read it yesterday did you understand all that from i read it really quickly read it really quickly okay but that's what that's what i was saying and it was that was the i gave my own uh explanation of my own uh words okay anyways you read the meme yesterday yeah so that's what it was talking about okay so the point is bottom line you call it the last line i'm talking about the bottom line you know the bottom line doesn't just mean the last thing you say the bottom line is an accounting term that means when all is said and done when you add all the the the the uh profits and you subtract all the debt so what do you end up with the net the net so the uh the bottom line is like this probably the most essential [Music] knowledge that i need in order to be an effective person is is self-knowledge i need to know who i am and that has to be very clear to me and when i have that when i have self-knowledge when i know who i am even if i mess up i'll get back on track because i'll be able to identify that something is an aberration in other words how do i calibrate how do i even know what's consistent like oh that was consistent with who i am let me do more of that and what's an aberration and i need to correct and get back on track how do i know i mean what what what what's my point of reference i have to have a point of reference so the point of reference is i have to have a sense of self a sense of self tells me um is this the kind of behavior that someone like me should be doing or it's not and if it's not i can admit it and say let me do more of the types of things that are a true reflection of who i really am and that that gets me back on course but if i don't have a sense of self it's very very hard first of all to know the right thing but also what i was referring to earlier is if i don't have a really strong sense of self it's really hard to not dig myself in deeper when i've already gone off course because if i don't have a sense of self i went off course so that becomes my new sense of self i mess up one time instead of facing the pain of being ashamed i rationalize you know what it means to rationalize rational lies it's consistent you know with a certain logic internally in its own bubble it's rational until you compare it to you know the rest of reality then you realize it's a little pocket of absurdity like yeah it has its own internal logic well that's what i do because that's what i do i guess that's a truism yeah that's what i do because that's what i do but objectively that's not such a it's not such a strong argument how about saying that's what i do but that's not who i am and i can identify that as such and i can correct myself so the concept of an identity is crucial i need to know who i am in order to be able to measure whether any behavior was successful or not successful whether it got me closer to my mission and my goal in life or if it was a distraction that drew me away from my goal in life and that's why when it comes to parenting our children need to have an identity their first identity is a borrowed identity they get their identity from a sense of belonging to their family children at first they have a borrowed identity and that's that's what adolescence is when the child starts to get their own identity that's why there's always adolescent rebellion even in the best circumstances it's healthy it's necessary because that's when a child starts to find their own identity outside of the family and then hopefully what happens is after they figure out who they are as an individual outside of the family they they can align that with everything that they are as a member of the family and the two can not only coexist but they each complement each other it's they're they're mutually beneficial um but the whole the whole point of we could say is to teach a child who he or she is and everything else sort of goes under that greater category identity you have to know who you are okay so anyways we have this book which is about the jewish people going into the lowest spiritual uh bankruptcy possible they were at the 49th gate impurity before they were redeemed at the last moment they were at the precipice of spiritual extinction and they were snatched back at the last moment and then they were very quickly brought to the highest of spiritual heights they were they experienced mass revelation the giving of the torah at sinai so um it's this is all what's happening in the book of of of schmeich the book of exodus they're they're good they go to the lowest of the low in slavery then they're brought to the highest of the high they were redeemed they experienced miracles they experienced the giving of the torah then they build a sanctuary in in in the desert in order that that revelation can continue and be grounded and and and persist in this physical world so it's like a real drama of they fell low they were pulled out and then they were placed at the highest heights and and the name of that book is its names why makes perfect sense now because how do you make sure that even if you fall into the lowest levels of spiritual bankruptcy you will still be redeemable you still will be intact to heed the call of redemption when it is heard is as long as you know who you are if you know who you are if you know your name if you know who you are you know your identity and sometimes like i said it can be a borrowed identity you know whose child you are or you know who's hosted you are but knowing who you are on some level that is the that is the key to being able to make it out of all the perils all the challenges of life and coming to the highest places where you can actually reach your reach your goal reach your fulfill your purpose of being of being in this world but it all it's all hinging and identity when you have schmoys and you have these are the names of the jews when they have identity when they know who they are and by the way i should mention names are different than numbers because you can identify things with numbers as well but numbers are impersonal names are personal so it's not just an identity there's a vantage point