Practical Parenting - Another Link In The Chain

2:34 And they have to make sure that their children are the next link in the chain. Preservation is the word of the day, and in order to do that, a parent needs to give over. They need to be teachers of Torah. And the Gemara in Sanhedrin 19b says that it's our responsibility to transmit Torah, of course, to our own children. But even if you're teaching Torah to the child of someone else, the Gemara says it's as if you are that person's parent. It's as if you gave birth to that child, because teaching Torah is the primary reason why we have children to begin with. We have the child in order to transmit Torah to the child. And then the child in turn will transmit Torah to the next generation. Teaching Torah is not just preparing a child for a livelihood. Teaching Torah is more fundamental than that. It is your raison d'être.

3:30 It is the very reason for your being. And that's why the Gemara says that if you teach someone Torah, it's as if you gave birth to him, because that is the reason for existence. So a parent, part of their responsibility, is to be a teacher. And then they transmit the Masora. This is fundamental, especially as we'll see in today's generation, because there were times in Klal Yisrael's history where the father taught Torah to the son, and then the son in turn would teach Torah to his son. But because we are not all capable of teaching Torah for two reasons: number one, we may not be capable teachers; we may not know enough Torah, or we may not be skilled or patient enough. To teach Torah to our children, that's number one. One reason why we wouldn't teach Torah to our children. A second reason, which I imagine is probably much more pronounced in today's generation, is because we simply do not have time.

4:29 Rabbeinu Yisrael the Rambam says La halacha How many hours a day should a person work, and how many hours a day should a person learn? The Rambam says that a person should learn nine hours a day. And work three hours a day. The Rambam is assuming a 12-hour day. What does that mean, Rabbeinu? To us, what that means is that it was possible—not only possible, but it was the prevalent custom in the times of the Rambam—to only work three hours a day, because there was no such thing as the shrunken world in which we live. If a person was a tailor, how much work was there in his shtetl? If a person was a shoemaker, how many shoes could he make every single day? It would be ridiculous to make nine hours worth of shoes every single day. There weren't enough people that could buy nine hours worth of shoes.

5:17 How many hours could a farmer work the field? They had to wake up early in the morning to work the field, but then it would get hot. They wouldn't be capable of working the field. So the Rambam in the Rambam's time, a person would work three hours a day, and then he would learn nine hours a day. Seventy-five percent of his time was devoted to Torah. And in our generation It is exactly the opposite. In fact, three hours of learning would be incredible. In our generation, it's exactly the opposite. Who is a hero today, Rabo Say? A hero is a balabas who gets up in the morning early because he wants to learn in Kol Olboker. So he gets up for 5:30 Kol Olboker. He learns until 6:15. From 6:15 to 7, he's in shul. He comes home. He helps his wife get the kids out. He catches the train. He does a dafyomi on the train. He sits in his office.

6:08 Probably for nine to ten hours a day. The only break he has is when he goes to chapa mincha. He comes home. He's probably chazaring the daf if he's not sleeping. On the train on the way home. He has dinner. Goes to ma'ariv. Probably learns a little bit. Comes home. Spends some time with his kids. That guy is a hero. He's devoting himself with real amelus betorah. It's unbelievable. But today, if we were to throw on top of all of those responsibilities, if we were to say, and now we want you to be responsible for your son's education. It would not be possible. But as a result of the elevated stature of our world, meaning we are accustomed to what we think are basic needs Like running water, like having the beautiful homes that we live in. Baruch Hashem, on Zoom I get to see all of your beautiful homes.

7:03 Some of you have blank walls behind you, but some of you have what appear to be gorgeous homes, palaces. Shlomo HaMelech did not have the regal garments that we wear with the finest threads, sitting in comfortable chairs with solid walls and heat and air conditioning and running water. If you would have described our lifestyle to a king, they would have said, 'That's a palace you're living in.' Even a basic house is a palace. So because we have these quote-unquote basic needs, as a result, we've had to work so much to support those needs. And as a result, we don't have the capacity to educate our children. However However Because we are the direct link in the chain of the Mitzvah Even though we are appointing the Rebbeim to be our Shluchim, to be our messengers in teaching Torah to the next generation That does not mean that we don't have a responsibility.

7:58 In fact, Rabbeinu. It's just as much today as it ever was, and I'll tell you a story. They say that Rav Elchanan Wasserman, you all have heard of Rav Elchanan Wasserman, who tragically was killed by the Nazis. He was the great Rosh Yeshiva. I'm sure you guys have been exposed to some of his Torah this year. Unbelievably beautiful lamdas. So Rav Elchanan Wasserman was the Talmid Muvak of the Chafetz Chaim. And he learned in Radin by the Chafetz Chaim And the Chafetz Chaim. Was the Rav Chanan in a situation where he had a choice to go home for Pesach and be at his father's seder Or to be at the Chafetz Chaim seder? They were very close, and Rav Chanan had the opportunity to go to the Chafetz Chaim seder. So Rav Chanan went to the Chafetz Chaim and he asked him, Rebbe Where should I be for seder?

8:48 Is it better to be by you Or is it better to be by my own father? Now I don't know who Rav Chanan Wasserman's father was. I'm sure he was a tremendous person. The Chafetz Chaim was the gadol hador. Could you imagine the stories that Rav Chanan would have had? Could you imagine the inspiration of getting to be at the Chafetz Chaim Seder? This is not just Stamer Rebbe; this is the Godol Adar, the Chafetz Chaim. And he said to the Chafetz Chaim, "What should I do?" Because of course he didn't know what to do, so he went as Rebbe. So the Chafetz Chaim said to him, "You should go home to your father's Seder." So Rav Chanan asked him, "Why? Why should I go home to my father's Seder? So the Chafetz Chaim answered. Because there is nobody that can tell the story of Sipur Yetsias Mitzrayim like your father.

9:35 What does Rabbi mean? He said Sipur Yetsias Mitzrayim is meant to be from a father to a son, and so even the greatest Rabbi in the world, even the greatest Gadol B'Teira in the world Pales in comparison to a father giving over the Mitzvah to their children. And that means that yes, we might be giving over. The day-to-day learning But we are not abdicating our responsibility. And I have to tell you Baruch Hashem Baruch Hashem, for guys like yourself One of the things that I hear so often in interviews Rabbeinu says, interviews are hard. They're not the easiest thing in the world because you're sitting and hearing the same answer over and over again. I see Yoko is laughing because he's heard me say this a million times. It's hard to sit and hear the same answer over and over again. I want to learn all the different things that people say, but you know, rabbi, say one thing that I hear all the time, and it's a beautiful thing.

10:32 You ask guys what they want to gain out of yeshiva. You know what they always say? I want to be able to open up a gemara and learn with my son without using an art scroll. And there's something beautiful about that. Not because I don't appreciate art scroll. I'm a big fan of art scroll. I'm a big fan of using the art scroll as a dictionary so that it can help you understand how to learn a Gemara. I'm not knocking art scroll. However, I love the fact that your generation understands that you have a responsibility to learn with your children. And that you may not have a lot of time. But when you have that time, you want to be able to sit down. Your kid comes home and he says, 'Abba, Tati, Daddy, whatever your kid is going to call you,' and he's going to say, 'Abba.' I assume he's going to be Israeli because you're all going to live in Israel.

11:20 So he's going to say. I have a test tomorrow. Can we sit and learn together? You don't want to be the guy that says okay. Let me pull the art scroll off the shelf. You want to be able to sit and learn. Rabo said, you know what I love? I love David. I'll get to him one second. I love when you have the rebbeim come to yeshiva for the first Shabbos of the Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchas Torah, Shavuos, whatever it is. I love sitting in the bais medrash. Sitting in the shul on Shabbos afternoon. I, of course, only have a son now, who's three and a half years old, so I never had this opportunity. But I loved watching Rav Lovi sit and learn with his children, Rav Steinertz sit and learn with his children. It's a beautiful thing to watch, and they don't have an art scroll, and you see them—they're cucking and learning, they're fighting and learning. The mesora comes alive. That is the responsibility that a father has to his son, that a parent has to their child. David Perlman Schlichter, what was your question?

12:25 This is more of a question where Rev mentioned that our generation looks very promising and that we understand that when we have children, we should learn with them. That we're going to want to learn with them. I'm just curious if our generation is just as. Understanding is the previous generation, but somehow the previous generation messed up, and therefore we're nowhere. Have we progressed? Is my question. Have we gotten? Do we look like we have a more promising? I want to say future as far as ethics and morals for our children Becoming better parents, or do all parents start off as these bright-eyed young people, and with time their parents like, this is really much harder than we thought And they kind of fall flat a little bit. David, that's an excellent question, and I think the answer is both. I think that just like when I was your age, I thought to myself, 'I'm gonna do it right. I'm gonna do it perfect. I'm never gonna lose my cool. I'm always gonna be totally balanced and totally great. My kids are gonna love me and they're gonna feel open with me and all of those things.' And it's true. I started off thinking, man, my parents really didn't know, but I'm gonna do it right. And then you get older and you realize you're human and you make mistakes. And there are pressures of life that you didn't that you never factored into your

13:39 Into your chesed when you were young, thinking you were gonna be the perfect parent. And of course, there's a lot of arrogance involved. And it's true, our parents were bright-eyed, I was bright-eyed, you're bright-eyed, and it will not be exactly what you think it is. Rabo, say we are living in a more psychologically aware generation. We are living in a generation that is getting closer and closer to the coming of Mashiach, which means that we're getting closer and closer to the essence. And I, for one, am extremely not just hopeful, not just optimistic, but I'm seeing with my own eyes that the next generation really is trying their best to raise a generation of passionate Jews. And a lot of the kids that you know 20 years ago Have you know, 21,22 years ago, came home from Israel. And they said, "we're gonna do it right, and we're gonna raise the next generation of passionate Jews." I'm seeing their children In NCSY Kollel, I'm seeing them come to Mivaseret, and Baruch Hashem, we are on our way. Good things are happening in Klal Yisrael. David, don't buy into the Yeridas Hadoros negativity. If you think you are bad, the generation after you is going to be even worse. That is destructive.

14:53 Horrific mentality. One that will surely result in a self-fulfilling prophecy of terrible parenting. Thank you. Seeing as we are a chain in the masorah, responsible for creating the next generation, I'd like to turn your attention for a moment to a Yerushalmi. Yerushalmi and Yevamos tells us a beautiful story about Rav Yehoshua. Rav Yehoshua's mother When he was just an infant, a little baby in the stroller. She would take him to the bais medrash. So that he would hear the sounds of Torah, the riskand oraisa. A bais medrash. Do you remember the din in the bais medrash, Rabbi Osay? Do you remember the hum? It's like there's a palpable sense of power when you walk into a bais medrash. You walk in through those back doors, and you have Rabbi Arnold Sheer, Rabbi Lovi Sheer to the left. You have Rav Isaacson in the front, Rav Chagai on the right, Rav Hershel on the right, Rav Glanz in front. It's unbelievable. Rav Saffer, Rav Biser, Rav Bloom. Baruch Hashem, we have a rocking, beis medrash. And the sounds of the beis medrash make an impact. Rav Yosheu's mother does a fascinating thing; she takes him to the beis medrash as a little baby.

