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Tonight we're going to start to discuss one of the most fundamental aspects of parenting, which is the concept of self-esteem. Just a reminder for those who are not on mute. So first of all, let's just go back a little bit to an introduction. As you may recall, we see parenting as a sacred trust. That we are responsible for raising, not just training, but raising a child to be capable of fulfilling the Jewish mission. If our children are a gift from God, and they are going to be a gift to God, then it's our responsibility to ensure that they develop in such a fashion, which means that it's not something that we can merely leave to the educational system.
Many people, when they're parenting, say that the school's responsibility is to educate children and the parents' responsibility is to raise children, and that's something fundamentally different. Educating a child means imparting certain wisdom. Today, unfortunately, the family structure is not what it once was, where generally both parents are out of the home working, it has become much more in vogue for the educational system to take over and a lot of the parenting responsibilities. Even though it's true that the educational system is doing much of what the parents used to do, it still does not mean that a parent doesn't have a responsibility to their child, and obviously the parents are still the ones that are primarily responsible.
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The natural godly soul that every single Jew is endowed with is not capable on its own of achieving a relationship with God. That's something that requires real parenting. And the reason why that's true, and this is where we're going to begin our shir today, is because in addition to the nefesh elokis. In addition to the uniquely godly soul that every Jew has, we also have a nefesh abahamis. What is the difference between the nefesh elokis and the nefesh abahamis? The nefesh elokis, the uniquely godly soul. It's the natural tendency that we have to connect to God, and every Jew has that. However, we also have a nefesh abahamis, and a nefesh abahamis the soul.
That animates our body. That's where life in this world comes from, and the natural nefesh abahamis is self-indulgent. The natural position of the nefesh abahamis is that it indulges its own desires, and the reason that it does so is because it's afraid of death. The godly soul is infinite and therefore it will never die. Since the godly soul is infinite, it doesn't need to be worried about death, and therefore it doesn't need to feel alive. However, the nefesh abrahamis is afraid of death because every body at some point passes away, and therefore the nefesh abrahamis engages in a self-orientation.
And that distorted ego will inhibit the relationship that exists between a person and God. Therefore, the natural person left alone without any parenting will not develop a relationship with God. Just to sum this up, to make sure we're clear, why do we need to parent? We have a sacred trust that we are entrusted with these children to raise them to fulfill the Jewish mission. If they are naturally connected to God, why do I need to parent them? Why can't they just naturally develop a love of God? Let them go out on their own and let's see what happens. The answer is because even though it's true that the nefesh Elokim has a natural connection with God, we also have a nefesh Abahamis.
And the nature of the nefesh abahamis is that it is self-indulgent. It's only oriented inwards. It's only oriented towards the self, and that ego will always get in the way of a relationship with God. Therefore, a person cannot be left to their own devices. They need parents to teach them how to have an appropriate ego. Let's stop here just for a couple of seconds. If there's any questions, Aaron Tuckman. Isn't the whole concept of Misora the whole point of passing down from one to another, where you do need the generation on top to pass down to the lower generation? But that's educational, right? In other words, let's say as a Rebbe. You are missing certain information, so I as a Rebbe have received certain information from my Rebbe, who received information from his Rebbe, and so on and so forth.
So I'm communicating what I learned. The question we're addressing now is why can't a Jew just develop on his own? If it's like you don't need a tree that does not need to be parented, right? The sunlight naturally comes down, and the tree naturally grows. So why is a Jewish child any different? We have a natural godly soul that's attracted to God. So why won't the child naturally develop into a Jew? The answer is because in addition to our nefesh al kis, we also have a nefesh abahamis, and that's going to be our segue for learning about self-esteem. Before we do so, Daniel Gross. What's the source for all this concept? Take a look in the Tanya in the very beginning of Tanya. He speaks about shtein nefasho, so you can see over there. He has all the sources brought down over there in the very first parak of Tanya.