from which numbers are important as well that's a different discussion why it why it actually rashi says on the first verse there that it's like hashem uh brings out the stars and has names for them and numbers for them so there's names and there's numbers numbers is also a thing then without getting into that whole side conversation numbers are also important because everybody has to count one man one vote everybody counts everyone counts equally from the from the biggest to the smallest everybody counts that's what numbers mean numbers has a certain advantage as well but right now we're talking about names names mean how you are an individual because a number is uh you know it's a it's a label it's uh you know the frida kahlo writes about when he went to prison they told him uh that you're now prisoner two six eight one eight i think that was the leak number your leak is a tag like you go to a furniture store it's a russian word it means like a tag like a label so they gave them a number you're you're two six eight one eight now i believe that's uh what the figure of his number in jail was so if you're only a number and that's a complaint that people have sometimes i'm just a number i went to the dmv they treated me like a number um but a name means an identity a unique identity so i'm special i have a personality i have a i have a unique mission in the world i have something to contribute that nobody else is contributing i have my own style my own personality i have my own gifts and my own challenges but that idea of a name of an identity a story you know a unique narrative who i am what i'm here for that is the foundation to everything and that makes possible the whole journey and being able to go through all the the whole range the whole the whole range from from the very difficult challenges like like mitzrayim to the awesome revelations like splitting of the sea like sinai like uh the building of the sanctuary it all it all depends on names it's all about knowing who i am okay anyways that's all uh i want to share with you so if anyone wanted to questions answers comments whatever complaints we'll do that i'll repeat everything because we're we have the camera here and we have the zoom we have two cameras the camera and the zoom so i'll repeat everything everyone says so it'll be heard question about motivational charts they're not terrible you know motivational charts can be fun um it's a way of quantifying something that could be abstract it's easier to look at something a chart you know it's easier to look at a chart and recognize progress sometimes when you're having progress especially it's something that's like a tican amides type thing like being nice sharing with your siblings it's kind of abstract so how do you quantify it like if i became more of a mensch like i hope that over the past year i have more of a mention than i was a year ago it's very hard to quantify so sometimes a chart is just a way of quantifying give me something to look at where oh that little bar is going up right so in that sense i think it's good it's like a muscle why do we use a muscle you know when we use metaphors when we learn torah because sometimes we're learning abstract concepts and it's too abstract so we give a muscle we give like a physical example of that thing and it makes it more tangible so think of the chart as a muscle the chart isn't the accomplishment whatever you're doing is the accomplishment the chart is a tangible reflection or manifestation of the thing that you've been doing and why is that important because you know it's like i just when i came here i came from my tanya class in the five times we have a tanya class weekly tiny class mondays at 11 o'clock if you ever run five towns for uh mondays at 11 you can join the tanya class oh really it's all my stuff recycles it's okay oh really at the tiny class in lakewood okay excellent so we have to what what day where where and when is that what tuesdays what time um nine o'clock so if you're in lakewood toms river you can go to uh mrs gurari's tanya class um so if you're in five towns mondays 11 a.m so we were just learning chapter six we were learning about the idea of le shmoop doing things for the sake of serving hashem so somebody was asking me like what does it mean if you're doing it for the sake of hashem are you doing it are you doing it what does it mean you're really doing it for hashem so i said you know we don't serve shulhan we serve hashem but how do we know what hashem wants because it's written in shokunatha he understands the distinction are you serving the are you serving hashem and the way you know what hashem wants is that he was kind enough to make it clear for us in halacha so that's or a parallel concept is when i dive in i'm not dominant to my sitter or the minion or uh or the shul diving into hashem but i'm using the minion i'm using the shul i'm using the siddhar as tools in order to direct my prayers to hashem the same thing with the char sometimes what happens is they start serving the chart it becomes all about the chart and what it does is it becomes an extrinsic motivator an extrinsic motivator means where the value of the task becomes supplanted by some other value like i'm not valuing the intrinsic value of what i'm doing i'm valuing the fact that it's on a chart so i know this might sound a little bit like a subtle idea but it's not and if you can grasp it you can convey it the chart is not the accomplishment the value that you have been displaying through your behavior is the accomplishment so the sharing your toys with your siblings or the putting your backpack away when you come home or the getting your homework done before supper that was the accomplishment the chart is just a physical representation of the accomplishment and it sounds like a subtle idea and and you know what much of the stuff that we study in the course is subtle and it's conceptual and it's it's kind of abstract but i think it makes a huge difference there are so many little unspoken messages that you as a mother will convey that you don't even realize you know