Our Family, Our Strength - Principle #7: Priorities - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Abramov

you we continue on the twenty five basic principles of Jewish child rearing we are now up to principle number seven now children at varying ages are just developing a broader context and a broader way of looking at things but when they're still young they tend to see things in very cut black and white suit fashion they haven't yet developed the capacity of seeing things broadly this is an ability which develops in time and they sometimes can draw conclusions and formulate opinions based on something very very specific a typical example of this if a child observes in the home that inadvertently someone knocks over a bowl of flowers a very flower flowers and everyone shots ofa oh what a terrible tragedy what a catastrophe and someone one of the someone is castigated for for clumsiness so the child sees oh that must be a very very important thing wow this child knocked over a bowl of flowers and water fellow I all over the table wow that's something terrible in if people holler at that child so the child begins to get an impression okay that's very important and that gets gets stored away in his mind is that's big stuff and yet we know that's something very minor this is a little incident as a little triviality that happened that isn't something of such big dimensions on the other hand if a child we mentioned the concept of rahat if it solved and if people mumble birkat hamazon raised after meals and they mumble it while looking around while fiddling round and no one relates to that a child again stores away well this is another this on the priority list is much much lower that seems to be much more important to be careful of breaking of knocking into a bowl of water over the table then to mumble birkat hamazon so um again we need to sort out our priorities for the children now as Jews were observant of Torah as people who are trying to be close to a Shem so it's absolutely imperative that the child's yatra mayim the child's fear the fear of God that the the respect and the honoring of mitzvahs these are very very central issues so these things are communicated by the parents so when at the shabbos table which is a great arena for educating the shadows table and the whole family is around there there's no distractions there's no outside distractions and the family can integrate and if at that shabbos table someone searing a juicy bit of gossip a little and they talking l'shana at this table then the this is completely messing up the priorities if on the other hand the shabbos table is filled with joy it's filled with a sim comets VAR with a with a joy of performing a mitzvah there's there's singing coming from the heart there's an exchange of positive ideas and thoughts and discussions and interactions the child begins to see what's important what's not what's not important so the issue of prioritizing of priorities it's important for a child to get the sense of priorities right so if again if a something spills over appearance clothes and the and and the parent lashes out and makes a huge big fuss about that the child again is is is acquiring a certain lack of priority what's important what's not important so giving a child a sense of priorities is there is an extremely important thing it's very important that a child needs to know that our relationship with Hashem is absolutely supreme is the is the number one thing that's the most important thing we're doing and that Parnis are the issues of living of enjoyment of pleasures these are all completely safe in the secondary things these are things which should be just servicing this so it's important the child gets the sense of priorities right and but if he sees that we take a very lackadaisical to Mitzvahed and yet we're very very focused when it comes to physical material things so the child begins to get the sense of priority so if parents will spend many many agonizing hours about deciding the color of panels on the in furnishing and taking great pain and yet when it comes to issues of spirituality are much less concerned or much more like the child is it is adopting a real sense of priorities and things are not going to change it's going to be very difficult to change those priorities so therefore by our actions we constantly have to give clear practical messages what are the true order of life's priorities you