Rabbi Goldman - Enjoying our teenagers

so good evening everybody and first of all i'd like to start again by thanking the helpline which has made this evening possible the helpline again is open for people from all over england and indeed if someone from around the world wants to call they're also welcome to the helpline is there to help anyone who's might be struggling it's anonymous it's an anonymous service the callers all remain anonymous and to date the helpline has helped many many people who otherwise would not have been able to reach out the number is one six one eight two six three three three three currently they are open from ten o'clock on sunday morning till ten o'clock in the evening sunday till thursday so again we'd like to thank them for sponsoring this evening i'd like to just start the evening by recapping last week i realized somebody asked a question at the end of the session and i only answered part of it and i realized because of the amount of questions that we've had back to us that we didn't really fully answer the question so i'd like to just first start by revisiting that question and answering the first half of the question which i didn't give an adequate answer to at the end of the last week's session so the question was how would i know if my child has been abused and if yiddish kite is one of those things that could have been caused trauma for my child so i'm going to address the first part of the question which i didn't answer last week was how would i know if my child was abused so the truth is that in essence that's a shift for itself and it take a long time to fully go into the ins and outs of that so i'll do my best to make it very very quick and to try and answer that question the reason why this question was asked was because we spoke a lot last week about the high rate of children that are abusing our community we said one in four and the amount of children who are struggling report having suffered some sort of abuse the truth is that we don't know we will we might never know if our child has been abused and really it's not essential to know because it's not really relevant to how we would work with our child when we have a child in crisis we're going to work with in a certain way we're going to work with him or her in a certain way and it's irrelevant if we know for sure that the child has been abused one thing i know for sure is that when you're worried about a child you need to seek expert advice so many parents come to me and say and you know everybody says that it's because of abuse i've asked my child so many times if he's been abused or she's been abused and he said why would you ask me that of course i haven't been abused and they tell me they haven't been abused because i've asked my child and that is something which we should never do we should never give our child the notion to feel that we feel you might have been abused without proper training we need to often they might not understand what abuse is second of all they might feel that it wasn't abuse because they were involved and they had some sort of enjoyment and some sort of boost to their confidence or whatever it was and it's really complicated for them and even if they have a really open relationship with the parents when it comes to something like abuse they're very embarrassed very ashamed and they need to feel so so secure to be able to open up about it i sat with many victims of abuse and i've sat with them while they've opened up and it takes a long time it's usually just as you're about to do something else they just let something drop let bombshell drop and they're not really going to open up about it when they're asked about it so and it also doesn't affect the fact of how we're going to deal with a child who's in crisis so you might not know and it's not important to know if your child has or hasn't been abused what is important to know is if my child is in crisis if my child is in crisis we need to seek expert advice if they're not in crisis then they've probably not been abused anyway and we don't need to worry about that but when you go to an expert they'll be able to tell you how to proceed and eventually if you have that relationship with your child they will probably tell you if they have or haven't been abused so i hope that puts to rest what that question was and if there's more questions on that we can revisit that next week but for now i'd just like to move on to tonight's session but before we start with tonight's session let's just quickly recap what we said last week so last week we wanted to put out of the way the worry and the fear that my child might go off the derrick and we worried that this thing of them going with otd is something which stops us actually being able to enjoy our children because we're always worried if he does something different from the norm he's going off or you know there's something wrong with him so and in fact we met some friends on shabbos and they said to us they listened to the lecture last week and they said that it used to be we were scared of our parents and now we're scared of our children and that's what we tried to put to rest last week we should not be scared of our children being scared of our children or their behaviors what they might do stops us being able to enjoy those children let's remember that if a child is doing well and he's happy and he's successful he's not going to throw that away not for anything in the world he's definitely not going to throw away from a mcdonald's sandwich or for something else like that we said that taiva is not something which makes a child dysfunctional if a child is dysfunctional it's not because of taiva bali taiva people are following their desires are doing that and they're being successful the the world around us managed to turn up at work on monday morning after indulging in all their desires over the weekend and that's not what's making our children dysfunctional it's not fiverr and third of all the most important thing to remember is that only trauma or such a low self-esteem has the ability to cause and wreck such havoc in these children's lives to make their lives go on a trajectory which they they themselves don't know how to get out of so we don't need to worry no child is going to choose such a path and if they do go along such a path we have to remember it's something has happened and if you're worried about the behavior again i implore you get expert advice turn to people in the field who know what they're doing and get advice before earlier rather than later you might not be able to stop their journey but you can be with them there during their journey okay so let's move on to tonight's session which is about enjoying our teenagers hashem i had a lot of feedback over the last week and one of the comments that i kept hearing and i generally hear whenever anybody connects to anyone who has a mahalo with children who are struggling they come across and say oh when it comes to our teenagers the right thing to do is what like you say no boundaries just give them what they want unconditional love and that's not the truth in fact not is it not the truth it's the furthest thing away from the truth because of course children need boundaries no one's saying that children shouldn't have boundaries no one's saying that we shouldn't give our children or our teenagers a safety net of course they have to have boundaries because children don't thrive when they don't have boundaries with a regular child with a regular especially when they're young we have boundaries which keep them safe boundaries which are to do with their behaviors as they grow into adolescence those boundaries have to widen to encompass their growing abilities to encompass their growing mindset and if they're struggling teenagers if they're in crisis then that boundary sometimes has to be an all-encompassing boundary a huge boundary of love which is around the entire life of this child remember when you've got a child in crisis his emotional body has been so broken there's bits of him everywhere there's bits of him wherever he was shouted out or abused or told off or all the bad memories are all dotted around everywhere and we need to encircle all those different pieces we need to make a huge boundary of love around that child without any internal boundaries and sometimes that's the boundary that that child needs a safety net all the way around him so wide that he can't fall through that net through that boundary so again boundaries are important and a child again if you're teenager and you're unsure how to place those boundaries don't take a risk by trying to just put