micro expressions facial expressions vocal tone there's so many things that you convey you don't even realize you're conveying it all depending on how you see the situation so when you realize that the chart is not the goal it's just a way a fun way of making a physical representation of our goal the way you're going to talk about the charts going to be different the way you get excited about the chart is going to be different you're not going to turn the chart into i don't want to say a gachka but you know it's like ultimately yeah it is it can be a gachka because ultimately why are we teaching our children any values because we believe this is what hashem wants so ultimately anything we're doing in genuch is about serving hashem better not about serving the chart the chart is just giving us a way of seeing in a very um with our five senses something that's very uh relatable taking something abstract like like hashem and it's all of it as hashem putting your backpack away when you come home is of it is hashem and sharing your toys if it is hashem getting your homework done before suppers evade as a gem it's all of it is a gem and the chart is just a way of of uh well it's called a chart for a reason if charting what we've done or you know maybe put another way the map is not the terrain okay what's about the idea when their band gave coins giving uh prizes yes coins yeah i mean that's you're saying specifically coins or any prize as far as what i remember hearing is specifically yeah money yeah that's a whole other discussion why money is so important money is a very powerful tool uh actually didn't we speak about that the hanukkah we spoke about in connecticut the in the month of his group we spoke about why money is such an important gift so i'm not gonna repeat that whole thing but yeah money uh is uh i'll give you the 30-second version but money is always an educational experience because you can't do anything with the money itself once you give a kid money there's a lot of stuff that has to happen afterwards they have to calculate micer or haimesh then they have to figure out with the micer where they're going to give it or the haimish and then with the 80 90 percent that they keep what are you going to do with it are you going to buy photo are you going to buy lollipops what do you do with the lollipops sit under your covers and eat them all by yourself or make a shabbos party so money is always educational because it creates it it puts the ball in your court it's very empowering it makes you have to to think the freda could have with the money he got from mishnais he started a gamak he's a little kid what did he do with money he made a free loan society that he used to give loans out so and a little kid could do that he could make uh he can make a free loans aside but here's the thing again extrinsic extrinsic and intrinsic motivation i could ask you a different question i could throw the ball back in your court and i could say we know that if we serve hashem that he's going to make the rainfall in the right time so why do you serve hashem because of a shama for the rain you're going to say i'm not a farmer i haven't thought about the rain okay but if you go to the grocery store and you buy food it had to rain somewhere right so or if you don't want to talk about rain talk about any of the things that that we just wrote in for brachas for you know uh health and and children and uh and money all the things that we need so are we serving hashem for those things are we serving hashem because we're serving hashem that's an adult question it's not even about kids so what's the answer the answer is we serve hashem because we're serving hashem now it happens to be that the way hashem set up the world and by the way we should learn the twelve sukim we really should learn the twelve sukim the devil said there are twelve sukim and maimori hazal which serve as the the tools for a child's inculcating a child with a worldview one of those is braces but my base audits it's it's one of the twelve sugar not just because it's the first pasak in hamish but it's a foundational concept what's the concept concept is not just that for instance that the torah was given to me okay the torah was given to me but then i look into the world the world is not conducive to toyota so what can i do okay so i wanted to keep toyota but the world doesn't let me no bereishis the world was created by god in other words the world was created as a forum it was not created first and then god made rules for it god made the rules and then created the world as a forum for the expression of those rules and if you believe that what that means is you cannot lose out by being aligned with hashem's will so therefore when you do something that's spiritually good it will manifest on a lower level as material good now you can get caught up in the material blessings and say oh i'm doing it in order to get the material blessings or like the chart discussion the whole chart discussion you could say it's very similar to the chart discussion you could say i'm doing it because it's right i'm doing it because it's what hashem wants happens to be that the way god made his world is that when you do the right thing things flow because the world was built for hashem's will and that's by the way what the rabbi would tell people all the time about about taking on a mitzvah in order to ask for a bracha like what is that like it's like barter what it was like uh what it called quid pro quo so you give a little bit of you know a new hither mitzvah a and then you get to get you know some brachas no that's not it's not what it is that i would say this all the time that the mitzvah is the sinner is the pipeline in order to bring down hashem's blessings so it's not i'm going to trade you i'm going to do a little more from kite and then hashem will give me some money because that's what i like no i'll give you a little shabbos and you give me a lot of parnosa no it's abs is the thinner for abraca in paranosa and we're just saying the video starts first that's why first the children bring the