I'm just curious. Any other questions? Feel free to unmute yourself, because I can't see all of you at once. Yes, that the job of the parent is to basically guide the childhood. Basically, use his nephesh abam is the what the right way and just not let it totally dis. This like associate himself with us. Again, it's going to be much more sophisticated than that. But yes, the battleground. You are correct in saying that the battleground will be to have an appropriate vision of self and an appropriate ego. That will be where the battleground of parenting is. Elon Boshin, you got a question? It's an extremely general question. Do you think there's an
Is it unhealthy? Sorry, does Rabbi think that in the Orthodox Jewish community there's a huge amount of pressure on young people to get married and start a family quickly? And if so, is it damaging? Can it be damaging? I'm happy to answer the question. I'm just curious. Why are you raising that question now? Just in a general sense. Just a general parenting question. I've always wondered about in Judaism. So I'll tell you what. Since it's a general question, I'll try to fit it in the curriculum when we get to that point. I just want to make sure we stay on topic. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry about that. No problem. Okay. Viter. So now, we have to talk about self-esteem. Because, as we said, we are endowed with a nafeshelokis, and that nafeshelokis is what makes us capable.
Of fulfilling the godly mission, the Jewish mission. Think about it like this. Let's say you had a job and your boss asks you to fulfill a certain task, but you have not necessarily been given the tools to fulfill that task. It would be unreasonable to ask you to go ahead and do the job. As when a person gets a job, generally along with that, they're going to get an office. They're going to get a desk. They're going to get a laptop. Maybe they're going to get a phone, whatever it is that they need in order to be successful. You need not only the skills, but you need the actual tools in order to be successful. And so too with the mission of Judaism, there is a mission. We're not going to get into right now what that mission is. For those of you who were in the questions and answers share for the first eight months of the year, you should know by now the answer to that question. And if you don't know the answer to that question, I refer you to Abe Teicher, Shlomo Sarkani, any of the guys that were heavily involved.
In the first eight months of the year, there is a Jewish mission, and not only do we understand the mission, but we were given the tools in order to be successful in achieving that Jewish mission. And the neshama, the nefeshalukis, the neshama is basically our essential connection to God, and without a healthy self-esteem, it is impossible to fulfill our godly mission in this world. Why is that? In order to understand this, we need now to define the concept of self-esteem. Self-esteem means as follows: self is the unique individual, or what we in Judaism call the neshama. And this is what it means when we say bishvili nivraha olam, that the world was created for me.
A vision of their own unique sense of self. So when we speak about self-esteem, the first thing we're talking about is the unique nature of the self. Every single neshama is different. God does not make copies, and part of our raising of children is enabling them to understand that they have a unique self, a uniquely godly soul that they were gifted with. And then the second part is esteem. The word esteem means evaluation or appraisal. So self-esteem would be the appraisal or the evaluation of the self. The only question is now, what system of appraisal will we use to evaluate ourselves, and the standard we use to evaluate the self.
Is going to have a major impact on the way we raise our children and the values that our children have, and even ultimately the society that our children will build. For example, let's say we value money. If we value money, and that's our system of appraisal in the world, who is successful? He who is financially, who has financial abundance, who's financially independent. If that's our system of appraisal, then we're going to use that same rubric when it comes to evaluating our children, and therefore that will be the value system that we give over to our children. And if we give that value system over to our children, then the child will define themselves by how much money they make. For example, if let's say the child
Goes to a regular college, and he doesn't go to Harvard, right? He just goes to your average Queens, Y U, Rutgers, whatever he's going to, right? And coming out of college, he's making his fifty, sixty thousand dollars a year. So he may be looking at people that are in his peer group who went to Harvard and are making a hundred thousand dollars coming out of school, and maybe they feel like a failure. Why would they feel like a failure? Because the system of appraisal that they were raised with is a financial system, and in a financial system they may see themselves as more than or less than. It goes without saying but of course we'll say it that as Jewish parents we have an obligation to impart a Jewish system of ethics that should be used to evaluate the self. So just to be clear, self-esteem.
