Panel Discussion

good morning this session is being moderated by three moderators my name is shirley halpert to my right is rabbi zakaria frogtandler and to my left is rabbi swirly um the way we're going to break up the time here is as follows or at least we'll try we're each going to speak for about five minutes to tell you who we are and what we do and then we'll do that again each will speak for five seven minutes what they know about today's title of what we're speaking about and what other insights they have through their own experiences and what they do and you will obviously find out what each of us do and then we're going to after about 40 minutes we're going to open it up for questions from anybody and everybody and we'll we'll each you can either direct your question to one of us to all of us whatever whatever kind of answers you're looking for i would like to just ask that the questions that are asked should be general questions if you have a specific question about your own specific child or relative we'll be glad to try to make time for you privately one-on-one because in all probability there's a lot there's a lot of detail that will need to be discussed and this is not the forum for anybody's particular details to come out into the open and then we'll end we'll each give a final couple of minutes on what we've heard and what we feel we've gotten out of it and what we hope you will have gotten out of it so first i'd like to introduce rabbi zacharia frogtandler good morning good morning usually when i thought conversations with parents i'm not sure the life is working i could talk later can anybody hear me without the night are we good [Music] okay yeah that's much better i'm going to start off with the disclaimer the way i like to phrase it i'm not a rabbi and please don't make me prove it i'm a retired businessman i spend my day in the morning i learn in a kalel in the afternoon i learn in the shiva in flatbush i learn with three sets of bakrim nishivahari israel and austrian avenue and recently i threw avi fish off's direction who i worked very close friend with and worked we co-authored not that i'm putting in a plug for hour safer cpr i co-authored cpr together with avi fischoef and yes i do recommend it in addition through avi's urging i counsel parents of what i think even though the title of the this conference symposium this what we're here exactly now in the next hour or so um is what's called and how how do we impact how do we positively impact children in in a group of kids that are functioning but there are difficulties uh and as as shirley said we want to do one open this up um to questions questions should be general in nature um i would just say one one little story that i heard over and i think it's going to help us with our relationship with our children i bark have a large family and on the doctor's orders i'm being a little bit careful the shabbos i'm not staying my youngest child's offer of his next shabbos so uh i would like to wish all of you that that what you should see you should resize it to see all your children to mash them down to the in in order and i'll be speaking with you just in a few minutes [Music] okay again my name is shelly halpert uh i have been here before by quite a number if not all of the weekends at least those that were in america i'm a businessman and as a volunteer for the last 15 years i've been trying to help boys and girls of all ages to find the right yeshivas in schools for what they need as wide as the spectrum is in other words mainstream children kids struggling in yeshiva those who can't find the right yeshiva those who are out of yeshiva and those who unfortunately yeshiva becomes secondary and life and safety is the number one priority being that i'm not a professional obviously i make a decision in each and every case if i'm qualified to try to help ibrahim have a wide range of people in the professional world that i deal with that i try to siphon off to the right person to see if we can get them to get help [Music] um i started out uh many people ask in fact i always ask kids when i meet them for the first time in my house why do they think i'm doing this and they they usually answer uh you must like to do hesed and i said yeah but i could have joined hatsallah let's ask him i keep going on and on why did i choose this particular field and the answer is is sort of obvious i am a recovered parent of a teen at risk now avi has trained us to change that to a kip a kid in pain however when i went through my struggles 20 plus years ago there was no such thing as a kip at that time there was no avi fish off there was no help there was there were no yeshivas off the main street it was the mainstream in public school but on the flip side i have a cursor tied to the bunch loyal that i went through it in 1999 and in 2000 and 2001 where the street was terrible but compared to the street today it was a cold atmosphere and in all seriousness you know when you're going through a messian you think it's the worst messiah in the world and trust me i thought it was and it was but it's things are getting worse nobody is getting up on a pulpit anywhere and saying you know hashem the issues with our kids it's getting so much better and so much easier it's all a reflection of the street loyal i know you know we we have to come to the realization le have del el of dallas that the outside street does seep into our communities into our homes and it's the parents job to do the best they can to be a role model for their kids that that they should understand in the right hadraj morning my name is shirley bistritz i'm the director of resolve resolve is a comprehensive resource for struggling teens operating nationally we provide umbrella resources for teens at every level of struggle be it in school and parents are noticing things aren't going too well to possibly one foot out the door needs resources or to or to relocate so he's finished with school and he's on his own um looking for you know his next uh big aspiration to further than that and we target the children teens nowadays has expanded so it's they're 11 up to around 23. and we tried to cover all resources possible that not every resource is labeled and not everything that we think is a resource is a resource and things that we don't know could be helpful could always be helpful so it tries to cover everything from schools to modified school systems vocational programs night drop-in centers chill matzah for boys who just need a safe place where they can connect with people to job opportunities at all levels trying place in areas where they could grow from from the job opportunities rather than being a reckless position helping with reintegration post rehab reintegration summer programs extracurricular activities career planning and we tried to put together with the parents a plan of action so i could notice all the moving parts in the relationships and the environments in the school systems and the teachers and the principals and their circle of friends and try and prioritize where where are we going to start as our base in creating a positive trajectory for them a plan of action room wasn't built in a day and everything is a process and we try and move along slowly that they should be able to gain at each step we help the parents brainstorm and give them empower them with their own tools and then slowly we we follow the progress and we have a department that when we do have a mentor or a carusa or a study partner or big brother big sister that set up we follow up with them to see how progress is going and coach them along the way that they can connect in the relationship better and be create more of an impact on on the team and sometimes we'll use one resource sometimes we'll use two resources sometimes