Rabbi Dr Bentzion Twerski

sound quality good okay so welcome uh any first-timers here yeah okay mostly first-timers so i'll just drop about who i am and um what i'm doing here uh and my background is that i have a phd in psychology yeshiva talmud and my earliest days working in the field i wound up working with a lot of people with addictions gee whiz is a real big kiddush because my father was one of the notable people in the field working with addictions to drugs and alcohol and it it stayed with me that i have the sensitivity and the experience having dealt with it for a number of years after i moved to the new york area i worked in hospitals and outpatient programs and while i'm basically burnt out in terms of working for hospitals and and outpatient clinics uh but my sensitivity to the problems of addictions hasn't gone away uh it didn't gave me an opportunity to learn from my father an awful lot um when i moved here was in 1989 to to new york and i was probably one of a very limited handful of people who had any background in qualification to deal with problems related to drugs and alcohol while it was not something foreign to the adult population but it was something that uh was just beginning to get noticed with the adolescents that there were there were teens that were getting involved in drugs and alcohol and there were a number of things that took place in the those early years and one of the things was that it was very difficult to get somebody to be accepting about taking a teen to a drug rehab uh what about kosher food what about shabbos was going to help bring mikado of the kids and together with the entry of teens and kids into the addiction scene it wasn't just that they were involved with an addiction to drugs and alcohol but it was a little bit more than that they were getting involved in a lifestyle that lived in the streets so they were invariably getting thrown out of yeshivas they were invariably getting into the patterns of hanging out and doing things that are not exactly uh producing nachos for the parents and it really became a serious serious problem that was catching note of everybody yeshivas were were struggling with this and at some point there were enough kids being thrown out of yeshivas that the growth of what you want to label second chance meisters for both girls and boys mostly boys began cropping up um and then there were people who were trying to send the kids out of town whatever there were there were very very few people who were trained and experienced to deal with the addictions and frankly being having been trained i was not trained to work with the teen population and that's what was landing on my desk so i got to i i got to know the scene quite well and then of course you know the next the next step in my development was that uh i had on my list a number of parents who were struggling with problems like this uh what was interesting is that probably an average of about seven or eight out of ten of the parents struggling with the kid that was on the streets acting out today we have the labels otd those times we were talking about kids at risk then they they made a nicer name a more politically correct name kids in the parsha um today kids kips means kids in pain um but there were so the various labels that were given for and there was the opening of a program called mask that they have a table here and some of the staff is going to be here which became a a a system to provide support for the parents there's meetings on a weekly basis there's a monday night meeting a tuesday my wednesday night meeting has been going on for 24 years every wednesday night at 8 30. unless it's yanta for tishbo or something like that and i i i began i did not used to take off for hanukkah i began taking off for hanukkah because nobody was coming um and if i'm making hassana that week i take off this past year tishma was on a wednesday night and we for the one time in all the 24 years we moved the meeting to tuesday night because people wanted the meeting to happen in any case the bottom line is that there's there's that brought me into a place where i was dealing primarily with the parents and yes i had the teens coming through my office my practice today is far more centered around which is only private practice around working with couples and one of the things that stands out is that there's a there's there's an old call that i've i've i've i observed a long time ago that is that the stability of the child is directly related to the unity of the parents if parents don't have a solid unit this is a threat to the child the child cannot be com completely comfortable and stable and one of the things that that we've gotten to observe many many times is a kid who goes away to a rehab or a treatment program whatever they're going for the treatment for whether it's trauma the addiction or whatever when they come home what is the environment the avira of the home that they're walking into and these things this is this is a really important variable we've we've we've paid we've paid a lot of a lot of attention to this over the years and it's really really a critical thing to make the home a pleasant happy place i'm going to be a little bit arrogant okay the work in my home was to make the home a happy place um it had to it it had to be there there's a sizable family and today almost all my kids are married and you know granted the hashem enough good reasons why they should stay home to eat the siddhas and shabbos you know they're busy they have little ones they're all looking to come shabbos for us to see this why we worked hard to make the shabas see this into a fun place to be whether it's the title being short and interesting whether it's in entertaining discussions whether it's with the little kids i remember when my kids were little i would always stock myself with a