16:17 By the way, guys, this is a limudshus for all of those merits kolol guys that come with a daddy daycare and they come with their little babies into the beis medrash. So you wonder, what are you doing, bringing your kid into the beis medrash in a stroller, put your kid in Gan, sit and learn. The answer is this year Shalmy, those merits kol guys, they're trying to raise the next generation of Rav Yosheus. So what was the pedagogical message? What's the Gemara trying to tell us? I'll answer by sharing with you a vort from my Rebbe, Rav Yehuda Parnaschlika, who I hope you have all heard of from your rebbeim. If Parnas Shlita, Kanai Nahar, is ninety years old She'd continue to be well until a hundred and twenty. He told me the most incredible vort. He didn't just tell it to me; he told it to the whole she'er. But it's a vort that stayed with me for my entire life thus far, and I hope it'll stay with me for the rest of my life.

17:11 Ravosa, we know that Chazal say that even an uber, bemeimo, even a fetus while it was still in the womb Had great levels of nevuah. Great levels of nivuah by Kriyas Yamsuf. So my Rebbe asked, 'What does it mean that the fetus in a womb can have nivuah? What is the Gemara trying to express to us?' And his answer was as follows: The mother had an emotional experience. And because the mother had an emotional experience, and the child was in utero at that moment, the child experiences the emotions of the mother. This is what my rebbe explained psychologically. The gemara was saying The mother had an emotional experience; she had a clarity of godliness in this world, and the child, as a part of the mother, experienced that same emotional connection to Hashem. And the gemara is telling us something unbelievable. Even as a fetus, we now know this to be true psychologically.

18:15 Even as a fetus, there's a development going on. It's not just that the child is sitting there. There's a psychological development that happens to the child even in the womb. And if that's true in the womb, then it's true even when a child is a little baby. We know that the child becomes accustomed to the physical touch of the mother, which has an impact on the development of the child's psychology. So what was Rabbi Yehoshua's mother trying to do? She was trying to acclimate him to the noises she wanted her son to pursue in his life. There is nothing more beautiful than the din of the bais medrash. There's nothing more powerful than when you walk into the bais medrash and you see people fighting and learning. That is the place. That is the arena. That's the stadium. That's where it's happening. She wanted, as a young child, ready to inculcate him.

19:07 So that's lesson number one from this gemara. Rabo, say if we have a responsibility to raise the next generation of the chain, to raise the next generation of the mesora. So we already have to know that at a very young age, our children are being influenced, and then the question is, what will their influences be? What are the books that we read them? What are the stories that we say, that we tell over? What is the avirah in our home? What? Who are the people hanging on our walls? Who are the people hanging on their walls? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with I'm not judging Chas V'Shalom. If you're a Phil Simms fan and you want to have Phil Simms hanging on your wall Kol hakavod. I myself growing up Not embarrassed to say this, maybe I should be, especially now with the documentary. I had a picture of Michael Jordan dunking from the foul line on my wall, and a picture of Muhammad Ali with his fist up in the air on my wall.

20:05 But when I got older, and I asked myself after I was in yeshiva and mivaseret, I asked myself. What do I want to be on my walls when my children are growing up? What do I want to be on my walls? Do I want there to be art? Which, by the way, I do, and I have art up on my walls? Do I also want them to see pictures of tzaddikim? Do I want them to see shelves full of svarim or chas v'shalom? Do I want to be bringing images into my home and stories into my home that are not necessarily in line with the hashkafas Torah? And one has to be very careful with the avirah that they bring into their home, because if you think it doesn't have an impact, already from a very young age, you're making a big mistake. You're making a big mistake. Number one, we want to acclimate our children to a life of Torah. We want to acclimate them to what it means to be someone who dedicates themselves to the service of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

21:02 There is a second lesson, and after this, I'll pause ten seconds for station identification. There is a second lesson. For those of you that listen to the fan There is a second lesson. And the lesson is thank you Nachi for that smirk. I needed that. My self-esteem was plummeting, but Baruch Hashem Nachi knows how to give me that little cute Rebbe joke. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Now there is a second lesson here, and I think it's equally important. If you want to raise a Rav Yehoshua Then you have to be a mother that understands that there's a primacy of Torah. In other words, how did Rav Yosheva become Rav Yosheva? Two ways. One way we spoke him out. From the time he was young, his influence was the beis medrash. His influence was the block gemara. His influence was the shmooz in the beis medrash. That was the music in his cradle, so to speak.

21:55 But at the same time, he had a mother who very clearly valued Torah and took the time to make sure that her son went to the beis medrash. And both have to be true. We have to send our children to environments that are going to be appropriate, that are going not just to be appropriate, but that are going to encourage our children to become the very best that they can be. That is absolutely paramount. But at the same time, if we put them in those environments and we ourselves are people that don't necessarily have Torah as a priority Then it doesn't matter what environment our children are in. Ultimately, it comes back to us. Rav Yosheva's mother put him in the basic medrash. And when Rav Yosheva grew up, he knew my mother brought me to the basic medrash. So he knew what his mother's values were.

22:48 And that's what made Rav Yosheva into Rav Yosheva. Let's pause for any questions. Daniel Gross The question is if someone just. Hold on, give me a second. Will, can you jump to your center for a second? Sorry, Sho and I are actually in the same room. If someone is dependent on the parent's actions, let's say for instance you have two kids, one of them the mother was Reb Gerbur Yishua And the other one, let's say the mother was not like Reb Yishua's mother. One of them is an easy time, and one of them is a hard time. I don't want to say it's like maybe it just goes into a little more of a free will discussion, but how exactly can they judge In the sense that they have different They kind of it's not really an even playing field for each kid. I and you know what, Daniel, you're making an excellent point because life is not an even playing field We believe in equality of opportunity, but not necessarily equality of outcome.

23:55 Not every single child is growing up with a mother like Ravi Yeshua. And because of that, it may not be an even playing field, which is good because Hakadosh Baruch Hu has different missions for every single person, and some of us have a different point of free will. For some of us, it starts at point A, and for some of us, it starts perhaps at a more elevated plane. If your mother is Rav Yosheua's mother, your obligation is to become Rav Yosheua. If your mother is not Rav Yosheua's mother, then you have a totally different set of circumstances that you have to overcome, like everybody in life. What I would say to you is as follows. Let's take a moment to recognize that our parents have a tremendous influence on us. Again, I've said this many times. I'll say it again. I was very privileged. I grew up in a home where my mother has an insatiable thirst for learning Torah. If there is a shiur going on, my mother is there. She, no matter what happens, Shabbos afternoon, Friday mornings, she's running to shiurim every single day. And now, because she can't leave the house, because she's over a certain age and would be unsafe for her to leave the house all day long. No problem. Whenever she's not teaching herself She has shiurim that she goes to. Insatiable.

25:09 I have to admit I don't think that I would be a teacher today if it wasn't for my mother and her insatiable thirst for learning Torah. I think I got that from her. Not everybody has parents like that, and some people have to overcome that. But there's leshus as a given. Recognize the impact that a parent can have on a child. The parent's priorities are communicated to the children. Is that fair? I don't know. I'm not in charge of that system, but it's a good point. Any other questions? Nachilo shliita. Regarding the medrash in va'yigash How could Klal Yisrael answer for the children? It's a medrash, meaning the medrash here is meant to be taken seriously, but not literally. I don't think we should have a halachic discussion about being a guarantor right now. I think it means to say that the children guarantee that their parents will preserve the Torah because they will accept it upon themselves.

26:11 But why? Like, who says? As I zuk the medrash The message is what's critical. The message is that the parents are responsible for the transmission. I think that's the point of the message. Know what I mean? That is the dictum of Chazal, as they write in books. The dictum of the sages of the Medrash. Any other questions? Moving on. One of the challenges, perhaps the biggest challenge Of Chinuch today. Is the mass production Assembly line production Of students. When you start thinking about the educational system, you'll see that what's happened is as follows. Again, I'm not here to criticize. I'm just here to point out what's going on. Because we live in a situation where the parents are working to the extent that they are, it is quite difficult for the parents to have the children home. So as a result, school days have to be pretty long.

27:27 Because they have to at least hold the kids until one of the parents gets home. Schools have challenges. One of the challenges is that they have to operate within a particular budget. Despite the tuition crisis that exists. The reality is nobody's walking away from the school system rich. Nobody. That being the case, what happens is that schools usually have to become larger than they want to be. And so, for example, the school that I was in when I was growing up When I was there, we had 500 kids. 500 kids meant kids from nursery through eighth grade. Today, that very same school has over a hundred kids a grade. Every single grade has its own principal. Over a hundred kids a grade, and there's over two thousand kids. From nursery to elementary school to middle school to high school, beis medrash kollel—it's unbelievable. They have everything, but they have over two thousand people learning there every day. And baruch Hashem, they've built themselves up. And what used to be a big campus with a small building is now a big campus with an airport-sized building, and it's massive. And I'm so happy for them. I'm so happy for them. But when you speak, I love this school.

28:47 But when you speak. To old school talmidim, people that were talmidim in the 80s and in the 90s, and they go visit the building and they see Baruch Hashem thousands of Jewish kids sitting and learning. It's amazing, but they all have the same comment: I miss the old building. I miss that old run-down building that used to be broken into every night and you didn't know if your schoolbooks were going to be there in the morning. Why? Because there was something so personal about that school. Where everybody knew everybody else, and the rebbeim knew all the kids, and it was very special. You could run into the principal at a simcha, and the principal would be able to tell you exactly how your son was doing, and be able to tell you even the last mark that your kid got on his test, which, with 500 kids in the school, is very impressive.

29:36 But unfortunately, today that's impossible because there's over 2,000 kids in the school. It would be a ridiculous thing if he was able to know every single kid's test. And so when we start to make our schools bigger, what happens is that we start to mass produce talmidim. And that is terrible for the individual child. Now the rebbe is sitting there with 25 kids in his class, 25 in America, as 40 in Israel. If he's sitting there with a massive amount of kids in his class, what's going to get your son or daughter the attention they need? What's going to make sure that happens? The answer is because you have not abdicated your responsibility. This is critical on both sides. It's your job to know your child. Know what your child needs, and become an advocate for your child. Do not allow the system to educate your child. Don't do it.

30:38 The system is not a bad system. But by definition, it's a system for a lot of kids. It's not a system for your kid. The system needs to be tweaked. Some kids will need special attention. Some kids will need warmth. Some kids will need extra learning on the side. Some kids will need speech therapy. It is your responsibility to be an advocate for your child. Do not wait for the rebbe to call you and say that something is wrong. Be proactive. Have a relationship with your children's teachers and rebbeim. Don't just wait for parent-teacher conferences. Make sure that you know what's going on and that you're advocating for your child. A word of caution: Do not be that arrogant parent that thinks that you know better than the rebbe. The rebbe spends a lot of time, and the teacher spends a lot of time with your kid, and they may know a part of your child that you don't get to see at home. And your son, while wonderful and the apple of your eye You may see him through the lens of a parent who loves their child, and sometimes the Rebbe has a little bit more of an accurate insight into the child because they're one step removed. I would strongly encourage you to get involved early and often.