buffet the famous oh you were saying well this was uncanny i was asked did i set up the video that was playing when you're coming out of the aisle no i did not set it up but it was it was it was valve and about the the brachas of of children how alcona was telling akana don't worry you have me she said no i mean i need a child and that was speaking there very emotionally about children being the greatest bracha yeah oh really i guess everybody came out at a different time everybody saw education related stuff everyone went to the same place more than one video that's amazing everyone got kenuk messages okay yeah okay the child that might not even know why he should be crying and that you have to accept the child for whatever their background is very much in line with it wow wow everybody got strong messages okay what else it's not so much tips but i don't know how to reflect the whole parenting thing for little kids i have a two-years-old daughter my first very challenging she knows exactly what she wants but she thinks amazing she will be great as adults but they're focusing on positive at this age i'm not sure that she's two is she getting so remember the question was with a two-year-old i let me try to restate your question like with a two-year-old how do you give them a lot of positivity when ultimately you didn't say this at all but i'm gonna rephrase your question my own words two-year-olds you're constantly just chasing them to keep them from doing crazy things like putting their fingers in the electrical outlet or you know jumping off the high chair yeah so it feels like there's a lot of like discipline and where's the love so here's what i want to tell you we speak we speak about this at length in the course i think in in lesson three we talk about the paradigm of the four ps the the first one the most important one is parenting and parenting we defined as the transmission of values we should not live enough teaching your children what ideas are important enough to live by and that's what parenting is parenting is teaching values and then we said that there's three other p's that parents also have to do but none of them are parenting we said there's policing providing and protecting so when the kids are fully grown you may only do parenting but when they're young especially when they're really little you're doing a lot of policing providing protecting policing is when one kid's hitting another kid you got to stop you don't just let them do it providing is make sure they're fed make sure they're clothed make sure they have a safe place to sleep at night also emotional needs you're providing for giving them attention giving them hugs and then there's protecting protecting is uh they want to run into the street you don't let them so here's the thing policing providing protecting there's a lot of it that goes on when they're little because you're protecting them from themselves essentially and thank god you know two-year-olds are made out of rubber because every time they fall they somehow they bounce up unless you gasp and then they realize they should cry but if you just smile then they they don't even think they got hurt but here's the thing there's a lot of policing providing protecting that goes on for little little kids but that's don't think of that as a contradiction to the fact that you're already teaching them values that you're already parenting them and that you're parenting them with love and with positivity and i think you should think about the ways in which you are parenting meaning teaching values even to a two-year-old you know that ever spoke about teaching values to to infants that's one of the things that ever spoke about a lot of people ask you know they have questions about isn't the success of the idea about the stuffed animals the teddy bears don't use the bahema tamaya right even though it's so popular and so beloved but that ever said use kosher animals what's the idea there the idea there is that even a pre-verbal child is receptive to and they're absorbing everything and the fact that eva said and when the rabbis said it wasn't even so much yet the consensus the scientific consensus although today it is never spoke about prenatal education that children are influenced by things that go on while they're still in the womb and that ever said that's why you put up the shiramalis when they're born and you not just put up the shitamale's card at the house when they come home but you put it up in the hospital first of all that ever said it comes down the mother but another thing is that when the child is born they're born into this place of purity and automatically they're absorbing it they're absorbing everything think about that how much a child a newborn is absorbing so you have to realize that there's a lot of parenting going on with a one-year-old and a two-year-old and a three-year-old and and that and in some ways even more parenting in some ways even more importantly because you think about like a teenager they're set already what they know about the world is pretty much set and you're hoping maybe you'll have one last crack to give them like a profound message that may influence them but pretty much their worldview is set a baby is learning everything about life so think about the fact that everything you do with them is an opportunity to teach them values so what you sing to them about um what you put around their crib um even if you think they can't understand it what you talk about with them and when you make brachas you make brachas out loud so they hear the words and uh everything that you're doing around them is education so when you realize that you're doing so much parenting and so much educating i think you're not going to feel so much that all i do all day is keep her from putting your fingers in the sockets yeah you also keep her from keep putting her fingers in the sockets but you're also doing a ton of parenting you should realize it i think you said it so well when you differentiate the keys it's in a center category like actually you are taking care of that that's called policing