Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parenting Class 44 Love Your Children! Express Your Love to Them! 2

If a child is respected and loved by his parents, he will be attached to them and no one will ever pull him in the wrong direction. And this view is partial because even after we understand the ever weakening power of the home, we still have not reached the root of the problem. The problem is not just that the home is too weak to hold the child in place but also and mainly that it actually distances the child. It pushes him away by not providing the love and the child needs love as food as air and if he's starving he's going to go elsewhere to look for sustenance. He needs love and we're not giving it to him. He will go to his friends to the street to the um cult leaders. So we are actually pushing the child away by not attracting him. It's like a magnet. If you turn the magnet the right way, it will pull. But if you turn the magnet around, it will push away. where the part of the magnet that doesn't pull it pushes away. This truth emerges very clearly from close analysis of the great many cases. In the vast majority of them, only after the child felt distanced from his home did the lure of the street exert its effect on him. Again, the child might once in a while make a mistake and temporarily go out to explore, but he will always come back. And when he comes back, the parent has a choice. I can either rebuke him, I can put him down, I can show him my disapproval, and thereby I will hurt him. I will take away the love and he will not feel comfortable and he will go back right away where he just came from back to the street back to his friends back to the desires or we have a choice when the child comes back from stumbling. We can hug him. We can embrace him, kiss him, love him. And the child will feel so bad that he ever let us down, that he did not imitate us, that he did not follow our path. He will see right away the difference between the street and home. At home he's loved. At home he's made feel good. And on the street it's fake. He will recognize it and he will stick to his parents. He will regret what he did. He will change his ways. But parents who look down at the child who made mistakes, they push him away. >> [cough] [clears throat] >> This is painfully clear to many of these young people themselves. And here he brings a quote. A known educational activist activist asked a group of troubled youth the following question. [snorts] You guys describe very convincingly how hard it is to break free of the streets pool. So my question to you is this. How can a parent help his kid overcome the street? What can I do to ensure that it will not happen to my children? It will not happen to your children. One child responded, "Why do you think it's not going to happen to my children?" Because I know you and I've seen you in action with your kids. You really love your kids. You hug them. You kiss them. And even though you are a rabbi, you're not embarrassed to play with them. Every time I was in your house, I was jealous of your kids. Your house is a dream. Anyone who lives in that kind of house doesn't need all the garbage of the street. We street guys are looking for something instead of that instead of the street. But nothing can match the real thing. An activist turned to the other boys. Do you guys agree with him? Would you also say that you dropped everything because you didn't feel loved at home? And they answered, "You're putting it too gently. It's not that they didn't love us. Our parents hated us." I can't believe that. I understand that some parents have a hard time expressing their love. But it's hard for me to believe that your parents really don't love you and they actually hate you. So the child said bitterly, then you are naive and out of touch. What do you say? He asked the third boy. I don't give a hoot about all this fancy talk about whether they really loved us but just didn't know how to express it or whether they didn't love us at all. I just know what I felt and I felt lousy. Actually, it's not that I felt lousy, but that I feel lousy. Even now that I have cut ties with my parents and make believe that I just don't care about them, I still feel lousy. The boy hesitated for a moment and then added, "I'll tell you the truth. Even today whenever I see a father hugging his kid I get tearary. I think that says it all. And unfortunately this is something that I have seen in so many kids. They wish that they their parents should love them but they're convinced that their parents hate them. And when I speak to the parents, they seem like very nice, polite, loving parents. But towards their ch children, all they do is just take care of their physical needs and tell them what to do and rebuke them. Why didn't you do this way? This is better. Why didn't you get aid? Why this? Why that? And the child, even though the parent does everything just for the child, the parent lives his whole life for the child, but the child is convinced that the parent hates him because they never expressed love. This report, just one of many, shows that a warm, loving, and supportive home atmosphere is the most fundamental basis for combating the problem of kids going off the of the dak means they leave the path of Torah, the path of Judaism. Why? Not because they don't believe in God, not because they don't believe in Torah, but only because Torah and God and mitzvot are are associated with their parents and their parents never showed them love and therefore they're convinced their parents hate them and therefore anything that's connected to the parents they cannot stand. An environment that provides warm bonds of deep stable love means more to a child than anything else. The child also realizes that only home can provide this need. This atmosphere is our primary protection against the street. As they say, you cannot buy love, you cannot buy praise or respect. And that therefore this is the greatest tool that parents have. More than toys, children need our love. More than vacations, our children need our respect. Of course, it does not provide absolute immunity against challenges, but it is unquestionably the primary basis for any effort we wish to make in this area. Without love nothing will work. Now our claim is not based simply on intellectual analysis but on facts. It is a fact that most of the kids who leave their parents way come from homes where where this sort of atmosphere was lacking. There was no love and respect, no warmth. It is a fact that almost all of these children who are troubled children attribute their personal failures to a sense of alienation and rejection and the resultant bad feelings. Every bad child will say he was forced to become bad by his parents hating him. It is a fact that only those families who later came around and granted these children the warmth and affection they craved. Trying to fi fill the void the children had suffered from managed to get their children back on track. at least to some extent to provide a clear and deeper understanding of these arguments. Let us take a look at the lure of the street. Wow. Now we will try to understand what is the pull that the bad company that the friends that the street that the entertainment industry offers our children. And therefore we cannot hope to protect our children from the bad influence unless our pull to our children is even stronger. And again, that can only be through love. Again, on page 304, um, the lure of the street. The following is an is a a quote of a parents letter. I understand the terrible temptations of the street, but I can't understand what a kid who can't get any of it is looking for out there. My son has no money and he wanders the streets for hours on end with nothing to do. Why does he prefer the street to home? Some parents say if I don't give my ch child money, they're not going to do bad things. And that is partially true. When we give our children too much, we give them tools to do bad things. However, don't think that if I'm strict and I don't give them money, they're going to stay home. No, they'll just go and do nothing outside of their home. Because even being homeless on the street is more pleasant than being at home where you feel that you're being hated.