31:53 But also be a listener. I'll share with you a piece of advice that Reb Hershel gives. It's an excellent piece of advice. In the beginning of the year Buy the teacher a present. Say thank you. You are about to embark on a journey with my child. Buy the teacher a present. Because it makes your child stand out in the classroom. Your child is the one whose parents bought me a present at the beginning of the year to say thank you. That is an amazing piece of advice because it's our job. Each one of us has to fight for our child to get the attention that they need. We're not leaving it up to the system. There's one beautiful story that goes along with this. And the story is the story of Shlomo Freifeld, zechut tzadik ve-kadosh of Racha. Have you guys heard of Freifeld? Freifeld was the founding Rosh Yeshiva of Shaiyoshev, and he was known as one of the great rebbeim of his generation.

32:48 I strongly encourage you to read his biography. They put out an unbelievable biography. Nachi, have you read the biography? The purple one. The purple one, yes, the purple one. That's right. It's an unbelievable biography, exceptionally inspiring and true, which is a chiddush today. It's an amazing, amazing biography, and in the biography, there's a story that in Rosh Hashanah Frayvel's office, above where he sat, there was a key. One of those giant keys. He had a giant key on a plaque. And somebody asked them, they said, Rebbe, what is this key? What's like of all the things that you have in your office Why do you have a key on the wall? Sir Rosh Hashanah said, it's to remind me. That every single student, every single talmud, every single child has their own key that needs to open their door. Every child has a unique key. It's not one size fit all, and so different things are needed for different children. And again, it's our responsibility to make sure that our children are getting the key they need. Some kids need a soft, gentle touch, and some kids need a rebbe who's going to lay down the law. It's your responsibility to be an ombudsman.

34:00 To be an advocate for your child. Moving on. Transformation. If we are going to create another link in the chain, if that is our sacred trust of building the Masaora. That means that the child is going to be transformed over the course of their lives. A child is raw material. You will, when you become parents, when you become fathers, see that a child is just massive amounts of potential, totally raw material. Our job is to transform that raw material into someone who's capable of fulfilling the mission of Judaism, and then in turn passing it on to the next generation. What does this require? This requires working on midos. Just as Klal Yisrael had to transform themselves from being a nation that was enslaved to Egypt, forty-nine days later they were capable of receiving the Torah. So too do we have to take a child who is enslaved by their own nefesh abahamis, by their own egotistical self-preservation drives, and transform him.

35:29 We have to build him up. Rabbeinu says this is particularly relevant to us who are on Sfira S'omer right now. Because every night that we count the Omer, what are we really doing? We are really transforming our midos. There's seven different midos: Chesed, Gevura, Tiferes, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchus. I hope you guys know this by now. And every one of those middos has a permutation of one of the seven. So it's Chesed Shab Chesed, Chesed Shab Gvura, Chesed Shab Teferes. Every single one of them is a different permutation. In total, we have 49 different middos that we have to work on. The transition from being a nation that was enslaved to Mitzrayim All the way to Kabbalah Zat Torah required a transformation of our middos, and that is a parent's responsibility. Raw material is not going to be capable of being a link in the chain of the Mitzvah.

36:20 So we need to. The middos are there. Chassidum, we're not instilling middos. The middos are there, but we need to raise appropriate middos to consciousness. And that means that a parent must be focused on the ethical development of their children. Shlomo, that was for you. They must be responsible for the ethical development of their children. They're not just sitting back and allowing the child to figure it out. But the parents are actively involved in midos, appropriate midos. What does that mean? Remember that for a young child Midos are almost always in the extreme. So a little kid when they don't get what they want, they scream and they cry. A teenager might become very withdrawn, but it's almost always in the extreme. And as adults, we realize that the extreme is not healthy. Those are not developed midos. We have to do like what the Rambam says. We have to ultimately get to that shvil hazav, to that golden middle where we balance multiple midos. For example Chesed requires gevura, and gevura requires Chesed.

37:34 What do I mean? For example, you love someone. Love is amazing. But love requires boundaries. Intimacy means exclusivity. When it comes to our children, we may love our child, but if we never discipline our child, if we never give them those healthy boundaries, that is inappropriate chesed. And the opposite is also true. When it's time to discipline your child, that's gevura. You have to do it in a way that's chesed-oriented. Discipline should be done with love, so that you're striking that middle of the road. Chesed shebegevura, gevura shebechesed. And that's what we have to teach our children. We have to teach our children how to engage with their midos, to know what's appropriate and what's inappropriate. To know how to modulate their midos so that they are balanced appropriately. When a midah is in an extreme state, that is often inappropriate. There are obviously, of course, appropriate times for that, but often that is going to be an inappropriate midah. It's our responsibility to make sure that our children develop appropriate middos. How do we do that?

38:39 Two ways. Number one Do not waste your Shabbos table. Your Shabbos table, because you are going to be out of the house so much during the week. Even when you get home, your kids might be doing homework, and you might be exhausted, and you might be working on your homework with the kids. You are not going to have massive amounts of time. And since you do not have massive amounts of time, I cannot stress this strongly enough. You have to make the time that you have count. The Shabbos table is an unbelievable place to raise a child. You will remember. I know right now it sounds crazy. In twenty, thirty, forty years from now, you are going to remember what your Shabbos table looked like as a kid. Was your Shabbos table a place of ethical lessons, where there were divrei Torah that connected to what we are meant to do in this world? What does it look like to be a righteous person in this world? Were those the divrei Torah that we're told, or were the divrei Torah that we're told more abstract? The abstract of our Torah might be great, but it's not what your child needs to hear.

39:55 Or Chassidishalom, even worse Is your Shabbos table a place? That might be what the Chazal describe as a Moshev Leitzim. Are we sitting there and roasting the Rabbi and saying how boring his drasha was, or how off he is, or how wrong he is, or what's wrong with the system, and bashing on everything left and right? Your children will remember that. So since you remember yourself what it was like when you were a little kid at the Shabbos table, commit yourself to making your Shabbos table a place where you teach your children. Ethical lessons. What you can do this with amazing stories. Today there are so many publications with amazing stories for the Shabbos table that teach these beautiful ethical lessons of how to and lessons that will raise a child to be a real Ben Torah or a Bas Yisrael. These are the goals. Do not waste your Shabbos table. And of course, the second lesson is role model.

40:55 What do your kids see? Do your kids see balanced emotions or do your kids see extreme emotions? Remember that children are hypersensitive to parents. Guys, you know this to be true. Think back. If you wanted to write a thesis paper, a doctoral thesis on your parents, I'm betting you could do it. I see some of you nodding and laughing, so I know you're with me. You could write a thesis statement on your parents. Because you know them well. That means your children are going to know you well too, and if your children are going to know you well That's going to be a learning opportunity. Make sure that you are role modeling appropriate lessons for your children. Rabosei, I will see you Beis R' Hashem tomorrow. Okay, We're now moving on to a fundamental topic in parenting. And today, we're going to move from some stuff that was a little bit more theoretical to a very practical parenting tip that will be at the core of a lot of what you do as parents, and that is the topic of motivation.

42:11 When we talk about motivation, we have to understand what exactly is motivation. When we say I want to motivate someone So what does motivation mean? So motivation. We're going to be really precise in our terminology here, so you guys can really hop onto this. Motivation is the will to act. While that may seem very simple at first I think you're going to see that small definitions will be critical in terms of how we parent our children. If motivation is the will to act So then, what we need to do as parents, if we want to motivate our children We have to tap into the inner will of a person. That's no small feat. And in tapping into that inner will, we need to channel that inner will. So let's think about this for a second. Let's unpack it. So remember, let's go back to the basics.

43:12 We are involved in goal-oriented parenting. We're parenting towards a particular mission. And the mission is that our children should be the next generation of observant Jews who will fulfill the godly mission. At the core of that is, do I, the child Want to do that? And as parents, what we are trying to achieve is to tap into the will. In order to channel the will that the child should actually want to do it. It goes without saying That's obviously going to be mission critical. Because if the child doesn't want to do it Then ultimately they won't do it. And some children figure this out sooner, and some children figure this out later, but the child If he figures out that there's nothing really his parents can do to him So then. The child is going to say as soon as the parents are gone, or even if the parents are there, since I don't want to do this, I'm not going to accept this mission upon myself.

44:24 And that's when a child decides to go off the derech, so to speak. What that means is I don't value this mission. This is not what I want for myself. This is not what I want for my life. And because it's not what they want for themselves or for their life, we've failed in imparting the entire goal of parenting to begin with, which is to make sure that this child will continue the Jewish mission. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So having said that, Daniel, we'll get to you one second. There are going to be different ways that we are going to choose to motivate our children. So when we speak about motivation, we need to be very clear on what the goal of motivation is, because not all motivation is going to get us to that goal, which is the will to act. As we'll see in a moment, there's going to be negative motivation and positive motivation, and we're going to unpack whether or not negative motivation is going to be capable of getting a child to actually fulfill the mission.

45:34 Or perhaps positive motivation, and if we do go with positive motivation, we really need to define the exact nature of the positive motivation that we're trying to create. Daniel, what was your question? My question is: Is it a little harsh to say the parents quite often failed if their kids decided they don't buy into the mission? When I say failed, I want to be clear. I'm not saying it in a judgmental way, but more in like you either made the sale or you didn't. And as if I'm tasked, let's say I have a job and I have to make a sale, and I didn't make the sale for a myriad of reasons. Maybe they just didn't want to buy. So that's not necessarily my fault, but I didn't fulfill the mission. As parents, our mission is that the child should take upon themselves this mission. That's what we're trying to do here. We're not just trying to raise happy children. We're not just trying to raise wealthy children. We're trying to raise Jewish children. And to be raised as a Jew means that you've been mechabal on yourself with this mission.

46:38 So if we employ parenting techniques that don't get us to that end So then we didn't succeed. Any other questions? Elon. Can you help me clarify what negative motivation is? Excellent. That's exactly the next thing I wanted to discuss. So when we speak about motivation, there's going to be negative motivation and there's going to be positive motivation. Let's first speak about negative motivation. First of all, negative methods. They may be in the short term, it may look like you're successful, but as we'll see in a moment. It's not true motivation. And here's why: because if I use negative techniques in order to make someone do something, then I failed in the very premise of what it is that we were trying to achieve. Let's go back and get our definition straight, because this is a deep point. It's not so hard, but it's a deep point.

