Madraigos Parenting Event

good evening we're gonna be starting in five minutes everyone can please take their seats yeah oh good we can see you if everyone could please take their seats please good evening just a request please that people turn off their cell phones put them on silent so we shouldn't have any disturbance welcome everyone to the a parenting matters second lecture night series I'd like to thank everyone for coming and joining us on this most important topic I'd like to take a quick second to acknowledge the event sponsors tonight cross river bank and taro college for understanding with the foresight and understanding the depth of the issues of today and partnering with us recognizing that parenting is a struggle for all of us in one way or another and it's so meaningful that we have such sponsors that understand this and want us to be able to learn and grow from it we also have sponsors in the firm for the program tour any time and thank United gotta get a bagel printing seasons and the five towns calm we're very appreciative for all your support and help in making this event tonight no no successful program works without a very successful staff and I'd like to just take a minute to recognize some of the most wonderful staff members who have worked tirelessly putting this event together and it took quite some time I'd like to acknowledge and thank mrs. riff Kalakh and this is Sharon gross for all their tireless work and devotion and this this idea of this topic was really formulated by an individual who is now the clinical director at my Drago's and we're very grateful to all her work on a daily basis with the tremendous crisis issues that we're dealing with and also with the tremendous prevention and help with finding preventative ways to help families in our community and that's mrs. Mindy or Glaus key extremely proud of her efforts and our hard work we have a ongoing parenting series of groups that go on on a regular Monday night and we're already up to our fifth group and basically it's a group of parents that come together to share and be methodical one another and also to learn from professionals that could give them tremendous guidance and support and not only is this formulated group or go on le'ts for a few months and then it stops but it continues going once a month in a representatives home so we're very proud of that concept of not letting go but continuously working with these families and that is mrs. rina Kutner and mrs. Ricky Rosen Walden we're very appreciative for all their monsieurs nefesh and hard work to help us help our families help our community grow and learn together the actual parenting series and parenting work also has a big credit of the clinical directors of my drago's that are not here anymore but I want to acknowledge them and their service and their tremendous work is mrs. Connie Delmon and mr. le broman and my drago's has within it very wonderful and special therapists in our community that give up their time and their professional work to help the Clow and I want to recognize them that have been there and instill on an ongoing basis and that usually the unsung heroes that are not acknowledged and I want to take this opportunity to just listen them by name mrs. Hani Delmon mrs. Lonnie Schick mrs. Talley area mr. Gabriel Fagan mr. penny Farkas dr. dolphin Minh mrs. Esther goldstein dr. Deb Hirsch horn mrs. Raphael low injure mrs. Talley Moskowitz mrs. Randy Tanzer mr. Alexander man mrs. Hana runoff and dr. Deborah Rosenberg this evening is dedicated Lulay knishmas firstly rabbi barrel wines wife that recently passed away so it's a poem mural allow Sean Basara Baraka lady and also for dr. Paul Cohen says father so he notes at a club roughly I just passed away I rather follow been arrived at frying then the show most should have an Aliya the theme of tonight is parenting then and now and I think that's one of the most common questions that we hear in the office why is it that things changed my parents didn't have to do that we never seen that before why aren't things changing why is it necessary to come up with new concepts and new ideas and the truth of matter is it's not clear and it's not so simple and there's not just one easy answer especially when it comes to something as our children parenting our children what more of a portent tasks do we have in this world and to give our children the Hydra education responsibilities so we want it to go very far and very deep to the absolute to people that could give us this perspective of then and now before I introduce our first speaker rabbi wine I just want to Rabbi krupka is here if you could just join us I'd like to say a parent to Hill him for some of the Hold'em that are in our community and and around and there's a lot of tourists going on and I think it might be a tremendous horse for the community hall and if we could just say a quick Eric to him I'm sorry I didn't ask you beforehand but if that's okay that's great if you could please stand and join me possible plastic Shira Milo's me mama came cause he hardly know I'm the uation mark Achilli Tia knows never cashew baryshnikov know in my bonus dish well you're hardly know me I'm Kim fastly for the Monty vivere QVC I do like you so knife shave a little high faulty now if she laughing like me show me love okay show him love okay yeah tell you soil allowing no he came out you know you have had a debate money for those [Music] the holy if that's you smile me call every night so severe harvest a mile from his screen wish and outer stumble you're vertically raffia hold him and his Karan poem mission are sooo cool enormous pollen barber and viscacha Kadesh brother malli rifle male him leaving La Paz I'm lucky awesome the yesh lach Elohim made or foolishly Menasha Wrangler mafia very very him wishes soggy day in be so sure Hurley Sorrell the fourth and that fish to the Forester good harsh the Vagos man career and I'm our main I I had asked the staff if they could please print out for me the tremendous bio of rabbi wine and and I honestly it was so impressive and so much that I think that just by me saying that I was just so overwhelmed and so inspired that it's really incredible and the plastic says in devarnè in the Shiraz ozzie new says shall avi fovea get because akane fov young ruler that we really have a responsibility to know what happened and what took place and rabbi wine is the pioneer of that and for us to understand what to do today we need to know what happened before and what and she calls it showers Cana huh Rashi on the sips if a common Rashi says that these are the shaman the wise man that could tell us and give us direction and give us a a path because if you don't know where you came from it's very difficult to know where to go so it's a great Swiss for us tremendous honor to call upon rabbi wine to address us the sea thank you very much good evening I noticed that ma Drago's provided a notebook here for dr. pallets and myself and it says parenting matters and it's a substantial notebook the only thing is that every page is blank so I think that part of my task is at least to fill out one of the blank pages as to what once was now I'm not a believer in the good old days because the good old days weren't so good there's a sense of nostalgia always regarding the past the errors are forgotten that the weaknesses are forgiven and our memory chooses to remember what we positively wish to remember nevertheless there is no question at least to me as I view my grandchildren trying to raise my great-grandchildren you know they look at me and one of them said to me overpay sup elders ad how come you look so old and I said ask your parents there's no question to me that it's much harder today and the reasons for it are many a few of which I wish to discuss I was born basically I my childhood was at the end of the Great Depression in the United States and of the Second World War and my adolescence was of the period after the Second World War when the survivors gained and when the State of Israel