Means the self, the unique self that we all have in Yiddishkeit. We call this the neshama. Esteem means the evaluation or appraisal of the self. The question is, what system will we teach our children to appraise themselves with? It could be a financial system. It could be an emotional system. It could be a psychological system. As Jews, we're trying to raise our children with a Jewish ethical system that appraises the self. Before I take questions, I just want to share with you the danger of using a Jewish moral code to evaluate the self, because there are some significant dangers in what we're suggesting here, and the dangers are as follows. Number one, when a child sees parents.
Acting in ways that don't live up to the highest standards of that ethical code, children can be very confused. In other words, if we are imparting a value system to our children, and we send them to yeshivas and we teach them to value Torah and to value tefillah and giving tzedakah, etc. And then the child looks at the life of the parent and sees, wait a second, my own parents don't lead that life, so that can be very confusing for the child. So what we need to do, number one primarily, is we need to educate our children with role modeling. Value system is a system that I believe in, and I live that system. I vote with my feet, as the Rosh Yeshiva says. So I'm not just.
Telling you that this is our system of conduct. That's number one. Number two, we have to make sure that the standards that we set for our children are appropriate expectations. So number one, we cannot set the standard impossibly high, and that's why it's very dangerous when we teach children that the mission of Judaism is to seek perfection, because perfection, by definition, is impossible. Only God can be perfect, so rather we should use the word completion, because completion is a process. So there's a big difference between perfection and completion. If we teach a child that our standard is perfection, that is impossible for the child to reach, and therefore, when they sin, and inevitably every child will do an avera.
The resultant feeling will be completely inadequate. I'm gonna take questions in one second. I'll get to you soon. Sammy. Number one, make sure that you are living up to the moral code that you are setting for your children. Number two, make sure the standards are set appropriately. It's important to teach children that we're not seeking perfection. We're seeking completion. We don't want the child to feel inadequate. It is important to teach children very early on about the concept of tshuva. Chazal is replete with talking about how valuable tshuva is. So we have to teach our children that making mistakes is part of a process. And the danger of the inadequate feeling. This is critical now. The danger of the inadequate feeling of the child.
When they inevitably do that, avera is a feeling of shame, and when we say shame, what we mean is a feeling of unworthiness of love and connection, and so we have to teach our children that making mistakes is part of a process when we're seeking completion. It's okay to make mistakes because there's always a concept of tshuva, but we should never ever feel shame. We should never feel that because of our averas we are unworthy of love and connection. Rather, what we should teach a child is that there's a feeling of regret that's very healthy. Regret means that behavior was unbecoming, and guilt, a small amount of guilt. Guilt should be like the bumps on the side of the highway. When you're driving and you feel those bumps on the side of the highway, they remind you to stay in your lane. That's the only guilt that we are speaking of. Just a little bit of a pinch to remind you.
This behavior is unworthy of my godly soul. It's important to teach children about the power of tshuva. How do we do that? Number one, make tshuva part of the conversation when we're giving over divrei Torah. When we're giving over any ethical lessons to our children, if our children make a mistake, number one, first and foremost, make sure that tshuva is part of the conversation. When you hear these fire and brimstone shmuzin, which are very dangerous, a person needs to be very careful when they hear a fire and brimstone shmuz that a person is doing something terrible. If tshuva is not part of that lesson, chas v'shalom, a person could become debilitated by such shmuzin because all they'll be left with is feelings of inadequacy, feelings of shame.
Which will in turn feel that they're not worthy of love and connection. Why can I? I can't have a relationship with God. So that's the end of the show. Number one, let's make tshuva a part of the conversation. Number two, another way of doing that. There are so many amazing stories in Chasal about the humanity of people where they fell, and they did unbelievable tshuva. The example that comes to mind is the story of Rav Elazar ben Duda. Who was one of the worst chotim in the world? We're not going to get into all the averes that he did, and yet when he did tshuva, a baskol came out of Shamayim and said he was kainah elam haba b'sha'achas. So we should make sure not only when we're giving our children ethical lessons, shmuzin about the value of our ethical standards, we of course have to make sure that tshuva is part of the conversation, but we should also employ the stories of chazal and the stories of tzaddikim where they made mistakes.
