Webinar: Children who leave Yiddishkeit (PART 1)

welcome to part one of a two-part webinar let me give you a little bit of the background how this uh came to be uh my friend ellie nash made a uh webinar a couple weeks ago which was a panel and it was about uh it was entitled the great divide which some people felt was a very uh provocative title and it was meant to be a provocative title um and it was about parents uh who are religious and their children who have chosen a different path than the ones that then the path that their their parents raised them um i got tremendous feedback from that panel and afterwards i was speaking to ellie about it and ellie's always one of my good advisors he said i think you need to do a follow-up and he said why don't you do one session what every parent needs to know about this about this topic and then the mirror image so to speak a uh a session what every child needs to know who's in this uh in this situation and let everybody come to both or or either whichever they prefer or whatever you know wherever they feel they fit in or wherever they're curious so i'm cognizant of the fact that um although tonight's lecture is officially titled every parent needs to know not everyone listening here is a parent or even if you're a parent maybe you're not on the parent side of this subject maybe you're the child or maybe you're just a concerned spectator or a friend or a family member so and that's fine because this is a subject that is so big that it affects all of us and uh i think everybody can do well to commit some time into understanding this topic a little bit better however i'm going to address my words directly to parents who are in this uh who are in this situation and if you're not a parent or if you're not a parent in this situation just please understand that um you know take what you can from it that you can apply to your situation but the the way i'm going to speak is to the parents so you are a parent who raised your child to be religious like you or probably even your hopes were that they would be more religious than you right the gemara says that no one will ever be jealous of their talmud or of their child because the whole role of a parent or a teacher is to facilitate the growth of our children and students until they even surpass us right that's the greatest knockouts and uh whatever happened whenever it happened however it happened you came to a point where you see that your child is not interested in yiddishkeit the way that you wanted them to be whatever that means and there are so many different versions of this story um i would not want to even attempt to uh generalize and and and you know create a uh hypothetical scenario but let's just speak in very very broad terms you the parent raised your child to follow in a certain path in regards to you this kite and they are not on that path okay fine the question is now what do you do so i'm going to tell you my whole talk in one minute this is the most important piece of information that i have to share with parents in this situation in fact with with all parents and any parents and this is it i'm going to say it right up front this applies to every situation but especially in a situation like this where there's desperation and there's fear and there's this this this focus on solving the problem getting to the bottom of it and you know all that type of uh panicked thinking and disappointment frustration so here here's my message to you what a thousand professionals therapists teachers whoever put them all together the greatest team ever assembled in the world what a thousand of them can accomplish for your child will never come close to what one loving parent can do for a child that's it there is nothing like the unconditional love and support from a parent from a parent to a child you can question that you can ask me why is that why did hashem set it up that way but i'm just telling you in the one minute version of this talk the greatest power you have in fact no one wields this power in your child's life the way you do if you so choose to wield this power the greatest power you have is your connection your bond your loving supportive unconditional relationship with your child and that is the medicine that makes all other healing possible without it a very very very driven uh person can succeed in spite of not receiving that kind of support from a parent but it makes it so much harder with it with the with with the the the parental support the healing can begin and the sky's the limit all possibilities are are open so that's it that's the one minute talk now that i said that i want to state a caveat a condition um because this caveat if you if you don't know this then you don't know that there's something that can undo everything i just said and that is when we're talking about unconditional love and the power of unconditional love if you use your unconditional love to get a result then it's not unconditional so you have the power to enable your child to accomplish anything if you are truly just loving them without the intent even the the in the back of your mind that by giving the this love they're going to do something that you want them to do even if even if you're your ulterior motive is for their benefit the thing that you want them to do is it even for you it's for them right because when you love somebody in order to produce a result that's not unconditional love so here's the double bind here's the paradox the only way out of this this uh situation is love but if you use love as the way to get out of a situation then you're not really loving and that's what's so difficult what's so difficult is to accept your child as they are right now even when you're unhappy with where they're at in life and maybe even they are unhappy they probably are unhappy with where they're at in life but to completely accept them and to be proud of them we're going to talk about that yeah in a moment being proud of a child who's not living up to what your plans were for them because it's very important not just to love them but to be proud of them but we'll talk about that i want to get to that in a minute so the the paradox is to love without any expectations even though you realize now that love is the most powerful tool that you have you know i get a lot of questions from people i think this is this is bound to come up in the q a and i'll just put it out right right in the beginning people often ask about uh tough love they call it tough love or sometimes they say they say in a negative way what they don't want to be i don't want to be a codependent i don't want to be an enabler and they have been taught that you have to have boundaries and you have to uh you have to be tough on the kids right okay and first of all let me preface my answer by saying that i'm a big advocate of 12-step work i think i've established my record on that on that issue um and when people ask me well how do you reconcile unconditional love with boundaries my answer is it's not a contradiction at all if you understand both of these ideas properly let me try to explain to you what and if this isn't your question that's fine you can just sort of uh you know you know check your emails or something during this during this section but a lot of people do have this question i don't want to be an enabler i don't want to be a codependent so let me tell you something um it you're right it is sick to be an enabler and to be a codependent and that's why in the world of recovery uh people who have that problem go into recovery themselves right we learned that it's a family disease so it's not just the addict needs recovery the codependent needs recovery too right so like in alinon let's say friends of f friends and family of alcoholics they work the same 12 steps as the alcoholics work because what happens is they realize that you know the addict is addicted to their you know drug of choice the codependent is addicted to the addict and that's a real insidious addiction being addicted to people uh because you know you have such a a holy and righteous cover story when you're addicted to people um especially if you're a jewish parent uh you know i i'm i'm i'm not controlling i'm not manipulating i'm not overly enrashed i am uh just doing my job i'm i just i'm trying to take care of my children i just love them right and what we have to learn is that the attachment to results meaning we use manipulation we use emotional blackmail to try to get people to do what we desperately want them to do right so if i only um give in to my child and uh you know buy them that thing that they want me to buy them then when i tell them you better be home at 11 they'll really be home at 11. and that's insanity that's insanity and the recovery from codependents is to realize that you can't control your loved one and you have to let go of that control and because this is a faith-based uh approach we understand that letting go doesn't mean doesn't mean abandonment but rather letting go means releasing them to the care of god somebody once explained it to me that you know for a codependent the most important thing is to detach detach surosha an acronym don't even try and change him or her detach don't even try and change him so really the recovery approach um the not being a codependent not being an enabler means to detach don't even try and change it stop it stop trying to use you know if the the co-dependent behavior is you know if i if i beg you if i plead with you if i use a guilt you know how can you do this to your mother you're keeping us up all night right or if i use uh you know sweet talking oh sweetheart you know we you know we love you so much and of course you will uh stop doing that uh destructive behavior right or you spying that's you know another big one you know and you check the cell phone you go through the drawer and go through their pockets you know all the insanity all the insanity and and you know the recovery from that is to realize you can't control a another human being and you gotta let go of that and real recovery from that what happens is you realize that um i can't play god in somebody else's life you can't play god now here's the thing the way that that often plays out the way that it often looks is um i'm sorry i can't help you with nothing i can do for you you know go help yourself that's the way the detachment looks but it doesn't have to look that way you see what was toxic wasn't the fact that you were giving to people if you're a codependent a people-pleaser they're also cold what was toxic wasn't that you were giving to people what was toxic was that you had this unspoken narrative in your mind that you believed in that when you give to people you can control them that when if you'll