Practical Parenting - The Art of Persuasion

2:30 But any time there's an investment of our time and energy, it's difficult to change. Number one, you're confronting something new. There's always a basic law of inertia. I'm comfortable. Number two, I already made a big investment. You're asking me to change. Number three I am preoccupied with other concerns. So let's say you are trying to get a child to change. Let's say they haven't been studying well, and you want them to study well. You want them to get good grades on their tests. The challenge is that they might be preoccupied with social issues. They may be preoccupied with image issues, so it may not be the top of their priority. So let's say you have a kid that's being bullied. And you come to the kid and you say, "We want you to get an eighty-five on your next test." The kid is struggling to survive in school.

3:30 He doesn't have the headspace to think about studying for a test. You may have to overcome external challenges when you're trying to set a goal for a child. And again, these are just some of them. But this will be the last one that we'll speak about. I don't want to do something new because I enjoy the power and the control that comes with being resistant. So as a parent, you have to understand that you are coming into this saying, I want my child to get an eighty-five on the test. Now the child knows that you want something. That puts the child in a position of power. Hey, it drives my parents crazy when I don't study, and there's a feeling of power that the child has. When we speak about resistance We have to understand the complexities of resistance. A kid might be resistant because it's new, it requires energy. He's comfortable. He's dealing with other issues. You see how many he might enjoy the power. He's made an investment in a prior way of being. So when you speak about persuading the child, you have to appreciate that the child is the way they are because of a particular power that comes with being that way.

4:49 So it's not as simple as snapping your fingers and saying, "Okay, we're gonna get the child to do this now." In order to get the child to do something, you have to understand first what's blocking the child from moving in that direction. Let's pause here for a couple of questions in case anyone has any questions. So far, so good. So we said that by the parent wanting that to happen The child kind of has an upper hand because he feels that if I don't like, I don't really understand how that's having an upper hand. It's like he thinks that if I don't do this, my parents are going to be happy. That makes it that. So again, it doesn't necessarily mean that the kid is going to feel that way. But it's possible. Like a kid says, 'Oh, my parents want something from me.' So it's possible now that the child will feel in control. What would be a good example of this? Let's say a kid wants the parents' attention.

5:54 And let's say they don't feel like they're getting enough attention. They may not process this consciously. But let's say they say, "It drives my parents crazy when I do poorly in school." So I'm gonna do poorly in school so that I get that negative attention. That's a way of commanding the parents to do what I want them to do. You understand? By getting negative attention. Negative attention. Remember, attention is attention. Negative or positive attention is attention. Some kids thrive within negative attention. Which obviously is going to have long term debilitating effects. But you have to understand that when you get into a power struggle with the kid, that's powerful to the kid. You have to really watch that carefully. I'm not saying it has to be like this. I'm just saying these are some of the resistances you might come up against. This is certainly not a comprehensive list.

6:51 Any other questions? Okay. Now knowing that we are encountering resistance, and having discussed some of the various resistances that we might find So let's look at what we can do to persuade our child to behave appropriately. Let's first understand what we'll call the salesman's methodology of persuasion. What do people sell? People sell solutions. That's anytime you're in sales, what you're selling is a solution. So if you have a product, what do you want to convince your potential buyer? You want to convince them that they have this problem. And this is the solution to their problem. But you may not be able to get there right away. Because the first thing they need to do is establish a relationship with the salesperson. So just think about it. Let's say you're buying a. Let's say you're you're buying a car, right? So the first question is, do you trust this salesperson? Is there a strong positive relationship that I have with this person? Because everybody knows when you're going to buy a car. For those of you that are fans of Seinfeld, if you're holding back in nineties humor. Buying a car, they throw in all this stuff that nobody's ever heard of. Gross.

8:23 You with me? Are you talking about the episode where Jerry has a smell in the car? That's a great episode. I'm talking about the episode where Elaine's boyfriend, on and off boyfriend, is working for a car dealership, and he's giving them the inside deal. So he says, "Oh, we don't even know what these things are. We just throw them in and we charge extra for them. The reason we don't trust car salespeople is because we don't know if they're actually telling us the truth. They could sell us anything." I'm gonna get the undershine on the undercarriage. We don't know what these words mean. So why do you buy a car from someone? You buy a car from someone because you have a strong positive relationship and you think they are being honest with you. A person walks into a car dealership. That's the first thing he wants to know.