was created those were seminal events in the lives of people who lived then you could not escape them in fact as a child I remember that one of the first words that I could repeat in English was the word affidavit because my parents were struggling to obtain affidavits to try and bring my uncle and aunt and cousins from Lithuania to the United States which they were not successful in doing and I grew up at a time I went to public school till seventh grade there was no Jewish school in Chicago but when you went to public school in my day there was a separate entrance for boys and for girls from kindergarten onwards and the culture of the school which was basically Protestant religion was not antithetical to much of the culture that existed in our home and in our neighborhood which was 100% Jewish at that time and therefore people did not feel that there was a clash between the public school and between the home or between the general society and the Jewish society now this had very negative implications as well because it led to assimilation it led to the confusion that somehow the general culture was our culture that their goals were our goals but on the other hand that made it much more easy to use of a word to raise a child because there was discipline in the school because of the fact that the value system that was taught in the school was fairly identical to the value system of Jewish tradition and of the Jewish home and that was an enormous difference between them and now because now one can hardly think of exposing one's child to the general culture which to a certain extent is self-destructive in the extreme when I grew up believe it or not Jews did not have money and what I mean did not have money I meant they did not have money and no one dreamt of vacations trips if the yes you but they got a hat and a tie for your Bar Mitzvah you wore it to your wedding because there was no second one people simply didn't have and the struggle of the Jewish parent then was that my child should have what I don't have and the tragedy of how that generation was that in trying to give their children what they did not have they neglected to give their children what they did have so everyone immediately from the time you were a child onwards you had to plan out your future because no one was gonna support you no one could support you the reason that people credit the existence of : Lehmann America as though that were the great educational Discovery Coulomb came because there was money when there was no money there couldn't be a cola no matter how devoted you were to the cause of Torah study so that was one major difference and we grew up and knew that there was no money and therefore we had limited expectations I never expected to own a home I never expected even the drive an automobile of my own because my parents didn't and nobody else was there that either there were exceptions but the basic Jewish world certainly in Chicago where I grew up we all had very limited expectations and we all expected that we would have to make our way by ourselves and that was a mindset and that mindset was the discipline that our parents did not have to enforce upon us no one had to tell you to do your homework because you knew if you didn't do your homework you weren't going to get a good mark if you think at a good mark you want to get into school you weren't gonna be able to go to university you wouldn't have a chance to someday own a home or drive an automobile so that what that's an enormous difference because as today's world is a world of affluence never in the history of the Jewish people to my knowledge and I'm never wrong has the Jewish people as a whole possess the wealth that it possesses today the material comforts the ability to enjoy life which is so ironic because very few people do enjoy life in the world the vamps luhan's the challenge is far different than the world of poverty because how to say that Gomorrah says Yoanna you slowly Israel the Jewish people do better when they are poor than when they are wealthy and to a great extent that is the problem that we are dealing with now i dont preach poverty and god forbid I don't want to go back to that time when the my colleagues and I in the yeshiva started to search for a mate at the start to go out so five of us geniuses pooled our resources to buy one good tie and we would arrange our social life so that I would be available and it was a countess Mara tithe $25.00 then Wow it was as ugly as could be but I so my ruse I remember one Sunday morning that we had a truce at 6:00 in the morning to learn and I knew he had gone out with this girl the night before and he was very interested in her and when he came to learn in the morning I saw he was slightly depressed and I said to him what's wrong then what happened and he said she told me she went out with this tie once before that doesn't happen today that does not happen today and that's a major major difference in background another difference is that today in the United States in the main it's very acceptable to be a Jew you can be a nominee for vice president and be a Sabbath observer you can be a Jew you Candace pyre to anything which again is a great contribution but on the other hand is fraught with all sorts of dangers in my time and past generations here in the United States I'm not talking about Europe I was born in Chicago that what America never had official anti-semitism as the European countries have had but America had them to a certain extent still has social political economic anti-semitism and because of that therefore to a great extent to put it not so nicely we all knew our place we did not expect that somehow we would ever run for Vice President we did not expect that somehow a Jew would be the chairman of DuPont chemical we didn't expect that Jews would be as publicly wealthy and influential and political as the current generation is and that also is part of the challenge most of American fury has failed on that challenge absolutely failed because of the fact that the general culture has become their culture and the general value system has become their value system and what taurah has to say whose Torah what our aware tolera the people of the book don't know what book you're talking about that was not true in my time but as society changed when I saw it already in the 60s and the 70s as society changed and the Jewish attitudes changed that situation also began to change and then there was a question of Education in the 1940s the day school movement was begun I remember in Chicago where I was I had just finished sixth grade in the public school and he opened up a junior high school then it was called the Chicago Jewish in chaotic it was co-ed my classmate next to me was the Nova Minsky Rebbetzin and neither she or I would admit to it publicly and the school never charged tuition I remember that have a saxophone Allah Rosa who was one of the founders of the school would go to homes and he didn't go most homes were not Sabbath observant they were Jewish but not Sabbath observer they had to work on Saturday and he would say in the words of the Commish tain Leon M fish give me the child don't worry about paying you don't have to pay I went through 12 years in the yeshiva without ever paying a nickel in tuition they were ball about them in Chicago that somehow paid for it it's a different attitude the attitude was someone we have to save the Jewish people the only way to save the Jewish people to save Jewish children the only way to save Jewish children is to give me Jewish education and the rabbi's in Chicago my father included spent a majority of their time raising funds for the Jewish schools so that Jewish children would have a Jewish education now I'm not here to discuss the tuition crisis but it is a crisis way out of hand it's not what the I again I can't speak for God other rabbis can but I can't but I don't think that that's what the Torah had mind so it was a different attitude was also an attitude that you were willing not only