even more sometimes we follow up and find that a resource isn't working so we change the the angle a little bit and hashem there's been a lot of nice things that have you know we've been seeing and the goal is really to empower the parents to know that there are resources out there and many of them don't exist in the mainstream world we have to be creative on our own to understand the feelings and the interests the creativity of our teens where their talents are understand where their emotions are what's blocking them in the mainstream society that's just not working for them and they'll need a modified system sometimes we find that in our own workplace that this just isn't a business where i can grow and i feel that my talents could be useful elsewhere there's no difference between us and teenagers so this this is really the goal of the organization it stretches across the united states finding any resource that could possibly have benefit to any teen at any level listen it's working now it's working okay we introduced ourselves now i think it helps make make us comfortable uh now now it's our responsibility to make you comfortable i know with these shabbatonim and to working with avi we need to be honest and open in public as long as we're not hurting anyone else um surely thank you for mentioning 20 years ago in your life i believe her have 12 children and for for a 20-year period i had four teenagers at once and about 20 years ago exactly like you said shirley before they were these organizations i also went through with one of my teenage girls and we had to be a little bit more proactive and i think the reason why you were successful and i was successful is the resources were not there surely wasn't here organizations weren't here we really had to figure it out on our own not that there weren't people willing to help there were but we had to be much more proactive we had to actually do investigation inquire who could help me what's going to work what could i try but you talk to someone you know it's interesting when when an idea made sense to me that i knew would work i felt it here i felt it in my gut i didn't doubt it i tried very hard not to change my father's manhuggin my father didn't didn't bench us friday night when we came home from shul and i was in the car listening to a tape i think it was from yankee horowitz from muncie and he recommended doing it he said because you know what no matter what the week was and no matter what's going on with you and child you're you're you're benching them you're putting your hands on that on your head you're giving them a kiss it's just it's part of the family structure and one second my father didn't do it it was a friday afternoon on the way home from work and i didn't even want to tell my wife she'll say we don't do it i just did it whenever you hear something doesn't matter from who you hear it from if it sounds right for you and your child it's right trust yourself you want you want it for the benefit and you'll have you'll have that sloga with it that's an important recommendation i feel relatively confident in what i do what's you know tonight today's topic is a little bit you know we want to zero in there are a lot of teenagers that need help a lot of our children need help and looking back again i said i have 12 children and several years ago to one or two one of my sons i apologized i i didn't get you i didn't understand you and he cried i cried we had a great relationship and he's a great kid but it doesn't have to be that it's such a serious thing it doesn't have to be that the leaving yiddish or that they're not functioning or they're they're acting and of course if you have those symptoms in those situations we have to deal with them but forget about that it's 60 percent it's it's a hundred percent of our children we're dealing with i want to tell you a story i heard it from two sources and i'm careful when i tell over a story but eat and each source is really gives it enough authenticity one i heard from a close friend of mine who heard from elisha shapiro that's all and the other heard directly from from from i think it was rebellious was nifter a few years ago willie mayer was his first name this is the story and it goes back to the days of the brisker rob so it's from the 1950s it's more than 20 years ago there was a yiddin bre brock that had a few children that were impossible to use a word and someone asked the father how do you manage how do you cope says i tell myself over and over and over again one day i'm going to see emma saying from these children i tell that to myself again again again and again and that's how i cope [Music] beautiful this year the short time afterwards by the brisker of and he told over to risk around this story what the father said heard this from two sources and i'd said the sources the biscuit refs stopped for a second two virgins to the story change a word same word really one version of the risky rev said skimatkira the other version is kemat abby curses the abish that doesn't give you children for you to have nakas from your children the abyshi gives you children because he took on the shama in his base ganasa in his treasury of neshamas and he said he said i want you to be responsible for this do the best you can that's it that's our job you know sherman russell we all know very well you know he tells the story it won't come into the whole story now you've probably heard of him from baron lake steinman about the love a children needs to see in their parents eyes i tell parents that if your child looks into your eyes and sees failure sees disappointment i can't help you you're the source of the confidence without you how can they survive ivanka had another way of a child surviving in this world besides with mommy and tati abe mommy and daddy whatever you're called then he would have done so the only way to combat the yetzer is with torah and if someone thinks he can do it another way have fun failing because you won't succeed if the abisha created the world that every child needs a mother and a father loyolano loyolano sometimes children grow up without a mother and a father but if a child has a mother and father so the english is that you say the mother father is taken away never from this world the amish steps in not that the child doesn't need both every child needs a mother and a father it's not possible otherwise i'm going to leave you for now with two questions which i want you to think about questions are as follows what is the difference between a child and an adult we'll give it an age what's the difference between an eight-year-old and a sixteen-year-old they both know what they want right whoever's an eight-year-old in the room who remember what an eight-year-old wants they very much know what they want they know what they don't want they know what they want to do they know what they don't want to do how is he or she i was an eight-year-old different than a 16 year old second question is why do you think children at least express that they hate their parents you think about these two questions why do you think children hate their parents we'll be back very invigorating words i always like to hear from another source from someone else in the trenches i'm going to try to cover my next five seven minutes with as much as i can me just give you a picture no problem lash habits i was in chicago at the agora midwest convention i have children married children there and on thursday i went to see one of the newer yeshivas in the united states it's been open for about six or seven years and i've done a lot of work with them and we need more yeshivas like that that are on a certain level below the mainstream but not at the bottom of the of the ladder and just to give you an idea what kids are all about so i spoke