Rabbi Goldman - Working it out with our teenagers

you good evening everybody and thank you for joining tonight before i start i'd just like to thank tonight's sponsors the gateway action help of the georgia action helpline um the helpline is a organization which provides for for anyone everywhere who is struggling the volunteers are available 10 till 10 from sunday till thursday they've all been highly trained to deal with any crisis that person from any age might be facing and they are available on the helpline numb which is advertised heavily around manchester if anyone needs the number i'm happy to send them make a private message okay so uh before i start i think it's really important whenever anybody buys a book or anybody takes medical advice or any advice whatsoever they have a right to know who it is who's who's giving them the advice who the author of the book is and it's important to know that the person who's giving the advice has the right to give such advice and it's no different either when it comes to the topic we're talking about tonight of parenting obviously it's a very very difficult topic and it's as important when one gets medical advice it's just as important to get the right to find out the right doctor so too when it comes to parenting it's also extremely important that the person giving the advice or has a right to do so so therefore i feel it's important before i start to give over the credentials if you can call it that that i have so bad hashem i've had this for the last 15 and a half years to work very closely with with struggling teenagers both in a yeshiva that i worked in before i opened my own yeshivas which i've been which i have them for the last 12 years and i've been ready to have a very very much an inside view of teenagers life very different from perhaps what a therapist sees when they see them once or twice a week in therapy because i've had there's a close to see them 24 7 365 through the ups through the downs to the times where nobody believed in them and ultimately through the copper and when they bring their children to bris and further i also have been softer to be able to help parents as well who've been struggling over the last few years i've had the opportunity to help a number of parents who have been struggling with their children so that's what gives me the the right so to speak to speak tonight although i hope that i do justice to the faith that everyone listening has done as as putting me i'd like to pre-phase tonight's topic with a story that i heard from robert's car wallace so he relates to the following story there was once a girl called roti roti was born to parents and unfortunately she was born blind she was unable to see and obviously that came with its own challenges and as rooty grew up you know the parents did the best that they could for her they put her in the best schools they could find for her but obviously she led a very limited life and it was very difficult for her she she had friends and she grew up she did what she could but obviously she missed out on many things in life as roti grew older the she went to sem and left sem and obviously her friends started to go into shidoku and get married and roti was left a bit on the sidelines because it was extremely difficult to find the right match for for roti as she was blind she had a big um she had a big obviously disability eventually shotgun found a boy called hayem kayem met roti and he decided you know what he's going to give his life over to rutty and he's going to marry rotty and they met they they loved each other very much and they got married and they spent many happy years together flying was basically a nurse mate to roti he looked after her he took her here he took her there and as the years went on things they came into what was normal in their life obviously they didn't do the same thing on family outies like everybody else but they did their things anyway one day klein comes home from work and he says to roti you're never going to believe this i heard on the radio today that there's a doctor somewhere in america who can do an operation he can transplant eyes you know and it says even people who've been blind since birth he's going to be able to transplant those eyes you know i've given him a call already i've given the clinic a call and i'm waiting for a call back tomorrow and they're so excited and they speak about the possibility if it's really going to happen they're a bit scared to put more in their tentative hopes but tomorrow comes and they get a call back from the clinic and all the hopes are dash when you're here there's a huge waiting list there's a number of years it's going to be 10 years before she's going to be able to even get anywhere near a transplant there's so many people who want this track this operation and the hopes are dashed once again but you know once they'd hoped it's not as easy anymore and roti fell into a bit of a depression a month later han comes home and goes rusty you're never going to believe it i got a call from the clinic next month you have a slot they've found a donor for you and you have a slot you're going to get new eyes in a month's time ruthie can't believe it she's so excited and wild time it's just unbelievable it's going to be amazing we're going to have such a good life together and they talk about anything they talk about for the next month and they get they get ready mentally and physically the time comes when they have to travel for the operation they travel they have the operation and roti has to stay in bandages for a number of weeks afterwards and they come home and slowly but surely they start to take off the bandages and at first you can just see you know a bit of light and you can see shapes and figures client sits down with her one evening and says they're roti you know soon you're going to be able to see properly you're going to be able to see everything around you and i want to tell you something i want to tell you a secret that i've kept from you all these years because i didn't want you to know about it but i am also blind and root is like wow and you looked after me so well all these years i'm so excited that now i'll be able to see and i'll be able to look after you to thank you for all those years of devotion that you've given to me and that's what happened rutty gets the bandages off she's able to see for the first time in her life and she takes in the world around her she takes in the people she takes in it's unbelievable she can't believe it she can see and and of course she's got her husband with a disability who used to look after her and now she spends a lot of the time looking after him han can't do as much as he used to be able to do and she spends a lot of the time looking after him the months go by and ruta gets a bit fed up she's like you know i've never seen the world i've never been to a zoo i've never been to a park i've never there's so much that i haven't seen and i really want to see it and i'm being held back by him so she decides that there's no other thing for it and the idea develops in her head more and more and she decides you know what i'm going to have to ask