right right separate categories yeah yeah what else well maybe let's do one more uh quick uh we'll wrap up so i mean i thought i said it clearly enough but let me say it more clearly a prize is not an extrinsic reward a prize is the physical manifestation of the spiritual attainment you think i'm speaking gobbly and i'm just you know playing word games let me explain it very clearly the fact that when we do tita mitzvahs and hashem makes it rain in its time is not why we trade our mitzvahs it's the fact is that it's a spiritual attainment which is becoming this goshen that is becoming manifest in the physical world because hashem set up the world in such a way we as parents sometimes step in and we want to demonstrate for our children how when you do the right thing for its own sake there are residual physical benefits so we're demonstrating that for them so you know the federal once said an indic of yamtif is a glychazach a yamtif of a indic is nishkinglaih i'll say it in english a turkey anjantif is a beautiful thing a yamcha on a turkey is not a beautiful thing he wasn't talking about thanksgiving by the way that wasn't the point the point was no no has nothing to do with thanksgiving his point was to celebrate yamcha and you want to have nice food ah that's beautiful because yamtif is itself beautiful and now you're reflecting it physically by having nice food but to do the reverse you're having nice food ah that's my umptive you understand the difference one is i'm physically manifesting the fact there's something spiritually valuable going on that's the good way the other way is i'm isolating the physical thing by itself and that itself becomes my cause for celebration so i'm celebrating what that i'm eating turkey i don't know i'm making a yamtiv out of the turkey no that's not what i do i eat the turkey because it's yamtif don't reverse the cause and effect so the kid's excited because he has money no he's excited because he learned a mission about and part of the way we show that excitement being manifest on a physical level that even the body and the animal soul can relate to is we give them money it's like a sudden mitzvah it's like a so this mitzvah that's when they make the prize the main thing and then you're right then it's not enough it's never enough they need a 10-speed bike and they need a scooter and they because they made the prize to get you and the point is that if you do it the way i'm describing eventually you'll wean them off the prizes because they will need it because they'll realize look the prize was just a way of showing of demonstrating even to my lower senses that this is a beautiful thing but it's not what makes it a beautiful thing it's like the balchemt of marshall about shabbos why we eat nice food on shabbos he said there was a prince on an island with savages and he got a letter from his father and he was so happy he wanted to read the letter from his father but he wanted to make it like a public ceremony but there were savages and the savages wouldn't even understand he didn't they didn't know the greatness of the king so he gave them food and drink and gave him a nice party and while they were partying because they had a nice buffet he whipped out the letter from his father and he read it so the basham dev said that every shabbos the king sends us our father the king sends us a letter shabbos is the letter it's a communication from from our loving father the king but the body doesn't realize that that's exciting so you give the bodies you know small tearing and you give it some some nice brisket whatever it is the body gets excited about but that's not why it's shabbos that's not what shabbos is that's just a way of involving the lower self and getting it on the same page with the truth so the same thing here like a smithsville was saying you don't learn a massage in order to eat a meal you learn a mustache because it's geshmak to learn and it's geshmaq to serve hashem it's geshmaq to have your dias and uh as a way of involving our lower selves so you also you make a meal to show that we're incorporating the body the animal soul but that's you don't learn the massage in order to have the meal and same thing with all these prizes the prizes are a physical manifestation of something that's already valuable on its own and if you treat it like that then you will wean them off of the prizes but if you treat it and because you believe that really the only reason a kid really comes down to cynicism if you believe if you're cynical and you believe the only reason a kid would learn toyota is in order to get a prize then that's the message they'll get and then they'll only learn paid in order to get a prize and then every year it's gonna have to be a bigger and bigger prize until finally there's hyperinflation and we can't keep up with their taste in prizes but if you teach them that these things in and of themselves are valuable attainments and they're so valuable that we're going to also include some physical aspect of celebration now you've done a very beautiful thing you've show what have you taught them you've taught them that really the spiritual and the physical are are aligned you've taught them that when they do the right thing that it ultimately work out for them you know like i was telling you before the rebels brachas often were coupled with asking someone to take on a new mitzvah and i said it before but i'll say it again what was that i've been doing like being like a a a broker for hashem like oh hashem wants more mitzvahs and you want more money so holland i'll get some mitzvahs from you and give it to hashem and i'll get some money from hashem and i'll give it to you no that's not what that's that's not what's happening what was happening first of all it's not that hashem wants mitzvahs and you want money hashem also wants to give you money hashem wants to give you spirituality and materiality the thing is they go together they go together so when the rebel would tell people you want a bracha take on a mitzvah it wasn't tit for tat it was saying look you have to open up the flow