But they were able to do tshuva, and perhaps most importantly, it is absolutely mission critical that our children see our mistakes, and see how we recover from our mistakes. The child should be able to see the parents and say, 'My parents are bale tshuva. My parents are not perfect, but they're constantly striving for completion.' I value the fact that I can see in my own parents their humanity, but they never give up, and they're working on themselves, and they're plugging, and they're doing their best to be the best over day Hashem that they can be. Sammy, you had the first question, so I'll call on you first. Sammy, if you could just speak a little louder, because it's harder to hear. It's a little hard to hear you. A little bit, but not much.
Can you hear me better now? Now much better. Yes. Give me one second. I can't connect to the Wi-Fi. You mentioned that you should strive for completion rather than perfection. Yes. I'm a bit confused as to how that differs, because completion basically is an action, a process of finishing something. Then again, it would be necessarily perfect. But it just seems like they're very similar concepts. They are similar, but the key difference is the process. So when we're striving for perfection, anything less than perfection is not perfect, and by definition, once it's not perfect, I've messed up, and now there are feelings of inadequacy that come along with that. Whereas, when I'm striving for completion, every single step is another step in the process of arriving at completion. Both the positive things that I do.
And the negative things that I do, and that's why Chazal say, 'Samy, and this is so important.' That's why Chazal say that it's possible after we do an avera, if we do tshuva me'ava, that our zdonos are nasalo kashrios, that the averos that we did can actually become merits for us, and this means that everything that we did was part of a process, and so if I never did that avera, then it's quite possible that I never would have reached the level that I'm on now, and so we learn to appreciate our failures. We learn to appreciate our imperfections. I'll share with you a very beautiful idea. I'm sure some of you have heard this before. There's a martial a parable of a king, and the king had a crown jewel which was a stunning jewel, and unfortunately one day the king's crown fell.
And the jewel broke, and there was a crack right in the middle of the jewel. Of course, no matter how great you are, you can't fix a jewel once there's a crack in it. There's a crack in it, and it's over. But the king was determined because the entire power of his crown came from the perfection of this jewel, and so he was determined to fix the jewel somehow. And so he called all the jewelers in all the land and offered great rewards. But of course, nobody was able to fix the jewel. Until one old Jew came and he told the king I can fix your crown but you have to trust me, and the king said okay I have no choice I'll trust you, and he took out his implement and he started to etch even more cracks into the jewel, and the king was so disturbed he said what are you doing you're ruining it and the Jew said I told you have to trust me, and he continued to make these etchings and make more cracks and by the time he was done.
What he had done was he took the crack and he had turned it into a tree, and the etchings that he made were the roots and the branches and the leaves. And the significance of the moshel, the nimshel, is that we have to look at our imperfections and recognize that they're opportunities to enhance the beauty of the jewel. And so that's the process of completion, Sammy, and that's critical when raising children because if we raise children with an angry Judaism, chas v'shalom. With a Judaism that's oppressive, there will be no capacity for these children to develop in a way that's healthy. Shlomo Sarkan. So self-esteem is essentially mesiras nefesh, like an accounting of your soul. I'm sorry. I do you mean mesiras nefesh? I don't. I don't know what you mean when you say mesiras nefesh here. Just like when you look at yourself. Do you mean a chesvan nefesh?
Messiras nefesh means to kill yourself. It means to take your life for this, for the in the name of God. A cheshbon nefesh. A cheshbon nefesh is an amazing tool for self esteem because a person who makes a self cheshbon nefesh. Let's look at what they have in front of them. A, they're a growth oriented person. B, they're unafraid to admit their mistakes. Which means they recognize that they're part of a process. And in recognizing those mistakes, the beauty of their imperfection can enhance their journey towards completion, and that is a very healthy system for evaluating yourself because you're looking at yourself and you're saying, since I evaluate myself by the following ethical condition, here's where I'm doing okay, and here's where I need to do some work. It's a beautiful system of self evaluation.