couple of candies or taffies in my pocket and i'm sitting at the seed the shoppers and everybody you know the fish the soup they did and at some point i lift the candy out of my pocket from sitting there just holding it in my hand like this until the kids notice it oh toddy is hitting right i start tossing it around to here to there you gotta be careful you don't throw candies or this is left around but you know that i hide it here i hide it there it it it's fun and games but if that keeps the kids participating in a a shamastic environment right it's a critical critical piece and you know it's not a one-size-fits-all but the but the approach that you have to have something something uh that makes the makes makes your shabbos table and a pleasant place to be makes your home a pleasant place to be i nap shop this afternoon i finish bench and i take a few things into the kitchen and it's lights out i'm sorry the lights out my eyes are closed right my wife doesn't do that she's busy sitting in the living room entertaining entertaining whoever it is that's that's there whether it's the kids the sig equipment of the the the son-in-law is the the the daughter the daughter-in-law's the anticlock whatever it is all right she's busy she's busy doing that right we're going to miss that this job is broken she's going to she's going to mix and match and get what she has to out of out of being here chavez but it the the stability of the child has a direct relationship to the unity of the parents making the home a pleasant place to be when a kid will come out of a program where are they coming back to are they coming back into a place that has conflict in it that has strife that has actus that's the question and that's a that that's a that's that's an important piece that's much of the show and bias work that i'm doing now it's yes we need the parents to be happy with each other but has a direct direct impact on the children let me take some questions to see what you know how we can how i can contribute to helping your shabbos become a uh a gainful experience so let me let me give you a early history of mask the question is what do we do if a parent is divorced we know we now have a kid how can you make an environment when there's only a single parent there when mask began the first meeting was in ruhama's home you'll see her here over shabbas she made a meeting in her home in in in flatbush on a sunday night and jammed several dozen people into the place i don't remember the number the huge number of people there were politicians there were and there were parents of there were at this meeting there were eight parents who spoke to share what their experience was and they were these early days of cell phones they're driving around in their cars trying to find their kids where are our children and uh they're they're at playboy billiards they're at dunkin donuts they're at prime time they were in all kinds of different hangouts and sometimes they were hanging out on ocean parkway and avenue m on an avenue j on coney island and the parents were circulating in their cars and those mothers and when they shared their stories there were eight sets of parents no parents of eight kids were there seven of the mothers were were single or single divorced mothers one was both a husband and a wife and it became very oh i can't have an actress kid i have an intact marriage we now know that that's a that's a uh that's a myth but there there are divorced parents did the divorce contribute to this to the instability of the child maybe i do know that what will contribute to the stability of the child is having a healthy environment to come home to and guess what sometimes the healthy environment is a single parent it's a healthier it's a healthier option and it's a challenge it's a challenge because you because they're because there's a there's a father all in the home there's a mother all in the home the father role is is missing and we have to find what elements we need to add to that so we can compensate for that if a child is in an unloving environment the child is going to struggle and how much how much do children want to get back so that they're quote-unquote stable in in in in an unstable home so it's a it's a major challenge perspective i just want to say that nowadays i don't see a correlation between intact families or non-impact families correct and i think that sometimes you have a happier your parents are united it's it's like the apple falls off in the driver there's a huge wind and there are i'm finding other factors that play in the children uh choosing okay and and one of the things that we're going to actually be talking about a lot over shabbos and how do i know this because i've been here a few times already some of the other factors that stand out are things that that happen to a child their their events and their major events and in in short trauma and one of the things about trauma that we need to keep in mind we have these really we can have real elementary childish perceptions of what trauma is right so if a kid gets mugged in the middle of the street that's trauma kid gets molested trauma we see that there are many other events that are traumatic and it doesn't it doesn't necessarily you know there's no drama to it there's no flashing lights and police and and then and hot solely there's a lot of other events that can be traumatic to a kid if a kid gets embarrassed in school whether it's by another kid whether it's by a rebbe or a faculty member i'm absolutely absolutely beside myself when i see people using embarrassment and shame as a disciplinary tool i freak out like what where do we have the azas to assume that just because i'm a rebbe and this is the talmud that i have the right to be melbourne panerai what what authorizes me to do that it it just it it incenses me greatly and yet you're going