willing you were absolutely convinced that you would take in any Jewish child and do the best that you can with each and every one of them and that was a world we didn't know from all of the things that go on today and again I'm not saying that was right but I'm just filling in the page you know all my years in school I never knew anyone that was a DD but there must have been a lot of them generally the attitude was the teacher was right the Rebbe was right the parent would never take the side of the student I'm not saying that that's correct but you did not have the interference which exists today in the school system of parents of donors see I can say all it is because I'm going to Jerusalem Tuesday but I think it should be said where victims are our own success we've corrupted ourselves and therefore that attitude existed and that attitude immediately force toward a certain discipline and the students because they knew that no one was gonna come and back them out and we got a very good education looking back at it had a wonderful education we used to when I was in tenth grade we learned fifty block Gomorrah Incubus bein from silk'n stop asa and we thought that's the way it's supposed to be because they're every demanded that of us there a was a wonderful person but no one set such goals today and if they do they are rarely realized so it was a maybe it's a bubble in history now there are those were problems there always were people at risk we didn't have hundred percent success in the yeshiva and didn't have hundred percent success anywhere but generally speaking those that chose to hang on were able to hang on most chose not to hang on my father's shul in Chicago was a big shul on the west side so they had to minyan him on Shabbos morning they had the Haskalah minion said over 750 men that attended that minion and then they had the regular minion another 750 men at nine o'clock so I as a child I used to go with my father to the 9 o'clock minyan once he saw all of these other men leaving the show from the first menu and I said to my father daddy where did what happened who were they because I was unaware my father did answer me only later in life I discovered that the first minion you know today - hush , minion is where God prays but then that scum a minion was if you were gonna work on Saturday and you have to take the trolley to work but you wanted to dive him so you went to the high school a minion you went out from shul then you took the trolley and you went to work most of those Jews lost their children because somehow that couldn't be navigated they did not produce another generation of hosh coma mignon of that ilk or perform but that because what was evolved and there was one other major difference they spoke about anti-semitism I mean on the street you know the non-jews would call you names or they would beat you up that was expected you didn't expect to go through life without being called a and there forth there a certain that sense had built up a defense mechanism within you and the defense mechanism was oh I have something that they don't have and again a great sense of Jewish self-identity which today doesn't exist and the major difference there was the creation of the State of Israel in 1946 when the refugees began to trickle into Chicago remember rabbi oshri came to our home to tell my father how his brother and his wife and the little children were executed publicly by the communists in 1940 in Lithuania before being counter-revolutionaries every house casualties everybody lost somebody the Holocaust was not a museum it was personal it was real and we did have to say never again because we believed it could happen again and the che gets that threw a stone at me she gave him a gun who knows that was our mindset and then along came the State of Israel with all of the miracles and ups and downs an unbelievable story and it reinvigorated us when I was in public school the Scots him used to holler at me go back to Palestine so we were the Palestinians I don't know how we lost that title along the way but it gave us back boat after the six-day war you could wear a yarmulke in the street State of Israel allowed us to raise children in an openly Jewish fashion and it became a focal point of our lives amazed when I went to public school there was a patriotic statement regarding the United States was something which today you're almost embarrassed to say my country right or wrong my country today my country better be right according to my standards otherwise it's not my country so Israel's not my country it's socialist or it's not socialist it's religious it's not religious it's belligerent that's not belligerent it's not my country and children sense that and all of the flags and programs as wonderful as they are cannot change that inner feeling the inner feeling that Eastern European Jews had regarding Gerrits the soil and regarding the Jewish people I remember that on May 14th 1948 Friday night when I walked with my father to show but my father who was not an especially emotional person publicly there's the quintessential Lithuanian Talmud Sultan he wept every step but away I was amazed what is he crying about but he was crying about the whole 2,000 years about what it means to be a Jew about how somehow something has happened that should not have happened that no one figured would have happened and that we live to see it and be part of it I don't know how to communicate that feeling to another generation I have tried and in my old age I have started to cry we live in a time when the tears are rare and where the feeling of Jewish solidarity is always open to question so that changed all of this has changed and I told that dr. pail covets that I think it's much harder today than it was in my time even though in my time they were terribly unsuccessful no Jewish world disappeared the Navi says bazo's beneath Royal Mail I and the Jewish people made a grave error and they lost their way most of American jewelry lost their way but it was a different society so simply knowing that it was a different society I think helps it fills in a page that gives us perspective it allows us to realize where we were and therefore perhaps where we are but more importantly perhaps where we should be you know they say a rabbi has three speeches the one he prepared the one he delivered the one he should have delivered but we have to know what happened we have to know what the situation is now and perhaps we'll come to a realization of what can be done to face the challenges and to continue the growth and success of the Jewish people the Lord promised us that we would survive the Lord promised us that Torah would survive the Torah the Lord promised us that we would return to the land of Israel the Lord's promises are all valid but they require human cooperation an F than work and sacrifice and to the extent that we are there than the challenges of today as enormous as they are will be met like all of the challenges in Jewish history and would be privileged together to see generations of Jewish children Osteen batura the mitzvahs great and good people the value system the moral compass and with a great and eternal the future thank you well we asked the question and boy did we get an answer I think right before I call upon dr. Paul kayfetz there is a parent here that's been coming to our parenting group that we like to ask her to come forward for just a few minutes to discuss some of her feedback from the parenting group [Applause] good evening my drago's is well known throughout the Far Rockaway five towns community and Beyond for its many vital programs and services that provides for young people and their families when people think of Madre goes well usually comes to mind to services such as community education case management crisis intervention holiday programs in the lounge there's much more tamadre goes though tonight I would like to share how one of my drago's is hidden gems impacted myself and my family in a profound and lasting way my husband and I