And also, what happens if someone does that type of cheshbon nefesh, and also self esteem, so an accounting of just seeing what yourself is supposed to be. What happens if you get to a bad answer, this not good. Self esteem, I always thought was more of a thing of just trying positive. This what I have. This what I'm good at. This. What happens if you see, this bad. I'm doing awful. So self esteem is not necessarily positive. By the way, self esteem could mean I'm evaluating myself and here's an area where I'm not doing so well. So this was a big mistake in the trophy generation. Was we tried to make every child feel good all the time, and that's not possible. Real life is not like that. So there's nothing wrong. A person with healthy self-esteem is okay saying here's an area where I'm really not doing well, and the fact that they're capable of saying that, in and of itself, it becomes an opportunity for growth.
The problem is so many people have this debilitating feeling that they're not doing good enough, and I'm not enough. There's an inherent shame, an inherent unworthiness that's underneath the entire system, and that's what's debilitating. You see, if you're striving for perfection, you'll never be perfect. I'm unworthy of love and connection. Why would you ever admit that you're failing? Whereas, if your goal is completion, so then you recognize this is an area where I need to work on. Does it feel good that I'm failing in this area? Not necessarily. Am I okay? Am I still worthy of love and connection, despite the fact that I'm not doing so well in this area? One hundred percent, I'm doing great. You know what I mean, Shlomo? At what point would one lose their worthiness of love and connection? I believe because I believe that the soul is essentially connected to God, and that there is no disconnection from God ever. So I would believe that it is never appropriate to feel.
Unworthy of God's love and connection, and that's an amazing lesson to teach a child. That even if they do the worst averos, they're still connected. No doubt, some of you are concerned. If we teach our children that they're always connected, then they'll say, 'Why does it matter?' So if I'm always connected, so then I could do whatever I want. In fact, the exact opposite is true. If you teach your child that they're always worthy of love and connection, that's a relationship that a child will want to participate in. And since they look at and they say, 'Wow, no matter what avera I do, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is still with me,' I want to participate in such a relationship. Who would want to participate in a relationship with someone that's going to send them to hell? If every time they make a mistake, they're just thinking to themselves, 'Ooh, the fire is going to get turned up that much hotter.' That is a dysfunctional relationship with God. Makes sense. Any other questions?
Do we lap? Would you teach your kids to do this by telling them or by showing them through your actions? The answer is yes. And by your actions, how would you do that? By their actions, where would you show your? So again, I think. I think as we said, we should definitely teach them. It should definitely be part of the conversation when we're giving divrei Torah at the Shabbos table. We should always make sure to include the notions of tshuva. And we should always be telling stories about balei chovah. My children hear from me so often. I have a great amount of respect for my parents. Both of my parents did not grow up in observant families. They chose to become observant. They're both balei chovah, and that was part of how we grew up. My parents are balei chovah, and that was a very growth-oriented message for us, the children, growing up. So number one, yes, you can communicate it in your words, but also.
You can, and should communicate it in your actions. Remember that if your children see you preaching one thing, but they see you doing something else, then that's going to be terrible. If you're trying to teach your children about the power of tshuva, let them see you do tshuva. Let them see you speak about a particular inyan and say, 'This is an area where I struggle, and I'm really trying to work on myself, and here's how I'm doing tshuva.' Again, I don't think you have to share the gory details of all of your averos with your children. That might not be safe either. But for those averos that are appropriate, it's important to share with your children and to allow them to see your process. Dovi, that's an excellent point. How are we doing? Looking around. Any other questions? Yes.