to find a lot of people but but that's what the kid needed how do you know that's what the kid needed tara says you can't do that you should know that the gamora about melbourne pine creva explains why what so what's what's the what's the availa of embarrassing somebody publicly so the gomorrah says the person turns white his blood flows away from his face right and that the gamora says is tantamount to the secret to murder right it's killed it it's kayla we murdered that child the rambam when he passed when he has it brings the mountain he says and we and if the subject the victim of this of this of this public shame it makes no difference if it's an adult or it's a child now that's i it's rational because murder for a child is you know somebody murders a child it's still it's still a cersei but it's just because the reasoning is there but the ram says the is there rebbe is not allowed to publicly embarrass a child he loses kylie karl haber for that so these these are these are traumatic events that have major impact there's even you can even find we might term soft trauma okay a class gets split up into two parallel classes and the impression is this is the better class this is the we class this is the olive class this is the base class right the kids aren't gonna may not refer to it that way this is the smart class this is the stupid class all right and there may be reasons why kids get assigned to this one versus that one a kid that's put into the stupid class and feels he shouldn't be there can be traumatized by that now again no flashing lights no no no hot solo or police sirens but the kid can be traumatized there's all sorts of events that can lead that can leave a kid in a situation of trauma i grew up in pittsburgh my class throughout grade school was comprised of eight tell me them [Music] at least the upper years from fifth grade or not there were eight kids in the class it's out of town that's what that's what that's what you get um and we spontaneously had a share that we used to get together and learn every shop this afternoon and we take turns to go to this one's house that one's house you know we learn for half an hour an hour we play the rest of the time um then we go home for uh manchester and one day one of the guys comes over to me one of my classmates and he says we're kicking you out of the shear don't come to the shoe this week now they did that to somebody else and me and him would get together every shot this afternoon and it was perfect you know it was the two of us having your own little thing we we both figured out how we're going to compensate for being thrown out of the chair had we not had that that could have been a traumatic event i was rejected by my peers simple rejection hurts so this is these are these are the we're we're going to be talking over shabbos a lot about trauma right and be aware that that there are no hard and fast rules about how people react to it you might not you might not as a matter of fact there are people who are trauma victims that carry the trauma with them for years and years and years before they ever before it ever rises to the surface anybody who's who works in the mental health field all right once we've been around a couple of years you've had cases where something winds up getting disclosed years and years later i'm just flashing back though i had a case that was um where a young woman came to me this is in pittsburgh days so it's like way over 30 years ago and um what brought her in was a it was a physical symptom that was not you know it wasn't it was not amenable to treatment with with medication she did the medical route so she comes my way and what winds up happening was that you know i i i smell the rat now i'll tell you i'll tell you exactly how i smelled it this is not the first time that i've seen this but it was it was very dramatic i'm trying to help her relax to be able to reduce the anxiety that triggers the medical symptom and she's relaxing for like a minute or two now i'm sitting in my office chair over here she's six feet away with the books from a decent sized office six feet away in a on a recliner and i'm talking her through this relaxation exercise and in in a blitz she's on her knees in front of me gripping onto my knees saying help me help me help me nothing happened to her there's something going on in her kepler and we need to figure out what this is fine got her back into her chair and from that time on i did not do relaxation exercises with her until months later we needed to try to identify mahalekpo what's going on now there's a phenomenon called relaxation induced anxiety right now it sounds it sounds like it's a it's like a contradiction people who begin to to relax and suddenly kablooie figure they they have a spike of um of anxiety it it's a major event for them what happened you know and and some people have trouble sleeping because of this now what what what the what the experience of this is is that this is not a common but when it does happen it's an indication of trauma now the kind of trauma may might might matter as to how it converts into a symptom like this but let's just let's just follow a some logic over here this individual when she began becoming relaxed at some some historical point in time was violated and was attacked and was traumatized she now does not want to let herself get relaxed because in a relaxed state she can't protect herself this is what the logic is and that when you find relaxation induced anxiety you can doctor google this if you if you choose to you'll discover that these are all cases involving molestation rape trauma it makes sense and in fact we i began trying to talk around to find out what's going on then i had another another another tip she's a young adult she was in law school or something at the time and i decided you know let me get some history