Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parenting Class 46 Showing Love to Your Children will Not Spoil Them! Child

will happy atmosphere makes the child feel loved and valued. My parents are calm because they are in control. My parents are calm because they're happy with everything that's going on around them, including me as their child. A tense and pressured atmosphere makes the child feel rejected and unwanted. Even if the parent is stressed out because of his job, because of health issues, because of finances, because of relatives, the child doesn't know about it. And the child feels that I am the source of my parents being upset. Just like we if our spouse is upset, any normal good spouse will feel bad and will blame themselves. Why is my spouse sad? Why is my spouse angry? Why are they not in the mood? Probably I did something. So for a child it is a number one conclusion that if my parents are stressed or upset or angry, unhappy, it's my fault. They're not happy with me. I'm not good enough. This is an important principle. A tense and pressured atmosphere makes the child feel rejected and unwanted. A child enters the world with an egocentric perspective. They view the world as our sages say. The world was created for me. I am at the center of the world and Hashem places all the events around me for me to react. And if I see something, it's a message for me. And that's how the child looks at it. If someone smiles at me means that I am good. If someone frowns at me means I'm not good. If my parents are happy means I'm good. If my parents are not happy, it means I'm bad. Even though my parents have a thousand other reasons to be unhappy. The child believes that everything he sees is about him. And by the way, if a person does not grow up from his childhood, he continues believing that everything is about him and he sees people unhappy on the street and they he thinks they don't like me. He thinks people who talk quietly in the corner are talking about him. Everything is about him. An infant does not grasp that there is an entire world out there that existed before him and will continue to exist afterwards. A world of activity that has nothing to do with him and a world of people that know nothing about him and have no interest in him. More specifically, a baby doesn't understand that his parents existed before he was born and that they have a relationship with the world independent on him. His egocentric p perception dictates that everything about his parents revolves only around him. This is his mother. This is his father and that is the only connection between the two of them. They're not husband and wife. They're my father and my mother. selfish but natural. It's not bad. Something to grow out of. The same goes for anything else that may be taking place around him. If he hears a noise from outside, he's sure it is directed at him, either to make him laugh or to scare him. If he sees someone upset, he's sure that the person is mad at him. This perception changes gradually beginning from the age of about 3 or four and continuing until the child fully matures. But even then and even as an adult this perception does not entirely disappear unless he has a very well-developed self-esteem, a good understanding of his value as a as a human being. Otherwise, he will be dependent on people's opinions. Adults too will automatically tend to perceive reality this way to a much lower extent. The following letter illustrates this though to a bit of an extreme. When I see someone smiling near me, it makes me feel very good. Even when I know that the smile has nothing to do with me, I'm still happy as if it did, my intellectual understanding does not eliminate my deep feeling that everything is about me. And the opposite is true as well. Rabbi Israel Salanter once reprimanded a person for walking around with a somber expression in Elo. Now we're in Elo preparing forashan. we have to do touva and the person might say I have so many sins I have to walk around depressed and rabbi is salant told him just because you need to do tshoua why is it my fault you did sins and now I have to be suffering seeing your sad expression do tshoua in your in the private of your home but when you're outside smile and be happy because people think that if you're not smiling, you're upset at them, even if you just met them. Every self-aware adult knows that when he is deep in thought and then suddenly hears a laugh or a yell behind him, he is sure for a split second that it's about him. It takes an instant to realize that it's those other people in the world who live for themselves and aren't thinking about him at all. So I would suggest that you add in your booklet that this concept of ego centrism is not just about kids. It's a major part of the parents reality as well. If we parents would pay attention to how this works with us, it would be easier for us to understand that we're doing what we're doing to our kids when we walk around tense, irritable, and snappy. This understanding very much illustrates our point. The way the child sees it, the atmosphere in the home is directed specifically at him. If the father is stressed, it means the child is not good. If the mother is tired, it's the child's fault. a tense and unfriendly atmosphere at home makes him feel as if he's the one causing it and that the tension and unfriendliness is directed at him. On the other hand, a pleasant and happy atmosphere reinforces his feeling that the people in his life are happy that he is around. If a husband and wife are sitting and enjoying each other's company and they're laughing at the jokes they make and all of a sudden the child comes in, a smile will appear on his face. Why? He didn't hear the joke, but he sees his parents smiling and he thinks they're smiling because they saw him and he's happy. They're smiling because they just got the joke, but he thinks that they're happy to see him. The problem is that in today's reality this description of tranquil, pleasant and happy atmosphere sound more like a description of wonderland. Today life is characterized by pressure and stress, not by tranquility and pleasantness. Our reality is fastm moving and impatient. Financial concerns are a constant stress. Various issues and problems keep us anxious and aggravated and the day-to-day grind is all but unbearable. And u this is true also for husband and wife. If the husband comes home, the wife should make sure that she is smiling. Because if she's not because she just spoke to her neighbor and got into a fight, the husband will think that it's his fault. And if a husband comes without a smile, the wife will think that he's upset at her. So the the husband and wife must always be smiling at each other. Try it. This makes talk about serene and pleasant atmosphere sound completely unreasonable. It sounds like we have to give up. Impossible to be smiling all the time, to be happy all the time. The the goal is not to be smiling all the time, but the goal is to deepen our understanding of our personal reality and resolve to do whatever we can to enhance it. That uh the expression on our face affects our other people. It makes them feel good or not. And the goal is to find ways to minimize and perhaps eliminate educational problems that result from our expression that is not happy. The