turned to my draggers for help at a very low point in our relationship with one of our children I will freely admit that I made many mistakes in my interactions with my son and I was in dire need of support and guidance in addition to individual support the staff at madre NGO suggested that we participate in the parenting support group that they offer I was somewhat unsure of what to expect at the group would it be difficult to open up to a group of strangers how would it work would it be awkward but I can unequivocally say that the parenting support group led by Rena Kutner and Rivka Rosenwald was life-changing from the moment that my husband and I entered the room Rena and risky helped us feel extremely comfortable and immediately able to overcome any initial reticence or hesitation that we had my husband and I felt that we were in a safe warm accepting space where we could honestly voice our fears their concerns as well as our hopes in our dreams where we felt validated and understood Rivka and Rena were simultaneously incredibly supportive and yet they challenged our previously held beliefs and ideas in a gentle yet firm way they pushed us to grow and to change as parents and as individuals they gave us the inner calm serenity and strength to be able to persevere and face our challenges they gave us the tremendous gift of skills and tools for an entirely new philosophy and way of approaching our parenting the members of our parenting group were from diverse and varying segments of our community different schools and different neighborhoods different ages and stages of parenting some of us had children with emotional challenges some of educational struggles some with religious issues some who struggle with substance abuse and some who just had regular typical children but we all faced our own unique and different challenges and raising our children yet we all shared the common goals of a desire to create a loving relationship with our children and to raise healthy and productive children who bring nathless to their families into a Shen the parenting group brought us together and allowed us to share our perspectives and experiences with each other in a profoundly supportive way in an atmosphere of trust and without judgment friendships formed and we developed into a cohesive unit there was a source of mutual support and health support which has continued even after the formal parenting group concluded I truly believe that every parent at any stage and in any situation and even without facing any particular challenges would benefit tremendously from the skills and parenting approach that we learned in the parenting group everyone knock on camera Bunim teachers mental health professionals emphasizes how the most important thing as a parent especially when faced with challenges is to create and maintain a good relationship with your children and I still very much wanted this for my family but until we began participating in the parenting group I didn't know how to do that in practice Reena and whisky taught us how to be the heroic parents that our children that all of our children need the insights and the skills that we learned in the parenting group have had a tremendously positive impact not just in our relationship with our son but on our relationship with all of our children nan creating a loving and harmonious atmosphere in our home to us the madrigals parenting group was a lifeline Thank You MA Drago's and Meena and risky individually for giving me back my relationship with my son and with all of my children we will forever be grateful to you thank you so much I'd like to call upon dr. Paul Tibbets obviously in this community and throughout all our communities he does not need an introduction but I like to consider life like I consider a rabbi wine the rabbi's rabbi I consider dr. pail cool it's the doctors doctor so without further ado call upon dr. bulk of it thank you and thank you so much for this opportunity and okay okay I already started filling in rabbi wines book you know because it's so valuable to hear his perspective as to be thinking about things I hadn't thought about and to the extent that part of tonight is a memory of my father and I just start in a practical way sharing with you three lessons I learned about parenting for my father and then I'll get into the heart of recommendations number one was what is it that we know the Hebrew word ashrae the highest level of happiness is tied to the word assure to license or validate and in his interactions with each of his children he knew how to recognize our uniqueness he knew how to recognize the uniqueness and validate us something we were all extremely different even though we shared the same values now the research shows the longer siblings live under the same roof the more different they become from one another it's pretty amazing right I hold a son Ari told me that at one point my father Hulk held on to him by his shoulders and looked them in the eye and said Ari just be re and it was an amazing affirmation of Ari who's a remarkable boy who marched to the beat of a different drum and became a remarkable adults but was always completely accepted by my father who set the stage for us to be able to take in the diversity of the uniqueness of each of our children you know my father would often quote the beautiful review um on the Broca's of yakou to each of his children where it says ich a shirk fever close obey Rocko some and where you're welcome brings down their beautifully as I've told some of you in the past is that if when you give a bra to your children whether or not you have them in hug of actually benching your children Friday night but if when you fantasize about your children and what you want them to become if your thoughts are about what you want them to achieve that you never achieved yourself you can ever be a doctor you want them to be a doctor you can never be a full-time and kasam they're gonna do it for you he said if your bracha and your wishes and your dreams and aspirations you pour into your children are about what you dream about for yourself he says you know what it's like just like taking a watering can and watering a piece of Earth that has no seeds in it he says it's literally a brussels of atala it's an exercise in futility if you want a broth on to take hold if you want your wishes for your children to take hold it has to be a match for their aspirations it has to be a match for the essence of who they are and it has to be in the context of a clear balance between love and limits the ability to not just always be there hugging them but the ability to also have the small dosa to be able to gently push them away in the context of love my father had the ability to do that he often said no but it was always in the context of saying yes far more often and we knew we were on the same team I once had a woman from this neighborhood come to me and she said I always wondered why my son who's on the hockey team and one of the local you see Vosges here he says I always wonder why is it that the coach always works him incredibly hard if he does the slightest thing wrong he'll have to do you know dozens and dozens of push-ups or run countless laps and he totally accepts it but if I even look at him sideways he has a tantrum on me and then she said one night I woke up in the middle of the night with this deep insight which is I realized it's because with the coach he realizes that we're all on the same team my father was what we were always on the same team so that's that validation recognizing the uniqueness and the context of also being able to say no you know the key to uniqueness is again something that my father and I will always very much enjoyed and wrote about in one of our books is that beautiful way of cook which i think is something i always aspire it was extremely hard but you've heard it but let's review it yesh Ben Horan shiruko ross11 there are free men who have a spirit of a slave vh7 shiruko Malaya famous and there are slaves who have a spirit