crying for a divorce so with a heavy heart she says the time you know there's so much that i want to see there's so much of the world that i want to see and you're holding me back because of your disability and i appreciate all that you've done for me all these years but there's nothing i can do i think i want to ask you for a divorce a client says you know something i understand and i expected that that's fine i'll move out so that day roti goes out to a job kai and packs up and he leaves a letter for roti roti comes home that night time's taken his stuff already and there on the table is a letter she opens up the letter and on the letter it says that they de roti and he describes their whole life together and speaks about how thankful he is that they had that time together and he finishes off with a sentence and he says to ruthie roti i wish you the best of luck with your new life and i'm really happy that you're now able to see but do me one favor look after those eyes because they used to be mine the name show from this martial is that this is obviously a an example this is the niche of a miss martial is that a kurdish boracle when he creates a child there's because i'll tell you shut them below him there's three partners in a man in a child there's a rabbinician who's the master partner there's us the mother and the father and akash baruch who takes a bit of himself he takes a heineken he takes which every jew regardless of how observant they are regardless whether they're brought to a from family or a not religious family it's irrelevant every single jew is born with a headache of hashem inside him he's born within a shaman inside him and kurdish borojo is the senior partner he's the one who's chosen which parents to give that nishama to he's decided the path of life which that nishama is going to take the trials and tribulations that that nisham is going to face and when he puts that shaman into the family that he gives it to he's decided that these partners the junior partners the parents are the ones who i have found to be the best partners to look after this and the summer of mine and we have to bear that in mind we have to remember those eyes and remember that this is the shama that we've been given is being entrusted to us and we have to give that back and one day we're going to have to answer to hashem what we did with that in the shaman so obviously if it's a autopilot kid it's a easy going kid who does everything right who we all wish for then uh you know that's an easy job but sometimes hashem has more belief in us than that and feels that he can challenge us and he's going to give us uh he's going to give us more we can do more we can get he can get us to a higher place in canada by giving us a bit more of a challenge and there's so in order to to carry on with these next three sessions i think it's very important first of all to address a fear which unfortunately comes from the goddess that we're in we're living in a terrible time we're living in a gala switch measure he saw what was going to be in the future goliaths that clarissa were going to suffer in all the future exiles and they both saw that the exile we were going to suffer today is worse than all the sufferings that cloudy strong have suffered throughout the generations and that exile is one we're living in now and it's where we see children who are really really struggling badly and that leaves us with a strong fear almost all parents that i speak to and i've heard from many other people there's a deep-seated fear among parents that my child is going to go otd which is translated by most people as of theref people in the field as coined by mrs battyrodel have coined it as on their deref they take a different derivative from the one that we've brought them up to be they change the expectations that we've had in them and they lead themselves on a life which looks like to us that they've chosen for themselves this is important that because if we don't address this fear it'll be impossible to work with enjoying our teenagers as and and actually getting it right with our teenagers so i think it's important that i address this session this first session to working it out to what's going on with teenagers that do leave the fold that do go otd why they go otd and why even though rightly so all the schools have a worry about it and parents have a worry about it but why it shouldn't be a concern which is first and foremost in our mind and certainly it shouldn't be affecting our relationship with our children the fear that perhaps they might go after there so so we need to first understand what is going on with the struggling teenager so i'm going to devote this session to why and the truth is it needs hours and hours and hours of understanding why a child goes off the derrick so i'm going to try and do it as concise as possible because obviously we don't have all the time in the world but i'm going to try and do it as brief as possible and bring out some important points to understand what is going on and why there's no necessity to to fear that my child might go off the door now obviously whenever someone has a struggling child it's important that you get opinions that you you get advice but opinions should only be taken from people who are in the field no one would ever go if they were diagnosed with a physical illness no one would ever go to a neighboring shul or to a friend of the family and ask them advice what they should do medically wise what treatments they should take obviously you'll go to a doctor you'll go to a medical professional and you'll find out and the same is true when in china somebody you this is a very very delicate topic and it's something which takes a lot of years of understanding and nobody should go to people their neighbors or their friends and ask them for opinions and advice on the matter because just because they brought up their own children doesn't necessarily make them understand what's going on with our children so and as well as song does it advise you that time to track their own children first and um and again make sure we're going to rabona understand the mata and the donut will understand it so well they could only understand it so so well and other people experts who are in the field who've been working with children like this so the part the the first point that i want to mention is something which took place in the 1990s the jewish observer which was the the main family um the the main jewish magazine at the time he formed before ami that was the main i think maybe the only jewish magazine there was at the time and they ran an article in the 1990s which when the off the dark phenomenon was coming out in the 1990s in america they ran an article and they blamed parents they blamed certain parents maybe badly to shove or whatever it was that it was their fault that children were going off the death it was their bad parenting rubbish shimon russell who is a leading psychotherapist in the jewish world today he took he took this to task because he was working with children who were struggling and he knew this wasn't true there was no rhyme or reason apparently at the time and the