with the resheba there for a few minutes there were about 20 boys there um some with white shirts some not but i sat down with them and i said okay i've sent a few boys here and rashida said he would accept them but the boys said no so just give me an idea of what your curriculum is so to say in accepting a boy into this yeshiva so listen to these answers number one no pay is behind the ears that's number one number two we already have one boy from baltimore no more boys from baltimore no harry's if you're not familiar with the term i'm not sure i'm even familiar you have to ask somebody under 20 and i'll explain it to you in better detail i don't want to insult anybody's children and again i don't even know myself what it is but you know we had our own terms in yeshiva growing up they have new terms today don't even try to figure out what's going on and kahana mekahina and i want to tell you i like the boys there very much but nobody knows what's going on in the world up down plus minus froome not from than these kids and these girls they know it better than we do our job is to figure it out so i want to jump back as i said by my son's vart some 14 years ago one of the people that really helped me happen to be a classmate of mine by the name of yitzchak mitnick he's been in the trenches for 25 years and he had to uh happen to have been a rebbe in the school where my son finally landed and i told him by my son's vert that i'm ready now now that he's getting married i'm ready to try to help other parents so you can give out my number sure enough the next day in my office in the afternoon my phone rings hello yes rob admit nick gave me your number i live in new york i have 10 children eight boys two girls my first seven boys are superstars stanford long beach philly brisk you name it they're all there the eighth boy is 14 years old and he's on the streets of lakewood he's been out of the house for two months and her husband believe it or not is a mechanic what happened two months ago the boy did an avla a bear avala i don't know what he did and i didn't ask the father went and took all of his belongings and wrapped it in his bet given in his sheets and pillowcases and all his clothing and put it out by the garbage and threw him out of the house the mother after midnight got up and took everything that was there by the front of the house and put it into the garage the father also went he had a set of art scroll himacham with rashi which he had bought a year or two before because this boy who's on the streets of lakewood yes the beautiful kasha by the table friday night and the father bought him his him this set of of and in the boracious safer wrote a full page of how proud he was of this boy he ripped out that page and gave the the set of swarm to one of his older sons to take to a basement somewhere now as this story is being telled to me i'm saying to myself i am going to kill yitzhak mitnick what in the world am i supposed to tell this mother so i said you know you gave me a lot of information hashem should be with you give me a couple of days and uh i'll call you back let me think it through i hung up the phone i called you i said what were you thinking what you know no experience my son was nowhere near on this level not at such a young age never left the house what did you want me to tell her oh i'll tell you what i wanted you to tell her i want you to take a picture of your son when he was in the 10th grade in my yeshiva and i want you to take a picture of the vart from last night what he looked like i'm going to give you the address of this father i want you to ring the bell and when he answers the door the first thing you do is put your foot in the door that he can't slam the door on you and you tell him you need to get down on your hands and knees and ask from your 14 year old son the los angeles if you ever ever want him to come back home because this is what my son looked like and this is what he looks like today now that's a very it's a very powerful story um let me see just raise your hands how many people think i did it well you would be wrong i certainly i wouldn't be able to do it even today certainly not not in such a drastic passionate way and also i have a little bit of a more passive character to be able to do something like that but just to give you an idea and again this was 14 years ago to the best of my information he's uh 20 he's in his highest 20s he's not married but he's learning in lakewood and he has a relationship with his mother and not with his father which brings me to step number two and this has been going on as long as i've been involved in meeting with boys and girls my process is the first step is always i meet with the parents with the child i won't talk about yeshivas to anybody without meeting a child because each one no matter how much information you're willing to share and need to look into the child's eyes to develop a half an hour relationship with them to get an idea what works best for them eight reasons might be good for this school six reasons for that school you really have to work through it but what bothers me and it's still going on today 90 percent of the time when people are coming to me a lot of people come to me with kids trying to get into regular high schools i'll put that to the side for a minute but ninety percent of the children who come to see me about an alternate school come with their mother and not with their father it doesn't matter if it's a boy or a girl and i've come to the realization that for some reason fathers are much quicker to throw in the towel mothers never never ever throw in the towel on child at least from what i've seen [Applause] and i and i'm a father so i have a right to say it you know but you know it's all part of the program you know the you know women are wired differently you know i i could explain it to you in another way but it doesn't it doesn't match up we find very often when there's a struggling child in the house the boys will lean on their mother and the girls will lean on their father what's the reason it's very simple the father went through the yeshiva system with his son with i mean when he was a teenager and he did what he had to do and he kept the rules and and and really the end result was good now he's looking at this boy he was going through the same yeshiva says what do you mean you don't want to learn what do you mean you don't want to get up for dabbing i did it even if they don't say it that's what they're thinking and the mother is the same thing with the girl i kept sneeze when i was in school i did everything i never woke up at four o'clock in the afternoon why are you doing that whereas the father of the girl will try to sort of he doesn't really get the mathias so instinctively always now there are exceptions but we know these kids they know how to press buttons i don't even want to go into that that that subject so what makes me with all trying to something sound as humble as i can what makes me good at what i do well i have two cardinal rules i never meet any boy or girl in a white shirt i don't wear white shirts except for shabbos you have no idea what it means and i'm not loved after the siddish community also in the literature community if they see somebody today wearing a colored shirt okay he's not one of them that's just the way he's not a manal he's not a rebbe he's not trying to pull me somewhere that's number one the second one which is sort of a side note i made bucky in sports from the time i was eight years old when i was nine years old my father told me at least two thousand times then [Music] and every once in a while in the last 10 years i look up and i smile and i fool myself into thinking listen the bunnies alone wanted me to know sports so that i could communicate with kids