just be sweet enough if you'll just be you'll just ingratiate yourself enough you'll win their loyalty and they'll stop breaking your heart and that's the insanity so the freedom from being a people pleaser the freedom from being a uh codependent freedom from being an enabler is that i stop using this controlling behavior and i am free to be loving and giving with no expectation whatsoever i no longer use love and generosity as a secret weapon so why be loving why be generous why be giving if i'm not going to get anything out of it why because it's godlike because just as he is compassionate you should be compassionate just as he is gracious you should be gracious and i don't have to expect anything from it so recovery from codependence and unconditional love actually are not only uh two things that can be reconciled with each other but to me they're synonymous they look identical i just want to make this clear i i i'm repeating myself but i'm going to repeat it in slightly different words when somebody uh stops being a people pleaser co-dependent and enabler oftentimes they make the mistake by this by saying you know i was just too sweet i was too giving giving is toxic for me i'm just i have to i have to be tough no more mr nice guy okay because giving is toxic for me that's a misunderstanding of the whole position it wasn't the giving that was toxic it was giving in order to get control over people that was toxic but if you can trust god enough to let go of your need to control other people and realize that they have their own relationship with god to realize that god has no grandchildren and your child isn't god's grandchild you understand just because you're god's child and your child is your child doesn't mean your child is god's grandchild your child is god's child directly your child has a direct relationship with hashem and you don't have to be their mammoth you don't have to stand between them and hashem and you don't have to play god you can be god-like in being gracious and compassionate but you don't have to be the one who tries to play god by making sure that they're at home they're they're at home the time that you tell them to be at and that they're not hanging around with the wrong people and that they're uh making good on their promises and they're living up to their responsibilities not your job not your job and as long as you're using sweetness and presence to win over anyone including your child especially a child in order to to be able to sleep at night right well you wouldn't break my heart tonight because i just bought him a car right okay so that's the insanity of the co-dependent but when you stop being a co-dependent now the beautiful thing is you can give for fun and for free you can give without any expectation of any payoff and that's why i say unconditional love is not a steer up with recovery from codependence and in my mind not only they're not contradictory they are synonymous they look identical and the way they look is a healthy person who's connected to god and gets their needs met through god is no longer trying to get their needs met through other people or through security to get their security through other people's behaviors and now when they are kind and loving and sweet there's no expectation of anything even being kind and loving and sweet to your struggling child who you want to see certain behaviors from you're not even going to do you know even that nia you're not going to have so to go back to where i started from the greatest power that a parent has is love but the minute you start to realize oh it's powerful i could get some results from that love ah now you spoiled it now you spoiled it okay so far so good makes sense so far i mean i don't i'm not asking you if you agree with me that i that might take time or maybe you'll never agree with me which is also fine because you're entitled to your own opinion but i'm just asking cognitively this logic makes sense not that not if you agree with it but just you understand at least the logic is is internally consistent right okay not easy but makes sense okay that's what somebody wrote in the in the chat yeah it's not easy it's very hard it's very hard because you have to overcome the temptation of using your love manipulatively and children know everyone knows but especially children know when they're being manipulated now let me dig a little deep let me dig a little deeper i didn't even speak about the story of the child and i said before there are so many different versions of the story it's very hard to make a general scenario but let me say this i do not believe that it happens anymore that somebody reads a pamphlet from the masculine and decides to run away from the stettle and go to the university and uh live like a non-jew i think the last time that probably happened was 100 years ago i don't think that's what happened today today when children leave this kite anecdotally i'm reporting so don't ask me for numbers i don't have studies it's not my job i'm just telling you from the hundreds of real life situations that i've ever been involved in there's always i'm going to use a word now that evokes very strong reactions but there is always trauma now i have to explain what trauma means and for a longer explanation of this just sunday night for two hours i was on a show the let's get real show with coach menachem bernfield and uh and uh ashi parnas and we spoke about for two hours i brought dud and shimon russell on with me we spoke about trauma for two hours so if you want uh more on that you can go check that out um trauma could be the things that we know are traumatic such as sexual abuse that's a big one it's much more rampant than we care to admit um i'm not going to say a number because whatever number i say either you won't believe it or you'll think uh i don't know for some reason when i say these numbers people suspect i have some type of ulterior motive in in like inflating the numbers but it's it's it's it's big it's big okay if it were one child it would be too much and it's much more significant than that um so that's an obvious trauma and you know and then there's there's things like uh you know physical abuse obviously or or uh severe bullying a child who was bullied um these are things that you know we all know of then there is um you know what they call complex trauma now i'm not a mental health professional i'm not here to you know define these clinical terms but the the term they use complex trauma that means it's not a single event trauma it's not that something cataclysmic happened in a child's life it's sort of just the compound effect of thousands of little micro traumas so for instance uh a kid who has a learning disability and he's going to yeshiva where they can't really support that and so he spends eight nine 10 hours a day trapped in this box where he's not good at what he's supposed to be doing and he's disappointing everyone and uh you know his self-esteem is taking a beating and and he wants to be somewhere else and he's trapped there you know that could cause trauma or um you know he even can just be the social pressure so three year i mean i'll talk about this also uh let me let me let me remind myself to get back to this the severe severe social pressure of our community let's not uh you know let's not mince words over here living in any from community is living in a fishbowl and being scrutinized and uh there's definitely a uh a pressure that that builds and that that can be traumatized and especially if for any reason a child starts to deviate and then they're judged for deviating and then the pressure of being judged leads them to deviate more which then leads them to be judged even more harshly and then obviously becomes a vicious cycle okay and then there's another thing that i'll put out there which is there are some people who are traumatized just by life itself um i've had this theory for a long time i i wrote about it in in god of our understanding about addiction and now i've been you know learning more about trauma because i've been involved with uh with fresh start uh retreat center and i've been speaking to some of the biggest experts in the world in this topic and anyone i've asked about this they've agreed with me that there are sensitive souls and it's interesting to see these doctors and these clinicians who are coming from a you know a a very secular background at least they're they're trained their professional training is and and i say you know what about the sensitive souls and they instantly know what i'm talking about right so you know those are the the poets the artists the creative types and i don't mean literally poets and artists some of them are poets and artists but you know the the the sensitive types and you know a lot of times those are the kids with the sensory issues like the tag in the back of the shirts driving me crazy or i can't eat because my brother is breathing funny through his nose and like little stuff like that is just driving me crazy because i feel everything so acutely so deeply right okay it's like a layer of skin that makes life functional was removed from me and now everything's touching my nerves right and and i say as a rabbi you know i say that that makes perfect sense that there are spiritual uh canaries i call them you know the canary in the coal mine he dies from the same thing that the miners die from he just dies first right it's an old expression about the canary in the coal mine so there are sensitive souls who just feel things more deeply and for whom embodiment itself is disturbing and who tell me who's crazy are they crazy for thinking embodiment is disturbing of course it's disturbing a soul is up there in heaven basking in in in oneness and then it comes down to a world of separation where now it's in a body and it's being categorized and it's being separated from from others and separated from from from the revelation of godliness and everything's hidden and now it's bombarded with all these physical stimuli is that crazy that they should feel traumatized just by embodiment just by being an illum that's the opposite of crazy that's the most sane reaction so these children by and large are traumatized um so what we have to understand is this how can you react with anger disapproval frustration towards someone who's punished doing the best they can do that's what i want you to understand your child is doing the best he can do or she can do it takes every ounce of strength they can muster to get out of bed at 3 p.m come downstairs eat something and go back to sleep if that's how they're living now that's about what they're able to do right now and if leia elaine knew they had cancer your neighbors would have sympathy for you and you would have sympathy