47:52 Remember that motivation is about will. So as the parent, we want to tap into the child's will. That's our goal. So if we use a negative technique So that the child will perform We have failed in our basic mission of tapping into the child's will. Does that make sense? So it goes like this. If I tap into the inner will of a child, then there are enduring effects. Because basically what we're looking to do is invest in the child a particular will that goes with them. That goes with them wherever they go. Negative motivation is not going to do that. And here's why. Let's take the following case. The child is given a task to do And they ignore the task. Let's pick on someone here for a second. Let's say Arya Webber. Are you with me? Let's say Arya Webber's parents tell him that we expect that in school he's going to get at least a ninety on the Regents.

49:14 And Arya basically ignores his parents. He doesn't take school seriously. He doesn't do his homework. He doesn't study. His parents have hired him a tutor. He doesn't take the tutor seriously, and as a result, he gets a 75 on the test. So Arya has not paid attention to the mission that his parents have set out for him. How do the parents respond? So as I see it, there are three approaches. Approach number one. Is do nothing. Don't respond at all. Do nothing. And here the hope in this approach is basically the child will ultimately figure this out on their own. The child will figure it out on their own. Time will go by. The child will grow up. Eventually, he'll outgrow this way of being, and then, God willing, he'll be successful. At first glance, that may seem like a good idea. But there's something fundamentally wrong with that. Every interaction between a parent and a child is a learning opportunity for the child.

50:29 What does the child learn when the parent says this is the goal? And then the child absolutely ignores the goal? What does the child learn? The child learns to disregard the parents. The child learns that they can act defiantly and that there'll be no consequence. So it may very well be true that when that kid goes to college, he will take it seriously. It may be true, but there have been other lessons, very negative lessons, that have been learned along the way. And this is true in high school, but it's certainly true as a child. Children are constantly learning, and when a child misbehaves and a parent says, "I've done what I can," the child learns that they can act defiantly, they don't have to listen to rules, they don't have to be obedient, and nothing will happen. There will be no consequences. That is a very dangerous thing to teach a child, especially when we're trying to raise Jewish children, because as Jewish children, we have goals, we have things that we're looking to succeed in.

51:37 And that's going to require a level of performance. If you learn that you can act defiantly, you can act defiantly towards your parents, your teachers, and certainly towards God. Does it make sense, Rabosei? Any questions Gabriel? This is clear. Okay. Price, this is clear. You got this. Okay. Beseder. What's your other option? Let's look at the second option. Elon, this is where we start getting into heavy negative consequences. We call it negative motivation, but it's not actually negative motivation. It's actually, in fact, quite the opposite. So here, the idea is as follows. I can fight my child. And here are some of the things that we may use to fight the child: mental pressure Coercion

52:43 Physical force. There are parents that do this. I'll give you an example. We're not speaking about anything abusive. Chas v'shalom. We'll speak about that in a moment. Let's speak about physical coercion. Let's say I am in the supermarket with my four-year-old child. And we walk down an aisle, and the child sees that the parent has turned into the cookie aisle. See, in Eretz Yisrael we don't have a cookie aisle, but in America, Baruch Hashem, there are cookie aisles, entire aisles that are dedicated for the various types of cookies that Baruch Hashem we have today in our kosher world. And the child looks up at you in wonderment And he says, "Dad." Look what we have discovered! We have discovered the cookie aisle, and the child looks at you, and you know what's coming. The kid says, "Please, Dad, please, can I have a cookie?" And you start to negotiate with the child, like a foolish parent. You start to negotiate, and you say, "Now Little Ruven Little Shimon, whatever you've named your child You know that.

54:03 We had a cookie when we first got here. And we're gonna have a cookie be'ezr Hashem when you get into the car. But right now we're not gonna have any cookies. The child looks up at you and begins to laugh because they know that they hold all the power. And so what do they do? What do they do? Rabbeinu say they throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the supermarket. And there you are, and it's Friday. You're shopping for Shabbos, and your four-year-old child is sitting on the floor of the supermarket, banging his hands and stamping his feet and screaming, "I want a cookie." Option number one is to give the kid a cookie because you're being embarrassed in front of the Jewish community. And if you're embarrassed in front of the Jewish community, your children may never get a shidduch. That might be the end of your life. People will talk about it in shul. Did you see what Baker's kid was doing in Gourmet Glot?

55:03 Did you see what was going on over there? So option number one is just give him the cookie. If you give him the cookie, you reinforce the behavior. Option number two: pick the kid up. You just physically lift the child up. Now that doesn't sound so crazy to you guys, right? Because it's like the kid is having a temper tantrum. He is little. I am big. This is the advantage of being a parent over a four-year-old. You lift the kid up and you put him back in the car and you say to the kid, with a very stern face, "Now you're not getting anything." And you point, and you're very aggressive, mentally coercing the child into silence. First of all, it may very well be a game that you lose. The child may scream anyway. But let's say that you were successful. Let's say the child is actually now docile and quiet in the shopping mart while you're now shopping, and the child gets no cookies. What is the negative impact of the physical coercion, of the mental pressure that you've exerted on the child? Number one, obviously it goes without saying, but of course we have to say this because if we don't say it, then Chas v'Shalom somebody might misconstrue here. If we're speaking about physical abuse, right?

56:27 The impact on the child will be exceptionally deleterious. First of all, abuse destroys children. It destroys their self-esteem. As they get older, it doesn't allow them to be capable of being in healthy relationships. They develop nervous habits. They stutter. They bedwet. They don't know how to. They don't have the confidence to engage in friendships. Physical abuse is terrible. Terrible, evil choice. You are a parent. You are in a position of power. The child is in a vulnerable position. Physical abuse is a terrible choice. We're going to assume for the purposes of this year that none of you are going to grow up to be physically abusive. Having said that, there are other Other problems with this negative form of fighting the child, exerting that mental pressure, that coercion, using physical force. Our goal is not that a child should perform out of fear. We do not remember what's the whole goal of motivation. Go back to that initial definition. I told you it's going to come up over and over again. Motivation is the will to act. That's what motivation is. It's the will to act. So if I force the child to do something, and now the child does it out of fear, they're sitting in that shopping cart and they're totally docile, but they're not doing it because they've chosen to. They're not doing it because they want to.

57:55 They're doing it because they're terrified of their father, who just yanked them up off the floor and put them in the shopping cart. So you failed at the fundamental mission that you were trying to succeed. The goal here was to be motivational. To get the child to a point where they want to do it. If you've coerced the child into doing it, you fundamentally failed at what you were trying to do. And therefore, what happens when you remove that fear from the child? The child now grows up and they don't have a fear of their parent because they're no longer four years old. Now they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, and the child has realized, hey, there's nothing that my dad can do to me. He can't pick me up. He can't. He could scream at me all he wants, but honestly, I don't care.

58:43 The child will simply relinquish their obedience because honestly, the only reason I was ever doing it was out of fear. And by the way, we see this a lot, right? People are growing up. The only reason they're serving God is some misplaced sense of fear. Now they've grown up, they get a little smarter and they go "I don't know if I need to fear, like that childish fear that I had when I was little." And then they start asking themselves the question, "Do I really want this?" And the answer to that question may very well be, "No, I don't want this." And since they don't want it They're not going to perform. That's number one. These negative type of interactions with your children fail in the basic mission to get your child to want this to claim it as their own. Another one, the child will learn not to value your goals. If the child sees that the relationship with the parent is built on the parent having to coerce them into doing something, so then that's probably not a child. That's going to ultimately grow up and say, these are the things I want to do. Why would I value the goals of such a person?

59:57 Another problem: you won the battle and you lost the war. Because what you've taught the child now is that coercion is an acceptable tool. So now, what does the child learn? You coerce me. Now I'm going to coerce you. And now you've entered into a power struggle with your children, and here's the thing you must know: you as a parent You will lose that power struggle. Because you will have to go to exceptionally horrific methods in order to win that power struggle. And as the children get older, you have less and less control, and therefore your methods of coercion need to become more and more draconian. So take for example the kid who's chutzpided to his parents. Which it goes without saying, a child should never be chutzpided to their parents. They should have tremendous gratitude for everything that the parents have done. Let's say a child is chutzpided.

1:00:57 When they're little, you can send them to their room. That's a method. There's a negative consequence here. There's a coercion. There's a level of coercion. Now the child gets bigger. What are you going to do? At some point, you're going to start taking things away from the child, and now these methods become not only draconian; they become foolish. You were chutzpided; now I'm taking away your phone. You were chutzpided; now I'm taking away your laptop. The child gets a little bit older. You were chutzpided; you can no longer live in my house. Get out of my house. They lock the door on the child. The kid is outside. What exactly is the end goal here? What do you think is going to happen at some point? You are going to lose your relationship with your child. It's just a matter of time until that child learns. If you want to be coercive with me, I'll be coercive with you. And the kids are smart enough to know they will win a power struggle. The child will lose terribly, because now what's going to happen is that child is going to grow up and do the same thing to the people that are in their lives. So even though as a parent you may have won that particular battle, ultimately, you will lose the war. Your child will become someone who engages in power struggles.

1:02:12 Here's another one. If you teach your children that level of intolerance and disrespect, what do you think your kids are going to grow up to do? So now let's say this kid who grew up in an environment where there was constantly these negative interactions. Now the kid grows up. He's 18 years old, and he comes to Mivaseret for the year. I'll tell you what it looks like In the dorms He can't live with other people. Nobody wants to be around him. He's constantly getting angry and yelling and getting upset. And when things don't go his way, he's verbally abusive. And he shuts off his roommates and nobody can speak to him. The madrichim are brought in. The avvayit is brought in. Eventually, it comes to me. These kids grow up, and very often they are going to display those same tactics. That they saw what their parents do to them.

1:03:06 They're going to do it to the people around them, and this is going to get in the way of them developing meaningful relationships. Last but not least To preserve pride and identity The child develops a protective shell. Every single person needs to have an identity. That's the fundamental challenge we're all engaged in. We need an identity. When our identity is attacked, and make no mistake about it, when a parent is doing that physical and mental type of coercion, the child feels under attack And so the child will develop a protective shell because it's really painful to be in a. It's really painful to be in a situation where you, as the parent, I'm sorry. Where you as the child, it's really painful to be in a situation where you as the child feel you're under attack, and so you have no basic pride. And so what happens is that the children will develop a protective shell, and that will look like different things to different people.

1:04:14 That might, for example, mean that the child becomes self-centered. Totally narcissistic, because they don't know how to take for themselves in an appropriate way. It may be that the child develops anger management issues. It may be that the child becomes a loner and they're not capable of being with other people. A child may turn to food. A child could turn to drugs. A million things a child will do to protect their identity and their integrity. So even though you can win the battle with what we'll call these negative motivational methods, even though they're not truly motivational. As we pointed out, ultimately you're going to lose a lot more than you gain. Let's pause here for some questions because that was just a long haul. So let's say as a parent, you find yourself starting to see there is a power struggle starting and developing. Is there a way you could get out of it, or once you're already developing that kind of power struggle where it's you against your kid?