9:12 Am I being dealt with by an honest person? So same thing when it comes to our children. The beginning of persuasion is not the goal that you have. I have a goal. I want my child to do better on his test. That's not the beginning of persuasion. The beginning of persuasion is what the relationship is that you have with your child, because if you don't have a relationship that's a positive, trusting relationship, right? So then, why would the child ever trust you? Why would he buy that goal from you, so to speak? So how do we create positive Trusting relationships with our children. All the things that we've spoken about, we make sure that they know their value to us. We respect who they are. We respect their boundaries. We're sensitive to their feelings. We're tough on the issues, but easy on the child. We use sensitive and appropriate language. We listen carefully to what the children are saying. We're there for them. All of these things build trust in the relationship.

10:16 Only if there's trust in the relationship can the parent then go back to the child and say. Now that we have this bedrock Here's what I'm asking from you And now we get to the second stage, which is making the sale. But you can't even begin to talk about making the sale if there's a fundamental lack of trust that exists between the parent and the child. Any questions, comments, or reactions? So far so good. This is clear. Excellent. Now. I know Aaron Tuckman is going to ask me about this So Aaron, I am avoiding your question, even though I'm sure you're going to ask it anyway. What happens if the parents don't have a trusting, positive relationship with the child? What if there's a tense relationship? What if there's even a bad relationship where the child has openly stated that he does not see eye to eye with the parents and he doesn't trust them?

11:21 Now what? I want to persuade my child. They have important things that they need to do in their life, but with you, I don't feel like I don't feel like I have the capacity to communicate that to the child. So the first thing is you may need to hit pause on that goal. So it might be really important to you to try to convince the child to get a ninety on his test. But you may not have the relationship in order to do that. So you may have to postpone that goal by three months or six months or whatever it is until you build that trusting relationship, because what might happen is you might come to the child and say you need to do better in school. But all you've done is thrown up another barrier or created negative feelings about the new goal. So first of all, I have to make sure that the child knows they're valued now. They have to know that the child feels supported now.

12:18 Only afterwards can I start to build the relationship with the child, so that ultimately they get to a stage where there's a trusting relationship. The barriers have been taken down, and now I can assert those goals. Does the relationship need to be perfect in order for me to come with a goal to a child? Of course not. Even in a tense relationship, if we have a gentle tone And we really try to communicate to the child that we're there for them. We can go ahead in some cases and deliver that goal to the child. But you gotta know your relationship with your kid. So if your kid doesn't trust you and you're coming to the kid and you're saying, look, it's important that you get nineties and above because we want you to go to a good college. You may not have the bandwidth to do that.

13:10 But if you do have the bandwidth to do that, you may have to acknowledge going into the conversation, saying, "look" I know that our relationship is tense, and I know that we don't always see eye to eye. I want to share with you, as you're in these formative years of high school, that you're making decisions that will impact you long term. So it might be important to really consider your schooling and how these grades you're getting are going to impact you long term. I want you to know that if you need tutoring, we're here to support you. We'll pay for the tutoring. If you need us to, get the school to give you a lighter course load—we're here to work with you. And then, what might happen in some cases, and you have to know your relationship with the kid, is this show of support can actually be a way of getting the child to take down some of the barriers, because the child's experience might be, wow, my parents didn't just come to me like I'm used to them coming to me and screaming about me that I'm not getting good grades. They came.

14:08 With a gentle tone, understanding, ready to work with me, ready to support, and the kid might say, "Hey" I did. I've never seen this, or it's been a long time since I saw that level of communication and trust in the relationship. Any questions? Aaron? How did I do? Okay, Pretty good. No questions. Okay, beseder weiter in Shas Zevi. No questions so far, so good. I have a little bit of a question. How do you meet? How do you? It's like before the problem. How do you make sure you don't have this problem initially? All the things that we spoke about. Are you a person that's listening to their child? Are you a person that's judging the child? Are you a person that's trying to see the world from the position of the child? Have you invested positive time, not just in quantity but in quality, or not just in quality but in quantity? All the things that we've spoken about.