The idea of teaching a kid to like accomplish perfection, which every says wrong. I agree. But no, is that where it stems the problem of OCD in the Jewish community, about people who are OCD, and turns them off because they can't complete it, and that's where it stems because teaching a kid to be perfect and try to accomplish perfection. Which essentially said is impossible. Is that where the idea of the whole OCD is like a whole thing in the Jewish community about OCD being like very dangerous? I'm not going to comment on where OCD comes from, and I think that people that suffer from OCD is something that most people they just throw it out or oh this is my OCD like I don't think they realize when they say those things.
How much people with OCD might be really suffering. I will share with you that I think it's important for every family to have a healthy approach to Judaism, and there's no doubt that if we give our children a soft and gentle, healthy approach to Judaism, that children who do have OCD will be helped by being in such a family, whereas if the message that children are getting is one of perfection, that will certainly exacerbate the issue. Having said that, I've had many of them over the years that have come to me struggling with their OCD and they're in tremendous pain, which I respect. And sometimes, even when they're growing up in wonderful, beautiful Chinuch homes, Mechunach homes, they may interpret the messages incorrectly. So the message may be one of completion.
But they may hear it as one of perfection, and so it's important that we be absolutely clear and on point in our message. It's important that we say that message over and over again, so that the children who may have OCD can understand that too is part of the process, and that's also an opportunity to serve God. This may be very painful for some people to hear, and I respect that. I really respect that. I'm not trying to tell them that they should just get rid of their OCD. I know it's not that simple, but I do think it's important for them to remember that we are not seeking perfection. We are seeking completion. No matter what, our children should grow up with that. But I can't tell you that that's the cause. I think it's probably much more complex than that. Last questions. Any last questions?
Yehuda Pensker. Is it really a little bit of guilt? Am I underestimating how much guilt is being used, or the amount of guilt that's used in a lot of Judaism? Is it a little amount, or is it? I think it's a lot of guilt. I agree with you that I think there is a lot of guilt, and I think people are peddling guilt, and I think that's very dangerous. I think guilt very quickly turns into shame, and that's why if the feeling of guilt that you have is one that diminishes your service and diminishes your capacity to engage with God, then you've crossed the line into shame. We as people naturally have a feeling of guilt, and that's okay.
That's a good thing actually. It means that we have a moral compass. It means that there's something inside of us that says, "Ooh, that's uncomfortable. That's okay," but when it goes beyond that, and that's why I said it has to be a little bit. When it goes beyond that, and you're hearing these fire and brimstone schmoozen, my feeling is that that's very debilitating, and it'll cross the line, and people will start to look at themselves with a very negative eye. I really think that's very, very dangerous. So yeah, I would call that a little bit of guilt, just the smallest amount. If your experience, and I expect that for some of you, it's certainly true. If your experience in Judaism has been with these fire and brimstone shmosin, I'm sorry that happened. I really am. It's not the Judaism that I grew up with, and it's certainly not the Judaism that we've tried to teach you here in yeshiva. I think it's very, very dangerous.
Thank you, Rabbi. I was more referring to when your grandmother guilt-trips you for not eating your food. So I think that's just grandmothers being grandmothers. When my grandmother Allah Shalom, who recently passed away from Corona, whenever I used to go to her apartment, if I did not leave with food, it was an unsuccessful trip for her. Can I know her? She was ninety years old and she would give me everything, like apples and bananas and Entenmann's donuts and like a roast from a month ago. If it was food, she would give it to me. And if I didn't take it, she made me feel so badly. I'm like I'm just gonna throw it out, but I had to take it. That's just regular good old grandma guilt. That's not the guilt we're speaking about. Yehuda, if you don't grow up with that type of guilt, it means you didn't grow up in a Jewish family, and I would have to question your lineage.
To say there. I see. I got some of you back with that one. It's a fascinating experiment watching you watch screens. I can see who's looking at the screen and who's looking at me. It's a fascinating thing. I see I got Shuki. I see I got the. I won't call people out. I don't want to do that. That may not be a good idea. Signs of low self esteem. Let's finish up with this. Signs of low self esteem. Many children suffer from low self esteem. If your child has low self-esteem, do not panic. Your child is not the only one who has low self-esteem. Many children have low self-esteem, and we see it all over the place in yeshiva, even at eighteen years old. And it's certainly true when children are still getting acclimated to the world around them at five, six, seven, eight years old. Many children have low self-esteem. If your child has low self-esteem, do not panic. It is very normal.