1:05:20 It's kind of like you're already in it now. You just gotta fight through it. Don't double down on your mistakes. If you're in a power struggle with the kid, don't say, 'Well, now I've got to win.' Because the more you win, the more your child loses. It's many years ago when my wife was in seminary, one of the teachers in her seminary told her a great line. They said you could get into a fight with your husband and you could win, but then you'll be married to a loser. And nobody wants to be married to a loser. The same thing is true when it comes to parenting. Kolakavod, you could win the battle. You could come out as the winner. We got into a power struggle. Now I have to win. Then your kid is a loser, so that doesn't help. What we can do is we can, and this is difficult, no doubt, but we can, with great focus and attention, change the dance. And that might be really weird for the kid at first because he's so used to that negative motivation. The kid doesn't know what to do with himself. He's like, all of a sudden, his parents have this different way of being.

1:06:23 But depending on the kid's age, you may even be able to have a great dialogue with the kid about exactly this point about we felt were entering into a power struggle with you and that wasn't a healthy thing we own that and we're really trying to do things differently. Of course, with a younger child, they won't understand that. But if you change the dance, and we're going to talk a lot about what that looks like over the next twenty minutes, if you change the dance, then absolutely, you could have a phenomenal impact on the relationship. Is that? I feel like that could also show the kid some sort of like oh my parents are surrendering because they don't want to have to deal with me. I think that could backfire. Like as a teenager, I might think that if that happened in my case. And so that might be the short term loss, because the kid may say, "Hey, it was a power struggle and I won." But then over the course of the next years, as you're planting all of those positives that we're going to speak about, I think I would hope that the child would ultimately give up that paradigm and recognize, especially as they get older, "Hey, my parents have a different way of being now. They're no longer doing that yelling, threatening." All those negative, and I'm not saying there should never be negative consequences.

1:07:43 But the negative consequences have to come in a totally different way. There isn't an appropriate time to say, 'Hey, that was a negative behavior, and here's the negative consequence.' If it comes from a place of coercion, then that's not going to work. So when things are like the example of a very rebellious kid So like in those kind of things, like if a kid, if like your kid is going out. Getting drunk every single night and going to parties and doing things. I feel like with those kind of kids There automatically is a power struggle because those kids most likely aren't just gonna like if you go to them and say, "Hey, listen, you gotta stop doing that." They're not gonna be like, "Oh yeah, you're right, I'll stop." ", but like you're right about that. Exactly. But if you start punishing them, it automatically becomes a power struggle. Who's gonna fight back harder?

1:08:37 And your punishment is probably not going to work at that stage anyway. Because the kid is 17 years old. He's going out every night. He's drinking. He's partying. He's going crazy. The parents say, 'Don't do that,' and he goes, 'What are you going to do to me now?' And he walks out the door. So now, literally, this is what the father is going to be left with. I changed the locks, and I'm not letting him in. You had to go that draconian. What were you? What else did you have? I'm no longer letting you have the keys to my car. I don't need the keys to your car. I'll call my friend. I'm taking away your phone. At some point, this becomes ridiculous. I'll pay for my own phone. Where are you going to get money? I'm going to drop out of school. I'm going to go work at Chickie's so that I could have a job, so that I could pay that money, so that I could have the phone, so I could call my friend to get to the party that I wanted to go to begin with. In this power struggle, the parents will lose only if the child realizes that he is more powerful than the parents.

1:09:31 And even if he doesn't realize that, let's say at 17 or 18 years old. He's gonna realize it at 21, 22, 23, and when the child says, 'I don't really want this,' and they leave the parents' house, then they're gonna do all those things anyway. So how do you like get out of that? My kid that's bothering his siblings, those kind of things that cause problems in the house. Fine. He can sit down with them and be like, "Hey, listen, all these kind of things," and say, "Let's try to change things." This kid literally just doesn't care about any like. There is no parental like power at all. That's right. So how do you work your way out of that, or is it just one of those situations where it's a lose? No. I think you can work your way out of it. In fact, I have here a whole section on obedience and the challenge of children who are incapable of mode of obedience and what you do in that situation. So we're gonna get there.

1:10:30 I do think that there are meaningful ways to respond. It's an important issue, Aaron. Thank you for bringing it up, Ellie Shifshilta. How would you recommend handling that situation in the supermarket? Good. We're gonna get there. That's we'll be there in a couple of minutes. But I'll tell you one thing, Ellie. I could say that to you right now. The motivating factor in that decision of what to do with the child in the supermarket is not going to be based on the looks that we're getting as people are walking by us in the supermarket. Because we have to have enough of a sense of self to be able to say My kid's having a temper tantrum, and that's normal and that's human. You, as a parent who might be sitting there judging me, your kid also did this, and it's not, and if they didn't, it's not because your kid is better. We're not going to make the decision from the fact that it's weird to be looked at as that person. We can agree to that.

1:11:34 We're going to focus on what the child needs in that moment. That's going to be achvirak. Our focus. Any other questions? Besay there. Moving on. So now. Here's a quick question. David. How does one balance that power struggle? I'm sure people ask David, but I'm the parent, yet I'm also. You can't give in every time, and you can't not give in. I don't know. Again, the point here is not a question of giving in or not giving in. It's a very important point that David is bringing up. The topic is not should we give in or should we not give in. The topic is what is our approach towards motivating the child to get them to accept this as they want. Doesn't mean that we have to give in, but there's a general approach of how we're motivating our children. So it's an excellent point that you're bringing up, David.

1:12:39 Let's go further because I think things are going to become a little bit clearer. Somebody else had a question. Beseder, let's go on because I think things will become a little bit clearer as we move on. Let's talk about positive motivation for a second. As we said, motivation means the will to act. And this requires us to tap into that inner will, as we said. Negative motivation doesn't really tap into that inner will. When a person taps into that inner will, there are enduring effects. Here's what I mean when I say enduring effects. That's where we left off before. What does it mean? To have an enduring impact. Remember that the pasuk says, 'Chanoch l'nar al pidarko.' Educate the child according to his ways. "Gam ki yazkin lo yasur mimeno," right? Educate the child according to his ways so that even when he gets older, he will continue on this path.

1:13:49 So when you tap into the inner will of a child and you say. And you're able to get there and say, this is what you want, and the kid has now accepted that in the future. So then in the future they'll be able to call upon that inner drive and be able to say, this is what I want. Does that make sense? So how do we do that? So let's let's speak about a teenager for a second, even though this is you know not necessarily always the case, but let's speak about a teenager for a second. Let's take the following example. Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of a major company And as the CEO of a major company Most of the people in upper management They're with you. They're highly paid. They've become upper management for a reason. So they're capable of motivation, so to speak. They're there. They're with you. They're not going to be unmotivated. Then you have your middle managers. Your middle managers are more or less motivated too. Your middle managers more or less get it. Again, they're climbing the ladder. They want to get to that upper management spot. They have their jobs. They do it well. What do you do with the guys in the warehouse?

1:15:10 How do you motivate them? They're minimum wage guys and they're doing their job, but they're not exactly motivated. They're not working at maximum capacity. What do you do to get those people? The lowest people on the totem pole. What do you get those people to be motivated? Here's the classic thing. Let's create an incentive program. If you can do X amount of work and X amount of hours over X amount of days and X amount of weeks Then you're going to have an employee of the month award. You're going to win employee of the month. You're going to get a $25 gift card to Amazon, and it's going to be amazing. So even if you made the incentive program really good, ultimately, what would happen? Ultimately, what would happen? Rabosei, what would happen? What do you think? Stop caring at a certain point. And it's going to be a little ridiculous. In my opinion, it seems to me it's going to be a little ridiculous. It's not really going to last.

1:16:13 Right? Because if you up the prize every month. Good. So now what are you left with? You're left with these guys are used to getting $10,000 a month bonuses. That's not going to work for the company. Really, what we need to be doing, and this is a hard thing to do, but really, what we need to be doing is we need to explain to everybody in the company why the company exists Right? For example If you're working in a warehouse and you're just shipping boxes, so it doesn't really matter to you what you do. You're just shipping boxes. But if you knew, for example, that you were shipping medical devices that were going to a third world country that were going to be saving lives So that might be a different experience for you. Now you're not just shipping boxes. What are you doing, Rabo? Say you're saving lives. You're a part of a process. So what can we do to motivate people?

1:17:17 Motivation comes with understanding the mission of why I'm doing this to begin with. And teenagers will tell you this. They'll be very honest with you. They'll say, "I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know what I'm doing here. What's the value of me being here?" "Right?" And so, what we need to do, and again, different kids on different levels. I'm just taking teenagers because it's an easy one. When it comes to tapping into a kid's will, they need to know why they're doing it. They need to know what the mission is. If you want a kid in their inner will to accept upon themselves the mission of Judaism, you have to be prepared to teach them what is the mission of Judaism. So if you're only teaching halacha and you're not teaching hashkafa Don't be upset when the child turns around and says, 'I don't know why I'm doing any of these things.' So what we do when we teach halacha without teaching hashkafa? That's like coming to a restaurant, showing someone a menu and saying, 'Isn't this delicious?'

1:18:24 And the kid would say, 'I don't know if it's delicious or not. I know what's on the menu, but I don't know if it's delicious because I haven't tasted the sweetness of it.' You have to have the experience of actually eating the food to say this is a delicious or not a delicious restaurant. So if we want to motivate a kid, let's say a teenager, we have to give them an experience that they understand the mission and that the experience is a valuable one. It has to occur on two levels. Number one When a kid asks, 'Why am I doing this?' We have to be prepared to educate our children to know why they're involved in this mission. And you have to be able to clearly articulate that, guys. And of course, it's going to be at different levels. But you will see that sometimes a smart kid, even when they're very young, even maybe nine or ten years old, will say, 'Does God really care if I keep Shabbos?' You might get that question, and you have to know how to be age appropriate and to answer that question.

1:19:28 Different levels for different kids. That's really important. Furthermore, the experience of actually living their Judaism should be one that's in consonance with that mission. In other words Let's say I'm teaching my kids Hilchah Shabbos. And now I'm not just teaching them Hilchah Shabbos, but I'm also teaching them why we keep Shabbos. What's the value of keeping Shabbos? What did Rebbeinu Sholom want with us keeping Shabbos? So you have to have first of all good answers to those questions because if your answer is something like this: Shabbos is a beautiful time for a family get together. Your kid may wake up one day and say, 'Gentiles can get together also, and they don't need to not keep stay off their phone for 25 hours to sit together and have a family meal.' I know plenty of Gentiles that get together and have a family meal. So you have to have good answers. If you have good answers, which is great.

1:20:22 But your Shabbos table is not a motivating experience. It's not an enjoyable experience. You may have taught them about Shabbos, which no doubt is great. But why would that child be motivated to keep Shabbos? But if a child sees what Shabbos could really look like Whoa, that's amazing. If they experience the awesomeness, the power of a Shabbos, who wouldn't want to participate in that? And by the way, so many tell me when they come to yeshiva, and they go to their rebbeim's homes for Shabbos, and they see not just their rebbeim, but they see different homes throughout Israel. They see these beautiful Shabbos tables that are filled with zmiros and divrei Torah, and the sense of warmth. And not just any warmth, but like a Shabbos-like warmth. And there's something really special happening at the Shabbos table—a level of connectivity. The kids come back to yeshiva. We see it every year. They come back to yeshiva on Sunday morning.