certain wasn't a pattern of certain parents whose children were not for derek there was no such thing at the time so he got together with colleagues of his with other psychologists and doctors and people who were working in the field with children who were struggling and they went to a seminar in a hotel they locked themselves in and they brainstormed what risk factors could be involved when a child starts to struggle when a teenager starts to struggle together they came up with 27 risk factors and they put these risk factors down and they then gave this questionnaire these 27 risk factors they gave it out to people working in the field to children themselves who are struggling and they've given this out many many hundreds if not thousands of times the results that they got back initially were staggering and i heard ourselves from shimon russell how staggered he was when these results came out out of the 27 risk factors they came up with 25 of them came in at below 26 so that's an irrelevant number really of 25 things coming at below 26 those things were things like poverty like loss of a loss of a loved one single parents whatever it was they kept bullying in school lots of different things that they came up with came in that below 26 percent of children reported that this is what the catalyst which bothered us in our life one of the things came in at 42 percent that was add and adhd which is attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity which means that child who we expect them in our in our culture in all cultures really children are expected to sit in school and be very much learning-based be able to sit on their seat and concentrate for a huge amount of time and often six days a week and children who suffer from attention deficit disorder struggle with that tremendously it's an almost an impossible task for them to do it is an impossible task for them to do yet we expect them to do it we medicate them to do we mess around with their brains in order to try and get them to live up to the expectations we have over them so that came in at 42 42 of children who had gone otd said that if that was why they went otd because of their struggles with adhd the last risk factor came in at 80 percent which is a staggering difference between the 42 percent came in at 80 and that was sexual abuse intimate abuse which children had suffered and let me obviously i'm not going to go into that topic right now because obviously that's a topic for itself but needless to say we're not talking about the cases the crazy cases you hear of arabia who was molesting children etc which does happen unfortunately and we have to be careful to do our best to make sure these things don't happen and we stand up against it but also these things happen um we're talking about any type of trauma that a child is exposed to things which he's not expecting to see things which he's which he's been exposed to and he doesn't know where to go with it 80 of children reported that this was the catalyst that made them go otd so what comes out from that he took that back to the jewish observer and it led to them writing a huge um a huge magazine for itself on kids that were struggling and they brought in 1999 an entire issue which was devoted to struggling kids understanding kids that were going off to derek which is a phenomenal work and um and it really changed things around in the world what came out from that was that it's not a religious issue at all it's not children who have got a problem with their religion who've got a problem with judaism who are going off the direct or going on their own direct that was nothing to do with it it was because something had happened in their life which made them go like that and i heard a very good master from a baby fish off who's a tremendous monkey in this field in america and i'm going to bring in a couple of things from him tonight he says if you would go down the road and you'd see a car crashed around the lamppost with five dead bodies inside it you're not going to say what stupid car what was it thinking you know it should have just carried on into the merry way and why did it wrap itself around the lamppost and kill the people inside it obviously something has happened if the cars wrapped itself around the lamppost and killed the people inside it something has gone on to make that car end up there the driver was drunk that skidded on ice whatever it was something happened for this car crash to happen and when we look at children and we say to them they're so stupid how can they wreck their lives like that it's like blaming the car something has happened to make this sweetest kid to make a kid that we enjoyed for the first 10 12 13 years of his life who we loved and we enjoyed if he's gone cuckoo if he's gone crazy and something's going wrong with him obviously something has happened to making go like that and religion isn't the issue sometimes we can make religion the issue because most of the children most of the jewish children we see around are doing so well there's such a huge percentage which are doing well we feel a bit empowered that we can judge and we can dismiss the struggling children as bali tiger which brings us on to point number two that we can't dismiss them as valley tiger we can't say that they've got their desires to mess around with the world out there to mess around with all the outside influences we can't blame the internet we can't blame girls and drugs etc and the reason for that is because healthy people who are bali tiger are able to function i've had people who've worked for me in my yeshivas who are successful young men who when they were in yeshiva did really well but at the same time they were actually messing around with girls on the quiet they were smoking drugs but they functioned and nobody knew about it because they did it in the evening and they got up the next morning and they were able to sit with the khabros and then through entire sadarim and do really well in yeshiva and they came out the other end when they grew up they did well they came out they got married and they settled down to good luck we all know from the world around us people almost work very hard during the week in order to spend it in the pubs at the end of the week and they can drink themselves silly over the weekend and they come into monday morning work at nine o'clock on time it might be a bit groggy on mondays but they're able to work they're able to function and they're living throughout whatever desires they want and it's not making them dysfunctional so often we hear that these kids are enjoying their lives they're just doing it because they want to hang out with girls they they want to have an excuse etc but it's not true because if that was the case they would be functioning and if you ask any parent who is strong who has a child that's struggling they will tell you how many times they've arranged for them to have a job on a monday morning even at 11 o'clock and the kid isn't able to get up for that job how many times you've arranged new jobs when he's been in a job for a few days and is unable to hold down the job because the the boss is an idiot or