from her but i had this inkling that i need to do the history carefully not because i'm necessarily looking for a specific marker but she grew up this is a non-jewish woman in a military family her father worked for the her father was in the military and he kept on moving around from one from one army base to the next or military whatever whatever remember which branch of the military he was at but he kept them moving from one one one fourth to the next which meant that they relocated approximately every year every two years and when they relocated she had to go to a different school so i decided you know what let's call her carol i don't know what her name was carol when you who was your your teacher when you were in second grade oh mrs jones okay was your teacher when you're in third grade oh mrs smith how about fourth grade can't remember you where'd you live when you were in fourth grade i know that between here and here you know she had to do the math to figure out where she lived when she was in fourth grade um it's and there was a gap of about two to three years that she could not remember the name of a teacher but you remember teachers from before that and she was a full year with those teachers during whatever fourth fifth and sixth grade she could not for the life of her remember that was a that was that was a that was a red flag she blotched out it's as if somebody you know you highlight a couple of lines on the on the uh on the on the database and you hit the delete key and it goes into the recycle bin it's out of sight right and it was it was just it was it was a very it i made a note of it i said okay if i'm looking for trauma because i'm seeing relaxation induced anxiety that's where i got to go and it took quite a while we did hypnotic work for a couple of months and we discovered what had happened right but it it was hunting around she had no conscious memory of any traumatic event that happened and if it would not have been uncovered in a hypnotic trance she would have never should have never have never might very well have never come back into her conscious mind so he recognized trauma causes immense brain changes but that does not necessarily mean that you can put somebody in front of you who's gonna who can tell you exactly what that trauma was a lot of times it gets blocked a lot of times it just gets put away so it to where it's dormant and it goes slowly somewhere and it it's it's difficult to access but it's a very remarkable thing what what comprise uh the list of uh symptoms from trauma it's a huge list a huge list and we what what it tells us on this is when we're listening to somebody we're hearing about it somebody that's struggling a kid an adult you always have to have the question in your mind is there a traumatic event that made this happen maybe not but you always have to ask that question more questions please i drop louder i'm over 40. you mentioned about the shabbos table my question is what about the child who's no longer coming to the shops table they're in the room probably on its phone um she'll come down let's say it's because she's hungry for the shabbos meal so when she comes down and try to engage with her okay so i'm going to give you i'm going to give you some general ideas rather than a specific prescription because the specific prescriptions people would have to know a whole lot more before they started and then of course how much of this is us telling you what to do more or less we do a better job of telling you what not to do um there's an approach that in tp we hear we talk about this a lot but it really needs to be spoken about by everybody and that is that we will do far more for our children by being inviting than by being directive if we're going to take the stand of being instructional telling our kids what to do we're putting ourselves into a bind let me let me explain briefly what that is uh most of us went through eighth grade with some secular courses okay and in in one of the one of the science classes i can't remember sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade whatever it was i mean i had more in high school but there was a scientist by the name of isaac newton isaac newton came up with three laws of physics now a law of physics is not one that you vote on and it's not one that you can repeal and it's not one that you can break the law it's just this is how things are so one of one of newton's laws is is gravity now he wasn't handish that right they wish they created the world and there's gravity you hold something here you let go of it it's going to drop down one of newton's laws i don't i don't know what newton called it okay i don't know what the the the science books and then the physics books call i remember what the name is but it's for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction now i'm going to assume that almost everybody in the room if not everybody everybody has been on an airplane at least once now what makes an airplane move the wheels on an airplane by the way when it's on the ground don't are not connected to an engine there's no motor there there's no motor connected to the wheels the wheels basically hold the thing up so it doesn't scrape on the on the ground what the what makes the aircraft move is the engines that are powerful enough that the blast of exhaust that comes out of the back pushes the plane forward so if you have an airplane here here's an airplane engine you turn it on it blows out right the the exhaust this way and it makes the airplane go that way right now you gotta do that with enough with enough pressure it makes the airplane go fast enough so that it lifts off the ground etc etc um that's one of newton's thoughts for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction now that's physics now let's talk about emotion let's talk about how people behave and