1:21:19 How was your Shabbos? And the guys go, "It was amazing. I never had a Shabbos experience like that before. I never tasted that sweetness of Shabbos." I would want my Shabbos table to look like that. That's what I want my Shabbos table to look like. They didn't hear a shir about Shabbos; they experienced it for themselves. If we want to motivate our kids, we have to tap into that inner will. Sometimes it's going to be intellectually, and sometimes it's going to be experientially. David Perlman Shalita. Does Rabbi have a Shabbos Haggadah Sefer that he recommends that we read at the Shabbos table? Yes. The Shabbos hashgufa sefer you should read at your Shabbos table is whichever one your family needs. So I'll tell you exactly what I mean. We might not know what we need. You will because you're going to be paying attention. Right? You're going to be paying. He is on a swing set. You're going to be.

1:22:18 It's a long story. You're going to be. I'm watching my sister. Good. Shkayach. So you're going to be paying attention to your kids, so you're going to know what they need. For example, my wife and I were paying attention to our kids, and we realized that there was a lot of lashon hara going on in the house. And so we chose for a year, went through hilchos lashon hara every single Shabbos, just a couple of minutes at the Shabbos table. That was a beautiful way of teaching our kids avas yisrael. But I'll tell you a story I heard many years ago. I won't say the name of the gadol, but there was a particular gadol. Whose child did not follow in his ways, and far from it. And he was a very well-known gadol v'torah. In fact, he was certainly one of the gadolei adar, and so his child really didn't follow in his ways. And years later, he was asked about running a Shabbos table, and he said a very powerful thing. I was I read it in the sefer that he said it, and if it's true, I'm shocked to hear that he was that vulnerable.

1:23:18 The mistake that I made at my Shabbos table. I learned Rambams at my Shabbos table because this was such a gadol b'Torah that what he enjoyed was a good piple and a Rambam. If you have a Rambam that contradicts another Rambam and you're a brisker, then that's like the greatest thing in the world. And so he was trying to bring the excitement to his Shabbos table by bringing up a difficulty in a Rambam. But what he needed to be doing, this gadol b'Torah said, is he should have been singing Shabbos miros and he should have been telling stories of tzaddikim. And he should have made it a warm environment rather than making an intellectual environment. And so you have to know what your kids need to have that experience. And by the way, we see that it's true. A kid could be in school all day long. He could be learning all the halachas, all the gemaras. He could be learning all that stuff. But what gets him excited when he comes to NCSY Kollel for the summer and he has an unbelievable summer with unbelievable madrichim.

1:24:14 And all of a sudden he's motivated in his Judaism? What changed? The experience changes him. A guy comes to yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael for the year, and now Torah is not just a subject, but he sees it's kihem chayenu, and he gets accustomed to sitting in a bais medrash. It's a motivating type of experience. I will say, any questions? Shlomo, Sakani, Shlita. Shlomo, unfortunately, I can't hear you. Yes. Shlomo, unfortunately, it's breaking up, and I'm not capable of hearing you. I'm sorry. Want to take one last shot at it? Anybody else? Any last questions? Shlomo, it looked like it was going to be a good question. Don't feel bad. I'm sure it was going to be a good question. You can write it. Why don't you write it out on the chat? Shlomo, you want to write it on the chat real quick, or is it too long?

1:25:30 Rabo Rabo, say Let's stop here for today. Be'ezrat Hashem, we'll pick it up next week, Wednesday. Rabo, have a wonderful Shabbos. Okay. We're now moving on to a fundamental topic in parenting, And today's shiur we're going to move from some stuff that was a little bit more theoretical to a very practical parenting tip that will be at the core of a lot of what you do as parents, and that is the topic of motivation. When we talk about motivation, we have to understand what exactly is motivation. When we say I want to motivate someone So what does motivation mean? So motivation, I'm going to be really precise in our terminology here, so that you guys can really hop onto this. Motivation is the will to act. While that may seem very simple at first I think you're going to see that small definition. Is going to be critical in terms of how we parent our children.

1:26:48 If motivation is the will to act So then what we need to do as parents, if we want to motivate our children We have to tap into the inner will of a person. That's no small feat. And in tapping into that inner will, we need to channel that inner will. Let's think about this for a second. Let's unpack it. So remember, let's go back to the basics. We are involved in goal-oriented parenting. We're parenting towards a particular mission. And the mission is that our children should be the next generation of observant Jews who will fulfill the godly mission. At the core of that is, do I, the child Want to do that? And as parents, what we are trying to achieve is to tap into the will in order to channel the will so that the child actually wants to do it. It goes without saying that that's obviously going to be mission critical.

1:27:58 Because if the child doesn't want to do it Then ultimately they won't do it. And some children figure this out sooner, and some children figure this out later. But the child. If he figures out that there's nothing really his parents can do to him So then the child is gonna say as soon as the parents are gone, or even if the parents are there, since I don't want to do this, I'm not going to accept this mission upon myself. And that's when a child decides to go off the derech, so to speak. What that means is I don't value this mission. This is not what I want for myself. This is not what I want for my life. And because it's not what they want for themselves or for their life, we've failed in imparting the entire goal of parenting to begin with, which is to make sure that this child will continue the Jewish mission.

1:28:57 Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So having said that, Daniel, get to you in one second. There are going to be. Different ways that we are going to choose to motivate our children. So when we speak about motivation, we need to be very clear on what the goal of motivation is, because not all motivation is going to get us to that goal, which is the will to act. As we'll see in a moment, there's going to be negative motivation and positive motivation, and we're going to unpack whether or not negative motivation is going to be capable of getting a child to actually fulfill the mission. Or perhaps positive motivation, and if we do go with positive motivation, we really need to define the exact nature of the positive motivation that we're trying to create. Daniel, what was your question? My question is: Is it a little harsh to say the parents quite often failed if their kids decided they don't buy into the mission?

1:30:00 When I say failed, I want to be clear. I'm not saying it in a judgmental way, but more in like you either made the sale or you didn't. And as if I'm tasked, let's say I have a job and I have to make a sale, and I didn't make the sale for a myriad of reasons. Maybe they just didn't want to buy. So that's not necessarily my fault, but I didn't fulfill the mission. As parents, our mission is that the child should take upon themselves this mission. That's what we're trying to do here. We're not just trying to raise happy children. We're not just trying to raise wealthy children. We're trying to raise Jewish children. And to be raised as a Jew means that you've been mechabal on yourself with this mission. So if we employ parenting techniques that don't get us to that end So then we didn't succeed.

1:30:57 Any other questions? Elon. Can you help me clarify what negative motivation is? Excellent. That's exactly the next thing I wanted to discuss. So when we speak about motivation, there's going to be negative motivation and there's going to be positive motivation. Let's first speak about negative motivation. First of all, negative methods. May be they may be in the short term, it may look like you're successful, but as we'll see in a moment, it's not true motivation. And here's why: because if I use negative techniques in order to make someone do something, then I've failed in the very premise of what it is that we were trying to achieve. Let's go back and get our definition straight, because this is a deep point. It's not so hard, but it's a deep point. Remember that motivation is about will. So as the parent, we want to tap into the child's will. That's our goal. So if we use a negative technique So that the child will perform We have failed in our basic mission of tapping into the child's will.

1:32:17 Does that make sense? So it goes like this. If I tap into the inner will of a child, then there are enduring effects. Because basically what we're looking to do is invest in a particular will that goes with the child. That goes with them wherever they go. Negative motivation is not going to do that. And here's why. Let's take the following case. The child is given a task to do And they ignore the task. Let's pick on someone here for a second. Let's say Arya Webber. Are you with me? Let's say Arya Webber's parents tell him that we expect that in school he's going to get at least a ninety on the Regents. And Arya basically ignores his parents. He doesn't take school seriously. He doesn't do his homework. He doesn't study. His parents have hired him a tutor. He doesn't take the tutor seriously, and as a result, he gets a 75 on the test. So Arya has not paid attention to the mission that his parents have set out for him.

1:33:39 How do the parents respond? So as I see it, there are three approaches. Approach number one. Is do nothing. Don't respond at all. Do nothing. And here the hope in this approach is basically the child will ultimately figure this out on their own. The child will figure it out on their own. Time will go by. The child will grow up. Eventually, he'll outgrow this way of being, and then, God willing, he'll be successful. At first glance, that may seem like a good idea. But there's something fundamentally wrong with that. Every interaction between a parent and a child is a learning opportunity for the child. What does the child learn when the parent says this is the goal? And then the child absolutely ignores the goal? What does the child learn? The child learns to disregard the parents. The child learns that they can act defiantly and that there'll be no consequence. So it may very well be true that when that kid goes to college, he will take it seriously. It may be true, but there have been other lessons, very negative lessons, that have been learned along the way. And this is true in high school, but it's certainly true as a child.

1:35:11 Children are constantly learning, and when a child misbehaves, a parent goes, "I've done what I can." So the child learns that they can act defiantly, they don't have to listen to rules, they don't have to be obedient, and nothing will happen. There will be no consequences. That is a very dangerous thing to teach a child, especially when we're trying to raise Jewish children, because as Jewish children, we have goals, we have things that we're looking to succeed in. And that's going to require a level of performance. If you learn that you can act defiantly, you can act defiantly towards your parents, your teachers, and certainly towards God. Does it make sense, Rabosei? Any questions Gabriel? This is clear. Okay. Price, this is clear. You got this. Okay. To say there. So what's your other option? Let's look at the second option. Elon, this is where we start getting into heavy negative consequences.

1:36:25 We call it negative motivation, but it's not actually negative motivation. It's actually, in fact, quite the opposite. So here the idea is as follows. I can fight my child. And here are some of the things that we may use to fight the child: mental pressure Coercion Physical force. There are parents that do this. I'll give you an example. We're not speaking about anything abusive. Chas v'shalom. We'll speak about that in a moment. Let's speak about physical coercion. Let's say I am in the supermarket with my four-year-old child. And we walk down an aisle, and the child sees that accidentally the parent has turned into the cookie aisle. See, in Eretz Yisrael we don't have a cookie aisle, but in America, Baruch Hashem, there are cookie aisles, entire aisles that are dedicated for the various types of cookies that Baruch Hashem we have today in our kosher world.

1:37:32 And the child looks up at you in wonderment And he says, "Dad." Look what we have discovered! We have discovered the cookie aisle, and the child looks at you, and you know what's coming. The kid says, "Please, Dad, please, can I have a cookie?" And you start to negotiate with the child, like a foolish parent. You start to negotiate, and you say, "Now Little Ruven Little Shimon, whatever you've named your child. You know that. We had a cookie when we first got here. And we're gonna have a cookie be'ezar Hashem when you get into the car. But right now we're not gonna have any cookies. The child looks up at you and begins to laugh because they know that they hold all the power. And so what do they do? What do they do? Rabbeinu say they throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the supermarket. And there you are, and it's Friday. You're shopping for Shabbos, and your four-year-old child is sitting on the floor of the supermarket, banging his hands and stamping his feet and screaming, "I want a cookie."