for your child think of all of these children today as holocaust survivors the samurai once said that if you see somebody with numbers on his arm putting on film you could ask that person for a bracha just like you can ask attack because anyone with numbers on his arm who's still putting on filling is a topic now there are plenty of holocaust survivors but don't put until are you going to yell at them are you going to pressure them are you going to tell them you're disappointed in them or if the holocaust survivor decides to come for two minutes to your shabbos table even knowing what triggers there may be at the shabbos table are you going to pressure them did you hear kiddush how are you eating did you get it did you wash i'm talking about an actual holocaust survivor a 90 year old holocaust survivor walks into your you've asked him before would you like to put on filling if you're a laboratory you've asked him if he wants to put his phone and he yelled at you get away from me with your filler and now he walks into your house and he stands there and he's looking at your shabbos table how are you going to react are you going to invite him to come sit with you with not only with no pressure but it's not going to have them in you wouldn't even think the pressure of this person you'd be so impressed that he's overcoming whatever triggers he has and he's standing at your shabbos table and you would beam account of him what i'm telling you is you have to think of these children as holocaust survivors but in some way i know i'm gonna get nailed for saying this their predicament is even more difficult than that of holocaust survivors because a holocaust survivor at the end of the day you can say it was the nazis somebody who grew up in our community and experienced life as trauma for whatever reason any of the reasons i mentioned or or other reasons his triggers aren't the nazis his triggers are everything associated with yiddish kite and now you're going to judge him you're going to pressure him you're going to tell him that you're disappointed in him so i want to just explain how inappropriate that response is how terribly terribly inappropriate that response is and if it will be the 90 year old holocaust survivor we would all agree how terribly inappropriate it is you're going to go into a nursing home and find holocaust survivors and harass them because they don't keep gosh no one would be that cruel or or disconnected from reality so that's first of all but second of all let me explain something to you one of the greatest traumas that all of these children have in common whatever their original trauma was what the one trauma that they all eventually experience in common is rejection and the rejection can be worse than any of the other traumas knowing that you're a disappoint knowing that somebody feels that they wasted tuition on you knowing that the person who made you that your own mother or father cringes when they see you that kills that kills that's a stab in the heart so what i'm trying to tell you is this first of all it's wildly inappropriate to express disdain toward the holocaust survivor but second of all when you do that when you express your disdain even if you don't say it you crinkle your nose that's enough that rejection is so painful that the the response to such a rejection is to go and engage in what in whatever numbing behaviors that the child has discovered to numb the trauma that they already have so whatever it is that they're doing whether it's chemicals or high-risk behavior or or whatever it is whatever they're involved in the the the adrenaline rush behavior that they're involved in or the numbing behavior or the technology or the the the other inappropriate things i mean let's say the the children who are sitting in the room on shabbos watching pornography on their smartphone that is self-medicating behavior that is numbing behavior and when the child comes out of their room and you look at the child like you're breaking my heart they know that they feel that and that rejection is so painful they have no choice but to go back to the numbing behaviors so that they don't have to feel that pain anymore now how the heck are you going to not look at that child and not feel heartbroken and not feel disappointed okay so let's talk about that let's talk about that and now i'm reminding myself to go back to something i said that i would get to remember i said we would talk about it's not enough to have unconditional love there has to be unconditional pride let's talk about that how can you be proud of somebody no matter what i understand loving them no matter what how do you be proud of them no matter what unconditional knockouts remember a father told me a story his 20 year old son was home from yeshiva home from yeshiva he hadn't been yeshiva for a couple years and at first it was well you can come home if you have a job but the job didn't work out because he couldn't get up and uh you know this is a kid out of shiva he's not working he doesn't darwin you know he hadn't touched this phil in in in months locked in his room all shabbos again probably with the smartphone probably looking at inappropriate stuff because you know that's that's numbing behavior and one day the father walks by the son's room and he looks at him and he says how can you how can you be happy like this and the father is expressing his own frustration that he you know the son is wasting his life right now remember i told you before if your child eleno was a cancer patient your neighbors would have sympathy for you and you would have sympathy for your child right you wouldn't walk by the cancer patient child and say how can you be happy living like this right you would god forbid you wouldn't say it right he comes by he says how can you be happy living like this so the kid responds interesting how the kid responds you're never proud of me father responds how do i know this father told me the story father responds it's not true uh i was proud of you when you were a counselor at such and such that was three summers ago right so basically he's reinforcing it even more like no what do you mean never proud of you i was proud of you once three years ago right okay rub it in even worse right the kid says are you proud of me now now parents for god's sake if your child ever looks at you and asks you are you proud of me now i'm begging you okay this father didn't know i'm not judging his answer but if your child ever asks you are you proud of me now the answer is yes the answer is always yes now how is it yes i'll get to that this father he says to the son no i'm not proud of you look at you what's there to be proud of i said to this father said you should have told him you're proud of him he says why should i lie to him why should i lie to him here's where we need a whole new understanding of everything told the father every jew has a portion of the world to come like it says your nation are all righteous they're all righteous i don't see them behaving righteously all the time all of them now you don't get it that's not what we mean here we're talking about like the puzzle continues nate cemetery you might say your dial he's for branch of my planting work of my hands to take pride in hashem says of the jewish people and of every individual ye this is what i made and i am proud to be proud so i told this father and i'm telling you hashem is proud of your child right now who are you not to be proud of them they're going to say oh but has created a server maker he's not serving his maker first of all you don't know how he served you don't know how he's serving you don't know the struggle that it takes him one minute left that he's watching uh dirty movies on chavez on his smartphone it could take more struggle than it takes you to uh to to dive in three times a day in a minion so first of all you don't know but second of all who says that the only type of nachos is based on what a person is doing that's a very secondary type of yeah it's pleasing to me that that you did what i said but is that the only nonsense no much more basic than that much more fundamental than that is my ceo the least point that i am proud of the jewish people just because i made them and in fact you can't have a until you first have a foundation of knockouts from just their etsum being so i want to explain something to you if this is really about yiddish kindness if this is really about yiddish this is really about hashem okay this is really about taylor samus that i'm going to tell you what is samus said what is what what is what did they say your child is my son your night for please paul to be proud of so if you want to tell me you're not proud of him okay fine then admit that that's not based on yiddish cut so you you then then own that then say look on an ego level i'm embarrassed i'm embarrassed i'm ashamed i'm frustrated i worked hard and this is what i got for it i slaved to pay tuition and and this is the results so i'm disappointed on an ego level fine i give that to you no problem and and and maybe you need emotional support to be able to work through that but don't make this a yiddish kite issue because the average square is proud of your child when the avista looks at the holocaust survivor and that everything after everything that happened to our people a jew still walks the face of this earth whether he's from or he's not from the existence of the yid is a testimony to the niches of the abrasive so you want to be thrown on me be real from and look at your child and see your child is in the summer now what they do with that nisham okay that that's their next step and of course there's an idea of of having nachas from what they do but don't jump to that until you have not just from the fact that they exist you know when there's a child with special needs who's severely developmentally delayed and they can't do mitzvahs but nobody's angry at them and no one's disappointed in them and if if they do any little thing everybody has notice why because it's easier when you see a child with with severe special needs you understand that this isn't a shaman so then you love them for who they are not because of what they can do for you but i want to tell you something we're all in the shums so because my special needs aren't as obvious as someone else's special needs now the only way i get to have your pride is if i do something to earn your pride why can't you be proud of me like hashem is proud of me just be proud because i exist just be proud of because i exist and so i told you when the child comes out of their room for those five minutes and you uh you look at them with horror and disgust they know it and they feel it and that rejection is a dagger in the heart so how are you going