i'll tell you a quick story on that i had a boy who was thrown out of a new jersey dorm yeshiva because he left the yeshiva on a sunday night and went to the meadowlands to a sunday night football game and the boy came in he wouldn't admit to me what he did sitting there for a half hour and i couldn't he was just he was broken and it was a mainstream yeshiva and finally finally he said i climbed out the window and i went to the meadowlands and i came back and someone in my room ratted me out i i would assume that you know what that means in today's language right anyway which is another story also masira is such a problem today but this is not the time and place anyway i said when was this he says 10 days ago i said sunday night 10 days ago the jets lost in overtime you should have seen the kids eyes within five minutes he told me every alvera he ever did in his life but think about it or all of this comes back to trust if the child trusts you and feels you're on his side and he has confidence that no matter what he's going to tell you is not going to go any further you you have a very good chance of of uh connecting two more very quickly and this i'll say in yiddish and the people who even speak limited yiddish will understand one of the biggest problems we have today as parents is [Music] and to be honest it's a bigger problem in borough park and williamsburg and monroe than it is in flatbush but i will tell you that when i was a parent in this predicament 20 years ago for a kid to walk down the street in a t-shirt it was unheard of i saw my son walking home from shul without his hat on carrying it on the side i lost my mind now so today already you know the unfortunately you know kids off the derrick and struggling has exploded so we're starting to be a little bit calmer but you know in the more hasidicious circles you can't live your lives with us vet yanazone for those who don't speak english what is my neighbor going to say that's not what life is about and in 2021 i can tell you that your neighbor there isn't a person in the yiddish world who doesn't have a relative a friend or a neighbor that is struggling with one of their children so just get over it i can't tell you how many people came to me after my son got married and said i don't know how you did it that you got through this and you were never embarrassed by the way he was dressed by the way he handled himself in general when he came to schule or when he came late or when he didn't come to shu it's it's so sort of like a mountain that you have to climb but once you get over it once you get over it you just don't let it affect you and i'll end with this story which i've said already by kesha nafshi but i'll just say it again when my son started struggling my parents alaya mashallah were both hungarian survivors my father was from the deaths of europe and from the khasidish people [Music] and he had a european way of thinking which i was raised by i wouldn't say he did a great job with me but he did an okay job and i sent my older brother i have one brother and i said you gotta go to tatia and tell him this is gonna be a long process two years five years seven years look but don't touch in other words observe but there's no comments any comments you have you come to me to my brother and he'll decipher and digest and whatever and i gotta tell you my my father sir did a phenomenal job with that he never judged my son not the way he was dressed not where he was not the car he was driving whatever it was he was about 19 or 20 years old hashem well on his way back but he was still wearing jeans with all the cuts in them all over the place on a friday afternoon i sent him to boro park to pick up something from my parents and he was about to leave and he says get shabbos bobby your job is id as he was about to walk out my father went over to him and he says i want to just ask you a question what is it about your poison [Music] why do they have to have so many holes if it's a question of money i'll give you the money go and buy a pair of pants and by the way i didn't observe this this my son told me and he says i turned to him and i said zaidi you'll never understand your job [Music] thank you sean i just want to start that my english name is harry [Laughter] now you tell me i'm kidding i'm kidding i was that guy when i actually am but no but just uh one or two short anecdotes um i was once uh driving out of town to a hospital and i think i've noticed over time this obviously it wasn't in recent time but i always have the luck of a gps uh inventing new ways for me to get to places get to see uh all different sites had had come off a of a side county road that led right into a very small rural town and the speed limit dropped very sharply from almost highway road into the town and there was a police officer perfectly placed just eating his lunch at that spot and within a few seconds there were lights on behind me little did i know that that little town was on lockdown and uh the state state troopers were all over that of the town so a few weeks later when i showed up in the uh the civil court to to pay the the ticket it would there was a line through the courthouse like in six flags every door was open there were people working on their computers and there was a line right in front of them the place was chaos so i did what i had to do and i ended up in the small room at the end by the clerk you know where everyone pays the fine so we're standing there in awkward silence a whole bunch of people some grumbling some happy that it's over and there were two seats at the far end of the room and there was a a young south american boy like a metro pcs and a purple t-shirt and uh next to him was a very tall strong big burly man older man and they're sitting and talking making small talk and uh at one point in the conversation the young boy started talking to the older man about his goals and aspirations and he was working in a cell phone store because really he wanted to be in the music industry it was very interesting a conversation to listen to and um i tuned out a little bit and tuned back in and he was giving him all of the allegorical long haul you just got to keep your eye on what you want to do and get out there and do it nothing concrete and the voice sitting there listening to all of his and then the taller man was was called up to his name was called to pay his fine so he stood up and he kept on standing up and it's just he was he was a giant of a man and the young boy noticed that he was he was wearing a us army cat so he quickly jumps out of his seat to shake his hand you served he said sure did she said thank you for your service shook his hand and then he said before he went to the desk he says so what did you what did you do in the army what were you and he rattled off something that sounded very elite 451 platoon 9 blackhawk or something like that in the voice wow amazing so what did you do i delivered the mail and the entire room is just trying to control their laughter and he says i was like santa claus in the uniform he paid his ticket he walked down the whole time i'm driving back i'm saying how could you be in the army and rank and file with some elite soldiers and training and you're a mailman and he's proud and he wears his hat and he walks around with everything that he has when when his rank was average so other people walking around with decorated veterans and his tenure in the army was delivering the mail i just i thought for most of my ride back then in the school system and in society where we fit in so many stigmatic for just circumstances from all sides it's very difficult how to manage socially how to manage emotionally some people are stronger in different areas some boys or girls are weaker they're different here they can't connect