one of the things that we'll discover is that if you become confrontational you are going to be met with resistance right now we can bump into each other in the hallway you can say we can chitchat if i'm going to start getting confrontational with you right you're going to automatically become defensive right it's just natural if we're going to do this with our kids we're going to get exactly what we asked for we're going to get the reaction so if you you have to be at the shabbos table from kiddish until we finish benching you're going to get the kids putting up with us about that why because you're making them do it you're being forceful if you're going to be forceful you're going to get an equal and opposite reaction i want to do the opposite so here's now if you say don't you dare come to the shabbos table um they might they might actually do it you don't want me here okay i'll show you i'm here but you don't want to play that game it's paradoxical it's it's it's you're saying the opposite of what you mean the way in which you get your kids to the shabbos table is you be inviting and when they're ready they will come now we're not talking about having a shopper's table that's going to have conflict as as the main as the main course but we're talking about you make it an inviting place when they will be there for a couple of minutes you make that experience pleasurable for them um let me give you an outside parallel there's a yeshiva of the chakras at 7 30 every morning and there's a book of pointless kalumaishi maishi comes marching into the bismad dish that started chakras at 7 30 with his filling in tow and he walks in and at 7 45 what is likely to happen to this to moshi in all odds is there abby or mashkirk or somebody there that's going to come over to him after davening and say i'm going to find you five dollars for coming late too chakras what's going to happen i'll go home i need five dollars and gives it to the rabbi and he's off dook right the problem with giving these negative consequences is that they teach nothing and what's all that all that's going to happen is that you know he might try to protect himself so he's not going to do it again right or he might find a a a less limited source of funds and he's gonna do whatever he he feels like the point is that that we're missing a terrific opportunity the opportunity is not about about can we punish him enough to keep him in compliance because compliance is not the name of the game what what we're interested in doing is giving him a reason why to come to chakras on time and if we want to approach this from from a from a hindu perspective i want this kid to look forward to davening at 7 30 every morning if i make phyllis something that he wants to do he wants to have a a helicopter he'll be there now why why why is he not there once in the eiffel is because a kid has trouble always trouble waking up that's the exception to the rule the bigger rule is what am i doing there why do i need to do it because you made a rule that i got to be there they're not makshafts filler they don't understand it and so it's i mean they're not unfamiliar with it but it's like what are we doing so i have to stand here for 45 minutes and babble away what it says in the city and then go out and go out and eat and eat and eat breakfast there's no that there's no there's no meaning to him what you really need to do with a kid like that is sit him down and and have him understand better carry in to carry to him the messages of what phil is how how how geshmark is i'm going to talk about this on on sunday trill is a gift a guy doesn't have it the nachos was told that he's going to the doctor he's going to he's going to eat he's going to eat the awful call you may call him a high of why because he has to turn to darwin to be able to have what to eat david says i don't want to hear him leave them over there no sound crawling you can you can you can you can crawl the dirt so the point is that what we're that that we have filler is a gift gaucher says come talk to me three times a day i want to hear from you do our kids see that if they don't then why do you expect them to come to show on time what for that doesn't mean anything right do we feel that our tillers matter that if i dive in for something the device to hear is the chiller devices macabre the chiller do we hear that do we teach our children you know so-and-so is going through a a sober daven have them in mind do we make conversation with our kids do you do you uh you dive in every day what do you ask for what's what do you consider important right do we do that several years ago more than several years ago it was at the time of mister convention there was a workshop that somebody gave you he identified himself i can't remember the name he was a ninth grade rebbe and uh she was somewhere and he begged his menal i want to give a share on the filler after three years they said okay you can give a share for like one hour a week he said it's nowhere near enough he said we're not we're not altering the curriculum for for anything else how can you in one hour a week makes philip something sweet and geshmak he has a he has a classroom of 25 books how do you do it and among other things i mean he taught them the structure fill of this room the zimmer comes from and yeah he went through all that then he said boys listen to me you're going to adopt it three times a day you can dive three times a day anyways and you know very well that everything that we're going to have in life is what the ambitious is going to give us and we doubt it so that we can get it but guess what there are things that you want that you would want davis to help you with put them into your trill everything you're not in shamanism three times right when you dive into chakras there's nothing wrong there is a ninth grade class with saying