15:15 Because you're right. You're going to have parents who have to be smart enough to know that they're going to have agendas for their children. So you have to make the investment way before you have the problem. So if let's say you have a kid who's lazy and he's coming home with sixties and seventies on his test, if you never spent the time to develop the relationship, you may not have the mechanism for change. Parents have to be smart enough to know how to create that relationship. Zevi, I agree with you. It's an important point. Viter. Next. So now let's say I'm ready to do that. I've identified that my child has a resistance. I have a particular goal that I want my child to have. That I want my child to adopt. And let's say I have the relationship where I feel that I can come and I can share with the child. This is a goal that I think you should have. So now the question is, how do you present that goal to the child?

16:16 So first Just ask yourself the same way we were talking about sales before. What do you buy? You buy things that you want or things that you need. That's what we buy. So you go into a store. You see something on the shelf. How do you know if you're going to purchase it? You look at it and you go, "Oh man, that would be awesome! I would really enjoy that." So you buy it. That's one way you buy something. Another way you buy something, you went to the store because you had a need for that thing. So you have wants and you have needs. Same thing when it comes to a child. If you want the child to adopt your goal. Then you need to explain the benefit of that goal to the child. How do we do that? Because the child is not necessarily interested. Let's say again, I'm just going to use better test scores because it's a common one. It could be anything. Let's just use better test scores because that's a classic.

17:15 You come to the child and go look. I think it's important. You don't realize you're getting seventies. At this rate, you're really not going to get into a meaningful college. You're not doing well enough on your SATs. I'm concerned for your future career. Number one First you have to listen carefully to the child. Listening carefully means that you have to be authentically open. Authentic is the key word there. You have to be authentically open to hearing the child's experience. That's huge. If you're not authentically open to hearing the child's experience, then you don't necessarily know what's going on for the child. And how can you sell to the child and explain to them why this is something they want or need if you don't know what's really going on? So if you are listening to the child, you're going to pick up on what is the point of resistance.

18:16 So let's say your kid is not doing well in school. You sit down with the kid in a non-threatening, non-judgmental environment, and you say to the kid, "Seems like you're having a hard time in school." Full stop. Let the kid respond. What's the kid's response going to be? The kid might tell you, "Well, yeah. Honestly, I really don't get along with my teacher. I feel like my teacher is picking on me." That's a child's experience now, right? So you now know the point of resistance. So you can't go ahead and sell the child the goal if you're selling something that's not necessarily in, it's not speaking to the point of resistance of the child. The child might very well know that they should do well in school, but that's not the issue for them. And sometimes it might be the issue for them. So you have to first listen carefully with an honest and open mind to understanding. What is the child going through? Let me give you another example of this.

19:17 Let's say a child is having a particularly difficult relationship with a parent. And the child keeps acting out, and maybe even raising their voice and speaking inappropriately to the parent. So the easy answer for the child is to say the easy answer as a parent is to say I have a chutzpah kid, right? But that's an easy answer. It's much more difficult to ask. What's going on in this relationship, right? And if you can honestly listen to your kid and ask what's going on, your kid might open up and say, "I feel like I've been labeled as the bad kid in the family" And that makes it really unsafe for me to be here. You might have an agenda for your child that they should stop being chutzpahdik to the parent. But that might not be the root of the issue. The root of the issue might be something completely different. It might be that the child really feels hurt by the parent. And you, as a parent, have to be willing to open up and hear that feedback because that feedback might be It might be true.