for blessing when good things come down in your life in a spiritual way because you're more connected then good things will come down your life also in a material way you're going to see blessings in your life it's not trading one thing for another because they're not two different things it's one thing it's just two levels of experiencing it so the chart is a low level but we use the chart because we we are souls and bodies and when you're in a body it helps to see a little uh star getting put on the poster because it makes it more relatable but the main thing is that the child should start from a very early age to see that the excitement is in the attainment itself what are you excited about and by they're learning from you what to be excited about what are you excited about and by transference what are they excited about is about the attainment that they've done something they've done something that gives hashem and because hashem made a world where the spiritual and the physical are aligned so when there's a good thing spiritually we make sure there's also a good thing physically shabbos is a holy day spiritually so we make sure we eat some nice food physically but it's it don't reverse the cause and effect that's the question okay one more real quick yeah um if it's a short answer okay i'm wondering how to teach kids to think that you're not you know your value is you know it's important but you're a struggle with that also um yeah so that's a big thing we speak about the course about giving over your value so the question is what if you feel like you yourself are struggling with certain values yeah age 30 i think everywhere yeah so how do you give over a value yeah get over yourself yeah yeah okay so why don't we focus because i want to wrap up so why don't i focus on this one aspect of the question because i think this question can go many many different ways let's just talk about about ammonia questions um so some people will say we never spoke about these things when we were kids i grew up i'm from i'm okay and i don't have the answers to these questions so i know some people i didn't say you say that i'm saying some people say that right okay a lot of people say that and an answer to that is okay you may be okay you may not need the answer but what if your child needs the answer now you need the answer because if your child needs the answer and you don't have it for them who are they going to go ask and i don't know what's worse that they find nobody to answer or they find someone smart to answer right smart scare quotes parents need to be deeply educated there's no way around it especially mothers and one of the things that i really really try to impress upon upon mothers is that because women for practical reasons are the primary educators of our children and their basic beliefs about life and about yiddish are formed in childhood really mothers even more than fathers have to have a very solid education in emunah because this is what the children are going to ask if there's questions that are beyond you that's fair that's fair but i said that's fair that's fair that's okay i mean like if you're going to say there are certain questions around but to say that fundamentally amount of questions are beyond me that you can't say you can't pass the buck um so you mentioned you're going to tanya class every week in in lakewood okay so you're doing something you're doing something about it right but then there's a certain question that i wonder okay we'll never know right and then like i'm just wondering so you're responsible even if and i know this isn't you but there are many people who are like this even if you're you're the type of person you say you know i'm a simple straightforward straight shooter you know i have these questions and i let them go and i move on okay that may work for you but if your child has these questions you have to have something intelligent to answer so i would encourage you that there's if there's anything that you're struggling with on a conceptual level to seek out answers for it as a parent meaning we know this about parenting parenting in general forces us all to be a lot more religious than than we would be on our own everybody knows that everybody knows that when when it comes to practical mitzvot observance when it comes to minhogen when it comes to any even little little things or for the kids for the kids we have to make sure okay and that's the way hashem set it up it's also when it comes to hashgaffer being a parent forces you to be on the top of your game when it comes to these deep ideas and there are things that you could have let go you could have lived without an articulate answer but because you're a parent now you're responsible to go educate yourself yeah so that's why by the way i say that really parenting like a parenting course like we did that's the tip of the iceberg really to really do parenting so you go to soulwords.org you learn the whole tanya and then you learn the whole shot of it then you learn all the weekly parsha classes because it's all parenting it's all parenting because anything your child may need to know from you is is parenting what's some basis what they've ever guided us to do when we're struggling with them or not you have to you you have to be a person has to be learning right but if it's a specifics education okay okay talking is a big one shy but talking is a big one yeah there's certain things but again that that's that's the cop out of saying well there's a certain level we'll never understand yeah but there's so much before you get to that point there's so much before we get to that point like specifically these things really really gives me gives it more clarity and makes it more real so that definitely guides and helps yeah i mean shot over talking is a big one you schwer got the famous answer that made me start the whole shot of the talking class people don't realize gyber talking is for parenting we have to be learning we have to be learning we have to be learning all the time okay i'm going to wrap it up over here and we should do this again