filled with freedom here's what we've cooked said and this is what I think we all have to aspire and raising our children Hanuman likes me likes me you so Ben Horan hope if you figure out a way to raise your children to educate your children and even in terms of modeling for them to be named and lastly you so to be faithful to your inner essence you'll always be free and here is the real challenge I still often have to think about this who Misha Coffea of rabbu master Toby of Mao Ferran and somebody whose entire life is just about what are other people wants how do i impress this person or that person whoever that person will always be a slave I know some people were profoundly wealthy and successful people who I've seen over a number of years and they have multiple homes and they have more than enough money to last them for 20 lifetimes in their slaves and I know people who never quite know where the next meals going to come from and they're free men and they're free women so that's point one point two was a certain flexibility a certain openness your my wine spoke so beautifully about the exposure to the outside world about his about the woman sitting next to him Rebbetzin pearl who now I understand her better she was a very open-minded and phenomenally my mother here knew her also very well write grants in parallel she was a pretty pretty pretty remarkable woman but I guess that's what the Chicago achieve educational do for you I went to after going to highly now after I went to Mississippi of long beach there first class and then tutor with us so by the time I finished learning and Tyra died space mattress with roof palm valley sure for a number of years so all the highlight was squeezed out of me and then I I was just thinking about it today I wanted to become a clinical psychologist and I apply to Penn didn't even enter my mind to ask for permission to do it and this was in the early seventies just a long time ago this is when there was campus unrest this is when the world was going wild and I thought I was accepted and so you know the Penn clinical psych doctoral program and it wasn't even questioned that my parents my father mother Elena show'em they they totally supported it and then I only realized that was unusual when my friends who so got a school out of town I'm at a similar background to me they couldn't believe that my parents said yes to it and there was that belief in us you know it really is such an important part of parenting after you've done your job and you've poured your heart and your soul and your worry remember that Kamat Rhea IVA and da guy taiga it's the same go Montreal right love and worry are inextricably intertwined you have to believe in your kid story of study I've been telling people lately and I guess I'm weaving in my speech into these thoughts about my father is the beautiful thoughts a beautiful study done by dr. Ellen Langer at Harvard she takes a group of men who were old men in their 80s and Beyond and she has them spend five days and converted monastery the monastery outside of Boston that was made to look exactly like the world look to these men when they were in their prime at age 40 and each of the men were told when they came into the monastery for that five days the former monastery they were told treat each other like you're 40 years old occupy the head space of a 40 year old they didn't help them with their bags they would have to carry their bags up even was one shirt at a time three flights of steps and they spent a whole week thinking and living the life of younger men phenomenal things happened after those five days relative to the comparison group that spent the next week in the same monastery and were treated like old men among the changes that took place was not only that their mood improved but their strength improved the team of ophthalmologist not knowing which group these men were in found every one of the men to have had their vision significantly improved they saw more they saw more person interesting association with the Gemara on what broader perspectives come with optimism and joy and maybe believing in yourself they were told to believe in each other in each other's suits by the way the wallpaper was the wool paper the way it looked when these men were forty black-and-white televisions the art was the whole thing but here's my favorite part of the story of the study not only did they become younger in multiple ways because of this belief in each other and themselves but a newspaper reporter who covered the study which was replicated in England even more phenomenal results reported that as they were waiting for the bus to take them back to Boston they spontaneously started a game of two-hand touch football this is a true secret I'm telling it's there I'll show it to you if you ask me so again it was that part of believing a belief you know I'll just end this with its Pharisees rel beautiful two Pharisees rylann of us and have a goal Allah muhkam Torah here's what he says he says if you always stay surrounded and the same valid ammos that you grew up in and you never test yourself by leaving your zone of comfort you'll never grow you'll never grow he says in order to master Torah in order to internalize the values of your parents and the values of your rebellion it's very sister Ella says you have to go away from the comfort of home you have to push yourself there's less I'll tell us ain't Adamo medalled every Tyrell and kingdom shall bow hem and the final point I want to make before I move on to some specific recommendations is research tells us that values are very much transmitted not just by knowledge it's a big difference between moral knowledge and moral action values are transmitted by what do we as parents and grandparents focus on what do we spend time on what do we get emotional about that's the core that's the key and I'll just share with you before I move on to the next section a story about my parents I went to camp monk as a little kid or a certain number of years it was a camp it's a camp that wonderful camp it glorified the way to be a hero and camp monk other than to really enjoy Tisha but they did tsch above in a way that was amazing it was basically at least the way as a kid there I felt you could only really feel terrific about your experience there if you were a terrific athlete it's not what they stood for they were amazingly from an educationally really in camp but you had a you have you had to be a good athlete there all kinds of awards they've given the end of the year for best in baseball best monk or bad if you were very good at that kind of thing and all kinds of things in terms of athletic awards then there was what I always saw is the loser award the loser award was the award I invariably got as a major klutz it was best me DOS and I was incredibly embarrassed by the Minos award and I would take it and I would bury it in the bottom of my trunk and I come back and my mother and father Elena Sean would say well look at me and say so what David get any worse said no no they canceled awards this year noble words whatsoever and I remember my mother who was very wise in the way she did it she'd go through the trunk and she find the best me dos award I remember this ritual happened a number of times they would call me into a room and with tears in their eyes they would say David this is what we dreamed for you do you think we care what kind of ballplayer you are do you think we could care if you could sink a basket do you think that means anything to us this is all the matters is to be a mensch that you be honest that you be kind that you be empathic you know what when you repeat something but it's also the tears so also the emotion that's the way to instill values you have to believe it in your core let's move on to a couple of core points I want to make okay let's see okay I'll make it up okay here goes okay you get a slightly different speech okay okay it's good it's probably better okay okay actually know what that'll get me to my next point my first