to not have horror and disgust you're going to have to be a leather sorry you're going to have to get rapper and being a rabbit means to look at every year as a neshama so instead of looking at their guff you have to look at them as their eternal flawless nishama you have to see past the cenius see past the same you see past the outer shell see that there's a precious nishama and that the value of that nishama is intrinsic you know what i mean by intrinsic not extrinsic the nishama doesn't have to earn its value it doesn't have to do something to become valuable it is intrinsically valuable so then the summer has a value that is intrinsic then the shama has a value a value that is unconditional can't be taken away the neshama has a value that is infinite there's no limit there's no end to the value of an asham so however proud you'll be of your child it'll never be enough now i want to talk about one more thing then i'll take a look at some of the q a i'll look at the chat i want to talk about one more thing i mentioned a couple things i'm going to put them together one is the uh incredible pressure of living in a froome community i also mentioned a lot of times when parents claim that uh you know they they they're they're disappointed in their children and their their their reasoning is because you know because of toyota right because it's a fruitcut to be disappointed in your child who's not fluent so i want to tell you and that and that really that that's peer pressure not peer pressure from the children peer pressure from the adults the worst peer pressures the parents get from each other right you feel like a failure as a parent you have to have the same family or at least the appearances of the same family as your neighbor's family appears to be you don't know what's going on in his house either so i want to put those two together that the pressure of our culture and um the the um the fact that a lot of rejection of these children is because of parents who are you know embarrassed please consider um please consider if you believe if you believe that hashem really wants you to pressure and torture your child in the name of yiddish please ask yourself if you really think that's what hashem wants from you i don't know a jew more religious than may should have i don't know a jew who followed toyota more than meisha avenue tata is called tata maisha can't get uh more closely associated to tighter than that and when hashem told mesha that he's going to write off some jews because of what they had done erase me from your book because if this trader doesn't have room for those jews it doesn't have room for me either and i don't want to be included in such a religion you know it's almost like olivier dichova told the atheist the god you don't believe in is the same god i don't believe in right moshe said even more than they told and sold hashem if that's what you really believe i'm sorry i don't want you i don't want your toyota of course hashem told maisha you're right that's not what i believe either and i'm glad i chose a guy like you i saw when you were a shepherd what kind of uh leader you were right that we put jews first that we fight for them we stand up for them to be make out of them to include them so don't tell me that it's ava satora when when you're diminishing in avas israel don't blame it on hashem don't blame it on theta there's tremendous social pressure understandably and we could talk about that in another time there's tremendous social pressure i mean i'm not going to get into it tonight the shidduchim system is is part of it i just wish everyone could borrow my phone for one day and you would get calls from every kind of family and you would realize that every family has problems and then nobody would have to pressure their family about shidduchim anymore because you'd realize [Music] there's two kinds of people in this world there's normal people and people that you really know once you get to know any family you find out okay they're messed up just like us so here's the bottom line unconditional love is not enough we got to go to unconditional pride and that unconditional love and pride that a parent has for a child is the most powerful tool that any human being has in any relationship with any other human being and yet if you use it for that if you use it to get a result then it's not unconditional so you got to love them as they are right now how do you love them and be proud of them how do you love them and be proud of them as they are right now they're infinite nishama which has eternal intrinsic value and doesn't have to earn anyone's approval and a shama which already has hashem's pride if hashem's proud of them how dare you not be proud of them that's it that's the whole sugya in uh in a nutshell i'm gonna look uh i'm gonna look at the chats and the q a i'm gonna see what we've got over here um first question here if a child if a parent invites a child to this series how can that be done without implying the child is on a certain path um well why do you want your uh why do you want your child to come to this uh webinar what do you want them to hear let me tell you something whatever they need to hear is going to be so much more powerful if they hear it from you they don't need to come on chase tom's webinar they need for their mother or father to bond with them bonding let me tell you something bonding is a simple thing it means spending time with somebody doing things that they enjoy talking about what they like to talk about if they like video games play video games if they like to learn theta learn tater with them some children like to learn data by the way even some children who are not religious like to learn toyota and if they like it then learn it with them if they like to play frisbee play frisbee with them if they like to cook in the kitchen and cook with them if they like to just sit around and talk and sit around and talk they don't need this webinar they need you okay let me go to the next question how do i close this to show that i answered it already okay i'm dismissing it because i okay my child needs therapy but won't go please help okay um so i'm going to tell you something a lot of children do need therapy but like i told you at the very beginning what a thousand professionals can do for your child will never amount to what you can do for them so i would say like this increase your bond with your child until they trust you enough that they want to hear your opinion on whether or not they should go to therapy i don't know of a shortcut i don't know of a shortcut maybe there is one i don't know it you know what a best friend is somebody who you really trust somebody who you can tell anything to and you know that you know i once saw a refrigerator magnet it said a best friend to somebody who's seen you at your worst and still thinks you're the best our children deserve to have somebody like that in their lives are you willing to be that person in your children's lives so when they know that they have total acceptance and trust and that we have their best interests at heart not that we're nudging them for some other reason but because we just love them then they look at us like a best friend and people say oh your child's not supposed to be your friend yeah that's right you're you're supposed to be your child's friend why did nobody ever figure that out of course your child's not your friend you're not supposed to get your emotional needs met through your child that's awful but you're supposed to be your child's friend that means when your child needs emotional support they should look to you first and i want to tell you something not to scare you but if your child isn't looking to you for emotional support where are they looking and whose values are they picking up when they're looking to other people for emotional support and these people who are giving them emotional support are they doing so altruistically or are they using your child i don't know how many times i've seen children fall into relationships where they're being exploited just because they needed somebody older and respectable who they felt they could rely on and they didn't feel they had that at home they didn't feel they had anyone at home they could rely on so increase the level of trust yeah yeah i'm not you might not i'm not my i'm not my child's friend what are you they're not your friend you don't need their emotional support but they need your emotional support yeah you have to be their friend their advocate their champion of course of course let me continue in the q a what about boundaries i think we spoke about that right we spoke about boundaries should i repeat what i said my boundaries um boundaries are for you to not be a codependent see it's funny i think there's a lot of misunderstanding about boundaries when i make a boundary the boundary is not for you if audrey's for me like let's say i'm dealing with someone like you know like an addict a boundary isn't you have to be home at the left that's not a boundary that's that's an ultimatum ultimatums are the all part of the the disease of being a codependent a boundary is i'm going to bed at 11 pm i'm not staying up all night i'm going to bed at 11 p.m and i'm locking the door right so that's a boundary boundary isn't me telling you what you got to do a boundary is me telling me what i'm going to do because i have enough dignity and self-control to make rules for myself those are boundaries those are boundaries now i want to tell you a secret about boundaries that when we are still recovering from codependency we need a lot more boundaries for ourselves because when we don't have them we end up trying to control people we end up using um the relationship to try to get results so you know it's like we try to guilt them we try to sweet talk no manipulative behavior but as you become more god reliant and less person reliant and you don't look to your child or to any human being to give you peace of mind because you just have peace of mind from hashem so you actually it's it becomes safer and safer to just be there for people and give to them and and and you don't need so many boundaries for yourself but when i'm still you know manipulative and i'm still trying to use people then i need more boundaries so i need to tell myself i don't care if you stay out all night i'm going to bed at 11pm but after a while when when my peace of mind comes directly from hashem i don't even have to make that boundary but yeah the boundaries are not what you put on other people that's ridiculous that's just more controlling that's what the unrecovered codependents uh say in order to you know sound like they're talking recovery they say so i made a boundary yeah who's boundary putting the boundary