something else happened or they say something stupid or they weren't reliable they were unable to turn up they were unable to get out of bed how many times are they you you put something you offered to take them out you have to take them away to a theme park or whatever it is and they can't get up in the morning they can't they can't stimulate themselves to be able to go and enjoy themselves properly because that's nothing to do with their tiva it's to do with the fact that they're dysfunctional they've got tremendous pain inside them something has happened like we said before we can assume 80 percent of them have been horrifically abused that there's serious dysfunction going on inside of them this because they're in so much pain now the easiest way to put that down for us is imagine you have a migraine and when we have a migraine we pack ourselves into bed and we take some tablets and you know we hopefully survive but these kids are living with tremendous tremendous pain and another muscle from robbie fisher he said that when we saw in 2001 horrific pictures of people jumping out the twin towers when the planes flew into the 2000s september 2001 these people were jumping out of a fiery inferno but they were jumping out to a certain death why were they jumping out maybe there's a chance they would be saved inside they were jumping out to something which was certain and obviously because it was so painful inside it's impossible it's impossible to stay with such pain and it's better to jump out the window to a certain death than to live with the pain that was going on inside them and unfortunately we know we know how true that is especially now how true that is that unfortunately some of these children prefer to jump out the window so to speak than to live with the pain that they're going through the point the last point that i want to make on this on this topic is that often people will say to me okay so they've been through trauma they've been through abuse let's say they've been maybe they have maybe they haven't but you know this has been going on for years since the beginning of time people have been struggling people have been uh had traumas people have been they should stop being a victim and they should get on with their life it's enough already they don't need they're looking for i actually heard that once from iraq he said to me well this boy's looking for an excuse to go after derek i can assure you there's no kid that's ever gone on their own derrick that looked for an excuse never it hap and not only that but they're struggling so hard to try and belong somewhere none of them are ever looking for an excuse and no successful kids ever turned around and said my life's so good you know i want to pack it all in and i just want to cause everyone aggro i want to mess my life up that doesn't happen something has happened tremendously wrong and we've attributed that already we've said that that only comes because of some trauma that has happened in the lab so this question why is trauma so devastating why does trauma wreck them so badly that they can't they can't function so i think therefore it's important although i'm not a psychologist but i think it's important to try and understand why trauma has such a devastating effect on sufferers of ptsd so what i'd like to do is give a very very brief certainly not a comprehensive understanding of of trauma and and what it does to the person okay so for an example let's take a greenhouse a greenhouse we all know what a greenhouse is i know we have listen this is from america uh done if it's called the same thing in america but greenhouse is where we go a glass house where we grow plants and vegetables so imagine you have a greenhouse in your garden and you have inside the lizard which is trying to find water the sun's beating down in this glass house and the lizard is jumping around from plant to plant and it's desperate for a drink of water so obviously how are we going to calm this lizard down you know the only way we can calm this lizard down is by giving it a drink of water the question is why can't we just say to the lizards sit down where you are for five minutes just sit on your place for five minutes we'll get you a drink of water once we see you behaving in five minutes time we'll get you you know in two minutes time just sit on your place for two minutes and we'll get you a drink of water is that going to help of course it's not going to help the lizard doesn't understand that it's a it's a reptile it's just nothing just an animal it knows it needs water the only way to calm that lizard down is by giving it water now we have a small part in our brain which is called the the the amygdala brain which is a in which is the fancy name for it the amygdala brain and it's known in layman's terms as a lizard brain this brain is probably the most powerful part of the brain and this is responsible to alert the body to to danger so what usually happens is when danger when a person is facing danger it will release adrenaline which will it will send a message to the nervous system which release adrenaline which basically makes the heart rate go faster it makes a person perspire it gives a person extra strength it adds oxygen to the limbs and gives a person less of a perception of pain so what it does is usually three things so let's say you come out your house and you see a wild dog being a good jewish person scared of dogs and what the brain will do will tell you danger there's a wild dog up the road it will make you run as fast as the same bolt a person will run faster than they've ever run before because the brain will overtake their thinking it will say meat although it's not clever to run away from a dog they can always run faster but the brain will tell you danger flight run as fast as you can and often will run faster than we've ever run before because of the adrenaline that's pumping inside us released by the amygdala by the lizard brain that's one scenario in other scenarios you can see let's say mother comes out and she sees her child trapped under something heavy there's many stories of this people have seen a child trapped in their car and mothers have been able to lift the car up they find the strength to be able to lift the car up because they don't think they see their child trapped and immediately they will go to the rescue that child and they'll find strength that you've never had before because the amygdala brain will just shoot out those those hormones of adrenaline and the person will find the strength that he needs for that moment and then there's the third case the third case is where a person is trapped where a person is unable to do anything about the situation so then the amygdala brain will send out so much chemicals that will numb the body or make the body freeze so you have flight fight and freeze the freeze cases are where somebody's lino in a car crash and they're trapped and they can they can hear things going on around them but they go numb when la elena somebody suffers sexual abuse that can happen as well when they're suffering childhood trauma when a child is watching parents have a huge fight to having um