point my first point in terms of what I want to focus on it's a little bit on the importance I think one of the greatest challenges of today what's what is it that we see as psychologists and social workers as therapists in the field as parenting experts what do we see that's a big difference and it's something that we know that for the last twenty to thirty years and the balance between love and limits parents have been amazing in terms of being love specialists not as good and setting limits not as good in saying no so I want to talk about as some practical recommendations on how to say no I want to develop that a little bit and how do you handle your kids upset how do you handle your kids upset so I want to talk about that a little bit but first I want to talk about the power of being able to have your child view frustration as a source of growth because that could change your mindset it would make a little bit of a it would make a difference so I'm gonna tell you this story of Keith Jarrett it's a terrific story you could google it at some point not right now but it's the story of Keith Jarrett this is the story of what happens he was a world jerath you know about his jay-ar ett Keith Jarrett he was a role world-renowned jazz pianist jazz musician he was like bleeding guy and in 1975 he was set to play a major concert in Cologne Germany 6,000 seats they were all sold that way before he gets to the concert hall early in the morning to make sure that the piano was ready and to start his rehearsal and for some reason I don't understand to this day an 18 year old or 70 no I think an 18 year old girl was put in charge of preparing the piano and she I don't know how this happened but she had a piano there that was totally unusable all of the keys on the left side the there were no pads so no matter how hard you press down no sound all the keys on the right side no sound okay the only thing that worked was the middle keys but only if you really push down on them as hard as you could and then you get a sort of out of tune kind of thing going so he turned story says you have to get me another piano I can't do it can't do this is not the usable piano and she calls all over Europe you can't get a concert level piano on such short notice so he tells her okay we have to cancel the concert and being an adolescent she does what you'd expect an adolescent would do when faced with public humiliation she had the total total meltdown she throws herself on the grand she's gonna kill herself and she's she's gone and he's the soft touch she's a nice guy Keith Sheeran and finally he says okay I'll give it a shot and he goes on to perform what is going on to be the best-selling jazz piano concert in history you could by ever just google Keith Jarrett Cologne Germany 1975 it's haunting it's haunting you hear him huffing and puffing but the total impossibility of the task the total challenge brought out a level of creativity and greatness in him that made him an even greater and more admired musician than he was before again as I said before you Adam Oh made I'll do ratar-o Elam came next album the greatest gift we could give to our kids is to let them s up tonight go to go back to the wisdom of the era that my father grew up in and a little later the rabbi wine that doctor that rabbi doctor wine grew up in era where you let your you don't go to bat for your kids all the time no maybe the teacher is right even though the teacher isn't right you let them face some difficulty you let them be upset you know the wisdom of cause I'll listen to this mad rush I quoted it to some of you before initially it says yes urban folk eh tikva bill honey so I'll take a nap Shep I put limits on your kids there's always hope and don't pay attention to they're yelling and screaming and crying so this amazing Midrash on this says call how moseph i've you sir and i'll be no moseph have been i have I love it and boy is that true the more a father or a mother puts limits on their child the more that child will love the parent I see it all the time in my office his who when they were in my office many years ago I've been practicing now for 40 years in in in in this area and the North Shore and so I'm now well into multiple generations and in a number of times where I've had kids who when their parents said no when crazy and had Tantrums on on the floor of my office and then now they had their own teenage kids that they're bringing to me it's even getting to be into a generation be is a pretty amazing thing and multiple times they've told me the same thing they say you know doc remember when I was in this office and I was having tantrums and I was going crazy when my parents said no remember how violent I was remember how I screamed that I cried and I went nuts he said even then I was hat that they said not okay and then they come to me with their kid and something that they'll often tell me also is why than my parents this is with other parents why do they let me do the things they let me do now many kids come back from studying and eretz yisrael saying why was i allowed to go out into the city on moti Shabbos why was I allowed to be unsupervised for this and then in a fascinating study by my colleague Debby Fox in Los Angeles she found something amazing she was looking at digital challenges and one of the things that she found with digital challenges is that there's a very clear finding on the part of these kids that they say that they wish their parents restrict her with them or had more rules for them online we have dr. le Shapiro here who's done amazing research on this on very large numbers so I don't want to quote anything wrong but I'll just quote one of the findings that Debbie had Debbie asked the kids a great question when you have teenagers of your own how are you gonna handle the internet differently the your parents handled it with you and more than half the kids said I'm gonna be stricter I'm gonna be stricter they'd say I saw that they wrote things like if I could only get those images out of my head that I saw at a young age that I never should have seen if I could only get those hours back that I squandered being up two to three in the morning texting friends being on social media with friends talking to them about such incredibly important questions they'd have for me are you you you sleep yet you up yet what's up you know they said if I could only get that bad and there was real remorse it was real remorse let's just remember that when you put limits on and I'll give you some specific recommendations on limits in a few minutes okay let's go to let's go to the next the next thing over here okay number one okay so do you know that along the lines of the need for the small dough pen in a longitudinal study done at Harvard there's a finding now this is the one that looked at kids longest going longitudinal study ever done in the original cohort the future President Kennedy was there a number of Nobel laureates and they follow these people into adulthood and they see what's associated with success and what's associated with vulnerability you know one of the most important thing in terms of being associated with success its shores we don't talk about that enough give your children Shores it's not child abuse to have them make their bed in the morning and it's not at all unreasonable to have them clean up or take the garbage at or whatever many of you may do it but I was at a neighborhood last year in a different part of the country and I mentioned this and I talked to the heads of school in the heads of a couple of shoals and a talk like this and one of the the show that I was going to be speaking in that Shabbos the the Rob talked about this chores thing and he talked to the kiss and he said you know we've always had help in cleaning up Kennish kids we'd like you to clean up Kennish and they loved it I don't know how long it went on they loved cleaning up kiddush it gave them a sense of efficacy a sense of responsibility and then one of them was told oh this is the guy who