more tense and pressure the atmosphere at home, the more critical it is to express love because children feel negativity from the fact that we're not smiling and we have to overcome that negativity and convince them that we love them and that's going to be very hard. How do you love me if you're not smiling at me? Constantly expressing love openly and profusely is the only way to counteract the harm caused by a tense atmosphere. Of course, that's going to be more like apologizing. I apologize that I didn't smile at you. I apologize that I was stressed, but I do love you. Of course, it's much easier to smile and to be warm and pleasant to begin with. It is possible that in an ideal home, the child would not need as many reminders that he is loved and valued. He would absorb it from the atmosphere in the home, from the warmth he lives with all the time. If a child comes home and he sees parents who are happy all the time, whenever he comes, they're happy. He absorbs the message that my parents are happy to see me. So if you know your child is coming, maybe you should eat a snack before, maybe you should take a nap before, maybe you should shower before, maybe you should do exercise before the child comes so that when he comes you are energetic and happy. At least put a smile and say, "Hello, how was your day?" And then go back to your sadness. But at least that first moment when he sees you, be happy. Under such conditions where there is warmth and love which existed more commonly in earlier times, it might not be as necessary to pile on expressions of love so openly and directly and so often. Yes, our parents and grandparents did not express their love, but maybe they didn't need to because maybe they were not as stressed as we are. Maybe they were not as busy as we are. Today, however, the atmosphere around often conflicts with the child's sense of being loved and valued. That's the effect of the pressure and tension that per permeates our reality and society. This requires us to dedicate extra effort to repeatedly reinforce the child's sense of being loved through words, actions and other demonstration of affection. And now one more example. A known mash, the spiritual advisor in the yeshiva gave a a sh a class in which he told of a father who refused to hug and kiss his children because he heard that did not hug and kiss his children. The Mas related, I asked the father, why do you think the acted that way? I think the father said it's because he wanted to dedicate all of his love to Hashem. Just like we heard that when Yakov Au met Ysef, Yseph hugged him and kissed him and cried and Yakov didn't care. He was saying at that time so I want to be like to dedicate my love to God and no one else. So that's what you're doing. You are overcoming your overwhelming urge to kiss your children and thereby directing that love to Hashem. The father fidgeted uncomfortably. The mash added, "By the way, you said that you think that wanted to direct all his love to Hashem and that's why he didn't show his love to children, which means that you don't even know for sure that that's the reason. So, you're putting it into practice without even really knowing the reason for it or what it's meant to achieve." The father shrugged miserably. Listen, the mash said, "If you loved your children so intensely that you felt a burning urge to hug and kiss them, then overcoming the urge might be considered working on your character traits. And if that were the case, your children would probably not suffer any ill effects because if you were indeed experiencing such intense urges, they would be expressed in plenty of other ways. you wouldn't need to kiss and hug them. They would see it through and through that you love them. But that's not the case. You have no interest in kissing them. So for you, hugging and kissing them is a hashem. For you, hugging your child is God's will. You need to overcome your character trait and go ahead and hug them and kiss them. and instead you hide behind behind the and you fool yourself into thinking that your failings are your strengths. One of the people at the sh asked, "So if I do feel like kissing my kids, is it good for me to hold back?" The mash answered with a question of his own. Is losing your temper, and I mean really losing your temper, something that can happen in your home? The questioner gave a small nod. Do you sometimes yell at your children wrongly or lash out at them in a real display of anger? Does your home sometimes have a tense atmosphere? Another nod affirmed that these things had been known to occur. Do you think the kafetim's house ran in the same way? Do you think the kafetim got angry, screamed at his children? I guess not. Then that's the answer to your question. And that is the response to many rationalizations. It is the answer to people who beat their children, who punish them terribly for lying, who deprive them of openly expressed love. We discussed earlier that educational approaches cannot be transplanted from one home to another without without transplanting the full picture. If you see that in one house something works, it's only going to work if you create the same house atmosphere. People who reference earlier generations and the basis for their behavior today are ignoring the fact that they're raising their children in an entirely different world. We can and must draw our goals and objectives as well as our values and aspirations from earlier sources. The goals, the objections, the values are from earlier generation. But practical approaches must be analyzed from the perspective of current reality and must be made compatible with it. Now one short story my uncle told me about a woman who complained to the haz about the way her husband related to her. The husband justified his behavior, explaining that this was how his grandfather's house had run and that he wished to preserve the flavor of the old European home that had been lost in the Holocaust. And by the way, many of us say the same thing. My grandparents back in Usbakistan lived like that. My grandparents back in Morocco or in Hungary or in Poland lived like this. I'm going to do the same thing. The Kazunish responded, "Your grandfather also rode with a quill, not with a pen." And he traveled in a horse drawn wagon, not in a bus. So today's atmosphere demands us constant display of love expressed explicitly through words and actions in order to make our children feel loved and valued. And again the point of today's class is expressing love is a must. Treating your children with respect is a must. Creating an atmosphere of happiness where you show that you are happy with the child and you show that you are just generally happy because the child will interpret your general happiness as description of his value in your eyes. that general happiness is a must as well. And in today's class, we also understood that [clears throat] showing love cannot spoil a child. Saying yes too much is what spoils the child. Saying yes is a weakness. Showing love is a strength. Thank you for joining. Um this is the last class before Rosha Shana. Next class will be after Sukkot. So I want to wish everyone everyone should have a sweet and good new year and we should see only happiness from our children and our efforts should bear fruit. Thank you for joining. Uh, shalom.