domestic abuse and a child is stuck and he's seeing this going on that childhood trauma can affect him for the rest of his life his brain will tell him to just freeze to numb out to to to just disconnect himself from the entire situation around him so whenever somebody feels helpless then make the brain tells them just freeze now ideally the brain will the amygdala brain will usually switch off after 20 to 30 minutes when there's no more danger or give that it will make the person relax again and a person can get on with his life but in cases of ptsd where a person have been also on a battlefield they've learned this a lot from soldiers veterans who've been on the battlefield and they've seen terrible things they make the librarian react to things that it perceives as a trigger of trauma now let me explain this take a boy in school an 11 to 12 year old boy in school who's molested by an older boy now unfortunately this does happen he's molested by an older boy who's ready in the basement program is already wearing a hat and jacket he the brain immediately associates the hat and jacket as a trigger to the trauma so you have a 10 year old 11 year old boy who's molested it's a terrible trauma for him there's nothing he can do the older boy is older than him he's trapped the brain can relate that hat and jacket to trauma he comes to bar mitzvahed and he has to put on a hat and jacket he goes to the shule all he sees around him is hats and jackets that brain the lizard brain is telling him all the time danger danger danger you've got to be aware these could be triggers these could be although they're not but because it's in a free situation it's reacting to terrible trauma in a bad way it's taking regular things around him and causing those to be trauma a child who's heard pots and pans being thrown around and he hears the clink of a pot or a pan in the kitchen that could set off trauma the brain will tell him you're in danger it will make him freeze and be unable to function as a normal human being another story from ravi fishoff when he was running an organization called home sweet home he had boys that were totally disbanded by their parents who were on the streets of america and he opened up a home sweet home which was a which he ran himself to take boys in off the streets and give them a new lease on life one of the boys that he took in was molested when he was 13 years old and he the smell of the filling he associated his brain associated as a trigger to the trauma that he'd suffered and for years this boy never put onto finland after being under ababi's care he came to a stage where he was able to put finland on once again and abby came up with a an amazing idea for the next morning he didn't tell him but he stuffed that to fill him back full of the summon bags full of bags of assam in order that the boys shouldn't have to smell this definite but for a moment let's put ourselves in this bar mitzvah boy's place nobody knows what's going on he's coming to shore every single day and he's seeing to fill in everywhere he's he can't take it his brain is telling him this is crazy you can't you we've got to protect you and his brain is shutting him down it's not allowing him to function in order to protect him from any damage and of course when the boy starts putting onto villain we blame it on religion and really what's going on is he's suffering in pain and a shaman is infinite kindness he made that part of the brain the most powerful part of the brain so we have that the different areas of the brain one of them that we use is for logic for learning torah for learning studying doing school work for taking advice and doing logical things that we do every day but the amygdala part of the brain is much stronger than that for a good reason obviously because it alerts us to danger we were to cross the road and we see a car coming zooming towards us if we were going to start making logical calculations should i go forward should i go back it would be too late so the lizard brain just kicks in tells you run back to the pavement and when these kids are trying to lead a normal life they're trying to get on with normal things such as learning gomorrah such as learning homic such as behaving at the shabbos table such as doing their homework and picking up their socks and doing household calls like every other child does the brain is telling them stop stop you cannot go there you're in danger the brain doesn't allow them to function normally because it believes the body is still in danger and it keeps telling that child stop and that's why they cannot accept logic they cannot accept advice it hurts because the brain doesn't let them go that way you go in that area you're gonna get hurt again we need to get you out of this area out of this area stay in trauma stay in freeze mode in order that we can protect you and that's what's going on with these kids let's put that in a different way imagine that you had let's put a stress level barometer so we have a stress level barometer from zero to ten the easiest level of stress is zero where most people hang around to zero or one and high stress levels the highest stress level is ten so if you have a uh if you have general regular people their stress levels usually hang around to zero to a one or a two and if you have a particularly hard day if the kids are the kids are playing up or supper gets burnt or it's been a long day you've got you've got a headache your stress levels then rise maybe they'll rise four or five points that'll bring you to a stress level of a five or a six which is very difficult think of all those times you've been stressed out and that's really hard to handle but later on when the kids are in bed when supper's over when everything's gone quiet again you can sit with your feet up and the stress levels go back to a zero or a one a child who's been through trauma a child whose amygdala brain isn't switching off never settles down to the stress level of a zero or a one his stress levels are always around a five or a six now the same things that trigger us to have stress are going to trigger them there's always going to be something which is going to trigger stress if they're enjoying their bulk or whatever they're doing and they're asked to come and help with the dishes or help with the supper or do something which is just nothing big deal no big deal and it stresses them out their stress levels are also going to rise four five or six points they're going to go over the top of the barometer they're going to go over a number 10 and that's why we see so often when you ask a child who's struggling to do something normal like just just behave like a normal child just put your socks on the washing they act and they're like they react crazily they they go smashing doors they go smashing windows they they go swearing and and you're like what what made them go all i did was ask something normal and that's because their stress level got beyond a manageable level because it's never at anywhere near a zero or a one now if we take that for a moment and try and imagine what it's like i was the most stressful moment that we've had in the last week