1:38:45 So, option number one is give the kid a cookie because you're being embarrassed in front of the Jewish community, and you know if you're embarrassed in front of the Jewish community, your children may never get a shirach. That might be the end of your life. People will talk about it in shul. Did you see? What can I pick on? Did you see what Baker's kid was doing in Gourmet Glot? Did you see what was going on over there? So option number one is just give him the cookie. If you give him the cookie, you reinforce the behavior. Option number two Pick the kid up. You just physically lift the child up. Now that doesn't sound so crazy to you guys, right? Because it's like the kid is having a temper tantrum. He is little. I am big. This is the advantage of being a parent over a four-year-old. You lift the kid up and you put him back in the car and you say to the kid, with a very stern face, "Now you're not getting anything."

1:39:43 And you point And you're very aggressive, mentally coercing the child into silence. First of all, it may very well be a game that you lose. The child may scream anyway. But let's say that you were successful. Let's say the child is actually now docile and quiet in the shopping mart while you're now shopping, and the child gets no cookies. What is the negative impact of the physical coercion and mental pressure that you've exerted on the child? Number one, obviously it goes without saying, but of course we have to say this because if we don't say it, then Chas v'Shalom somebody might misconstrue here. If we're speaking about physical abuse, right? If we're speaking about physical abuse The impact on the child will be exceptionally deleterious. So first of all, abuse destroys children. It destroys their self-esteem. It doesn't allow them, as they get older, to be capable of being in healthy relationships. They develop nervous habits. They stutter. They bedwet. They don't know how to. They don't have the confidence to engage in friendships. So physical abuse is terrible.

1:40:57 Terrible, evil choice. You are a parent. You are in a position of power. The child is in a vulnerable position. Physical abuse is a terrible choice. We're going to assume for the purposes of this year that none of you are going to grow up to be physically abusive. Having said that, there are other Other problems with this negative form of fighting the child, exerting that mental pressure, that coercion, using physical force. Our goal is not that a child should perform out of fear. We do not remember what's the whole goal of motivation. Go back to that initial definition. I told you it's going to come up over and over again. Motivation is the will to act. That's what motivation is. It's the will to act. So if I force the child to do something, and now the child does it out of fear, they're sitting in that shopping cart and they're totally docile, but they're not doing it because they've chosen to. They're not doing it because they want to.

1:41:58 They're doing it because they're terrified of their father, who just yanked them up off the floor and put them in the shopping cart. So you failed at the fundamental mission that you were trying to succeed. The goal here was to be motivational. To get the child to a point where they want to do it. If you've coerced the child into doing it, you fundamentally failed at what you were trying to do. And therefore, what happens when you remove that fear from the child? The child now grows up and they don't have a fear of their parent because they're no longer four years old. Now they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, and the child has realized, hey, there's nothing that my dad can do to me. He can't pick me up. He can't. He could scream at me all he wants, but honestly, I don't care.

1:42:46 The child will simply relinquish their obedience because honestly, the only reason I was ever doing it was out of fear. And by the way, we see this a lot. People are growing up. The only reason they're serving God is some misplaced sense of fear. Now they've grown up, they get a little smarter and they go "I don't know if I need to fear, like that childish fear that I had when I was little." And then they start asking themselves the question, "Do I really want this?" And the answer to that question may very well be, "No, I don't want this." And since they don't want it They're not going to perform. That's number one. These negative type of interactions with your children fail in the basic mission to get your child to want this to claim it as their own. Another one, the child will learn not to value your goals. If the child sees that the relationship with the parent is built on the parent having to coerce them into doing something, so then that's probably not a child. That's going to ultimately grow up and say, 'These are the things I want to do. Why would I value the goals of such a person?' Another problem: you won the battle and you lost the war.

1:44:05 Because what you've taught the child now is that coercion is an acceptable tool. So now, what does the child learn? You coerce me. Now I'm going to coerce you. And now you've entered into a power struggle with your children, and here's the thing you must know: you as a parent will lose that power struggle. Because you will have to go to exceptionally horrific methods in order to win that power struggle. And as the children get older, you have less and less control, and therefore your methods of coercion need to become more and more draconian. So take for example the kid who's chutzpided to his parents. Which it goes without saying, a child should never be chutzpided to their parents. They should have tremendous gratitude for everything that the parents have done. Let's say a child is chutzpided. When they're little, you can send them to their room.

1:45:03 That's a method. There's a negative consequence here. There's a coercion. There's a level of coercion. Now the child gets bigger. What are you going to do? At some point, you're going to start taking things away from the child, and now these methods become not only draconian, they become foolish. You were chutzpahik, now I'm taking away your phone. You were chutzpahik, now I'm taking away your laptop. The child gets a little bit older. You were chutzpahik, you can no longer live in my house. Get out of my house. They lock the door on the child. The kid is outside. What exactly is the end goal here? What do you think is going to happen at some point? You are going to lose your relationship with your child. It's just a matter of time until that child learns. If you want to be coercive with me, I'll be coercive with you. And the kids are smart enough to know they will win a power struggle. The child will lose terribly because now what's going to happen is that child is going to grow up and do the same thing to the people that are in their lives. So even though as a parent you may have won that particular battle, ultimately you will lose the war. Your child will become someone who engages in power struggles.

1:46:15 Here's another one. If you teach your children that level of intolerance and disrespect, what do you think your kids are going to grow up to do? So now let's say this kid who grew up in an environment where there was constantly these negative interactions. Now the kid grows up. He's 18 years old, and he comes to Mivaseret for the year. I'll tell you what it looks like In the dorms He can't live with other people. Nobody wants to be around him. He's constantly getting angry and yelling and getting upset. And when things don't go his way, he's verbally abusive. And he shuts off his roommates and nobody can speak to him. The madrichim are brought in. The avvayit is brought in. Eventually, it comes to me. These kids grow up, and very often they are going to display those same tactics. That they saw what their parents do to them.

1:47:09 They're going to do it to the people around them, and this is going to get in the way of them developing meaningful relationships. Last but not least To preserve pride and identity The child develops a protective shell. Every single person needs to have an identity. That's the fundamental challenge we're all engaged in. We need an identity. When our identity is attacked, and make no mistake about it, when a parent is doing that physical and mental type of coercion, the child feels under attack. And so the child will develop a protective shell because it's really painful to be in a. It's really painful to be in a situation where you, as the parent, I'm sorry. Where you as the child, it's really painful to be in a situation where you as the child feel you're under attack, and so you have no basic pride. And so what happens is that the children will develop a protective shell, and that will look like different things to different people.

1:48:17 That might, for example, mean that the child becomes self-centered. Totally narcissistic, because they don't know how to take for themselves in an appropriate way. It may be that the child develops anger management issues. It may be that the child becomes a loner and they're not capable of being with other people. A child may turn to food. A child could turn to drugs. A million things a child will do to protect their identity and their integrity. So even though you can win the battle with what we'll call these negative motivational methods, even though they're not truly motivational. As we pointed out, ultimately you're going to lose a lot more than you gain. Let's pause here for some questions because that was just a long haul. So let's say as a parent, you find yourself starting to see there is a power struggle starting and developing. Is there a way you could get out of it, or once you're kind of already developing that kind of power struggle where it's you against your kid? You're already in it now. You just gotta fight through it.

1:49:27 Don't double down on your mistakes. If you're in a power struggle with the kid, don't say, 'Well, now I've got to win.' Because the more you win, the more your child loses. It's been many years ago when my wife was in seminary. One of the teachers in her seminary told her a great line. They said, 'You could get into a fight with your husband and you could win, but then you'll be married to a loser.' And nobody wants to be married to a loser. The same thing is true when it comes to parenting. Kalakavod, you could win the battle. You could come out as the winner. We got into a power struggle. Now I have to win. Then your kid is a loser, so that doesn't help. What we can do is, with great focus and attention, we can change the dance. And that might be really weird for the kid at first because he's so used to that negative motivation, and the kid doesn't know what to do with himself. He's like, all of a sudden, his parents have this different way of being.

1:50:26 But depending on the kid's age, you may even be able to have a, you may even be able to have a what's called, you may even be able to have a great like a great dialogue with the kid about About exactly this point, we felt we were entering into a power struggle with you, and that wasn't a healthy thing. We own that. And we're really trying to do things differently. Of course, with a younger child, they won't understand that. But if you change the dance, and we're going to talk a lot about what that looks like over the next 20 minutes, if you change the dance, then absolutely, you could have a phenomenal impact on the relationship. Is that? I feel like that could also show the kid some sort of like oh my parents are surrendering because they don't want to have to deal with me. I think that could pack fire. Like as a teenager, I might think that if that happened in my case.

1:51:15 And so that might be the short term loss, because the kid may say, "Hey, it was a power struggle and I won." But then over the course of the next years, as you're planting all of those positives that we're going to speak about, I think I would hope that the child would ultimately give up that paradigm and recognize, especially as they get older, "Hey, my parents have a different way of being now. They're no longer doing that yelling, threatening. All those negative, and I'm not saying there should never be negative consequences." But the negative consequences have to come in a totally different way. There is an appropriate time to say, 'Hey, that was a negative behavior, and here's the negative consequence.' But if it comes from a place of coercion, then that's not going to work. So when things are like the example of a very rebellious kid So in those kind of things, if a kid, your kid is going out.

1:52:12 Getting drunk every single night and going to parties and doing things. I feel like with those kind of kids There automatically is a power struggle because those kids most likely aren't just gonna like. If you go to them and say, 'Hey, listen, you gotta stop doing that,' like they're not gonna be like, 'Oh yeah, you're right, I'll stop.' ", but like you're right about that. Exactly. But if you start punishing them, it automatically becomes a power struggle. Who's gonna fight back harder? And your punishment is probably not going to work at that stage anyway. Because the kid is 17 years old. He's going out every night. He's drinking. He's partying. He's going crazy. The parents say, 'Don't do that,' and he goes, 'What are you going to do to me now?' And he walks out the door. So now, literally, this is what the father is going to be left with. I changed the locks, and I'm not letting him in.

1:53:01 You had to go that draconian. What else did you have? I'm no longer letting you have the keys to my car. I don't need the keys to your car. I'll call my friend. I'm taking away your phone. At some point, this becomes ridiculous. I'll pay for my own phone. Where are you going to get money? I'm going to drop out of school. I'm going to go work at Chickie's so that I could have a job, so that I could pay that money, so that I could have the phone, so I could call my friend to get to the party that I wanted to go to begin with. In this power struggle, the parents will lose only if the child realizes that he is more powerful than the parents. And even if he doesn't realize that, let's say at 17 or 18 years old. He's gonna realize it at twenty one. Twenty two, twenty three, and when the child says, "I don't really want this," and they leave the parents' house, then they're gonna do all those things anyway.