we're finding a place in shipment essay it's quiet you can say it in any language you want fill in the mirrors you know it doesn't have to be lotion kind of and all you have to do is to say god i got a history test this afternoon help me get a good grade and that sounds awfully stupid but it's not because it's important to that kid that they get a good grade on his history test circle says that it fits into the book all right so somewhere over there they say god history test good grade please then go on to the next book everybody's going to have something somebody may have an ingrown toenail right prone to get ingrown toenails by the block of reference asked abrasion to help you out with that what's the what you've done is you've personalized filler and filling now matters to this kid that's precious that's precious but that's the kind when when we will be mahana our kids by making them find geshmach in learning in davening in in the shabbos table you know in the whole the whole spectrum of tiger and mitzvahs we will have them now what's sad is that the the way that the community the trend of the community is not to do that we're busy disciplining we're busy figuring out if you're going to break the rule you're going to go outside of the boundaries then there's negative consequences some years ago i found the website for a yeshiva out of town and they had in the the on the website there was an an admissions tab so it had all these the forms that they have to fill out the the registration form and the medical form and the education history for there was a document there the parents had to read and sign and the document was called reward and discipline policy and it was three and a half pages saying if you do a you get suspended for one day for two days for three days basically the criteria of what the yeshiva has to meet in order to expel the student and throw them out and then there was a paragraph on the last page that if the kid gets enough points positive points for doing this and this and this they can be eligible to become student of the month and i'm looking at this and saying god almighty what is wrong here we're we're we're spending clearly seven eighths of our kayak right trying to throw kids out compliance they have to follow the rules make the learning and the target mitsubishi and welcomed by them and then you have them the stuff that we're imposing on them and we're pushing them to do is the stuff that they're going to resent it's the stuff they're going to say just leave me alone let me be i don't i want them to be but i want them to find geshmach right did you ever give any of your kids when they were little a kind of a nosh that they were not familiar with and the kid doesn't want to taste it they don't want to they don't touch it and but it's good taste it tastes i i don't want to i'm scared of it i don't know what it is right our topic we're dealing we're not i'm not talking about doing this with a a a uh a one-year-old kid but we're talking with kids that app is a little bit of an an ability to reason they do have expose them to the geshmak gesture except for benching and except for the did our children ever see us cry during davening think did they ever see us approached philla as an emotional thing my father aloha described as a it's one of his books but i remember when he came back from um saying that he had seen this he was by the castle probably in the late 60s and when he was there he sees that there's a little entourage coming a few people and there's an elderly man who was obviously um blind and he's being held on both sides by probably family members and they brought him to the castle and he comes up to the castle and he puts his hands on it he kissed the castle he couldn't hold the toilet in his hand because he was blind he couldn't see it and he says if you can pick look tell him and then he starts talking and he starts to say you know i need this and i need that and so and so needs this and so and then he stops him and he says anybody didn't get it sorry i said that already yesterday i my father stepped back is what the man is talking to the ubanishalam directly face to face right do you know what what an impact the scene like that can have right when our kids see that this is an opportunity phil is an opportunity for us to talk to the ubunishly alum and interact with him and connect with him directly it's precious right what what more is there once once once we feel that kind of connection we're good we don't need to vape on shabbos we don't need to to to to to text anybody friday night who needs that i have shabbos but are we making shabbos into don't dis and dump that and don't something else yes there are llama tes melojos and a whole bunch of you know all this and told us yeah there's plenty of restrictions but the restrictions are in the context of shams being a gift it's a beautiful gift right are you aware that when you eat the best machola manchabas the ibishda has tainic from that you say it you say they say it in a positive we say it by kidding hashem right maybe we should get signing i ate the giggle where does abhishek get the ironic from davis says no no my children are enjoying themselves we have timing for that do you ever play with your baby on the floor right you play with the baby your cha-cha aha cha-cha and told the baby laughs till the baby smiles okay who's having enjoyment then the child is obviously laughing and giggling but the parent is that's shabbos right can we can we convey that to our children yes enjoy shabbos the geshemaki you have shabbos is going to give the abish hashem said before it's a different mindset don't do this on shabbos don't do that enjoy shabbos okay i think it's time's up because we have something else in the program thank you for listening and thank you for participating in bez hashem i'm here and bother me