boundaries wherever you feel they're necessarily hopefully tonight we'll be able to explain a little bit more on how to do hinok etc properly when it's a child in crisis again you need an expert to help you place that boundary of love all the way around that child that he doesn't fall through and of course the principles that we're giving over tonight are just general principles and sometimes it can be applied and other times you need help by arrival a mentor or somebody who understands your child to be able to put those boundaries into place and to be able to put what we're discussing tonight into place so let's move on with how to actually enjoy our adolescence how to enjoy our teenagers so there is a famous conductor whose name is originally english actually his name was benjamin zander and he conducts the boston philharmonic orchestra in 2008 he gave a ted talk ted talks are inspirational talks which i believe are given in america i haven't seen them beginning over here but they're on online and people can access them they're inspirational talks and benjamin zander gave a ted talk in and in it he explained how he is a world famous conductor of the boston philharmonic orchestra and he'd been a conduct for 20 years and it made him think on all the posters whenever the boston philharmonic orchestra was running he was the one who was on the face of the posters he is on the front of the cds of whatever media they give out benjamin zander is the face of it and yet he was thinking to himself i'm the only person of all those people on the stage who doesn't make a sound he stands down the front waving his button but doesn't make a sound and that same thinking for 20 years i've been doing this yet i'm the only person on stage who doesn't make a sound and i'm the most famous person i am the world renowned person from the boston philharmonic orchestra much more so than musicians what is it that gives me that right to be that powerful person to be the face of the phenomenal orchestra of so many people and he answered he said my success and the reason why i have a right to be the face of the orchestra is because i have the power to make others powerful it's up to me to make those on the stage powerful and because i'm in that fortunate position to make them powerful i need to ask myself how do i know if i'm being successful and he explained when that there's a shining light in their eyes when their eyes are lit up and their eyes are shining i know says benjamin zander that i'm being successful with them and then i get to ask myself the question if there's no light in their eyes what can i do to make that light come back what can i do to bring that light forth and if i can't bring that light forth then i have no right to be that conductor that's an idea we'll explore a little bit more but he carried on to say and explain further that he once was lucky enough to meet an auschwitz survivor one of the rare auschwitz survivors a lady who'd been through the terrible death camp of our shits this lady was a 15 year old when she went to auschwitz and she was after losing her parents her parents had disappeared she and her eight-year-old brother were put on the train to auschwitz and when he got towards the end of the journey she noticed that her brother didn't have his shoes on and like any good 15 year old sister she turns around to her brother and she says how can you be so careless can you not even look after your things for a few minutes as any 15 year old older sister would say to their younger brother when they're looking after them but unfortunately this was the last thing that she ever said to her brother her brother never made it further when she came out of auschwitz she survived she made a vow to herself she made a promise that i will never say anything that could not stand as the last thing that i ever see she promised herself this would never happen again all her interactions with people after that would always be with the thought if this is the last thing that i'm going to say to this person how would i feel would i be okay with that now can we imagine living on such a level obviously it's not something that we can do because barakah we never had to experience what she experienced but let's try tapping into this for a moment imagine how different our relationships our reactions would be we meet so many people on a regular basis often we get upset with somebody we get upset with someone in the shop we get upset with a inconsiderate driver and of course if we look at our homes and we come home and we see our children and they've done something silly imagine we had that in our mind what i'm about to say to my child what would i feel if it was the last thing that i ever said to my child how would i say it how would i want my child to remember me how would i feel if i never had an opportunity to say something different to my child and he went on to say benjamin zander that more than anything is our silence and our carefully chosen words that can build people that can give us the possibility to be able to see into the potential of people by just being silent sometimes and carefully choosing those words that can help us to help our children and help the other people in our lives to bring forth the light in their eyes and to help them shine more than ever so that is in truth what benjamin zander says that is really something which is really really powerful as parents it's our job to be the conductor of our children to bring forth that light to bring forth their potential to see the shining light in their eyes now often people say to me very nice very nice so we should be all-encompassing etc what about we all have a mitzvah from the torah to be mechanic to educate our children so they're a hundred percent right it's certainly a mitzvah to educate our children there's a mixture of of education for every single parent to his children but we'll see how that mitzvah actually pans out and there's three points i'd like to mention first of all rakhine velojan who was the talmud of the villenegon he said that anyone who angers easily is potter he's exempt from the mitzvah of he does not have a mitzva to educate his child because he gets angry easily that's the first point that a person needs to remember but obviously by definition a parent is an educator so by law he has to do something he can't just ignore his children he might be potter from telling the mother from doing kind of things but what should he do says he should set by example by working on himself and setting an example he's yoitsa he's fulfilled his mitzvah of educating his children he has to set an example and this is something which of course said so many years ago but which is so true today because there's nothing more true in our world today for a parent for for a parent to know by setting an example further for their children there's nothing more that children want to look up to their parents they have the appreciation from their parents they have the acknowledgement from their parents there's nothing more they want to hear from their parents to have that warmer close relationship and to hear how proud their parents are of them which is a story that i heard from zakaria wallace says over that he was once given a share beautiful share on the connection between yaakov and yosef which won't go into now but he finished the share speaking about the connection between a father and a child and how much it makes a difference and he said when he finished giving the share a very very wealthy individual came over to him someone he knew actually and he says to him is harry i want to tell you something he goes you know i'm extremely wealthy and my parents were holocaust survivors they lost everything they lost their previous families they lost their children they lost everything in the wall and they both survived they met each other in america they got married and i was their only child but because they'd been through so much they decided that or it was a subconscious decision they couldn't get they didn't want to get close to me in case they were to lose me as well it would be too much for them so while i knew i had a safe stable home nevertheless my parents never showed me any love i didn't get hugs i didn't get kisses and they were very very cold they didn't give me those words of you know go get it they kept it very cold i became very successful and my mother towards the end of her life was on her deathbed and she was very weak and i was sitting with her in the hospital and she takes my hand and she says to me i am i'm so proud of you he says it was harry wallistein there was one day in business where i made a hundred