where do we find that the sense of identity and pride and what we are able to do and what we are proud of it's very valuable to just find that point of success and builds from there to build that image in where they are indifferent to the surroundings because there's always very difficult surroundings and the world is a harsh world but our world only needs to exist within us and that's the point that we like to convey to our children and that's a point that we like to brainstorm on our own where is their their strong point and expands from there and also taking into account something else comes to mind now then i'll be brief i was once standing in a in a bank waiting to make a deposit and uh the bank had just started advertising their brand new atm machines so they put this huge edifice of a machine in the middle of the bank for everybody to come and try so it's a very quiet bank and man went up to the atm machine over here you know beep beep beep and then all of a sudden you start hearing and the bank is quiet and doing as if he was taking out five thousand dollars in singles and the entire machine is just making noise so my younger son who was standing with me turned to me and he said why are we on this line that machine's handing out money so we got back in the car i explained see i was actually putting away money so that we'll have in the account and that man was taking out he was on his way to be losing money the perspective on things that how things work in the world shouldn't be a taboo concept and it shouldn't be something that's necessarily self-understood the inner workings of how a society works is things that we should be conveying to our children so they understand when surprises come their way and they don't know how to process it's not behind the curtain they could stand behind that curtain too and know exactly how things work and then they're confident and they're more resilient to be able to handle circumstances that aren't exactly of their best interests okay so as we said in the beginning we're now going to open up to questions please feel free to really talk about any subject that you like other than the stock market i mean you know as far as our kids are concerned relationships boys girls etc and once we're finished with the questions and answers we'll each finish then with another five six minutes of our closing remarks so please raise your hand if you'd like to answer your question yes in the back just speak up please stand stand up please so you might take me probably both the questions would of course my colleagues are welcome to answer it both of the questions would probably be best answered on an individual basis with each of you but it goes back to general question of why do children seemingly hate their parents and their children have within them to whatever degree they're not successful there's anger in them now anger suppressed is not something teenagers do well it's a lot easier for them to take their anger out on someone else so the answer to one of my questions is why do children hate their parents because they can because if they tried that with anyone else they would lose a friend whatever the relationship is with anyone else if they would show anger to them that would be the end of the relationship what you need to do is not now if you if you know the answer to your question what you're doing wrong then just stop doing that but if you honestly don't have an answer then it's not you if your child is going through a difficult time and that's what has to be addressed and really that needs to be answered on an individual basis please welcome to uh i was asked that when someone asks a question i should repeat the question that everybody heard it so the question was in a very very fair and a painful question why is it always the parents who feel they've done nothing to be even aggressive with their child but they've become abusive before 30 seconds have gone by so this is the world that we live in that number one and this is a fact also and i i went through this also when the dust settles when you're under the hook and the child is getting married and everything is great the fact is the last person or the last two people in the world see from that child are the parents i don't know how many times people came to me on the street and said you know i met your son last night he's such a sweet boy you know he he's about their heritage he talks nicely and um you know you want to come into my house for about 10 minutes and so you have to understand you are the line of defense and to take it a step further and this is my own observation la havdel elephant dallas the you think they don't have kids who go off the derrick but they don't have a derek by the straight to drugs there's nothing there's no religion so how do i get somebody's attention i go to drugs by the idnal have to we have a religion we have a torah for a child to get their parents attention all it takes is one haircut one piece of clothing different than everybody else and i know you don't like to hear this but they're crying out that's their way of showing it's not working for me right now for whatever reason and to go back to the specifics of your question forget about what you said think about this these kids read your eyes 24 7. you get up in the morning and they come in sometimes it's the afternoon or the early evening all they have to do is just see you and they can read it i know you're disappointed in me you didn't say anything but they see how you look if by chance they're ever in the morning where the other kids are going to school martial azad isn't i love you and this now you're certainly not on a level where you can say that to this child so you say nothing but they know it they know it now how do you balance that rabbi taub gave this over so beautifully yesterday you know there's an ashama there it's very hard so you're dealing with a teenager to begin with you're right they have a mindset and so do you theirs is immature yours hopefully is a mature coming from life experiences and we're expecting to have a conversation with them on an even keel it doesn't work that's another burden on us to understand that what they're saying in their mind makes sense and even though you know it's immaturity you have to be able to to balance it but think very seriously about the eyes you have no idea and again you can't overdo it either you can't have this big smile when they come in that i love you you have to learn how to balance it and i guarantee you everyone in this room can learn it each in their own way once you get past the eyes you have to try to let them lead the conversation your issue is that you're being abusive so start right away besides good morning let's see what they want to talk about they want to be quiet today it's going to be a quiet day but the minute you might say something that in your eyes is not abusive but if it triggers anything anything did you just look at my haircut i saw you look that's all it takes just to add the shelling how to resolve what we try and do is find the core of where all this began the question that was asked could be at many different stages in a relationship that same terminology of why are you so abusive could be at a very late stage in the relationship just emotions are running high and we've already lost the content of the conversation it's really just me against you and it's all territorial i can't give an inch because then i lost or if you do this then well i can't say that so so we have to figure out bring ourselves back to base basics try to understand how the relationship develop what were you trying to accomplish did you have an agenda were you pushing a certain agenda were they pressing buttons did you give an inch and they took a mile and then when we start understanding