imagine your stressful moment just for half a moment and try and take that moment and think to yourself what it would be like to live with it for 24 hours just for 24 hours from the morning when you wake up to the next morning try and live in a high stress level like when you are so angry that you don't want anybody to see you you try going to bed at night with that stress level how you gonna sleep wake up in the morning knowing that you're that stressed out how are you gonna face the day look at these children they're on that level all the time and when anything bothers them they're gonna shoot through the roof and they hate themselves for it because they don't understand it whenever i've sat down with the child who's been struggling and i explained to them this and i explained in a very generic way i said this might not be referring to them this might be something which is just by the way and you see you literally see a light switch go on in the brain hey i can relate to that how do i get help for that because this is my life this is how i live and this is the truth of how they're living are there any questions so far on anything i've said okay so i'd like to carry on with a story if i may i hope i have permission to say the story this story took place in rabbi ali fishoff's twisted parenting group in america that's the china rav who's uh roblesia roblesia dykovsky who's a very very khashevid he goes around he would go right to the other end of the world to the from one side of the world to the other to help a struggling child so he was he was giving hyzer to the parents and the twisted parenting group in america and he said over this following story that happened with him he was sitting shiva for his mother and a couple of days before his mother was lifted they'd heard about a cousin the second cousin of theirs who had lost a child a 19 and a half year old child who'd overdosed on drugs suicide whatever it was he'd overdosed and they were sitting shiver for him at the same time now they didn't tell their father about it because they knew obviously he would be very upset they wanted to keep it a secret from him on the second to last day of the shiva towards the end of their own shiva the father and mother of this 19 and a half year old boy together with the younger brother and sister came into the shiva and so they came to be manager marvel and so blazer that sheena rav rushed him out as quick as possible because he didn't want anything to come out they didn't want the father to hear about at the time and then he went outside and he was speaking to them outside in another room and he said to them you know it's amazing that you've come all the way from where you live you know you've just got out from sugar yourself what we certainly didn't expect you to come how come how come you came all the way here so the sachin are so they turn around to this china rob and they say to him well obviously you know the nature of the the circumstances that was surrounding the death of our child a 19 and a half year old so because it was a suicide or suspicious death the police go through all the phone records and we saw that over the last six years since our child started struggling there was one number that kept coming up every single friday and that was your mother your mother used to call every single week when our child was struggling so we thought that was only right for us to come and be model so reblazer said to them wow he was really he never knew that his mother done that it was really comforting to hear that that was what was going on and he turns around to them and he says to them you know stephen whatever his name was he says you know it must be really really difficult i can imagine the shiver must have been so terribly painful because people come in and they say you know very well intentioned very beautiful things he says no it's okay it's all right we've got through it tell me if you want me to shut up but this is what i do i go around being uh you know comforting people so he says telling the truth it was really really hard the beginning of the ship was really really hard but you know we had the we've got a new young izu rabbi in our area and he came in the second last day of the shiv and he gave us in he gave us a huge hammer so blazer says to them you know do you want to share this with me so they said yeah we'll show you the nakama but the camera is that he told us you know is careful he doesn't punish he doesn't punish a teenager clearly sparkle gets teenagers a teenager isn't punished but then ishmael until the age of 20. hashem your son died at 19 and a half he can be guaranteed that he's got a place in canada because he died and he's not high of the danish for all that various that he's done and blazers start his china ralph started to cry and they're like no don't worry it's fine we're okay with it he doesn't know because you don't understand why i'm crying you think i'm crying on what you said and i am crying at what you said you're saying that it's an akama let me ask you a question this boy suffered for six and a half years terrible terrible yes terrible pain so bad was the pain that he suffered from the trauma that he'd been through he had to decimate his feelings to be able to somehow get through the day with movies with drugs with with girls with terrible parties terrible places that he was going to just to try and dull that sense of trauma dull that sense of stress that he had he went through such pain he had no moment of peace and quiet and you're saying that a person at the age of 20 is not higher that's a kesha that's a question that's not comfort how could hashem make somebody under the age of 20 suffer so badly how could a boy who wasn't higher than hashem's eyes suffered so much pain and so much his surrender that he had to wreck his life like he did and ended up overdosing that's a question it's not mohammed's not comfort at all and sachin ras said to them i'll explain to you what the commerce we don't understand but this is what we have a message from our other from from our from our forefathers from arab from our obeying and he said like this there is such an idea as that we all know clearly that the the misawa sadik is makapa it turns when it's saddick dies it turns for the generation but there's also another idea in a dime to the base of make this there used to be a carbon which was brought every morning and every afternoon the carbon atomid was brought in the morning sacrifice and afternoon sacrifice the morning carbon was brought in order to atone for all that various all the sins that were done through the night and the afternoon the afternoon carbon was brought in order to atone for all the sacrifices that had been put all that there is that had been done during the day since the base i make this sparkle doesn't have this carbon atomic and the carbon thomas is a regular carbon which is sheep like any other sheep but that was nothing special about it there's a regular sheep since the times of the base i make dasha kalash barku doesn't have that sheep it doesn't have that carbon every morning and every afternoon and instead the carbonates are our teenagers our