1:53:50 So how do you like get out of that? My kid that's bothering his siblings, those kind of things that cause problems in the house. Fine. He can sit down with them and be like, "Hey, listen, all these kind of things," and say, "Let's try to change things." This kid literally doesn't care about any like. There is no parental like power at all. That's right. So how do you work your way out of that, or is it just one of those situations where it's a lose? No. I think you can work your way out of it. In fact, I have here A whole section on obedience and the challenge of children who are incapable of mode of obedience and what you do in that situation. We're gonna get there. I do think that there are meaningful ways to respond. It's an important issue, Aaron. Thank you for bringing it up, Ellie Shifshilta.

1:54:42 How would you recommend handling that situation in the supermarket? Good. We're gonna get there. That's we'll be there in a couple of minutes. But I'll tell you one thing, Ellie. I could say that to you right now. The motivating factor in that decision of what to do with the child in the supermarket is not going to be based on the looks that we're getting as people are walking by us in the supermarket. Because we have to have enough of a sense of self to be able to say My kid's having a temper tantrum, and that's normal and that's human. As a parent, you might be sitting there judging me. Your kid also did this, and it's not because your kid is better. We're not going to make the decision from the fact that it's weird to be looked at as that person. We can agree to that.

1:55:37 We're going to focus on what the child needs in that moment. That's going to be our focus. Any other questions? Besay there. So now Sorry Here's a quick question. David. How does one balance that power struggle? I'm sure people ask me, but I'm the parent, yet I'm also—I mean, you can't give in every time And you can't not give in. I don't know. Again, the point here is not a question of giving in or not giving in. It's a very important point that David is bringing up. The topic is not whether we should give in or not give in. The topic is what our approach is. Towards motivating the child to accept this as they want. There's a general approach of how we're motivating our children. So it's an excellent point that you're bringing up, David. Let's go further because I think things are going to become a little bit clearer. Somebody else had a question.

1:56:49 Beseder, let's go on because I think things will become a little bit clearer as we move on. Let's talk about positive motivation for a second. As we said, motivation means the will to act. And this requires us to tap into that inner will, as we said. Negative motivation doesn't really tap into that inner will. When a person taps into that inner will, there are enduring effects. Here's what I mean when I say enduring effects. That's where we left off before. What does it mean? To have an enduring impact. Remember that the pasuk says, 'Chanoch l'nar al pidarko.' Educate the child according to his ways. "Gam ki yaskin lo yasur mimenah," Educate the child according to his ways so that even when he gets older, he will continue on this path. So when you tap into the inner will of a child, and you say. And you're able to get there and say, this is what you want, and the kid has now accepted that in the future. So then in the future they'll be able to call upon that inner drive, and be able to say, this is what I want.

1:58:13 Does that make sense? So how do we do that? So let's let's speak about a teenager for a second, even though this is you know not necessarily always the case, but let's speak about a teenager for a second. Let's take the following example. Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of a major company And as the CEO of a major company Most of the people in upper management They're with you. They're highly paid. They've become upper management for a reason. So they're capable of motivation, so to speak. They're there. They're with you. They're not going to be unmotivated. Then you have your middle managers. Your middle managers are more or less motivated too. They more or less get it. Again, they're climbing the ladder. They want to get to that upper management spot. They have their jobs. They do it well. What do you do with the guys in the warehouse? How do you motivate them? They're minimum wage guys. They're doing their job, but they're not exactly motivated. They're not working at maximum capacity.

1:59:23 What do you do to get those people? The lowest people on the totem pole. What do you get those people to be motivated? Here's the classic thing. Let's create an incentive program. If you can do X amount of work and X amount of hours over X amount of days and X amount of weeks, then you're going to have an employee of the month award. You're going to win employee of the month. You're going to get a twenty-five dollar gift card to Amazon, and it's going to be amazing. So even if you made the incentive program really good, ultimately, what would happen? Ultimately, what would happen? Rabosei, what would happen? What do you think? Stop caring at a certain point. And it's going to be a little ridiculous. In my view, it seems to be a little ridiculous. It's not really going to last. Right? Because if you up the prize every month.

2:00:18 Good. So now what are you left with? You're left with these guys are used to getting $10,000 a month bonuses. That's not going to work for the company. Really, what we need to be doing, and this is a hard thing to do, but really, what we need to be doing is we need to explain to everybody in the company why the company exists Right? For example If you're working in a warehouse and you're just shipping boxes, so it doesn't really matter to you what you do. You're just shipping boxes. But if you knew, for example, that you were shipping medical devices that were going to a third world country that were going to be saving lives So that might be a different experience for you. Now you're not just shipping boxes. What are you doing, Rabo? You're saving lives. You're a part of a process. So what can we do to motivate people?

2:01:20 Motivation comes with understanding the mission of why I'm doing this to begin with. And teenagers will tell you this. They'll be very honest with you. They'll say, "I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know what I'm doing here. What's the value of me being here?" "Right?" And so, what we need to do, and again, different kids on different levels. I'm just taking teenagers because it's an easy one. When it comes to tapping into a kid's will, they need to know why they're doing it. They need to know what the mission is. If you want a kid in their inner will to accept upon themselves the mission of Judaism, you have to be prepared to teach them what is the mission of Judaism. So if you're only teaching halacha and you're not teaching hashkafa Don't be upset when the child turns around and says, 'I don't know why I'm doing any of these things.' So what we do when we teach halacha without teaching hashkafa? That's like coming to a restaurant, showing someone a menu and saying, 'Isn't this delicious?'

2:02:27 And the kid would say, 'I don't know if it's delicious or not. I know what's on the menu, but I don't know if it's delicious because I haven't tasted the sweetness of it.' You have to have the experience of actually eating the food to say this is a delicious or not a delicious restaurant. So if we want to motivate a kid, let's say a teenager, we have to give them an experience that they understand the mission and that the experience is a valuable one. It has to occur on two levels. Number one When a kid asks, 'Why am I doing this?' we have to be prepared to educate our children to know why they're involved in this mission. And you have to be able to clearly articulate that, guys. And of course, it's going to be at different levels. But you will see that sometimes a smart kid, even when they're very young, even maybe nine or ten years old, will say, 'Does God really care if I keep Shabbos?' You might get that question, and you have to know how to be age appropriate and to answer that question.

2:03:31 Different levels for different kids. That's really important. Furthermore, the experience of actually living their Judaism should be one that's in consonance with that mission. In other words Let's say I'm teaching my kids halacha Shabbos. And now I'm not just teaching them halacha Shabbos, but I'm also teaching them why we keep Shabbos. What's the value of keeping Shabbos? What did Rebbeinu Sholom want with us keeping Shabbos? So you have to have first of all good answers to those questions, because if your answer is something like this: Shabbos is a beautiful time for a family get together. Your kid may wake up one day and say, 'Gentiles can get together also, and they don't need to not keep stay off their phone for 25 hours to sit together and have a family meal.' I know plenty of Gentiles that get together and have a family meal. So you have to have good answers. If you have good answers, that is great.

2:04:25 But your Shabbos table is not a motivating experience. It's not an enjoyable experience. You may have taught them about Shabbos, which no doubt is great, but why would that child be motivated to keep Shabbos? But if a child sees what Shabbos could really look like Whoa, that's amazing. If they experience the awesomeness, the power of a Shabbos, who wouldn't want to participate in that? And by the way, so many tell me when they come to yeshiva, and they go to their rebbeim's homes for Shabbos, and they see not just their rebbeim, but they see different homes throughout Israel. And they see these beautiful Shabbos tables that are filled with zmiros and divrei Torah, and the sense of warmth. And not just any warmth, but like a Shabbos-like warmth. And there's something really special happening at the Shabbos table—a level of connectivity. The kids come back to yeshiva. We see it every year. They come back to yeshiva on Sunday morning.

2:05:22 How was your Shabbos? And the guys go, "It was amazing. I never had a Shabbos experience like that before. I never tasted that sweetness of Shabbos." I would want my Shabbos table to look like that. That's what I want my Shabbos table to look like. They didn't hear a shir about Shabbos; they experienced it for themselves. If we want to motivate our kids, we have to tap into that inner will. Sometimes it's going to be intellectually, and sometimes it's going to be experientially. David Perlman Shalita. Does Rabbi have a Shabbos hashkafa sefer that he recommends we read at the Shabbos table? Yes. The Shabbos hashgufa sefer you should read at your Shabbos table is whichever one your family needs. So I'll tell you exactly what I mean. We might not know what we need. You will because you're going to be paying attention. Right? You're going to be paying. He is on a swing set. You're going to be.

2:06:21 It's a long story. You're going to be. I'm watching my sister. Good. Shkayach. So you're going to be paying attention to your kids, so you're going to know what they need. For example, my wife and I were paying attention to our kids, and we realized that there was a lot of lashon hara going on in the house. And so we chose for a year to go through Hilchos Lashon Hara every single Shabbos, just a couple of minutes at the Shabbos table. That was a beautiful way of teaching our kids avas yisrael. But I'll tell you a story I heard many years ago. I won't say the name of the gadol, but there was a particular gadol whose child did not follow in his ways. And far from it. And he was a very well-known gadol b'torah. In fact, he was certainly one of the gedolei ador. And so his child really didn't follow in his ways. And years later, he was asked about running a Shabbos table, and he said a very powerful thing. I was I read it in the sefer that he said it, and if it's true, I'm shocked to hear that he was that vulnerable. But he said, the mistake that I made at my Shabbos table is I learned Rambams at my Shabbos table. Because this was such a gadol b'torah that what he enjoyed was a good piple and a Rambam.

2:07:32 If you have a Rambam that contradicts another Rambam and you're a brisker, then that's like the greatest thing in the world. And so he was trying to bring the excitement to his Shabbos table by bringing up a difficulty in a Rambam. But what he needed to be doing, this gadol b'torah said, is he should have been singing Shabbos miros and he should have been telling stories of tzaddikim and he should have made it a warm environment rather than making an intellectual environment. And so you have to know what your kids need to have that experience. And by the way, we see that it's true. A kid could be in school all day long. He could be learning all the halachas, all the gemaras. He could be learning all that stuff. But what gets him excited when he comes to NCSY Kollel for the summer, and he has an unbelievable summer with unbelievable madrichim.

2:08:17 And all of a sudden he's motivated in his Judaism? What changed? The experience changed him. A guy comes to yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael for the year. And now Torah is not just a subject, but he sees it's kihem chayenu, and he gets accustomed to sitting in a bais medrash. It's a motivating type of experience. I will say any questions. Shlomo Sakani Shlita. Shlomo, unfortunately, I can't hear you. Yes. Shlomo, unfortunately, it's breaking up, and I'm not capable of hearing you. I'm sorry. Want to take one last shot at it? Anybody else? Any last questions? Shlomo, it looked like it was going to be a good question. Don't feel bad. I'm sure it was going to be a good question. We could write it. Why don't we write it out on the chat? Shlomo, you want to write it on the chat real quick, or is it too long? Rabo Rabo, say Let's stop here for today. Be'ezra Hashem, we'll pick it up next week, Wednesday. Rabo, have a wonderful Shabbos.