20:19 So let's pause ten seconds for station identification. Any questions, comments, or reactions? Feel free to unmute yourself because I can't necessarily see all of you at once. Okay. Weiter. So number one, authentically listening to your child. Assessing the needs and the challenges of the child, finding solutions for that individual child. Number two Align yourself with the needs of the child. If the child understands that you are on their side, the child looks at it as a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness. Some parents are nervous to be on the side of the child because then they feel like the child is in control. It's really the opposite. It's like guys, if somebody throws a punch, you have two options: you can block their punch, or you can grab the wrist and use their momentum to throw them. So as parents, we don't want to block our children's punch, right? We want to use the momentum of the trust in the relationship to guide the child to a particular goal. If the child sees that you're considering their needs and you're working towards effective ways of reaching the child begins to trust. That's a sign of strength, right? And that means that the child now is going to feel like I'm going to support my parents on this, and they're going to have a greater commitment to the goal.

21:50 So if the child sees, my parents are with me on this. I came to them and said, honestly, I feel like my teacher doesn't like me. And let's say the parents said Would you be willing if we all came together, me, you, and the teacher, to sit down and discuss this? We'll all go together and have a meeting about it. The kid might say, 'Actually, I would like that because honestly, I don't feel safe enough to do it without my parents.' Now you've built credibility with the child. The child says, 'Whoa, my parents were willing to sit down at a meeting with a teacher, and they were willing to help mediate this relationship.' Well, when it comes time for studying now I might be more open to studying because I feel like my parents are supporting me on this. They have my back. I wanna have a greater commitment to this goal. Now again. It doesn't mean that you have to align yourself with the child completely, right? Even if the parents only partially agree, or even if they totally disagree, right? But you want to build the relationship with the child. As long as you're building the relationship, as long as the child feels support, you're taking down those barriers and you're moving in a positive direction.

22:59 Zevi. So you had a question before Or did I get that wrong? I did it. It got answered. Any other questions? Quiet day today. Very. Yes. Um. What if the child is too shy to allow his parents to come in and talk with the teacher? That. So first of all, that's a great. That's a great question, right? So remember that as a parent, you're trying to show the child that you support them. And sometimes that might mean asking the child to do something uncomfortable. In this case, let's say the child is particularly shy and he doesn't want to do it. It's too embarrassing, and they don't have, let's say, the courage to do that. That's fine. You might make a judgment call and say, look, we're here to support you, but we can't solve your problems for you. You have to be a partner in this. And if that's not a good solution because you don't feel you're capable of doing it, then let's think of another creative solution. That's fine too.

24:00 Alternatively, the parents might make a judgment call that maybe this is not something the child is ready for yet. So let's lay the groundwork for that eventual meeting by letting the child know we're going to speak to the teacher to hear their experience as well. And so maybe there's a process. It's certainly a good point that you're making because the main thing is if I force my child into a position that they're not ready to do, I haven't built the requisite trust with the child. Jonathan, I think that's the point you are trying to make. Yeah. Good question. Any other questions? Okay, weiter. Number three. Tap into the child's values. Even if the child doesn't necessarily agree with the goal They might agree with the process. Let's say, for example, you want your kid to be a good counselor in camp. And let's say you get a report back from the division head that, as a counselor, frankly, the kid is lazy and he's not engaged with the kids. So now you, as a parent, want to help your child to become a better counselor. So you sit down with the child, you listen carefully to the child, and you say, "You know what's going on? We heard you're not really doing such a great job this summer, right?" That's what that's the feedback we're getting. The kid says, "Honestly

25:21 I hate working with these snotty first grade kids. They're just I can't do anything with them. If I would have gotten put in an older bunk, I could have at least played ball with them. That's fine, but I feel like a glorified babysitter, and I'm not interested. Now you've listened carefully to the child's experience. And maybe there's nothing you can do to change that for this summer. What you might be able to do is let's say you know that the child wants to become a leader. His vision is I want to become a leader. So you might say, I totally hear you. Honestly. First graders can be really hard to deal with, especially when you feel like you're a babysitter the entire summer. One of the things that's important to you is becoming a leader. Part of the leadership skills that you might need to develop in your life is figuring out how to manage people who you're not interested in managing. Being at people's levels that you're not interested in being at. So as a CEO, you want to deal with the top staff. But the reality is, sometimes you have to deal with the people on the bottom of the totem pole as well. So learning to engage with people that you don't want to engage with is an important part of leadership. If the kid values leadership, they may not value working with first graders.