told us that do it it was a blizzard there I chose the wrong time to go to that part of the world and they cleaned off Mike with that being asked the whole group of them went outside and they cleaned off my car without being asked when we tap into that we tap into the fest set of our children and their need to not always be protected it could make Anna more an enormous kind of difference okay next I wanted to just go on to some specific kinds of recommendations in terms of in terms of how to say no how to say no so the first I'm going to read you something I came across in preparing this and was something I don't even know where it came from but this is actually a direct dictation for my father I don't think it made it into our books but it came up so I figure I have to read this and it's a good it's good that the power of sometimes saying no with that an explanation here's direct quote the story illustrating this point that sometimes you say no with that an explanation it's told about a generous spirited man who was hounded by numerous acquaintances who would constantly ask him for favors one man in particular repeatedly took advantage of his fine personality upon receiving a letter once again asking him to send him money he wrote back a letter saying and quotes in response to your request for another loan my answer is no and in order that you know that my answer is final I give you no reason a lot of wisdom in that story and that's basically this set of recommendations for handling handling saying no okay so number one is it's the broken record technique we that ages me you remember records right rabbi nobody else here knows the record it's supposed to be this round disk that would play music with a broken rate they used to get stuck but now we call it a broken mp3 but they don't break so ask your grandparents about what a record was okay so here's the broke I know you know so broken record technique is basically is if a kid keeps at use- persistence number one meaning that they keep you say no and they keep loitering you and they're going after you over and over and over again and you want to kill them okay this has happened to some of you you're all nodding your head about your neighbors I know that okay so here's here's here's what what here's what the recommendation is on that the recommendation is that you tell them when you tell them once with a good explanation here's here's why they want to go out it's a school night and they want to go and get together with a friend study and then they go crazy on you saying when you say no all my friends are allowed and by the way I've yet to meet that friends okay I've been in South Africa at times with Rabbi wine and his Rebbetzin I spent a wonderful day with your wife going touring a lot show them when we were in South Africa on our last trip there friends not there not in Australia not not anywhere I've seen anywhere I've traveled and the the key here is that first time you explain why then you tell them you could ask me three more times three more times first time they ask you say okay great that's once no emotion just say that's once get two more you don't give a reason like my father's story says second time calmly say okay that's twice you get one more okay a third time you say that's three times okay that's fine and they know from your discussions with them ahead of time about this technique that you're going to ignore them the next coin there's a beaut full thoughts from repenteth Leibovitz last Russia Shiva of Huff it's kaien shiba's and he brilliantly says something and actually I know here at least three people know CD but I'm using this for a different thing it's an unbelievable Madras and and think about this because it's actually very practical it's an unbelievable Madras where it says that Abram is taking you talk to that Keita and some well an ancient of Sutton stops and says old man you out of your mind you think you're gonna get another shot and having a son so Madras tells us and I romancers almond ice king even so and Sutton keeps going but don't you realize when your wife's sorry here's the path that she's gonna die of fright and sorrow and I and and I room says almond ice came and something he was going after him sort of henna Fiesta Nadia's question Iram had the best excuse of all time best excuse of all time I'm on a mission from God God told me to do this I was told to do this why didn't you say that repenteth answers because I've Rome knew that with the Sutton the slightest answer will pull you into the quicksand so you start and said a broken record technique telling your kids Alma nos pain you could blame me but the equivalent of that even so even so it's it's the equivalent to the broken record technique and one final point on this piece it's just the general guidance that sometimes one of the most important parenting techniques to think about is the technique of knowing that your children sometimes you have to ignore there are times that the answer is don't just do something stand there okay the opposite of common sense sometimes you do absolutely nothing here's this beautiful ghazzal that talks about no saint muck homeless sha so talks about think about the story of three Giants in our history okay Yaakov burrows Yaakov pulled back and ran away from his brother a sub strategic withdrawal Moshe Bharath Moshe did the same thing he strategically withdrew and doesn't borrow so cuz I'll ask what do we learn from this so here's the beautiful cause I'll call Misha Oh made Koenig and haha no foam yoga call me Shanna same uh coma sha sha sha no fallacy ah demeaning it's just a beautiful way of saying sometimes sometimes when you strategically withdraw and you bide your time and you choose your battle grants and you pull back that's when you have the best kind of outcomes and when you focus on the positive and you bounce back acceptance and belief in your child that's when you have the best outcomes you know there was a recent study about the soccer world cup where they found that everybody has the tendency towards action over in action it's very hard to do nothing it's very hard to passively pull back very hard to just sit and do nothing because they were telling us here is not easy so they found the following when there is a penalty shot in a World Cup game talking about huge stakes the whole world is watching most goalies should do nothing the best way of blocking that penalty shot is to stand in the middle and stay in the middle and that will give you your best shots of blocking the shot okay but what the vast majority do often unsuccessfully is the leap they lead to try to block to try to block the the the the score and that is almost invariably a bad time sometimes we need wisdom to know how to be know same McCulloh shot okay let me let me start to come to the end this neighborhood there's the Olin ur family are there any old a nurse here I'm sure you know some owners it's right from this neighborhood so in World War 2 in the Holocaust young boy young Golan er who ended up having family right here he one day the Nazis amaz Shabab lined up this entire town shot his parents shot his siblings shot his neighbor shot everybody killed the entire town and he managed to wander off in the chaos it's a little kid and he comes to a farmhouse and is taken in by a righteous Gentile who save him and protect him throughout the war in remarkable ways and he's sponsored by the family you know to come here after the war and he comes here and he dedicates his life to researching what creates a moral Giants what creates a righteous Gentile and he interviewed together with his wife who also got a PhD in sociology as he did he interviewed everybody he could find asking them a simple question how could you do what you did how could you have done that you were putting your children at risk you were putting everybody you knew at risk for being murdered and he writes they all have the same reaction I don't get the question I don't get the question so he tried to dig deeper why was it so obvious