But let's look at some of the signs of low self-esteem. Number one, poor school performance. If a child is not doing well in school, it's not necessarily because the child isn't smart. It could be because the child does not have enough of a sense of self to do well in school. Instead of jumping to the conclusion that maybe your child is dyslexic or maybe your child has other learning disabilities, it's also important to recognize that the child could be suffering from low self-esteem. If the child has angry outbursts and is not capable of displaying their emotions appropriately, it could be because the child has a very negative sense of self, a low self-esteem.
If a child is acting in a defiant fashion, in an oppositional fashion, everything you do, the child says the opposite. I'm just going to go through the list real quickly, and then I'm going to open up for questions. If your child is oppositional or defiant, that could be a symptom of low self-esteem. If there is sibling jealousy, that's a big one. If you see that one child is constantly jealous of another child in the family, as opposed to being really happy for the achievements of that child, that could be a symptom of low self-esteem. If a child is having trouble staying in reality, and they're constantly imagining other realities, and they're not capable of being present, again, it could be a function of a lot of things, but it might be a symptom of low self-esteem. And finally, last but not least, and this is probably the most belated, the most obvious one, if a child withdraws.
And they withdraw from their peer group. That might be a symptom of low self esteem. If a child does not feel worthy of engaging with their friends, and as a result they pull back from their friend group from their peers, that could be a symptom of low self esteem. We'll open up the floor really quickly to questions. Ellie Schiff. I was just curious. Do you think there's an age where once it hits a certain point, it's more likely that it's because when you're younger, I mean when you're five and six, you might you know you're just a six year old. So you could just be whatever and because you're young, you may just have a lot of emotions that you don't know what to do with. But is there a specific age where you're mature enough that a parent can tell oh they are mature enough to understand that what they're doing is because of.
So I think I understand your question. You'll tell me if I got it wrong, but I think when you're speaking to people who actually have low self esteem, and sometimes these people could be in their teens, in their twenties, in their thirties, in their forties. Often they can trace it back to feelings that they had when they were only five or six years old, so it's actually possible. Children are very sophisticated. You're right that it may just be they have these emotions that they don't know what to do with them, but a lot of times they do have a narrative that they're telling themselves. They do have a way of evaluating themselves even at a very young age, and so they might recognize that they're not cool enough. Maybe they don't have enough money. Maybe they're not as funny as other kids. Maybe they're not as good looking as other kids. So there's a lot of different stories that they might tell themselves that will contribute to their low self-esteem. And yes, even a young child can have low self-esteem.
And we know this because when we're speaking to them when they're later on in life, they can actually really give language to that, and they can express what they were experiencing even at a very young age. Thank you. Simcha Shrone. Poor school performance is an indicator of low self-esteem. Let's say you have a child who is smart, right? And maybe they're smarter than they realize, but they're not putting in the work because they're already assured in their own minds that they're going to fail. They have such a diminished sense of self that they're not willing to put in the work because they know for sure it's not going to work out. That would be one example, though there are many. It could be that a child is smart and he does study, but then he has so much anxiety when it comes to actual test taking that he's feeling really negative about that, and so he becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There are a lot of ways that self esteem could impact a child's school performance.
Shalom. So a lot of these things that you mentioned would seem to fall into categories of other mental illnesses like ADD, anxiety, depression. At what point? What's the? I guess more also general status of what do you consider? Do you consider ADD to be overdiagnosed? Do we have a problem with overdiagnosing? Part of the human condition. I think that's an important point, and I do believe that we do overdiagnose today. I definitely do believe that. I think some of these things are really hard to nail down because the system we put kids in is where they have to sit in a classroom for nine hours a day, and then when they can't do that, we call them ADHD. I'm not convinced that we would have been diagnosing those kids with ADHD a hundred years ago.