where things came from so then we let we like to advise you can move into collaborative thinking now again i'm stressing it really depends at what stage in the relationship we are but a lot of this is an open conversation where we try and understand two sides almost in buying a house how much are you willing to spend well you have to notice that you know the tile over there is broken well i was thinking there really wasn't such a big deal because you know kyle's very cheap now oh you value that as something as being important i didn't see it that way so when we're able to put all of the feelings on the table we're able to put all of the perceptions on the table we got a lot clearer where everybody was coming from and the language of you're being abusive becomes why are you pushing me so hard to do x y and z so it changes it from a very emotionally charged argument to very simply trying to figure out i was trying to accomplish this oh now i understand where you're coming from really we only like to do it in our house like this but i think we can make an accommodation that this could work for you too would that be okay because i really see it only working this way or that way did you have a different way that you thought maybe this could work let's entertain the let's see if that works and when we're able to diffuse the generalization and understand the the trees rather than dealing with the forest the terminologies become a lot less painful because they're not labels anymore they're feelings and we can discuss our feelings openly collaborate to end up with a better result i just want to throw in on that thing just just keep in mind how often does this happen the boy or the girl comes upstairs or downstairs whatever the logistics of your house is and you're on the phone and the mother usually it's the mother that's in the kitchen he just came upstairs i'll call you later that's all he has to hear or the girl she you don't even use their name she just came upstairs i'll call you later now you're just telling you're like trying to cover confide you're like what do you think the kid feels like what am i a donkey you know uh these little they're all little things and they all add up and trust me i went through them what you need i was just telling a parent the other day i'm not the other day yesterday i i trained myself when there were times when my son did things and i was already on a better level i used to work in the bronx and i had a long ride home and i know i'm walking into he did xyz whatever it is i pulled into the driveway i put the car in park and i yelled at him to the to the best of my lungs and let him have it for 30 40 seconds and then i shut off the car and then i went back inside and i was fine i got it i got it out of my system because there was no chance if i would have walked straight into my house that i wouldn't have let him have it next question and if you have it's directed for one of us in particular please say so let's try to get in let's get it's getting time is zooming by no pun intended stand up please i'm not answering that question um yeah okay the question is how do we teach the men to be more proactive uh surely mentioned something and i i find it true and it's because we we intend to want our children to be like we think or thought we would end up uh it's easier for fathers to relate to daughters and for mothers to relate to sons i actually find even the maybe when it comes to sri replacement um you find that it's way way out of proportion um it's not as out of proportion as as you make it sound it's really a question of of getting it and it is easier to cross gender uh whichever parent now when both parents are proactive it's of course much healthier for the parents for the child if one parent is taking a lead role the best thing that parent can do um [Music] sometimes it's not it's it's not even a teachable skill it's it's not i had with my daughter and my wife's a remarkable woman she couldn't get past certain things and and she admits it she she couldn't sometimes there's something you can have you know kevatat says we're all born with with a toolkit and some of us are given power tools some some of us are given rusty screwdrivers we all have talents and and we all have to use our tools to build some things what are we supposed to build yourself your tools are to build yourself everyone has to recognize their own strengths if you have a child that needs you and that's equal responsibility on mother and father it's the responsibility of the mother father to be there for the child this is your child your prime responsibility is not to teach your spouse how he he or she should be more like you i think you're inviting disaster but this is not what this little get-together is about so and just to add to that you know i meet hundreds and hundreds of parents and i i'm always learning and i'm always watching it's aina doma a child who's in even in a slight crisis if the parents are on the same page that is 90 percent of the battle because of the parents are on a different page so what does the kid do look my kids if parents are fighting anything i know when i need money i'll go to this one when i need this i'll go to that one and let them work out their own troubles and because of that schools and i agree with them when we realize even in the very early stages that we have a child who needs help we try to find a therapist if you feel either the husband feels or the wife feels that the two of you are not on the same page there's nothing wrong with both of you going to seek help to how to deal with this particular child there are such mum out there that you know i've had parents come to me have no idea what this person did for me in order to me to understand how to deal with my child together with you're a team if the father and mother are a team i'm telling you you're solving a good chunk if not most of the problem just want to broaden the discussion even though it was targeted towards mothers who have a greater proclivity so not for sick their children we connect with their children it's not there to get the exact vernacular um if at resolve we find daily it can it can really happen on both sides of the majita you can have a father who's calling and he's calling incessantly we have a mother who's calling and they're very driven and motivated and a lot of that i think it's really for an article in a magazine not for this podium but it really depends on dynamics in the home what's weighing on who who is more busy who has the more direct role in the house it can really go both ways but if we're trying to impact the spouse to see our way i feel the muscle helps because i think maybe most of us are in this if you're trying to repaint your home i like blue no but gray blue how could it not be gray so we haven't really gotten down to what's going on under the surface we just have the way we see it like charlie had said earlier he has the way it's supposed to be the way he did it and that's the way it should go and the other spouse says wasn't in that disposition so i was able to see past that so how do you impact the spouse to see past either the way they thought things were supposed to be or their life experiences which led them down that path we have to make them more for and this is where we have to do our diligence so we have to make them more familiar with the spirit of the times we can't talk to them from their perspective to change blue to gray but we could say what were the couches that you wanted in that room what picture did you want to put on the wall oh so i think that would complement that better if we would put it like this and there's different shades there and there's different shot well the flooring kind of matches this better you didn't try and tell him that gray is blue