26:34 But they may do a more effective job being a counselor because there's a byproduct that they want to tap into. This is why it's so important to listen carefully to your children, because if you don't listen carefully to your children, then you don't necessarily know what the goals of the child are, and you may not know how to align your values with the child's values. So far, so good. Here's another one. Oftentimes, children may not be motivated to do something because they're working off of a false assumption. So let's say a kid says, and I'm not saying this is true. In fact, I'm saying it's not true. But let's say you have a kid. He's in a modern Orthodox high school in the Greater New York New Jersey metropolitan area. And he says, I don't really need to do very well in high school in order to get into YU. Somebody told me that all you need is a bris.

27:37 Somebody told me you don't need a bris, all you need is a pulse. Somebody told me pulse is optional, but I'm going to get into YU no matter what I do. Even if I've got a GED, I'm gonna get into YU. They're operating with a false assumption. You have to have a certain academic standing in order to get into YU. And even if you have, and I'm doing this just for the laugh, just to see how many people will get this. Even if you have a college guidance counselor that looks at you and says, 'You want to go to Rutgers, right?' You have okay, and now I got. See who I got. Good, right? So I'm not saying anybody in particular. I'm just saying happens to be that he was my teacher. Twenty five years ago, but let's say you have a college guidance counselor like that. Sometimes the parents need to pull the kid in, and they need to be able to say, 'Look, I know you think you're just going to get into YU, but that's actually not true.'

28:28 And so the kid goes, 'Really?' And you go, 'Yeah, I actually, there are a couple of kids in the neighborhood that they didn't score high enough on their SATs, and they had to retake them, two or three times because they just didn't get in.' And the kid goes, 'Whoa, that's scary. I didn't. I didn't mean for that to happen. I didn't want to go to FTU. I really wanted to go to YU with all of my friends.' Sometimes the child is operating off of a false assumption. Listening carefully lets you know, if you come to the kid and say, "I want you to get an eighty-five on your test," and the kid goes, "Honestly, what's the difference? I'm going to get into Y U either way, right? Or what's the difference? I'm going to Queens College for knowledge, right? So what do I care what grade I get? I'm going to get in." No, Queens College is the Harvard of the Cunies. I love when people say this. The Harvard of the Cunies. If you're saying Harvard of the Cunies, you've probably already lost a lot of battles in your life. It's the Harvard of the Cunies. I can get I can get into this college no matter what. But just understand you might be operating off of a false assumption.

29:29 Another thing. Focusing on the benefits and not on the challenges. This is a classic mistake. Parents go, 'I know it's going to be difficult. I know you're six months behind. I know that you don't have any of the notes, but I'm confident you can catch up.' That is like a terrible pep speech, because now you just highlighted for the kid all of the reasons why they don't want to do it. So when you're trying to explain the benefit to the kid, don't focus on the challenges. Focus on the benefits. When the child says, 'Okay, I see the benefits. Here are the challenges.' Now you work towards solving those challenges together with the child. So the kid goes, 'Oh my God, I didn't realize that you have to get a certain score on your SAT to get into YU. I never knew that.'

30:16 But honestly, I haven't paid attention in math for the last three years. How am I going to get a decent score on my SAT? So now look how it shifted. The kid recognizes this as an important value. So now you say to the kid, 'This is why there's such a thing called SAT tutors, right? You can make up a massive amount of math for the SATs in a short amount of time if you apply yourself, right?' So the kid goes, 'But it's really going to be hard for me to apply myself because I'm also on the basketball team, the hockey team, the debate team, the mock trial team, right?' Because he's a Jewish kid, he has to be in every single club in T A B C or J E C or Rambam or Hank or D R S, right? It's like I'm on the soccer club. I'm on the lacrosse team. It's like these Jews don't even play lacrosse, right? Now I'm on the lacrosse team. I'm on the bowling team. I'm on the golf team, right? A parent at that point may have to say, "You may have to make some sacrifices here."