million dollars on one day a hundred million dollars on one day he turned over i felt like i was king of the world no one could touch me i was so powerful it's such a great feeling but he said it was nothing nothing compared to when my mother took my hand and said to me i'm proud of you that's how much it means a mother's or father's pride to the child and that's what the children really want and i've heard it so many times from children who are otherwise swearing about their parents talking about how they don't care about their parents who want their parents dead and they even tell that sometimes to their parents they say very very nasty things to their parents because they're so close to them but yet in their weakest moments when they're crying when they're speaking about how much they've been through in life they say and all i wanted was my father to connect to me all i wanted was my father to show me that he loves me all i wanted was to have that relationship to let to know that my parents truly love me and that's what is saying if we have badminton which is natural for us as human beings then we have to be a mechanic by setting an example by having that one close relationship because that's truly from the available from the root of bringing forth that's if one looks up what educate means it means to bring forth it doesn't mean to teach and that means parents rebellion manalim are all educators not teachers today we don't have milandi in our schools we have for the whole topics we have teachers we have a science teacher we have a maths teacher we have an english teacher because they are teaching a subject to our children they're not bringing forth anything they're not bringing forth any potential other than teaching a subject to our children they're not called a math educator or a science educator but our obeying are not melandim and if they feel them a landing that they're there maybe to impart their words of wisdom to the children then they need to be finding somewhere else to go because in the olden days we had malam them children were brought up and they had malam who taught them how to read et cetera but today we have mechanics in our schools people who are there to bring forth the best in our children and usually that is done through teaching them torah usually it's done by teaching our children the rich heritage of being a yid the beauty of the toyota the beauty of the mitzvahs and that's how we bring forth the best in our children we make them proud to be eat but sometimes and halaway was off it was rare but unfortunately it's not so rare sometimes we have children who don't tap into that something's happened to them to switch off that light in their eyes sometimes they don't get switched on by learning just about our heritage they have questions they want to ask and that's fine the torah embraces asking questions we should encourage our children to ask questions no matter how bizarre that question might be and our rebellion our schools are they're people who are bringing forth the best in our children and if it's not working the torah by just teaching them torah then we need to find another way to bring forth the best in them but as parents we also have the obligation not to be a malamad a teacher we are being a mechanic to our children if we're being mechanical children if we're worried about the mitzvah in the toilet being with our children that is the mitzvah to bring forth the best in that child hashem has put us in a generation which no previous generation has ever seen before our child we would like we said last week would never be able to survive today's generation and it's up to us as parents to bring forth the best in our child regardless of what that mahalo takes we have to focus and find out what's best for this child and we see in the torah it's something beautiful this isn't something which is a modern day fad something which is modern day educators and modern day schools and robotics say because his hunting was in his mouth that's literal translation there is rashi that says that kite before trap him with different uh questions but loved asap he liked his barbecues now yitzchak was the the most kaddish of all yusuk was on the mizbaya he was he was a carbon to hashem he wasn't allowed to leave our tistral yet he loved his son asaf who was a murderer because he said the fifth because he liked his barbecue asap would come home and say dad i've got a new recipe for steak rare wagyu steak whatever it is and yes i would say nice asap let's see how it is come on let's cook it up see how it goes i once heard from somebody speaking on a good convention that if you have 10 sons and nine of them are big worldwide russian shivas or russian kuala lum or successful lawyers or whatever it is and one of them is a biker pull out your harley davidson and go biking with him or pull out at least a book on harley davidson so you understand what your son's on about and this is exactly what yitzchak did he shared aesop's love of hunting to have that connection with asa and that led to something even further we're told by the mufashim asap had a son called alifa's alifa's was an absolute low life if one looks in the pasture as one knows why he's a low life and he was actually the forefather of the father of amalie alifa's was grew up on the lap of yitzchak now today kim can see through people they can see through their faces they can see and they can see where a person is up to and of course kawakuma yitzchak could see who eliphaz was yet knew who alifa's was he was someone yet eliphaz grew up in yitzchak's lap yitzchak looked after his grandson eliphaz now fast forward many years yaakov steals the ploy from aself asos swears to kilijakov and yakiv has to run away aesop calls in his son elifaz who is a lowlife a person with zero morals and says to ali faz i want you to go and chase after yarkov i want you to kill him and in one mitzvah and asos house which was kept to the utmost and that was the mitzvah of kibanov nobody nobody disobeyed a father aesop did the midst of qibla aim to his parents to the highest degree and california life has had to be had to listen to his father to the highest degree especially when it came to murder this was something they were good at no morals whatsoever he goes and chases after his uncle jacob he finds jacob and he says to him hi uncle jake i've got to kill you jacob vavino turns around him and says to him okay lethals i get you your father told you to kill me but listen you know the gemara says anikosh of kamis a poor person is considered dead so let me give you all my money i'll be dead you can then i'll be considered dead you can then go and tell your dad you killed me eleva says deal done i'll go home you're a poor man i'll go home and i'll tell you so that i've killed you seriously and he had no morals why should he care about killing jacob and not only that but why he's going to listen to this london stat that jacob has told him about only a fashion commence a poor person is considered dead why would the leafs even go down that road and the answer is because he grew up at the end of the day it was his grandfather who brought him up and because of that love that his grandfather had shown to him there was no way that he could now go and kill yaakov that's what stopped him and indeed that's why we're around today because yitzchak showed love to his grandson he showed love to his son who only knew about murder about hunting about different barbecues that's what he knew about and yitzhak related to him on that level even though utah was nowhere there because that's how we need to connect to our children we need to connect with whatever that talks to them and that's why didn't kill yakov and that's why yaakov was able to have the shavatim and that's why calistrol is around today so that's a point number two that we have to know means to bring out the best bring forth the best in our child however that is hopefully it's gonna be through teaching them torah through learning with them but if that isn't working we have to find the other way to turn that light on in their eyes and third of all before we tell off before we rebuke our children before we make our children we have to know how do we tell of a child and for that again we have to look to the torah which is our book of life our way of life it's our laws how we how we conduct ourselves and if we look in the torah we find moshe albano at the end of his life starts to tell claudius starts to tell banaya israel for everything they've done wrong in the midbar over the last 40 years all the times that they tested hashem and rashi comments in the beginning of