on someone else that's not a boundary boundary is what i put on myself to preserve my own sanity but once you're not controlling people and that takes a lot of faith because you have to believe hashem is taking care of the people you love and now you don't have to control them but once you have a lot of faith you're not controlling people anymore so uh you don't uh you're not trying to to leverage them for peace of mind anymore there's a lot more uh giving that can happen and uh you know giving is what it's all about the end of the day you know giving was never the problem i said that before but i'll say it again giving was never the problem it was that we were using giving in a in a manipulative way but once you realize that you know everybody is the way they need to be right now and i don't have to try to change you now i can give and there's no no toxicity there to the contrary it's only it's only very healing okay let's let's try to do some more q a i love this it's so true okay i won't disagree with that all right my house is tumbling one child after another opting out okay okay all right well so i want to address that i don't know if this is what you're saying but i've heard this a lot parents who are saying look i should have the first kid first kid who who started the you know down the slippery slope i should have cut him off i should have just thrown him out said shiva that's it because i i let them stick around and the other kids picked up the bad habits and and the whole house fell apart i hear that a lot and i want to tell you something for for a long time i even thought that argument sounded logical i knew somehow it wasn't true and how did i know it's not true because people don't become fried by exposure to fry people that's not it's not what happens um you know if if for instance you know if you're the shliyah and you move to uh you know wherever to uh to be makata people so you're the ambassador right you're not going to defect and join that country you you represent the country that you're the ambassador for in fact it'll strengthen your you this guy right so and we see this with the families where they have a child who's not from right now but the froome children are taught obviously it's it's amazing i mean nobody should be in a position to have to teach this to their children but when they are in that situation that the children get from seeing the love and the acceptance that the parents have for the not currently from child is is amazing also i mean on so many levels on so many levels it just produces such aidal kite and sincerity okay but let me put that aside for a second um or maybe put it aside entirely till till another time okay that's a whole other discussion um the argument that you know we should have cut the kid off because i see the house is tumbling like the questioner phrased at the house of tumblr [Music] um i knew something wasn't right about the argument that the younger kids picked it up from the older kids and then one day it clicked for me because somebody explained to me um a real life scenario and all of a sudden i understood what was happening one by one each kid leaves you this guy it's not because they got it from each other it's because they were all exposed to the same trauma if everybody in a house gets food poisoning do you say they caught it from each other or do you say they must have all eaten the day old tuna salad the siblings don't become weak and you describe because they saw an older sibling being awake in yiddish kind unfortunately what usually is the case is that all the siblings were exposed to the same trauma now what does that mean i mean i mean everyone's thinking this so i'll just confirm it if if you're thinking wow that one child was sexually abused and it was the same perpetrator who abused all the children yeah that's that's one i mean not saying that's always the case in most of the cases but yeah certainly that's a scenario certainly that's a scenario although it could be something as simple as there's incredible tension in the home it's not a happy home emotionally it's it's a dark home and that's traumatizing that's traumatizing so what i want to say is if you see your children one by one tumbling in yiddish kite look at the underlying causes and first of all first question is what can i do to protect my child not protect them from frying out that's not that's a symptom not the cause to protect them from whatever hurt them now if it's something that happened to them if it's happening now you you have to find it out and stop it if it happened already what can you do other than embrace them embrace them embrace them again the the first thing i said this whole talk i'll go back to it the greatest medicine is the love of a parent so if a child has had trauma give them love more love double the love and if the trauma was a lack of parental love sometimes that's the the trauma itself is a lack of rental love then for sure giving love is a remedy for that trauma that's the best case scenario you ruined them you fixed that but i'm saying even in a case where somebody else ruined them parental love can fix that that's for sure i don't mean a person was ruined but i mean that a person was given a terrible emotional burden the love of a parent can ease that burden like nothing else okay let me look at another question i have a question how can you watch your child not keep shameless when it isn't good for their soul if you truly love your child you must say something even the altar says to rebuke them if they're on the same level as you what happens if they're on drugs you wouldn't say anything either you need to set limits with children okay all right if you care about your soul if you care about their soul then please don't be mad at them further and push them further into their numbing behaviors which are probably not alpi toyota now some people's numbing behaviors is that they sit and learn tasteless all day you know there are people that that's their numbing behavior um and i guess that works out well because you know not only is it socially acceptable but it's a mitzvah so that works out wrong but if somebody is going through hell and you pressure them and reject them you're just pushing them further into their numbing behaviors which are probably not actions that are al-pitera so if you really care about their soul then then do what every shliya and every chabad house does when when the guy drives up on friday night jingling his keys and then talking on a cell phone walks into your into your house you smile oh you're here sit down and have some matzo ball suit because you care about their soul because you care about this home now you use an example or they're doing drugs shouldn't you say something no healthy person wants to ruin their life with drugs so if they're ruining their life with drugs that's a diet they're not 100 healthy right now so if the only problem is oh heroin is bad i didn't know that oh thank you for telling me right but they do know it they do know it and they don't feel either that they're worthy of sobriety or that sobriety is tolerable because every time they feel everything that a sober person feels they want to kill themselves so you're going to take away their self medication and and do and and what they should they should go kill themselves i'm not saying that flippantly i'm saying literally i'm saying literally somebody's only way of facing reality is to not face it and you're going to take that away from them and then god forbid so i i don't think it's such a it's like you make it sound like such a simple approach we'll just have boundaries just be tough just tell them cut it out stop doing that and then they'll stop you're talking about somebody who's who's in incredible pain and is doing the best they can to manage so don't add to their pain if you care about them then then support them and when they feel worthy and they feel like that their their life is worth something then you'll be able to help them to uh to implement the choices they're making to live a better life but if somebody doesn't feel like they want to live a better life yelling at them that they need to live a better life it's not going to do anything it's only just going to scare them and disappoint them and and reject them more and they'll go more into the numbing behaviors so please don't don't don't tell me this that you know you have to have boundaries so therefore you're going to go nag and harass your child who is self-medicated how do you explain the mishnah using love to be makat of someone of ram feeding his guest to get them to say abraham so taylor seems to support this method every shriek offers good food in an event it's a hook to get someone to come learn potato et cetera okay that's a good question so first of all have some videos from my cousin later why can't you read that to mean you want to be my kind of somebody to tell you wrong love them that's the best way that's the best way not if it wouldn't be for the fact that really i don't care about you i only care about so you know so i'm pretty but because they care about that i have to pretend to care about you that's not what it's saying saying if if if if if you really care about there then you have to really care about the jew so love them and that will be the kind of them to third why can't that mean now you say okay i've started from abraham of you know used to force people to vanish okay you know you have a nice story about ramavino and uh and that's true and who is dealing with he was dealing with people who were completely ignorant of monotheism they were a diver disorder because that's all they knew and uh he was trying to explain it to them and in order to explain to them no you really do need the amish there so he put him in a predicament where they couldn't pay the bill for the food at the oasis and he said look you have to admit you can't pay for the food right so you can't do everything so you are dependent on a power greater than yourself ah that's why you should match right so he was teaching that but uh our children know that already they're not these if they deserve wandering the desert in the times of of nimrod you sent them to haiti you sent them to yeshiva they know these things they know these things and if you're going to use a tactic like to break down the ego a little bit you're just pushing them further away because their egos are already broken was dealing with people who were too arrogant and too ignorant to believe in god do you think our children are too arrogant and too ignorant they have shattered self-esteem so they're not too ignorant they're not not too arrogant and they will suck behavior so they're not ignorant what they are is in pain and by harassing them you're only adding