blue or blue is gray you're trying to show them the greater perspective of there's more moving parts in this whole picture than your agenda so say we can explain to them how his his social environment works we can explain to him how the rebbe interacts with him and sometimes having that information already prepared as if we've spoken to the teacher and we know how he reacts in school you know when he learns with his cabrusso or when he stays after school to do the the extra enrichment course he's on task and when he comes home at the end of the day and he's very tired and even if he's eaten supper already to sit down with you to do an extra 15 math problems it's already at the end of his day well when i came home i did 50 math problems yeah well your day ended two hours earlier he's going he's going two days more so if we if we talk more effects rather than why can't you just be more involved or he needs you to be there so then we're kind of bypassing the collision and giving them tools to process and understand where you're coming from okay we'll take one more question and then and i would ask if any whoever decides to be the last person to ask a question we will go i will gladly and i'm sure my rib zakaria has to drive home so he may have to leave but we're here for shabbos we'll be glad to answer any questions so we'll take one more question and then we'll each close with a few minutes uh i'm only going to take the gentleman because so far we only took from the ladies side now go go ahead stand up please right so the question was that my story had a happy ending and it's having a happy ending um and how do you relate to that that's a very very hard question from my own experience i can tell you i didn't know anybody who had a happy ending because there was no beginning in those days you know so again like zachary said we were so isolated in the closet with what we were dealing because nobody else was dealing with it but i can say i wouldn't say that every day i told myself hashem is going to need giving going to give me knocks from this child i wouldn't say i did that but as the process was going on and those of you who have never heard uh rabbi russell has a five-stage program that he's given here on more than one occasion on the progression a b c and d with denial and acceptance and you know playing a and player b so that you can understand once it once you get past that first stage of denial you know what what i think is happening as much as i'm going to deny that it's not happening you know what it's happening once you reach that stage you have to convince yourself that there's going to be a happy ending i i i've been at to at least 25 weddings of boys and girls that i met six four ten years earlier who there was very little hope that i would be attending those weddings and i got to tell you from my own perspective to walk into a wedding like that and just making eye contact with the father of the hasano the father of the kaala and we're the only two people in the room besides the cousin who know every detail of what went on here and look where we're holding now but i understand all i'm giving you is is more hope you have to hold on there is an amish to hear and he has a plan and he may decide that this family is going to deal with a crisis for a year for three years for eight years for nine years they will have sixty percent of success they'll reach eighty percent success a hundred percent that we have to leave today as long as you're ready to accept the child and the more you accept them every day that you expect accept them more you have a better chance of having a happy ending okay we'll try i'm gonna try to explain in a few minutes what what my method is it it is successful in a lot of situations certainly not successful in all situations and it's really up to the parents as i said earlier when you hear something that seems like it's going to work you should try it i will say that 100 success is not measured by by your definition of success hundred percent success is like i mentioned earlier god sparkle gave you in a shama and he said take care of that nashamah for me that's my special neshama your success is measured totally and only by what you give of yourself towards your child it's difficult but it's simple it's simple but it's difficult so i'm not here to say it's any less difficult or easy but happy ending not happy ending has a plan for every single ashama in this world why the shamans are here certainly above my pay grade and we have to we have to accept that i'm not saying words are going to make it easier or less difficult but i will say that it's not 40 60 happy ending not happy ending let me just describe briefly what i do nothing in this world is accomplished without discipline and sacrifice nothing no one in this world ever accomplished anything that's a big bold statement it's from baking a cake to whatever whatever example you want to give if you don't have discipline you're not willing to sacrifice you will accomplish zero now all of us are experiencing we have someone in a house that doesn't respond well to discipline and sacrifice it's just not working so we're gonna try a different approach and we're going to try having conversation with our children preferably not at home at home parents tend to be well not at my house you're not coming to the shabbos table dressed like that in my house so get out of my house if you can't do it figuratively at least do it literally it works you're going to give a simple speech a very abridged version you sit down with your son or daughter and say you know i didn't make the decision that i was going to be your father or mother or you were my son or daughter i was born and bark hashem thank god from the happiest days of my life i had you but now i'm here and you're here now when you were an infant i knew exactly what my responsibilities were if i didn't feed you you would have starved to death frozen to death when you're two years old if i didn't hold your hand outside you would have been run over by a car go through this with them now you're 13 14 15 16 whatever age you are i can't exactly fall off the map [Music] i can't after 120 years when hashem asks me you know you're a great parent until your child was 15 but what happened well i don't know she told me enough so i stopped i don't think hashem wants to hear that answer for me ask yourself what do you think so why don't we try something very novel why don't i try to tell you what i think my role is what my responsibility and obligations are to you and actually what i think your responsibility obligations not to me but what our ability what are your obligations not to believe in this world now don't ask for an answer now but say since obviously you look at yourself as an adult i remember my 14 year old my famous 14 year old who thought she was all grown up i said really [Music] when you're 18 i mean you're not growing up anymore you're done you're all grown up no of course when i'm 18 oh so you're not all grown up but yes you are an adult stress and emphasize stress and emphasize stress and emphasize over and over and over again your child is an adult and i'm going to talk to you as an adult and we treat you as an adult but adults communicate so can you clue me in now if your oldest child it's easier but if it's not the dynamic between every parent and child changes trust me then the door that i was mentioning before and earlier when i started saying but your older sisters didn't do that she said abba that was 10 years ago i had children over 20-year period you can't even use the same skills you lose on your last child it's a different world with every child learn it's a different sugya learn it but talk to your child but mean it mean it that you're talking to them as an adult and you're going