devarim pasta gimmel rashi comments where did mushroom banana know to tell the banana sharlov just before he was about to die and rashi answers he learned it from yaakov jacob avino's wife rocco dies yaakov avina then goes and moves his bed instead of obviously his wife rock is no longer alive he moves his bed into ruffled maidserv and his other wife his secondary wives tent the tent of billah rahul vains the oldest son of yaakov the son of leia gets very upset is a bit of a slight to his mother who was one of the main wives of yakuba vino and he goes and removes yaku's bed from the tent of pillar and puts it into his mother's tent slayer he stands up for his mother's comfort he does something terrible hashem was resting on the bed of the tadic of the saudi gayaka and went and got involved in something which had no we have no right to get involved yaakov doesn't say a word it's a terrible aveira for which is going to get later punished that he's going to lose the behold the right to the firstborn to serve in the base of mikdash because he did the salvera yet yaakov doesn't say a word not that day not the next day and not the next month and not the next year 45 years later yak is lying on his deathbed and he says my beloved son roving i'm telling you off now for what you did wrong and if you want to know why i didn't tell you off earlier was kadesh i was worried that you would leave me mercedes would sit back and you'd go and join ace of my brother i was scared you would go off the tariff i was scared you'd go and join aself if i were to tell you off and therefore i waited 45 years you should know i'm telling you are from a place of love and not because not from a place of anger and that says rasheed is where mushroom learned to tell off claudia's troll just before he's about to die and indeed yeshua told of cloudy straw just before he was about to die now obviously we are not on that level that we can withhold ourselves always although i have heard stories about restrainer freifeld roger shivan shayash who would refrain from turning off a bakar for six months i've tried putting that off for a week two weeks three weeks and it works when you put it off telling about usually don't end up telling him off so but generally it's so hard to put off telling somebody especially if we're upset about something yet we need to ask ourselves a few questions we need to ask ourselves are we going to be better at telling off our children than jacob avena would have been telling off his son asa roving and if we are going to be able to give a better master russia let's say we have a better relationship with our children than let's say khashoggi had with his son is our child on a higher level and a better level than ravin was in those days roving was the first of the shavatin we can't even imagine who the shavatan were so is our son going to be more receptive than would have been to his father yaakov and let's say the answer to those two questions in your mind are yes you can tell of better than jakob vena and we could our children are better more receptive than raven would have been to his father the active but then we have a third problem yaakov was worried his son would go and join aself how much more so do we need to be worried if we're turning off our children in the wrong way that they're going to go and join the asap of the day what's going on in the streets out there in the world out there there is so much acceptance if we don't accept our children and we're not relevant to them they will go immediately outside and find someone who finds what they find funny funny what they find interesting they'll find interesting there'll be people out there who will make them feel so warm and so accepted and if we're going to tell them off and that's going to push them we should be worried says rashi we should be worried like yakuba they might leave us and go and join asov so we really need to be careful when we remember that mitzvah yes hashem has given us a mitzvah but that mitzvah comes if we're worked on our middles that mister comes by bringing out the best in our child and that mitzvah isn't about rebuking our children it's about bringing forth the best in them are there any questions on what we've said so far okay so we'll carry on a little bit yeah sorry there is a question about telling off a child if you're waiting to tell them off because i have tried that and especially with i know we talked about young teenagers now with younger children they don't remember what they did so if you're waiting like too long they've forgotten what they did and they don't know what you're talking about when you say you know that wasn't okay they have no clue because they've forgotten um and with the teenagers it's how long to wait or it's a good question so um i would say that obviously we don't always get it right but we definitely can't be angry with them or upset about the incident that happened when we when we tell them off so we need to wait long enough to be able to be able to settle ourselves and be okay with what went on and be able to show them point out what it was that might not have been correct we can even remind them of the incident and they might say i don't remember say yeah this was the incident this is how maybe one should look at it maybe encourage them how we can look at it for the future okay so let's move on a little bit so we've just spoken about i've seen a question come up i'll answer that towards the end if that's okay okay so we'll move on a little bit okay so perhaps one of the most difficult questions when it comes as well to enjoying our teenagers is because of this this burden of being feel we have to put them right we feel we have to put them in their place so we need to look at one of the perhaps most difficult questions when it comes to mechanical children and that is how high does discipline come on our agenda of being mechanical our children of educating our children discipline means how much are we controlling their behavior through consequences now obviously when a child's young that's something that they that's something that might work with them they might understand with their small younger mind they understand consequences and that's how they learn to behave themselves and what's right and what's wrong but when we come to our teenagers when we come to our adolescence when they're no longer so receptive to the consequences that we might want to enforce on them how much is that coming in how much are the consequences coming in and if they are coming in are they coming in because we want them to behave in a certain way is it because we want the externals to look good or is it truly because we want to turn that light back on in their eyes so it's kind of it's got to be that it's got to be especially when it comes to the adolescence specifically when it comes to the adolescence but it's got to be inspiring and it's got to be setting the example for our children trying to control our children trying to control their behaviors and trying to force them to behave in a certain way it might work in the very very short term especially when they've hit their teenage years we might still be able to control them for a year or two but in the long term it will backfire because whatever we're trying to control them with well as soon as they they're out of our control they will just they'll be off and we won't they'll be off to wherever they want and they'll they'll love the freedom so much that it wouldn't have helped them grow at all so while the short term control will help but it will not help in the long term and when it comes to kendall we've got to be thinking about the future who is a worldwide masjid assad would speak so much about how to treat each child as an individual back in those days when otd wasn't something which was common when struggling children wasn't as common as it is today and he would speak so much about it as we'll see soon he didn't just preach about it he actually practiced what he said he was one of the good olympians and we can learn a lot from what he tells us he says that parents often think they're acting in a way which is educational but in truth it doesn't have the slightest connection because we sometimes use this banner of and we hold up this banner and that allows us to behave in certain ways which if we would see other adults behaving in those ways we'd be shocked and horrified yet we justify using those ways those middles and using those traits those same traits on our children we see people we it says resham evolver he sees people who use jealousy who use honor searching they're looking for their covert and anger things