to the pain and we said what house is different than every any caban house to give somebody chicken soup in order to get them to come to a shear please don't be mate zelazan sometimes the mitzvah is just to get the jew to eat the chicken soup if you'll also learn spider that's also good that's a second mitzvah but if i can get a year to sit at a shabbos table and have enoch shabbos even if he doesn't call it any chavez i already accomplished something in a certain town i don't remember which town they lived in but one of the towns not in lyajna where the altar ever lived so i mean so these sydney east and there was this one guy he was a big balaveda and he used to come sit with them at the fabrics he liked you see you guys are also this way and that's why this guy hangs out with you so they went to the altar they knew they had to tell the opt in the first he couldn't do it you know on their own but that's ah they told the algorithm we have this guy he's we've got to get rid of him because he's you know giving a bad name to the student and the alternative says well what does the guy do no he sits yeah what does he do with the fabregas no no he sits there it's what he does right before the february and what he does right after the february does he was a big bala vader so the alternative says i if you had any concept how much taina good is greater my life every second that you just doesn't do an avedo you wouldn't even ask me this question you're telling me that before this february and after the fabregan and therefore you want to she takes them away from the fabric so the child was in his room all shabbos watching porn on the smartphone and comes out wanders out for five minutes and may just may if you smile lovingly and sincerely enough sit down at your shabbos table without a yamaka and just have eine chavis even if he doesn't call it any chops but just have a pleasant moment at a shower's tape nope that's not enough no get back in your room go back to the porn go back to the smartphone i know that's not what you're saying but by crinkling your nose at them that's that's what you're sending it to you're sending them to his numbing behaviors okay let's i the question i feel like in mitzvah and building the cities on swamps because i've seen how many questions are on my list of questions the numbers been at 18 all night and i've answered five or six of them already and it just keeps go it keeps going up not sure what to do here and i haven't even looked at the chat but uh let me let me look here i try to love each one but i believe that each one impacts the next i might be the worst parent in the world but what to do yeah okay so i said that it's not that they impact the next please don't don't don't don't buy into that okay i'll tell you what impacts each child when each child sees that you love them as they are right now they breathe they breathe see when a child lives in a house and wonders if his own parents even really want him there they can't breathe you know what pressure that is to know that you're an unwanted guest in somebody's home and you have nowhere to go when they see that you're loving and you relax and you're having a good time with their siblings then they breathe also because they know that you feel that way about your children enjoy your children enjoy them let them get come let them come back to living let them come back to life if you believe toyota is so true and i do too i also believe that it is true then believe that when your children are fully healthy functioning adults they will come to the truth but they have to become fully healthy and functioning let's uh okay similarly the rama talks about giving kids treats to get them to do good until they can do it okay similarly to what was a follow-up i guess another question okay oh you're saying similar to what i'm saying that you uh you'd be nice to them in order to i'm not sure okay anyways let's let's i'm going to move on i'm not a big fan of uh of bribery i i don't like threats and i don't like bribery in some ways i don't like bribery even worse than i don't like threats it's all it's all conditions but uh whatever we can get that we can have that discussion another time where the children uh need bribery i know i know that i'm okay anyways let's is it possible to get the recording yes we will have a recording okay can you please speak about kids off the dead of dating non-jews okay okay let's talk about it [Applause] you know there was a time there was a time when it was much easier to stop an intermarriage because basically what it was the person who didn't understand how bad it was or they forgot how bad it was and you had to do something to get through to them you know so the rabbis would take the young man open up the orange and say take the sacred terror and throw it on the floor because if you marry that non-jew that's what you're doing as long as safe return i know rabon and back in the 50s the 60s even the 70s that stuff used to work because what was lacking is a person had a sudden in in india they didn't understand or they didn't properly understand but you had to get through them so they would understand but our kids when when they come to that point where they don't even care whether they date a jew or marry a jew it's not a lack of knowledge it's that they're they're in such pain they just want distraction they just want relief why shouldn't i have some relief why should they have something that makes me feel good so as hard as this is to say when when a child is involved in a relationship with a non-jew that is a child who needs twice as much love and support a hundred times as much love and support and we believe that if we can give them that love parental love don't make them get it from somewhere else if we can genuinely give them that parental love and again unconditionally so that doesn't mean i'm loving you so that you will break up with that non-jew no i know this is very difficult to do but to put yourself into the position where you can actually save yourself sincerely i'm loving you so much i couldn't love you anymore or any less and it has nothing to do with who you date who you marry that can't affect it i couldn't love you more if you're married jewish couldn't love you less if you marry non-jewish god i know that's very it's a gargantuan task gargantuan task but if you can do it then that is the best possible path that uh that a child will have to making a choice that's healthier for their neshomer so yeah there are parents who have done the real massive snappish of doing what you know someone mentioned the house you know you have the intermarried person to your house and you be nice to the non-jewish spouse right because it's not their fault they're not bad they're innocent they got dragged into this unawares right and you're you're friendly and you're schmoozed you say well they don't know any better so this is even more so your child does know better and they're still doing it why are they doing it i promise you it's not from a place of uh of emotional strength and i know i'm going to get hell for saying that too because there are people who are going to feel offended and they're going to say well i left yiddish kite and i married in on jew and it has nothing to do with the lack of emotional strength and i would ask those people would you say that the environment you grew up in your family and your community was nurturing or not that's all i would ask that's all i would ask okay anyways let me let me just continue i want to try to knock off all these questions how can parents practically work on getting this perspective how can the teachers and principals receive this blessed perspective thank you for calling it blessed i appreciate that how can parents how can parents get this this is yiddish guy i want to tell you something this isn't um a special subject for people whose kids went otd no this is the real yiddish guy it's just most people have the luxury of never doing it the real yiddish kite is are one thing the real yiddish kite is the preciousness of eden and that are one of them that's the real yiddish most people have the luxury of not having not being forced into a situation to come to such a level of offices at all the people who are going through this fashion so they are put into that position where ultimately to have the proper avas hashem and abbas they have to have on human levels of obvious israel but you can accomplish on human levels of abscess at all because it's coming from the neshama and then the shaman is infinite so that's how we get the perspective and this this is yiddish titan this is in everything in total everywhere you look into now you'll see what you want to see if you want to see uh threats and punishment then that's what you'll see but if you want to see love that's what you'll see i hope that you'll look for the love for the benefit for the for the benefit of all of us the benefit of all of us okay i'm gonna continue quickly we need training hands-on okay um i don't know what to say you know first of all i i don't go around giving references to people because whatever that that implies a certain level of responsibility but i will mention that you know um there's a there's a shabbaton called kashanovshi which i think now they do twice a year i've been there in the past it's only a weekend okay but you want hands-on training go go to the kesha now there you go that's a hands-on training okay um at the same time i'm more looking at myself rather than my children and to refine myself good okay i agree with that i agree with that okay should you stress this to a child that is not having issues or is it better that they feel you want them to succeed and that you will make that and that will make you proud oh that is great i like that question so i want to tell you something um you want to hear from me what i say i say that if this stuff is true then it's true for all of us that's what i say i know some people will say that this is uh like shaw special dispensation when the kid needs the emergency treatment but i say no if this really is really the skype like i was just saying it was then it applies to all of us and all of us need love and acceptance and here's the thing we're so used to thinking that excellence can only emerge from pain and strife that we assume that if you won't have pain and strife won't be excellent and that's so silly that's such a silly concept and and i've heard people argue this and they talk about tiger mom which i've heard from people saying you got to be a tiger right tiger was not a jewish thing right believe in the neshama believe in the mice part that every jew is the handiwork of hashem that he is proud of when you can be proud of every jew that will rise to the occasion no