young children who are struggling who aren't hive in hashem's eyes who haven't done anything wrong in hashem's eyes they are the carbon thomas that kurdish barricade takes every day not necessarily takes but the ones that the struggles that they're going through are the carbon thomas for the rest of kali straw and he turns to the younger brother and sister and he says to them you know when your your young children your young teenagers yourself and you have to make sense of life and you're going to go out to the fed you're going to go out to the bay sakai and you're going to go out to your brother's cave and you're going to stand at the cave and you're going to think to yourself yuck you saw what he was busy with you're going to think to yourself what about either you're going to think to yourself what a terrible kid but you should know you're standing at the feet of a carbon atomic and he turned to the parent and he said to the parents when you go into the base of meditation you see other people celebrating the bar mitzvahs of the children you see fathers learning with their children you see people celebrating the marriages of their children with such nachas with such a perfect family know that it's at your expense so the expense of this carbon target that you were making that they are able to have that peace and quiet and unfortunately imagine we are only too well the suffering that pushes these children so so badly and unfortunately we know it only too well and again we have to remind ourselves the levels of stress these kids live with nobody would ever choose to live such a life nobody and there's no question about and i've asked boys who are struggling this myself if they had the opportunity to change with somebody who's doing well they would do it in an instant they wish they could swap places with somebody who doesn't live through the struggles that they live in and that means not having all the perceived parties that they're having that means not joining in all the the nightclubs the drugs the raves and all the other things that they get involved in they would change that instantaneously to be the most successful kid in yeshiva in sen so before i take questions let's just quickly summarize that first of all we have to remember we are a junior partner with hashem hashem is a senior partner he's entrusted us with this nishama he knows and has chosen us we're going to be the best parent for this part of him that he's entrusted us with second of all we have to have a munna we have to remember that orchestrating the entire narrative of our lives and the lives of our children there's nothing nothing that goes on in our life that doesn't is not orchestrated or not pre-ordained by hashem for the best for us and having a munna and knowing that hashem has got our best interest in mind and believing that we're in hashem's hands and we can just fall into hashem's hands and know that he's got our best interest there it's very very it's very i don't know the word um it's very relieving to know that because goddess he's got our back and he's with us every single step of the way and i want to say i know we have with us right guidance from keshinashi who who has put together a huge organization for parents to give parents who've got struggling children they have a shabbatan together an unbelievable organization which seriously if you ever want to donate somewhere kesha nashi they put together a parent to take a retreat we all know that kam simply does a wonderful job for children who are struggling for physical illnesses there's nobody who's giving relief to the parents who are struggling with children and you have no idea the suffering that they go through unless you've been through that suffering yourself and i was there to be at the shabatan last year and i can't tell you the people there all live with hashem and i spoke to so many parents there and they all say it's just they would never trade in their experiences for anything else in the world because it's brought them so much closer to realize that hashem is with us all the time they have such you could feel you could really really feel when you were there you could really feel that hashem was at one with us over there it was just unbelievable there was this skeleton you could really feel the shifting of that with all those parents over there and richard acting his book garden of vamana that there's no point getting angry at a stick that hits us if a person hits us with a stick you're not going to look at the stick and shower the stick you're going to look at the person who's wielding the stick and you're going to shower that person who's hitting you and with that kalish boracle if there's no point looking at our child and saying getting angry with our child that he's putting you through all this stress he's putting us through all this stress because he's merely doing what he's going along the path that hashem has put him along hashem's guiding him there and hashem has made it that you should be suffering this stress right now so let's turn to hashem in that and i will monitor that whatever hashem is doing he's with us and of course we have to dabble really really hard that our children are successful and we're able to be successful as parents for them and i think it's also interesting to mention now speaking to when when covert first came in started speaking to my bhakram about the challenges of their generation and the challenges that they face every single day you know we all have to have respect for anybody sitting in yeshiva any girl that's sitting in any any of them not doing any of this hashem it's so difficult for them there are so many distractions without a doubt anyone in my generation and above who will be living this generation today would never be able to withstand the trials and tribulations of this generation and the boys asked me what was your generation's trials and it set me thinking because i grew up in a generation where i wasn't brought by holocaust survivors that my parents generation were and um we didn't go through the holocaust baruch hashem and we really had it all we had barack hashem and hashem should help us continue to have a beautiful life but we really didn't have any real strong trial and tribulation there wasn't any mission so to speak in our day and i thought to myself and what i said back to the bachrim and they appreciated it was that maybe our trial and tribulation is to be parents to their generation to understand them to not judge them and to be there for them maybe that's what alan is saying is and third of all more important than anything else we have to remember and this is the whole point of this conversation is to remember that no child chooses to go otd no one is going to make a decision and going off the derrick or on my own derek and therefore we can put that fear away we can relax and know that unless something has happened to our child he's not going to go off the data he might be a teenager he might be boisterous he might think that he's not supposed to do but he's not just going to go after dara it's fine the schools don't need to worry if a child is out the box is doing things which