which if we'd see other people doing on the streets we saw people running after covered we'd be quick to comment on it on it if we saw or we knew somebody who's a jealous person would be very quick to put them down and of course if we see someone lose their rank then of course that source is something which isn't acceptable but yet people seem to find it okay behind the banner of kinect says reclaim the vulva and he explains exercised full control over their child and then got to be so careful about that when it comes to jealousy explains often a father or a mother goes out and she sees her neighbor's child behaving so nicely bringing in the shopping and cleaning up or whatever it is and she's jealous why can't my child behave like that a father goes to school and he sees somebody else's child always there on time my child turns up late darling's so long and his shoulders take forever and he's not looking around the shull and my child can't sit still for two minutes another child sits next to his father my child doesn't sit next to us to my father so it doesn't sit next to me that says rashfama vulgar is jealousy that is nothing to do with and if we go then if our child we're educating our child no i want you to do this because it comes from a source of jealousy that's not accessible but jealousy is a bad trait it's a bad mood and we have to get rid of it the same thing with honor searching we want our children sometimes to behave in a certain way to be polite because then people compliment us oh your children are so polite we want our children to dress in a certain way look how refined their daughter dresses look how refined look what our good yeshiva bottle their son looks like and we want our children to sometimes dress in certain ways because we want those compliments from our neighbors we want people to think wow their son is such a good yeshiva their son is such a good guy look how refined and agile he is and that says resham revolver is something that's running after covert that's running out to cover them that isn't okay that's nothing to do with and he goes in anger when we come home and we ask our child to do something and they don't listen to us says the flame evolved we if we get angry because of something that they don't do when we've asked them to do it that's also not for enough that's just anger and we need to work on those character traits through flame evolver and he speaks very very strongly about not hiding behind this educational banner now it's important to know that says restless that we have to act first and foremost with their interests in mind if we're acting with their interests then in the long term we will reap the external benefits as well of olga had a son has a son who lives in america as far as i'm aware he's a rav he's a mentor he's a psychotherapist as far as i'm aware and he when he was a teenager when he was young he was a very difficult child and i'd heard this as i'd said this over and i actually heard from somebody things were a bit different i said this over when i was speaking and somebody came to tell me they were in yeshiva at the time of the following story hashem albertson wanted to join the israeli army now islam of what we have to understand is one of the good olympics one of the greatest jewish people in the yeshiva world at the time and he encouraged his son to go and join the israeli army and his son went and he joined the iaf israeli air force and he would come back to the ayako where his father was the masjid in the yeshiva and he would come back when he had leave he would come back home and he'd come to the base of madrush and stand at the back of the base of madrid in his army uniform with his berry on his head his guns flung over his back and he relates how his father would run to the back of the base of madrush bring his son all the way to the front to stand right next to him on the overnight stand right next to him on the mizrah in the shawl and he'd said how his father would just look at him and just stand there looking at him with such pride i have the best son in the world his sons his son felt i could feel the love oozing out of his eyes i said this over once and somebody came to tell me that they were in yeshua and they remember a story which happened with the muslim evolver which has now been made into a video actually a sweet video where schwein of alba's daughter got engaged and in those times it was a minute or at least in their yakov that the hustle would come for a shout out and then he was invited [Music] they were all sitting down to the meal and suddenly in the middle of the meal ding-a-ling-a-ling israeli style as then if any of you when you live in israel and an israeli kidnaps on your door it's knock knock knock until somebody answers they don't just knock politely and then wait it's knock knock until somebody answers was in the middle of the shabbos meal and who could be who was ringing doorbells the doorbell rings rings rings rings rings where vulga goes to the door they open the door and in waltz in front of everybody his son in an open t-shirt in shorts with cigarettes and car keys in his hand now let's picture for a moment imagine we have our future son-in-law or a friend even around our house and around our friday night table and suddenly a child's phone rings in his pocket let's just imagine what our reaction would be for a moment how dare you embarrass us like that if you want to be mahalo shabbos do it in your own room can you imagine what our reaction would be and here was the goddale one of the gdalem of clarissa his son walks in in front of everybody rings the doorbell in the most brazen attitude and embarrasses his father in the most humiliating way opens up his arms and gives his son a huge hug i'm so happy you made it it wasn't the same without you i'm so glad you came and he goes and sits him down next to the hosun and in between him and the hustle and he tells his future son-in-law this is my son he's such a talented young man you're going to get along really really well i want you to be friends and he tells his wife bringing the meal from the start and the boy says that raphael says son says later in his life i couldn't walk out of there with my cigarettes and car keys i was just felt so close to my father and today he's a very successful person in america because of his father's love so as we said his father as being factories he says yeshiva is a fact explain that factory isn't focused on the aesthetically pleasing factors a factory is a messy place it can often be dirty it can often be messy it can be it can be noisy and it can be something which isn't nice and pleasing it's not something which is beautiful because the focus and the concentration is on making something of high quality on the other side there's such a thing called the showroom and in the showroom they're not worried about the quality but they're more worried about how good things look so that's what yeshiva's shiva's have to do you shivers have to concentrate says such a beautiful partner not on how things look externally right now and if she just can't be worried about the people poking their noses in and looking at the outside just poking their noses in and looking at how wonderful things look on the outside right now and see what they see in front of their eyes in fact i had a beautiful story about david trunk unbelievable there's a book coming out about david crank who's a mascara for many years and you shove in america you once got a call from two people on a bus from somebody on a bus we'd seen two of his bacharam and he said to her dobber tranq you know your boys i think two of them are hiding a tv a mini tv in their room i heard them talking on the bus so dr trenk says to them did you talk to them in learning did you ask them what they were learning so they said no they didn't so donald trump turns around to them and he says to them you he says to them you should know that you never saw my boys at all you didn't talk to them in learning you just moved your nose in from the outside and you think you know who my so you think you know where my boys are and this is saying yeshivas are factories they've got to focus on what's good they've got to focus on the long-term plan on turning out a quality product they cannot focus on the showroom product and the same applies to being parents we've got to be clever enough to be focused on our child's internal development on bringing out a quality product and not get carried away on the external imperfections that our child is showing today and in order to build happy and successful children sometimes we have to put up with the noise and the disarray