Practical Parenting Tip and Story From Rabbi Meir Stern - Rabbi Eli Karmel

When I was a baka learning in Payek, I was eating a shabasuda one week by the Shiva, my rebi mayor and I asked him that if you look around, it seems that there are kids that go off the d even from very good families. So what can I do to make sure that my kids won't go off the d? and his rebbitson heard the question and she was a little concerned that I was bringing up such an intense topic at a shabasuda. So she said to me, "What do you want? A five-word answer?" And he smiled and he said that the truth is that the correct answer only has five words in it and there's nothing more to add. Be nice to your wife. That is all you need to know. Right away the rabbitson asked him, "So, are you saying that Abraham wasn't nice to Sarah and Yitzk wasn't nice to Rifka? After all, they had Yeshal and Asov?" And he smiled again and he said that of course there are exceptions to this rule. But he said that from his own experience, he saw that in the vast majority of the cases that he dealt with, there was a clear lack of shell bias. And if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense because even though of course there are many other factors that can cause a teenager to want to rebel. But at the end of the day, no matter how many struggles and questions and tyus that a teenager may have, if your home has a happy, pleasant atmosphere in it, then of course there may be problems that need to be dealt with, but they will have no reason to even want to rebel. So, if you want to have extra good children, then make sure to go out of your way to be extra nice to your spouse. [Music]