When they didn't have to be sitting in a classroom for nine hours a day, so I definitely do think it's overdiagnosed. Having said that, and I think this is really important, a couple of years ago we had a talmud in yeshiva who was really a wonderful person, but he had real ADHD, and he really just had a hard time recognizing that his actions had consequences. He wasn't able to do the things that he wanted to do. He was really suffering, and one of the things he said to me in the course of one of our conversations that I think will stay with me forever. He expressed the pain of people who like guys in yeshiva who are walking around going like, oh my god, I'm so a D today, and he's like, you don't know what that means. For me, this really real and this really debilitating, and it would be like, imagine somebody who has O C D and somebody goes to them like, oh my god, I'm so O C D, I can't have like, like this food touch that food, and you're like, I have crippling O C D, like don't talk to me about that, and I think the same thing is true with A D H D, and it can also contribute to a person's self esteem.
Because if they see their peers are capable of sitting in school for nine hours a day, and then they see that they're not, that could be really debilitating. You could really think to yourself, "Hey, I'm not as good as others." So there was another hand raised. Elon. It's kind of a detail, but on the whole A D B thing with school. Does Ravi think that it's actually a little bit off topic? Does Ravi think that nowadays overdiagnosis of ADD and ADHD can be due to making kids feel good? Because in a sense, if a kid can't sit for nine hours in a day, then perhaps he just doesn't have a good work ethic or good concentration skills. Has nothing to do with ADD or ADHD. But once a psychiatrist or psychologist or whatever diagnoses a kid with ADD or ADHD, the kid says, "Oh, it's not my fault. It's due to something else." Is that? Do you think that's.
It definitely could be. The joke in the last couple of years, and I imagine some of you will probably laugh at this, is that I get extra time on my tests, and it's like at this point, there you go. I know I hit a nerve watching like half of the people in the screen start to shake their heads. So again, kids who literally faked having it, like I swear to God, they don't have it. Like I'm ninety five percent sure they got double extra time in their tests, and when a kid asked them what they got, they would be like, yeah, I got this ninety ninth percentile score, but they don't mention the extra time, and it's horribly immoral. I think you can get a sixteen hundred on the S A Ts if you take it over the course of like two weeks. Like I don't think that's the. If I paid forty five hundred dollars for a doctor's not to get extra time on my S A T, I'd probably. People do that. That's cool.
By the time we're all done with the extra time, we're all going to be in Harvard asking for extra time. It's like it looks. I think you're right that we're so nervous to have kids actually fail, and as a result, Elon, I don't think they build resilience by giving these kids the extra time. It's great that they get the extra time, but life isn't like that. You have a deadline when you're in business. You have to meet that deadline. There's no such thing as going to the client and saying, 'Hey, I need that extra time.' So it's a complicated subject because I think there are people that have real processing issues, and those people deserve the extra time. And then there are kids today, like half the yeshiva kids that I know, that are just figuring out how to get this extra time so that they can score better marks. I'm not even going to weigh in on the morality issue. I'll just weigh in on the parenting of it. It's poor. It's poor parenting, because you're not training your child for real life, and then when the child goes to college and he's not getting extra time.
When the child goes into a business meeting and he's not getting extra time and he hasn't learned resilience, how are these children going to be successful? One of the reasons that organized sports is such a great teacher for children and such a great life lesson for children is because you have to learn how to compete, and competition is an important part of life. It's an important part of parenting. So of course everything has to be in the right time. If we put a child in a situation where they're competing and they're too young to be competing and they're not capable, that's going to be terrible. Let's say these first grade wiffle ball leagues. How real is your score? These kids are in first grade, but if you've got sixth graders and you're still not keeping score and everybody's a winner and everybody gets a trophy, the kids themselves know that's garbage, and they never build resilience that way. That's a fundamental part of parenting.
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