The Key to Successful Parenting - Rabbi Dovid Kaplan

one of the areas today that people are so concerned about and we see so many books written and so much discussion is the area of K of training and raising children wholesome children children that will be capable of fulfilling their potential and turning out the way we parents dream and wish and hope and ding that they should pray that they should there are many factors that go into raising good children obviously uh the relationship between the parents is crucial that there should be what we call shom bias uh the parents should live in harmony obviously a person has to DAV has to invest in prayer in order to bring about raising successful children but like anything else when we want to look for a idea fundamental we always turn to the Torah because the Torah carries the blueprint for life and tells us how to be successful in all areas of life and where we should invest our energy when the Torah discusses the episode of Yos bringing his two sons mashe and Ephraim to his father Yakov who's on his deathbed for ab to get a blessing before he dies to bless the children Yakov calls them closer and then Yosef instinctively lines up the older son manasha opposite yacob's right arm because the right hand has a greater potential when it comes to the blessing and his younger son Ephraim is pushed over or moved over opposite jakob's left arm now Yakov aino felt that Ephraim is the greater of the two and has a different Destiny than Masha and therefore when he gave the the Torah says seel he crossed over his arms he put his right arm on the head of Ephraim the right arm with a greater blessing potential and the left arm goes onto the head of Minasha one of the questions the commentary is ask is why would Yakov you know the logical thing would seem to be that if the boys are not lined up the way you want them to be simply ask them switch places have Minasha stand on his left have if FR move over to the right then take your hands and put them out normally straight out ahead instead of Crossing them over that would be the natural thing to do now the standard answer given by the commentaries is if you've ever been in a situation where for example you walk into a sh and you sit down you're a guest visiting in the shol in the synagogue and you sit down in somebody's seat next thing you know somebody comes over to you you kind of thumbs you out you know and he says you know I have to stand up and I have to move it's embarrassing you become self-conscious just you had to get up you were sitting and now the entire show sees that you're moving over you're out of your seat there's something embarrassing about that to ask the boys to switch places would be embarrassing for Minasha the older son not it's not only that he's not getting the blessing with the primary arm but you're also asking him please switch over and now he's got to get up and he's got to move over that's very embarrassing but there's another idea that's mentioned by one of the great cidic commentaries the he saw and he says like this you know we as parents sometimes we have preconceived ideas about what our children are going to achieve and how they're going to turn out uh Jews are always stereotyped of striving for excellence the story is told of the lady who's walking with her kids and the man stops on the street and says ma'am how old are your children and she says well the lawyer is five and the doctor is three and as Jews you know we're always striving to reach the top and we already have an idea of where our children are going to go certainly in the Torah world that the child is going to be a master scholar and so on and so forth so the Ben says what Yakov Vino is teaching us is a very important lesson for parents and Educators in all facets in all areas of life he's teaching us that our job is to reach the child where the child is cross his hands over seek means he invested intelligence from the link to the Hebrew word SE our job is to do anything we can and figure out a way to reach that child where he is with his potential as opposed to assigning him a place in front of us and in a broader sense assigning him a place and a mission in life that's not our job as parents our job as parents is to figure out the potential of the child if we foret out the potential and parents May sometimes be disappointed they expected the child that they brought into this world they thought that this child sometimes parents have a child's entire life plann out before he's ever born yet the job for the parent is to look at that child make the correct assessment and then do whatever necessary crossing the hands symbolizing you may have to go out of your way in ways that are unimaginable but your job as a parent is to reach that child where he is and then bring out his potential and when that's done make sure that you ding your heart out pray that that God blesses your efforts with success [Music]