to say i have a question for you please tell me what do you think my responsibility and obligations are to you and what do you think your responsibility and obligations are never ask for an answer on the spot but you ask for an answer and remind them i want an answer if this is going to work right you didn't ask your one week old child do you want me to feed you now but again we're adults adults communicate an adult stops communicating that means by definition one of us is not an adult so we have to talk talk to talk and walk the work we have to treat our children as adults we can call that empowerment we put that in the driver's seat the question i asked before what's the difference between an adult and a child it's a one-word answer consequences children cannot process consequences an eight-year-old doesn't know consequences a sixteen-year-old does whatever it is whatever behavior because discipline is not working but we already established with our children that without discipline we can't accomplish anything and of course my dear child you want to accomplish of course he wants to accomplish so it's a very short version of what i do it's i'm not going to say it's highlights there's you know i i did take notes but i'm not giving my own lecture here um it does work does it work in every situation no i will not be of a shabbos my wife's not feeling well i must go back and next week i got dimensions they are from my youngest son um but my my email i'm on whatsapp and uh not advertising myself but when when i retired from business bar hashem hashem treated me very well and and my rebbe told me to get involved give of yourself give up your time and i had no idea what i was how what and my friend avi suggested this and i listened and so i'm available i i don't have a fee schedule uh i will microsoft available if you do need me please don't hesitate to reach out i wish you all the most luck and a wonderful shabbos thank you i i want to i want to close but i want to first say that believe it or not i met today for the first time we've never never met each other and i'm glad to see on my end that there's another member of claudia's role that gets it and that's something it's something very real and we live two blocks away from each other very close-knit flatbush community [Music] um and that's probably one of the reasons why after 42 years now i am moving to jackson but that's another story i want to close with a story but i just want to throw this out there before i tell you the story um many times this is with boys as opposed to girls i'll ask a 16 or a 17 year old and and i know what they're doing and they're into anything and everything and i said just do me a favor ten years from now describe what i'm gonna see about you oh i'll be married i'll have a few kids they'll start going to yeshiva i said going to yeshiva you're not in yeshiva oh my kids are going to yeshiva and i know all the shenanigans that are going on today so they won't be able to pull anything over in my eyes because i know it all and i just respond to them the same way when i was a teenager i thought i knew it all and when i became a parent the world changed i don't know if i want to think about where the world's going to be in 10 years from now but i tell that 16 year old you're really going to have to do a lot of homework because the kids will always be one step ahead of the parents so i want to close with a story under the heading of and this is really why i'm telling this story every single child is different doesn't matter how many similarities there are they're all different and they all have to be treated personally and separately and independently now this story is both sad and funny but when i finish it you'll understand about a year ago parents called me brought me their 15 year old son who was not functioning in yeshiva at all and it was time to move on that yeshiva was nice enough which i wish all yeshivas would do they did not send the boy away until he had another yeshiva to go to which really unless it's a real case of what all schools should do i answered the door these parents come in the boy was in my days they used the term pipsqueak if anybody know what that is but he was a tiny little kid they didn't even get a chance to sit down he turns to his parents and he says remember we're here tonight about me you don't open your mouth unless i ask you to so now under normal circumstances there's a one-word answer that we're all know right i mean but you know being i do what i do i'm observing and i saw the reaction of the parents they didn't flinch this is one of the nicer things he said to them on that particular day they sit down and we start talking i'm talking to the boy and i can't seem to make a connection with him he's trying to give me this tough persona especially because he's a small kid they train themselves to be tough and i don't know what to do and i you know i say this with a lot of emotion and i find it all the time i am sure other people in this field when i'm stuck sometimes i get a lightning bolt of ciata de shmaya i can't explain it and i don't know what made me say this but i said you know what i want to ask you a question if you could watch a video of anything in jewish history from bria lamb until today what would you like to see again i don't know why i asked it kid goes wow that's a great question let me think for a minute or two and he turns to his parents you guys be quiet he's asking me i'm sitting there it's quiet after a minute he says you know what i'm still thinking of the answer but i'm throwing it right back at you which is today's lingo he's asking me what video i would like to see and again never thought about it it took me about 30 seconds and i got seated ismail i said you know what i would like to see i would love to watch the way jaco vavino had 12 children and had 12 different relationships with each one of those kids and he was able to balance the relationship every minute of the day depending on who he's talking to the kid goes wow that's a great answer i wish my parents would understand that so i borrowed hashem i made an inroad at least i see and there's work to be done they went home i never saw them again i think i spoke to him on the phone but whatever that that's the sad part of the story that shabbos i went to my oldest uh daughter and son-in-law who have canine her a very big family with a lot of boys and i told over this story obviously without names and i said i want to go around the table i want everybody to answer what video they would like to see let's have a discussion the words didn't come out of my mouth when an 18 year old boy stood up and he said zaidi you know what i would love to see i would love to see the way pimcha stabbed those two people uh you know my mouth fell open and it doesn't hold but i said to myself this kid is watching video games something's going on here and the place is going crazy and the siblings are you know you're out of your mind and and when i got my composure back i told them you know if i took a piece of paper and wrote down my top 100 that would not be in there and i was totally at a loss after the meal an hour later we were sitting in the den and he comes over to me and says idea i just want you to know that last week we learned the gemara how pinches walked around with the spear with both people still attached to it and showed claudius roll that this is what had to be done to stop the mageifa so i had a little bit of an ahama that at least i knew where it came from but just to give you an idea every kid is different and i will be here over shabbos i'll be glad to talk to anybody who would like to talk to me go ahead [Applause] okay so um it was a pleasure here and uh everybody should enjoy the shabbos and get physic in every which way possible