rise to the occasion they don't need pushing i believe this applies to all of us i want to be treated this way i want to treat you this way i want our teachers to treat all of our students this way i don't think you can go wrong with with love and pride and and and acceptance and cure of i think it brings out the best in all of us and if you think that well if no one's being mean to me and harassing me why would i even try that itself is the voice of trauma that itself is the voice of trauma the only reason anyone would try is because they're being uh because love is being withheld sorry it's not compelling to me okay but with the attitude of just love it not much that's how we lose touch and the children will do less and less and so no more jews no more jews like what are we no more jews like do we know more jewish people um okay so you can harass everybody and eventually there will be a minion of mitsuyon and that'll be the jewish people well you can try that all i can say is like this the people who are writing this and saying you have to be harsh you have to be glutatic i'm just praying that these are people who came on style out of curiosity and and not that they have children in this partnership because i can tell you that if this is the way you're thinking your child feels and your child wants to die because any human being who knows that the people who made you the parents who made you look down on you that feeling is so deeply deeply painful to the core that a person feels that doesn't even want to exist they'll save their lives and not want to die by deciding that they hate you instead of hating themselves and that's how some of these children save their lives they decide to hate their parents instead of hating themselves i don't i don't i don't want that for you either though i don't want your child to hate himself and i don't want your child to hate you let me let me i have 11 questions up here what do you do about a child was tattoos and isn't always careful about hiding them why should i hide them they have them i don't know okay he hasn't worn shorts in the neighborhood since he got his first one but he wears short sleeves the one on his arm is visible oh yeah you know i'll tell you the thing about tattoos is that you know if a person is mahalo shabbos you don't see that on tuesday if a person ate after he gets up from the restaurant and you walk turns the corner you don't see where he was eating a person who gets tattoos look it's a love i mean like like other laven but unfortunately it's one of these things that just you see it on the person all the time so there's because of that there's a certain emotional uh yeah understandably a certain emotional reaction to it but here's what i want to tell you if your child wants to hide it let him hide maybe he regrets it okay but uh you shouldn't think that you're telling him to hide it you shouldn't think that you need him to hide it and in fact if your child wears shorts and has tattoos and comes visits you i think the greatest thing you can do for their yiddish guy go take a walk around the block go spazier and shabbos with with your son with the do with the shorts and the tattoos and and and and don't tell him to put on a yarmulke now if he wants to put on one you don't have to tell them to take it off obviously we're not against mixes but you go take a walk around the block with him on showers and just enjoy his time just enjoy his time i'm telling you it's the greatest thing that you can do for him if you really care about his neshama i'm saying it's the greatest thing give him 15 minutes of parental love walk around the block together with a parent and and i promise you something you don't have to say this in fact don't say it but he'll know that when you walk around the block with hips you listen to me right now okay when you walk around the block with your child with the shorts and the tattoos all the bad feelings that he has every time that one of the neighbors looked down at him since he was a kid since he didn't fit in and they looked down at him every disapproving look that a mechanic gave and that a neighbor gave any disapproving look that anyone ever gave that made him feel less than you go walk around the block with him on shabbos when looking the way he's looking right now and at least for those 15 minutes that will all go away and he will feel as perfect and loved as his neshama if you want to give that for your child if you want to give that to your child otherwise okay i'm not here to threaten you but your child will find people who are proud to walk around the block with him in his shorts and his tattoos why can't his mother and father walk around proudly with him on shabbos when you do that that is the most powerful medicine you can hire a thousand professionals they cannot provide that level of healing why would you not give the medicine to your child that you're the only one who has it how about respect for house rules there are other children in the home yeah you know what i believe in house standards not house rules um this may be as controversial but uh if my children respect me and my house they will they'll act accordingly and um by being a tyrant and demanding adherence i'm not gaining anything you know cops go around pulling people over for speeding you know what that teaches them slow down when you see a cop it doesn't make people not speed so if i catch you not being sneezed i'll make you go change right it doesn't make you it's near stick in fact if i make you go change then when you're not where i can see you you know the minute you go to uh er cisro you know the shorts come out i mean the mice in behold look you want your children to live according to house rules you want your children to live according to your standards then make your child feel like part of the family let them know this is their tribe when they identify with you they will identify with your values i promise you when they identify with you they will identify with your values the problem isn't getting them to follow your values the problem is getting them to identify with you if they identify with you automatically they will follow your values they know what your values are they know what your values are and by the way let me ask you a question if you have a kid who's from and he's not michael chavez is he not mchale shabbos because that's a house rule tell me that he's not my counselor because it's a house rule but because he doesn't want to be mahal jabez because that's a sensitivity that he has so you know when your children who who are keeping the mitzvahs that they're keeping it's not because it was a house rules because they internalized that value okay so do the same thing with the child who's not yet keeping that mitzvah allow them to internalize it as a value house rules what are house rules you know what i only know a one house rule the cal gold the biggest rule in total the rule for all other mixers that's our only club that's our rule that's our rule you wanna have a house rule our rule is be like the balchampton's parents the when elio navi came and acted like a michael shabas and it was boisterous and he drew attention to himself he tried to get himself thrown out and the balshampta's father ebola he wouldn't throw out the guy right he wouldn't throw him out and the the guests were looking down at him and and rebellizer went to the to the other room and he was crying because he felt so bad for this guest and he was the cat of that guest and then afterwards and she says i nearly all know you and now you're gonna have a son about this you want to have a son the mosham so you have to be macadam every year now we're going to take it to the next level you want to have a son about if you have to be my kind of your son when your son is that yet that we all know he was pretending to be can you mention the five types of love i know gifts words can you explain all five types thank you okay so i think you're talking about like five love languages it's funny if people assume that i know all these secular things i really don't but yeah i've heard of this five love languages i don't know i never read the book and i don't know what the five love languages are but just listen it's it's portions it's plush you want to make somebody feel good about you you want to you know relax them you want to make them feel appreciated so there's like different ways of doing that some people like to to talk some people don't like to talk some people like to just sit in your presence quietly other people like to go out and do things together you know spending time together other people you get them a gift i was out at the store and i saw some paprika and i knew that you needed paprika and i bought you the pepper you know like right uh some some people physical touch huge thing do you hug your kids do you hug your kids do you hug your kids do you hug your kids do you hug your kids i'm asking you a simple question do you hug your kids your kid who isn't from right now when's the last time you hugged him or he doesn't want a hug no not from you because the relationship turned toxic but show him it's safe show him you're a safe person show him you're a trustworthy person so that he can actually experience the hug from you and that hug is more healing than anything okay let's let's keep going i want to finish off how do we deal with teenagers who are slack enough in school and are just lazy uh if you forgive me i think i'm just gonna skip that because okay if they're just lazy they're just lazy but so that's outside of the scope here i think a lot of kids who have deeper problems are accused of being lazy but anyways okay meeting their non-jewish boyfriend and girlfriend spoke about that um okay he's reminding a child older than 30 to make a bracha okay because after all they'll be getting married soon you certainly want them to do this basic too oh i'm sorry for laughing that's not right i shouldn't laugh because they'll be getting married soon you should remind them to make abraham how about reverse because they'll be getting married soon they're way too old for you to remind them a three-year-old needs to be reminded to make a bracha if a thirty-year-old is not making brachas they don't need to be reminded to make brothers look guys so many of this um so much of this like so many of these questions really is push it simple emotional intelligence and by the way if you're out there and you're saying but i do love my kid my kid loves me and i hug my kid we bond and we spend time together and he's still not from i'm gonna tell you you're awesome keep it up don't stop don't stop don't give up don't give up and the most important thing is don't listen to the naysayers who make you feel like a sucker because they