31:07 Yehuda, relax, calm down. It's a good line. But let's say you go to a school that has seventy clubs. And some, by the way, that's not an exaggeration. Literally, one high school told me they have seventy clubs. So you're in ten of those clubs. At that point, the child may have to make the decision. I'm not going to be able to do all of these things. Jonathan, you had a question. You didn't have a question. I thought I saw you have a question. Any questions here? This is all pretty straightforward stuff. Any questions? So one last thing. This is really important. The last part for this section. Your tone of voice and the words that you use are critical when you're trying to get a child to adopt a goal. If you raise your voice and use harsh language with the child Nobody is ever going to buy that product. Think about it. If you walked into a Best Buy And some young man or woman comes over wearing those brown khaki pants and that blue Best Buy shirt, and they come over and start screaming at you. You're an idiot for not buying this computer. You're a fool. Don't you know what you're doing? You're not going to buy from that person, even if the points they're making are good points.

32:37 And it's the same thing when it comes to parenting. If you try to berate your child into adopting a goal, I promise you that even if they temporarily adopt that goal out of fear, the long-term damage that you've inflicted is far greater than the goal that you may or may not have achieved in the short term. Number one and number two, you certainly will not have achieved that goal in the long term because the only reason they're doing it is because they don't want to deal with you berating them. Parenting is a slow process of planting and building. It takes time, so even though you can choke the golden goose and get production, it doesn't work in the long term. The language that you use has to be empathetic, sympathetic, pleasant, kind, understanding and soft. Kids, even though a kid may seem like they're strong on the outside, they're often very soft on the inside. And it's really important to recognize the vulnerability in the parent-child relationship.

33:35 The parent isn't charged. The child is vulnerable. It's important that you respect that vulnerability by using appropriate language. Thus endeth this section. Any questions before we move on? Awesome Amazing. Okay, Asking questions to create dialogue. When you're having a conversation with your child. If you're spending the bulk of the time talking You're making a mistake. The goal is to listen to your children so that you can understand. Asking questions invites the child to think for themselves. So if you ask the child, you say, I've noticed you're not doing so well in school. The report card that came back this semester really seems like you're struggling in a bunch of areas. What's going on? And then be quiet. If it's awkward It's okay. Awkward silence is a gift. It allows the child to experience themselves. If they just shrug their shoulders and say, "I don't know," right?

34:51 Then you have to address that. You have to go. I'm not judging you. I'm not trying to tell you you're bad. I'm here to help. Is there something going on? If you create that relationship with the child, then the child will not only open up, but they'll allow themselves to explore their options. Let's say the kid. Let's go back to our old situation before. Let's say the kid says, "Honestly, I think my teacher hates me." What makes you think your teacher hates you? Everybody was jumping around in class, but the teacher only yelled at me. So now you have a hypothesis as a parent. Does the teacher actually hate the child, or is the child interpreting something? Again, ask a question. Is it? That is, does sometimes the teacher get in a bad mood? I'm just wondering if it's possible that the teacher actually does like you, but this was a scenario where maybe they just called on you as opposed to calling on the entire class. Allow the child by asking questions and creating dialogue. Allow the child to experience the possibility. And again, this has to be genuine. Allow the child to experience the possibility that they have options here. And allow them to explore.

36:06 It always happens. Everybody in the class is yelling, and it's always me that the teacher picks on. Sounds like you really feel like the teacher is not, is just out to get you. The teacher's always out to get me. One time the teacher said a nice thing to me. Really? What did the teacher say to you? These conversations, these dialogues, allow the child for themselves to experience multiple options. Children are really smart. So a child might naturally say to themselves in this process. They might naturally say to themselves I really did think the teacher didn't like me. But in that conversation with my parents, they may not be able to verbalize this, but it'll happen. They may be able to say, I did notice that there were a couple of times that the teacher did like me, and maybe the teacher liked me in these particular situations. So the child might try that out. The child might say, I notice that when I'm taking notes, the teacher appreciates it. So the kid comes in with a notebook the next day and tries it out, and the teacher might give the kid the positive feedback of, 'I really see you're taking notes.' So the child has discovered for themselves alternative ways of being.