to them and he found many findings his books are to me wonderful manuals and parenting the number of books he wrote but the one that I find most compelling is the way these moral Giants handled mistakes it's all the way they handled mistakes if you growing up in that home made a mistake which invariably everybody does when you messed up and violated the moral expectations of that family the parents wouldn't yell at you they wouldn't scream at you you know what they did they patiently looked you in the eye and they said we know that you're better than this we know that you're better than this we believe in you let's talk about a cheaper process how can you make this right no anger no guilt induction just a very clear message how are you gonna do chuubo how are you gonna put sugar how you gonna make it right what are you gonna do it turns out that ingredient was key to change the setback to feedback and that kind of an approach to parenting of taking the faith and not seeing it as a sin a sign that the child was bad but seeing him instead as Tanakh tells us fade is when as the archers of shaiva banned young men they never missed the mark low yakety fate as you missed the mark when you missed the mark you do it you have a do-over you tried for it again you go from threat to challenge that was the key let me end with the following story but first let me summarize a little bit what I said until now because I wasn't really listening that carefully okay so number one we talked about the importance the lessons some of the lessons of believing in your child of expecting the best from them or somehow understanding that the balance between love and limits is the key and in fact that's what all the research on digital responsibility shows us I'm happy to provide a PowerPoint for you guys to post with some very specific guidelines on digital safety the work of ravish of dr. Shapiro is far more I think far more comprehensive and research-based but it's it's basically all about finding the balance between love and limits setting limits it's much easier to do with your younger kids than with your older kids it's a talk in and of itself but it's so important to do that because our kids need it what they see now and one night summer Rebbe said in 1950 the what a Swiss Edom saw in one bus ride from Williamsburg to Manhattan was more than their grandparents on a lifetime in this shtetl just think about what our kids carry in their pocket now just think about that the challenges are unbelievable we don't have the option of not talking to them and having a dialogue and putting limits that they're gonna hate but that's okay they'll be very they're very specific guidelines that I'm happy to share but I recommend going to dr. Shapiro's for really very effective research driven recommendations number two we talked about we talked about the power of growth through facing challenge the story of Keith Jarrett I didn't talk at all about a finding that we find in our research that I was really with our doctoral students multiple times the importance of parents working together my father would always say couples don't have to think alike they have to think together and what that's about is as we find that when couples don't think together okay it is incredibly corrosive in terms of their internalizing the message religion it's you know we did a number of studies our students both with children of all h of but will so with children of people from from birth and when parents would fight over religion it would have the opposite effect of what you'd want the key is to pull back no matter how much you disagree pull back say to yourself not now and then to quietly discuss it and figure out a way to get on the same page but the key is to strike when the iron is cold and having a discussion and then we talked about the importance of chores the importance of the loser award right the importance of time and emotion in shaping values and I'll end with a story maybe we hear my homeless story maybe not or if you did no it's not a story I've told that what you heard it right okay Hazara fear so here's the homeless story and with this island number of years ago I was invited to speak at a homeless conference I was extremely excited because I pictured hanging out with a bunch of homeless people it was somewhere in Manhattan and I thought it would be more interesting than talking to a bunch of homeless people wasn't was the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom 400 very well dressed professionals specializing in homelessness and I go in and there were two speakers I was one of the speakers but the other speaker on the dais was a very good-looking man dressed and an amazingly expensive suit even though I don't know what an expensive suit looks like I even though I could sell this is like this is a very well-dressed man and then you read his bio his bio was incredible spiah was dr. so-and-so has his BA from Harvard his PhD from Harvard he's director of homeless policy planning for the United States government last year he won an Oscar or you want an Oscar for documentary he made on homelessness and so on and on I think I'm thinking I have to speak mr. big Oscar has to speak next to this guy and I want to go home and then he gets up he spoke first and the first words out of his mouth so shocking you almost saw 400 people like collectively faint and fall out of their seat here's what his opening line was he said when I was 11 years old in front of me my father in a coked-up rage shot my mother and then killed himself and there's like oh how does this joy he said I realized that I was about to fall in the hand of the foster care system and I knew what the problems were my neighborhood with that so I run away I'm an only child he said I spent the next two years from 11 to 13 going from homeless shelter to homeless shelter leaving a totally meaningless life as the second I thought they were on to me because I did look older than my age but they would start to get suspicious I run away again and I had nobody to talk to he said you know what it's like to live with that kind of trauma and loneliness and to lose everything you've ever known he said until I came to a shelter in Manhattan where I heard four words that forever changed my life everybody takes out their pen you know four words this is the answer we're always looking for the answer the answer he says put your pen back you said it wasn't the words it was the way they were spoken he said I go into a shelter in Manhattan and the director comes over to me he puts his arm around my shoulder and he looks me in the eye that's key and I how are you doing how are you doing and I saw from the way he asked the question he really wanted to notice I figured I'd take a risk I started telling them and the more I told the more I wanted to tell them and he really listens OSN must nagging Osen the ear is tight and him illogically Tomas nyam scales the inner ear the source of balance it balance me he said that they spent the next couple of months pouring my heart out to him and he was there he was there for me and after a couple of months of this he realized I'm a smart guy and he gets me a full scholarship to the Daltons school from there I get the scholarships to Harvard and that's why I'm here so let me end with that message for all of you as we try to actualize the dream that brought us all into this room tonight and as we work to benefit from the amazing parenting programs and other services of my Drago's and of this amazing community and as we try to bridge the wisdom of previous generations into this generation may we all be Zopa to be able to look our children and our grandchildren in the eye and truly ask them how are you doing so we could be there for them and giving them a hug and love and support thank you we're gonna be dabbling mired in the shul if anyone's interested and if anyone's interested in any of the parenting groups that we offer feel free to reach out to the office to the staff at the office good evening everyone [Music]