tell you to not enjoy your child and then it takes one disapproving comment and and you knock the kid off the rails for for weeks for months don't listen to those people if you have a good relationship with your kid your kids still not from don't stop keep it up keep it up what if it's a spouse that's causing it that's another story i mean this was about uh children who are off uh the data so to speak i don't like that expression but you're asking about adults i'll just say a quick comment about that quick comment i hope this will be understood you know how i said there's nothing more powerful than the love of a parent to a child and that a parent has a special ability to to heal a child's um that is unique to a parent-child relationship and they do not believe that a spouse can do that for another spouse i don't believe that if you would just have more unconditional love and unconditional pride that that can cure it i think it's a different parsha it's a different discussion and uh i don't want to get off into that subject but i see a lot of times um a lot of self-denial that happens a lot of people compromising their own dignity and their own safety for a spouse who is not able to live as a responsible adult um but that's not the topic tonight okay topics parents and children let's let's stick with that topic no matter how old your child is a parent has a very special kayak unique okay let's let's continue how is it fair that hashem puts people in situations that existence is painful um how is it fair i don't know i don't know if it's fair i i don't know you want me to tell you that in another gilgal they did something i don't know but i do know that there are such people now i can tell you this doesn't make it fair but i can tell you there is a bright side of it i can tell you there's a silver lining these extra sensitive people these people for whom existence itself is painful these are the most powerful people we have these people who don't fit in anywhere always feeling lonely in a crowded room terminally unique you know the sensitive souls so powerful and if we nurture them and support them they become our healers and they they they're the ones who are leading the charge to make our community and our world the way that it needs to be so does it is that fair does it make it all right that hashem makes some people so sensitive that existence is painful um i don't know if it's fair i don't know if that makes it all right but i will tell you that these same people who are so sensitive and have so much pain are the most powerful healers and i want to tell you something it's nobody's business what somebody's story is but i promise you anybody you know who you think really gets it who's really compassionate if they're not bluffing and you'll find out after a while who's real and who's not real i promise you that there's somebody who's been through pain and perhaps even is still going through pain or maybe existence itself is painful for them so is that fair does it make it all right i don't know but i do know that those who have pain end up being so powerful and having such a gift to share you know if we can stop being marathic the sensitive souls they can do so much for us we need them they're not the stragglers they're not the weak link they they're they're supposed to be our leaders and we kicked them out they were supposed to be ignorant we kicked them out you don't know the the great leaders that we were supposed to have and we need to become more compassionate as a culture i'm not here to figure out how it happened was it holocaust trauma it's not my business i don't care how it happened we as a culture i'm talking about from people need to become more loving and gentle toward each other and stop crippling people with the constant relentless pressure of being judged it's just too much it's strangling even the people who are cert who survive and are able to make it quote-unquote make it they also hate it enough we have a whole culture that's acting like a junior high lunch table i mean and it's it's such a hill hashem it's certainly not toyota that told us to be this way just don't say this is titanic don't don't do this in the name of tyra [Music] let's let's finish here but how do we communicate to our kids that their actions are not proper like intermarriage should we not state that we love them but yet we don't approve of their life choices they know you don't approve okay they know you don't approve on behalf of all jewish people thank you okay on behalf of me thank you um do i accept the if my daughter is dating invite him to our home against our will well let me accept him first of all he's not doing anything wrong it's not his fault he got wrapped up in it i'm not going to tell you what to do but i will say that if you can show her love even in this situation even in the presence of that non-jewish boyfriend that love is so powerful and so healing that so good for the soul i don't know why you wouldn't give it to your child that's all i'll say about that okay you are doing what not one rabbi is doing now that's not true it's not true that's not true there are many rabbis who are doing this i'm not the only one it's not true but thank you i'm i'm i'm glad you think i'm you know uniquely uh whatever but okay this may be your most heartfelt talk ever okay did you see all my talks i think this is the most heartfelt i think some others were more heartfelt who can judge what's heartfelt yes but i do take the situation very seriously and it's also a little bit of fatigue i'm just tired i'm just you know if you see me getting emotional i'm just worn down because it's like i can't give your child the thing they need they'll want nobody can give your child the thing they need they the thing they need is is you they need you they need you to be fully present and again i thought you have to be a rabbit you have to see it in the shama and not get fooled or distracted not get pulled in by the catanias so i got four questions left i thought i had no more tears but the beauty of your words and true obviously slow brings tears to my eyes keep up the good work please okay you know what when somebody says i thought i had no more tears you know what that means you know what to say talking about somebody who cried a lot okay but hopefully these are different tears this is not tears of pain this is tears of hearing hearing truth and uh look i want to make it clear here my words moved you to tears great it's not like i'm so smart and so special this is partial i'm just saying i'm just saying i'm just saying that's it okay it doesn't take a genius to to say this okay maybe in fact maybe i'm an idiot for saying maybe i'm i don't know i don't know what the the the the fallout will be for saying that i don't know who who's going to judge this everyone judges you know what it's their children dying and and we can't afford to be part of the problem anymore i cannot afford to be part of the problem i have a platform okay i'm using my platform this way you use your platform this way everyone has a platform you dive into school you sit at a table there are other people who sit with you okay so model compassion for them model compassion for them we need to change our culture this is the most powerful webinar thank you i've grown children and thank god you gave me this advice you gave me this advice two years ago oh okay wow okay you gave me this advice two years ago when my son came home with a non-jewish girl we do have a great relationship it was a long sad journey but my family argues that he doesn't think it even bothers us because we allow them to come to our home and we're so accepting it's a tough call because i do forget to be upset sometimes oh you're such a terrible person sometimes you forget to be upset look we all know intermarriage is a tragedy we all know chavez is a tragedy we all know that eating before might have is a tragedy anyone who's over [Music] it's a tragedy these are tragedies someone's mavato palmitata for one minute it's a tragedy but what do you want us to do go around being in pain every second from the evaders that we're all doing so we're all in pain and nobody can give you the one smile that you need to give you a path back home so yeah you know i think about real sadness real time who were more sensitive to this stuff than we are and trust me when they saw you who had a a smell of evaders on him it it was more repulsive to them than we could imagine and yet they were not merake they were makaris yeah get this kite is serious serious yeah we want every kid to be uh nizar and tariq mitzvahs and and i put my people first i put my people first and and and that's coming from malaysia nobody cares about today more than myself for whom the whole paper is called pedestal you want to be from be truly frugal thank you for this life-changing show okay you're welcome if so it's comforting to know that probably chase himself has been through pain has become so amazingly wise and passionate etc yeah thank you that hey that was very sweet of you i was very sweet of you thank you for thinking about me i appreciate it you know that's nice once in a while somebody actually thinks about me i i'm telling you it feels good thank you that gives me a kiss it really does thank you okay we're on the left now i have 36 comments i can't read the comments i i mean i'm hoping all of you saw the comments because the comments were visible to everyone and if you're watching this on replay i know you can't see the comments what can i do anyways i'm taking the last question maybe it's just a comment and i won't have to answer anything it's going to take a lot for the parents that were brought up by the previous generation to make real changes these are hardwired in and it leaves a lot of people speechless as to where to start with the awareness of this talk is a great start okay so that was more of a comment than a question so i don't really have to answer it okay uh this is two hours over two hours i want to stop now and i want to thank you all for being here you can do it you can do it if you're a parent the abrister has given you a special kayak you are hashem's partner there are three partners and a person a mother the father and the college hashem brought you in as a partner a partner means you have full access to all of hashem's resources so that's it you have infinite godly kayak you can do it and i know and i know when when when it breaks your heart and you and and you just feel that pain and you want to to to push the child away out of the sense of your own self-protection i know you have to overcome it you have to overcome that and be makative be my kind of and you can do it i know it's superhuman but you can do it the abhishek is with you the energy is