Our Family, Our Strength - Principle #13: In Accordance with His Own Way - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Abramov

you we now go on to principle number 13 in our series the twenty five basic principles of Jewish child rearing based on the book our family our strength King Solomon the wisest of men instructs and guides parents educators to steer the child LP Darko canola na r LP Darko educate in accordance with his own way what is the depth of understanding of this profound statement of King Solomon what he is telling us is that having said what we spoke about on the previous principle that he is such a concept of a child competing with himself or person competing with his own strengths we need to identify these strengths sometimes parents have completely unrealistic expectations of the children sometimes parents foolishly can compare one child to the other and how many times can this damaging distractive statement we said why don't you like your little brother why don't you like your big sister while that why don't you like your friends why are you so y and the child really thinking inside is saying to himself I'm not like my brother I'm not like my sister because I am me me is someone different so it's a very important thing that parents sometimes can actually break a child they can destroy the child's potential because they are imposing him upon him expectations which are not realistic to his his abilities and therefore what is the challenge of parenting the challenge of parenting isn't looking around and seeing what everybody else has and I want mine to be that way the challenge of parenting is to look deeply and get a deep understanding of one's child of your child and try and understand wherein lie his strengths try and define these strings and then when you identify a strength cultivated but that nurture it let him become special in some particular area and that will be his speciality be it in certain talents sometimes there were kids who had well-known children who have or having great difficulty in certain areas of their endeavors if it's in school work or socially suddenly find the most fantastic outlet in music in art in in sport wherever it may be so it's important identify wherein lie the child's strengths and then try LP dark or in accordance with him with his strength cultivate him and and guide them and steer them and it doesn't matter what the traits are all traits can be channeled in a positive direction cuz I'll tell us that a person can take sometimes traits which seemingly could be very negative but if they channel in a proper direction they can become positive and that's with regard to most traits there certain traits that there's no positive elements of them anger there are certain traits we just don't have any positive outlet at all but the vast majority of traits can be channeled and directed into something positive and it's not a simple laborer the greater abuse or else olanta a blessed memory is to say that changing one personality trait is can be a lifetime's labor it's not easy to change we mustn't look at our children and think how am I going to change him we must look at our children and think how can I take and understand what strengths of character he has and hone them and cultivate these strengths and channel them in a positive direction so the child may have a certain aggression aggression to can be channeled into something positive it can be it can become aggressive in his study so find identify the traits help the child identify his rights build up his self-image yes you've got a fantastic aptitude to do certain things let's cultivate them let's let grow them you become an expert in that field and that will give the person that tremendous sense of self-worth and his self-image will grow and he'll function better on all on all fronts so the challenge of parents is to educate him in accordance with his own way not the way of others not to be like others to be like me