37:14 Iron. Just one thing, I feel like kids don't like nosy parents. So how do you draw the line of asking too many questions? So the key is to not be nosy. The key is to be genuine. First of all, I would go back to Zevi's point from before. If you have an open, honest relationship with your kids, they won't see you as nosy. But if the questions you're asking are not questions of like tell me this, tell me that. But the questions are more of a nature like It's interesting that you experienced that. Let's say, take go back to that example, right? Has there ever been a time where the teacher gave you positive praise? That's not being nosy. That's a question that allows the kid to experience multiple facets of one experience, as opposed to tell me who your friends are and who you were with last night. That's a nosy question that a teenager in particular might take offense to. What do you always think I'm doing something wrong? Why are you always judging me?

38:16 So there's a difference between curious, genuine, authentic questions and questions that are based on a lack of trust. Irons, that makes sense. Just also I like kind of on that note. I feel like as a teenager, I've had things where I have a good relationship with my parents. If let's say I'm not happy about something, and if I feel like I need to tell my parents, I tell them. But if they see something and say, "Are you okay?" and the classic, "Yeah, I'm fine." So 'Yeah, I'm fine' could actually mean I'm fine, or 'Yeah, I'm fine' could mean I'm not okay, but I don't want to talk about it. If a parent, I just feel like it's a classic thing that if the kid says I'm fine, the parents will continue to push until the kid just says something.

39:01 Because 'yeah, I'm fine' actually means three things, right? It could mean three things, not just two. It could mean I'm actually fine. It could mean I'm not fine, but I don't want to talk about it. Or it could mean, in some cases, ask me because I'm having difficulty expressing it on my own, and I need you to sort of pull it out of me. That is also the case sometimes, like, I really want to say this to my parents. So I'm walking around the house in a bad mood, hoping that they'll ask me if I'm fine. Then I'll say, 'Yeah, I'm fine,' and they'll go, 'Let's sit down and talk.' And it'll actually be awesome. So it's actually a great point that you're making. Iron, because it brings me to the very next thing that I want to talk about, which is timing. You have to know the mood of your child. So if a kid, if a teenager in particular, says, 'Yeah, I'm fine,' and I don't want to talk about it Respecting their boundaries might be an important way of building trust. So you might have to really swallow your tongue, hang on for a couple of days, or maybe even a couple of weeks, and see how it plays out. The child may not necessarily need you to solve this problem; they may need to go through it on their own.

40:06 But they might need to talk about it, and if you can trust, if you can create, if you can support their boundaries, they will come back to you. So if a kid goes, 'Yeah, I'm fine, and I don't want to talk about it.' As a parent, you can go. I really respect that. Just so you know, if you do want to talk about it, you come to me, and I will do my best to make time as soon as possible to have that conversation. I respect the fact that you don't want to talk about it right now. So that's a great message to send to a child. And on that same note of timing, know your kid. If your kid just had a temper tantrum, let's say he's a little kid. And now you got their report card, and they didn't do so well on the report card. That might not be the opportunity that you want to take to talk about doing better in school. You might want to wait a couple of hours until the kid has had an opportunity to rest. Take a bath, calm down, whatever it is that they're doing, in order to have that conversation. So timing is critical when it comes to these things.

41:07 Any other questions? Moving on to the last one. Okay. Rabo, as parents We have an opportunity to employ a very specific tactic that, in many ways, can be more effective than parents, and that's role models. So a role model is important for the following reasons. Number one, when a child looks up to a role model, the child says, "If the role model can achieve this, maybe I can." Which means that a role model should be able to teach our children that failure is a part of success. Role models are generally people that are within reach. Or even if they're out of reach, it still establishes some sort of ideal. And role models can actually help establish the child's values. The behavior of the role model may be difficult to emulate or imitate, but it can still establish a value. Let me give you what this looks like in practical, real terms. How many of you guys went on N C S Y Colo?