of a factory sometimes things aren't they're not in order when they're on a factory floor it's noisy it's messy it's busy and it's difficult and it's not looking good when they're in a factory but if we want to bring out a quality product we won't have a showroom-like production role but of course we sometimes do need to pull out a policeman badge but that can't be the image that our children have of us it can't be that's how they relate to us as being the disciplinarian we have to have that open relationship with him relationship with them which will stand through the turbulent teenage years so there's one more thing i'd like to point out before i finish off with a story which i think brings out something amazing so there's also something else which sometimes gets in the way so just recapping now we've got to remember that our children everything we do can't be under a banner of enoch it can't be under the banner that we can get angry with our children we can punish our children we can do we can force our children to do things we don't want them to do what they they don't want to do is because all in the name of enoch we can't do that is something beautiful and it's got to bring out the best in them and the same is true for torah mitzvos it's so easy to get carried away with trying to force on our children a certain way of keeping the torah a certain way or keeping amidst us a certain way of dabbling to hashem we might want them to die in the same way that we doubt them but for them it might be better for them to connect to hashem by dabbling in their own words to our college sparkle the rambam is by doing his poisonous an hour of talking to hashem a day and that might work better for a child to talk to hashem in his own words until he's mature enough until he finds meaning in the in the printed word in the siddha and often we like to give care my mitzvahs to our children we like to ask our children for fulfillment says in the way that we do them perhaps sometimes with extra hormones which doesn't necessarily talk to them and sometimes that turns them away from the beauty of yiddishkeit kite and the mitsubis are something which is so beautiful that the gemaras talks about the different fruits which might be okay for what the torah meant to use for an escrow and the torah says there's a certain fruit which has all the qualifications of an asterisk except says a gemara it's uncomfortable to hold in your hand and says the hazal our obama say that that cannot be an estrad simply because it's too uncomfortable to hold it cannot be what hashem meant it cannot be hashem wanted us to have something which is uncomfortable because the ways of the torah are beautiful they're smooth and there's something special so we need to add something into especially for our teenagers something which is special to all our mitzvahs and it's something which i like to use is called the colored candle syndrome we know that in the second world war many parents had to entrust their children to their gentile neighbors and often these children ended up in monasteries or nunneries were hidden away by the church and there were many activists who after the war went searching for these children sometimes they could come into a place and they could shout out shema's trial and the children who'd forgotten that they were jewish would remember this shema straw because it was the thing that their mother used to whisper in their ear before they went to sleep at night but there were other children who didn't come from religious homes such religious homes didn't hear shamanistral but there were other customs from home that they remembered they remembered the colored candles on hanukkah the stories about the children who remember choosing the colored candles on the festival of chanukah now we need to do that with our mixes as well we need to bring in beauty to our mitzvos that the children really feel especially the teenagers they really feel oh i'm looking forward to that yanta i'm looking forward to that showers if our pesach is all about the stress of the cleaning the stress of getting rid of the hummus the stress of all the hummers which are very very important and they definitely should not belittle the formulas at all but it cannot overtake the beauty of yonder [Music] so much luxury in their lives because that's where the world is we have such a shepherd such an abundance that goddess barf was given to us we can't turn around to them and say we're going to take all that away of the pesach because then they'll turn around and say i hate stuff i'm going to make peace as something special of course if they can want to use those commerce and they want to live to that of course we should but if that's affecting the way they're enjoying yandere we need to concentrate on the main part that in west ham used to say to me here in manchester hashem we have so much from kite but very little you described people are concentrating on the externals more than they're concentrating on the main part of what's important when it comes to shabbos if all the child knows is about the stress about laying the table just before shabbos comes in if all the child knows about his father's long divorce torah at the meal he had a child sometimes that children turn around and say i hate shabbos of course if your child loves getting involved and hearing your touch on the powershell hearing what you want to say in your developer unless discussing that with you then that is brilliant your child will look forward to that but if he's not looking forward to that we have to steer away and find a colored candle to give to him for shabbos or give to her for shabbos i once told the father who was it was a very serious case where the child was the children were really struggling with their with the shabbos meal and i advised the father not to give the return they all had to be ramrod still during the father's day and the father went a complaint to his wrath there's a very fashionable rav in london and the wrath first of all said he's i was quite right in saying that but more than that he said my children have never heard a diva torah at my shabbos table and the father told him what and the father didn't explain more but i spoke to the rav afterwards of course the father that the children never heard the devouter because the toe of the table was talking about the pasha in a way which related to the children it wasn't about the father giving over something that he'd read in a pamphlet in shul just before he came home it wasn't about the father being able to give over what he wanted to give over it was about connecting with those children and actually when i was preparing this it reminded me many many years ago i was staying by my auntie who was a neighbor of dan birken at the zeitgeistic and i was there for shadow sugars because i was friendly with dan berkovitz's son and i remember it was precious nasa and dan berkovitz was telling over the story of the torah he was telling over the story of shimshin and gimbo and i remember to this day how he was saying it over in such a beautiful in such an in such a an unbelievable way that it stays with me even many many at least probably 30 years later that's what we need to give over to our children not something that which we do what we enjoy not to focus on ourselves if our child finds it too hot this afternoon to go out with a hat and jacket do we want him to go for a hand jacket because it's good for his finish or do we want him to grab for the hat and jacket because it's aesthetically pleasing it's show room business it's externals whatever it is whenever it comes to the shimiru samitsus and shmira satoru keeping the middle and keeping the torah we've got to focus on what's important in order to be able to enjoy them if we're going to get in fights with our children over things which are so not important in the long term things which in the long term they will come to the realization themselves what is going to be important and what's not going to be important then we can't let that get in the way of enjoying our children we need to put those things aside make something special about every shabbos about every ant of and through that we can relate to our children shabbos is such a beautiful time in the week we're so busy with phones with all the different things that we have on all the pressures that we have on shabbos is a time to relax and sit back and you know what it means to just sit on the couch with your children and enjoy them not pressurizing them about what did you learn in school this week and for hearing them there's time for that as well but to just sit on the couch and