might not be according to the law he can be naughty because teenagers are naughty teenagers like to experiment and when we were teenagers a question about it when we were teenagers we also we were also we were also able to misbehave and have that freedom to misbehave so of course if we're worried it should be no different from fear of a physical illness we know ever no one wants to get ill and of course there's some fear no whatever wants to take on them everyone doubts that they shouldn't get ill but it doesn't stop us enjoying our life it doesn't stop us doing the things we enjoy doing and so much more so fear that our child might go off the thereof cannot in any way whatsoever stop us enjoying our child enjoying our teenager and sharing in the things that they're interested in we so much need to be relevant in their lives because if we're not relevant in their lives they're gonna find somebody else to be relevant in their life so if they enjoy listening to the news that's okay if they enjoy speaking about sports and they enjoy speaking about cars i tell you a story that happened one in my backroom he came to me he told me that he said to his father he was driving with his father and he said to his father hey look there's a new bmw m4 car whatever it was and his father's response was him was it's not going to get you to canada now the boy was 14 years old and he was struggling actually the boy was like all right you're just irrelevant in my life i'll go and find the people who are relevant he'll find social media he'll find other people out there and they will become the relevant ones in there in his life we need to enjoy our teenagers and enjoy work it out make sure we've worked it out that we can start to enjoy them we kind of conversations with them about regular things about the things that we enjoyed when we were their age and it's not a problem if the conversation isn't about torah or isn't about sneers it's fine let's talk to them about the things that they enjoy and that way we are relevant we have that relationship with them and then if has shot and one day they do suffer through something we will be the first ones they're going to turn to because they know that they have a shy first they have something to do with us they're relevant we're relevant in their lives and they feel that they can connect to us of course if they do show worrying signs then you must get the right help it's so so important to speak to an expert obviously don't speak to somebody who's going to tell you you have to send your children or child away from home all that you got to put down boundaries and if they don't keep those boundaries they're out the house no child should ever ever feel that his belonging at home is conditional it can never be conditional hashem's giving you that nashama how are you going to turn around and say to hashem well sorry it didn't keep to my boundaries understanding you kept to my boundaries we can never make our children feel that being in our home is conditional that is so important but of course if we are worried about their behavior speak to a professional speak to somebody in the field who knows get advice before it's too late you might not be able to stop a child going off there and in fact you can't but you can do so much to help their journey and you can definitely be there for them at the end of the journey and then in mr shem once we've understood that we don't have to be scared of this we can start to move forward and try which will be next week's topic in its hashem to enjoy our teenagers i have a couple of questions that have come in so the first question that came in just have a look at it now so somebody's asked how would you ever find out if your child has suffered abuse so the truth is that you might not um it could be and it wants to know is it that it'll just find judaism so restrictive so if judaism has been going over in a restrictive way then yes they might find it restrictive and but they're not that usually if they're if they're having nothing to religion in and of itself isn't something which is going to which is going to make them have nothing to do with it it's because usually something else is bothering them that they would totally throw off every single way they've been brought up if they found if if you did now it is important to say actually it's a good question that it's important to say if somebody if a child has found yiddishkai oppressive then yiddishkai will be the trauma that they've been through i had um i've worked with children who i worked for the child who was earliest memory was at six years old being dragged down the stairs to shul now he is totally cut off from anything he's a one of the loveliest boys i know but he's got a disconnection he's got this association he cannot relate to anything because yiddish kind was the trauma so because that was the stick that was he was being hit with constantly if he didn't eat akazias in time you know when on shabbos if he didn't uh if he didn't you know you know whatever it was all sorts of different issues they didn't stand ramrod straight by kiddish if they didn't sing when their father sang if they didn't listen to the devatora which was given as part of one of the courses of the shabbos meal then of course they're going to resent shabbos they're going to if shabs isn't enjoyable they're going to resent showers if davening isn't enjoyable they're going to resent davoning and if yiddish is something which is a burden then that might yes become the trauma it might not be abuse it could be the trauma could be yiddish and then we have to readjust our yiddish guy with them and let them find their own way back to it but of course it might not be abuse and it might be described but that's only if you describe it has been a trauma for them it could have been a trauma for them in school they might have been told off in school because of their yiddish kind they might have been uh there might have been lots of different things that could have happened in the name of yiddish count which could genuinely be a yiddish cat could then become a trauma the same trauma as anything else but the answers are there any other questions okay anyone has a question they're welcome to ask is it possible to get your number for a few questions sure if you want to message me i'll see if i can message you privately how do i message you through what i'll i'll look for you now i'll look you on the list now and i'll send you my number thank you if you want i can give it now i can give it i can give it now anyway over the thing if anyone's my number if you call it from america it's plus four four you have that yeah 7730 four zero zero thank you okay did anyone else want to ask anything i guess not okay so mr sham will continue next week and that will be on the topic of enjoying our teenagers thank you all for joining and i wish you all the best thank you very much thank you thank you thank you no problem thank you so much good evening good evening that was very good thank you ellie so good to see you hi alpha hi mommy how are you oh there's a lot of people still here okay i'm gonna end it i'm gonna end the thing [Music] okay