42:12 So a number of you guys went on NCSY Kolle. NCSY Kolle, you have two types of role models The Rebbeim and the Madrichim. And the Rebbeim we'll call them sometimes the out of reach role model, and let's say the Madrich is the within reach role model. This is a classic example. I'm in Rev. Isaacson's morning seder here. I'm a tenth grader. In M T A B C Rambam D R S wherever I'm in Rev. Isaacson's morning seder shir, I look at Rev. Isaacson and I go, that seems to be out of reach, right? But it helps me establish a value. I look at his life and I say, wow, that's a man of tremendous integrity. But let's say you have your madrich on the program Who went to T A B C D R S Rambam M T A Hank J E C Heychal whatever just like you did. And they're good at ball. You look up to them. They're cool. They're put together. But you've noticed that ten o'clock when Night Seder is over, they're still in the beis medrash having chavrusas with guys. So you look at that guy and you go, How did he do that?

43:20 I may even remember him from when I was a kid. Five or six years ago, I remember he was the cool guy on the basketball team. He had really long hair, and I used to see him walking around Central Avenue or Cedar Lane doing whatever. And now I just see him, and he's in that base. He's in the base madrich all day long, right? So what naturally happens, and we see this every single summer in NCSY Kolle. What naturally happens? Madrich comes to me with the following story Rebbe. This kid just came over to me, and he asked me I remember you when you were in high school. You were a bum. How'd you do it? So the madrichim always want to know, should I tell him? Should I not tell him? Is it private? Whatever. But the point is, why did the kid feel comfortable to ask that question? Because the role model established a value. The role model is within reach, and even without saying anything. Even without giving this kid a mussar shmuz. This kid looks up to that NCSY role model and says "That guy's awesome. I want to be like that guy." How many guys have come to Eretz Yisrael already having in their head, "When I leave Eretz Yisrael, I want to look like that madrich." I want to look like him. I want to have achieved the same thing that he did.

44:30 And so, role modeling is exceptionally important. As parents, we ought to be role models for our children. But we also have to know that sometimes we are out of reach. So while they may respect us and we may help them establish values, it's important to position your children to be around good role models that are within reach. Don't necessarily look to the shul rabbi to be the guy who's going to inspire your child. It's more likely that even though the shul rabbi will be somewhat of an inspiration to the child. It is far more likely that the kid who's a senior in high school right now, when your son is a freshman, is going to be the kid that your kid looks up to in just a couple of years. And I'll share with you guys in my life when I was in eighth grade, my rabbi, Rabbi Grossman, he had us. It was a tremendous idea. He mandated that if we were going to be in his class, we needed to do night seder. I forget if it was two or three nights a week. But the key was not just doing night seder, but we had to learn with a beis medrash guy, meaning somebody who was already post high school, learning in first or second year beis medrash or beyond.

45:39 And what you did is again because I was in Farakway, so you went to Yeshiv Farakway. You found a guy at the time it was ten dollars an hour. I know that sounds like a joke now, but please remember we're going back thirty plus years ago. You found a guy who was first year beis medrash, and he would learn with your child for ten dollars an hour. Happens to be that the guy that I got was a guy whose name is today Rabbi Avi Rosner, who's a rebbe in Torah Shchem, and he was my guy. And when I was in eighth grade, he was a kid who had gone to MTA. He had switched to Yeshiva Farakway. He was super serious in terms of his learning. He was a good ball player. He was frum. He was smart. He was cool. He was everything that I wanted to be. So even years later, even when I was in ninth and tenth grade, and I certainly wasn't following his path, he kept in touch with me, and he continued to be a role model. When I came to Israel for the year, by that point Avi was learning in the Mir. He invited me to come to Mir for Shabbos, so I stayed in his dorm, and I kept the same staram that he kept.

46:41 He introduced me to Rav Nasan Svi Finkel, Zeichut Sadik Lavracha, and at that point in my life Avi was now he had always been the role model, but now he was a person who was like. I was able to move towards becoming a bentora just as he was because I was at a different point in my life. The point is, Rabbi Osai, role models are an amazing way of persuading your child to establish a value that you want them to have.