relax with them just have your arm around them and talk about what they want to talk about let's listen to our children let's enjoy just sitting relaxing with those children and you'll see how much that will mean to them in the long run how special shabbos will become to them because that will be the time where they remember that warm homey feeling where they snuggled up to their parents on the couch and were able to just be who they are i'd like to just finish off with a beautiful story which i read a number of years ago and i think it's worth repeating there was a man called jack phillips jack phillips was a multi-millionaire he was the owner of oil companies and him and his wife were very very successful he gave lots to doctors he gave scholarship funds to his children's schools and he was coming up to his 60th birthday the year before he bought himself a luxurious yacht this year for his 60th he wanted to do something special he wanted the entire family to gather together in this californian home so he calls up his children he tells them make sure january the 27th you're gonna be at my at the home at the ranch in california the mansion in california i want you there we're having a party for my 60th birthday it's going to be a beautiful showers i want you to be there no excuses good enough if you need a housekeeper get a housekeeper all expenses paid my travel agent is booking you all tickets he then went on the phone and called his grandchildren were obviously easier to convince than his actual children he told his grandchildren you're coming over we're going to be meeting in the california mansion we're going to be having a beautiful birthday party and so the preparations steam ahead at full speed and jack is delighted he's semi-retired but he finds enough time every day to call the party planner a few times a day to make sure everything is going to be in place this beautiful beautiful shabbat on this beautiful birthday showers the children meanwhile get on the phone together and they're discussing what we need to buy a special birthday present for our father obviously he's uh our beloved father this is a special occasion what can we buy him they discuss buying him diamond cufflinks he's got more cufflinks and he's got shirts buying in a candelabra we got that last year buying a piece of jewelry for mum it's not mum's birthday they couldn't think what to do and they call up their mother and they say to the mother what should we give dad for his birthday and she says listen call dad and they remembered yeah that dad doesn't like surprises so they call up their father they call the office all the children on the phone together and they call the secretary and the secretary says who's calling do you have an appointment they say it's his children jack gets on the phone he's so touched at his children on the other end of the phone and they say to him dad thank you for putting on this beautiful showers for us but we really want to know what can we buy you for your birthday so he thinks for a moment and he says to his children i want to tell you something there's something that i've wanted for 50 years so his children were like oh yeah and he tells him like this it's not going to cost you much money but it might be very difficult to get a hold of children are aliens and jack tells him his story because you might be very surprised about what i'm going to tell you but 50 years ago i was a child living in the bronx in a very very poor area we had no money we live in new york and my parents worked 14 hour shifts in a bakery i was an only child we had no extended family and i was finishing i was in public school and we finished school 2 30 every afternoon and i used to hang out with the delinquents on the street and i was by no stretch of the imagination a good kid in fact i was a terror mr jason the principal of the school really didn't like me and i love to cause trouble for him i would sit at home thinking what can i do to make misery in school the next day matters came to a head when one day i knew the janitor had a day after caretaker today off i took a wrench and i turned off the water supply to the public school it came to break time and all chaos broke loose children went to the bathrooms there was no water to flood the toilets the cook couldn't finish cooking the lunches because there was no water mister there was no janitor in school to repair the problem nobody knew how to do it mr jason had to send entire school home i was delighted the biggest chaos i'd call and i go home feeling really really good to myself really good about myself i get a suddenly the phone rings in the house and there's no caller id i pick up the phone and i hear is that the is that the phillips residence and i recognize that voice isn't mr jason so i put on a voice says mr says jack i put on a voice and i say sorry they moved so he goes do you have a forwarding number no they didn't leave any any details and suddenly mr jason caps it's me and he says to me you you're in so much trouble if you're not back in this school in 10 minutes you're one who turned off that water he can't get out of it he tries to play the dummy but he can't get out of it and he goes off to school knowing that he's going to be in serious trouble but his heart drops down when he comes into the principal's office and he sees his parents standing there and the parents give it to him jack come on he was in the storm trouble please and mr jason says i'm suspending you from school for a week and before you're going to be allowed to take part in any other lessons you're going to have to go and see the school psychologist dr nadov you can imagine says jack to his children i had to stay on school for a week and i planned schemes how to get back at mr jason i came back the day i was allowed back and i had to spend a two-hour session with dr nadov before i was allowed to come to school the next day so i go into dr nadal's office and he does a two-hour assessment on me and he asks me many inane questions about whether i prefer to bunk off school or go and visit people in an old age and i answered all the questions very very arrogantly and i went home i came home and i found my parents were packing up all their bags they were packing up the whole house into boxes and i said mom dad what's going on so they said we're moving to chicago dad's got a better job offer in chicago and mum's going to be a stay-at-home mom she's going to be able to look after you my friends helped we packed up the movers came and we went on a 24-hour trip that i took in those days to go to chicago on that 24-hour trip i had a lot of time to look back over my life and realize my parents are picking themselves up for me because they believe in me they're taking me to a better place i'm going to get my life in order and from there my life went up i became fully religious my parents became fully religious my father succeeded in the company the oil company was working in eventually buying the firm and becoming a multi-millionaire that made us the millionaires that we are today the rest is history he says but children he says i want you to get me for my birthday that report from dr nadav we left before we could get that report i want you to try and get me that report children hang up they've got a job to do they place a phone to the public's a phone call to the public school secretary's not really interested until they offer them money somebody goes down to the school archives they search through the boxes there they find the report they mail it off to the children and they come to the weekend in january in the california mansion it's such a beautiful show this works out better than could be expected and the highlight is a birthday party on sunday afternoon they have a huge barbecue they have a beautiful beautiful time and then jack gets up to speak he's going to speak to his children and his grandchildren surrounded by all his loved ones and just before he speaks his children come over to him and say to him dad we have a present for you and they give him a huge wrapped gift box jack tears off the wrapping paper and all the grandchildren are looking to see what they bought and he takes out a sheath of yellowing papers he smiles and he looks at the papers and reads through them and then he gets up to speak and he says i want you to know that i paid a speechwriter to make a beautiful speech but i'm going to scrap that speech i'm going to tell you came from me so many years ago when i was a delinquent child and he reads based from dr nadov based on my two hour study my opinion is that jax phillips is mentally he will never be able to acclimatize to a normal environment or be successful at a job i recommend that he be committed to an institution for mentally handicapped young adults he turns to his children and he writes i have to thank hashem that my parents picked up and left for chicago before that report came home i was sure when i asked you to get this report if it would be something that would have inspired me to become a better person but instead they didn't see the long-term goal he wrote utter rubbish as we can see today that barak hashem i'm such a successful person because we have to live above the labels that people give us we have to live above all those difficulties and those we have to go above that and he says to his children you have to reach for the sky and if you only end up with a handful of stars that's okay so should you help us receive the eternal potential of our teenagers to be able to see past all the turmoil and all the difficultness and the mess on the factory floor like we said and more than anything we should be dabbing into hashem that we can light up the eyes of our children and bring forth that light enjoy a warm and close relationship with them as we support them through the most difficult stage of their journeys there are a few questions i know that probably one of the time bang on time there are a couple of questions which i'm happy to look at now i don't know if we'll be able to answer them fully now but next week it is a question and answer session but ideally if you can send in the questions beforehand the earlier the questions come in i know we won't be able to cover all the questions but the questions that the earlier they come in the more chance we have of being able to um answer them the email address to send the questions to is a y torah dot co dot uk that's a y at d a r c h e i t o r a h dot co dot u k that's the where to send the questions to um i have a few questions over here i'd like to try and answer them i simply feel i'm the wrong person the wrong generation to play these games so that's a question which gets us often and yes you need to read up it's uh you might be in the wrong generation we're all in the wrong generation because the generation that they're in nowadays is not something we could have ever dreamed of barak hashem we're in a generation where google's around google the youtube videos google the games and be the first person to stick that thumb up to give that like to his youtube videos and you want to be sharing those with him because you don't need to be going off into a place where he's doing youtube videos and getting the likes and the appreciation from people other than you we need to be our children's biggest fan and one of the ways of connecting with them because they're gaming so much i spoke to a boy who told me he gamed for his record was 12 hours solid and there's other parents who who gained there's other children who've gained for longer so yeah you need to be there with him that's the short answer you need to be there with him to be able to like his youtube videos be a subscriber to his channel and show an interest in those games do whatever frey fell did look up the subject beforehand look up i didn't say the story which level 500 but look up google what enjoy those games with him and enjoy his videos be his biggest fan the next question which came up was shabbos has become challenging since lockdown it was fine when everyone was locked down right so a mother's written to me that shelves become very challenging because the child the son wants to go out with his friends and be in the house because it's raining the weather's not good here at the moment and it's illegal and unsafe to do so and you worry that this is leaving him to dislike chalice that's a a big issue um it is a big issue and i don't know how old the child is so i'm not sure who it is but if whoever's asking the question i'm happy to answer that in private probably it's probably better because i need some more details my phone number is zero seven seven three zero seven four eight four zero zero and that can be used to send in questions as well if you want to be in touch i will try and answer that question privately the video has been the session has been recorded and it will be sent out okay okay does anyone else have any questions if anyone wants to send in a question we can write it through someone's raise their hand yeah hello hello yeah yeah um what do you do if you have a teenager who puts themselves in their room for being upset with their parents and um they locked themselves in the room for hours on end and after come down and say that they were waiting for their parents to come to them to tell them to come down so it's a it's a good question um is there a simple answer to that the the answer probably is um yeah if your child's telling you this is what i want i want you to help me i want to hear from you i want that connection with you it's his way perhaps of saying i'm embarrassed of what i've done and i need that connection to know that you're there for me um he comes down he spent if he's spending hours in his room it's really really not healthy and if you're not going up there to see if everything's okay is there a reason that is there a reason you don't want to go up and see how he's doing no they were upset it was shabbos and we were eating the meal and they were upstairs because they've got upset with what one of their parents had said to them right yeah so definitely you you go halfway upstairs and you call them and they just think you know i'm expecting to come all the way there yeah they might expect that and that's what they really need maybe they want you to come up and put your arm around them and say i'm so sorry you feel like that don't need to necessarily apologize to what you've said unless it has been something wrong which you might have said but to put your arm around him i say i'm so sorry you feel like this i really am it's okay i don't didn't mean to make you feel like that and um is there anything you know what's bothering you keep that open relationship because if it's just keep he's gonna spend hours in his room it's really really unhealthy so so it is you're gaining much more in the long term by by going up there after a while let them settle down a little bit and going up there and and saying i'm so sorry that you feel like that how can i make things better i'm happy to discuss it in more detail if if you want to take my number and and um you're welcome to call hey could you just repeat your number then please because i didn't take it down when you said it before okay it's zero seven seven three zero zero seven seven three zero yeah seven four eight yeah four zero zero thank you so much so a parent just asked if um since her husband enjoys reading from a safe at the shabbos table and it's for the teenagers to listen some don't like it or bored and frustrated and the younger ones are not included and we talked about bringing it down to include the younger ones but sometimes my husband thinks that we should raise them up to our level should try to listen and silence and take some in is this good not really no because they're just going to resent the shabbos table they're going to resent the whatever you gain by teaching them in that safer is is going to be lost by the resentment they're going to feel so you know maybe talk about the parish or maybe ask to do a quiz of general knowledge find a general knowledge book in jewish history on jewish locker or anything like that and try and make something fun for them something which is on their level but it's definitely not worth trying to raise their level definitely not on shabbos raising the level you can leave you can try and lead to the schools to do that at home it should be selling which is enjoyable and something which creates no resentment that's really important kids are so bored and no matter what i suggested they only want to watch videos age nine okay um that's a big that probably is a question for next week um to deal with next week it's a big and it can't be handled told note so that again we need more information on exactly what's going on with that child so the the the asking of that question if they want to reach out privately i'll try and answer that in more detail when i have some more details about the actual situation what there's no simple answer every every situation depends on who the child is and how we can answer that okay any other questions okay thank you all for joining and it's hashem next week we will continue thank you very much thank you thank you so much thank you very much indeed thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you oh