Raising Children in Turbulent Times

1:56 In turbulent times, we are definitely living in turbulent times. I just want to share a couple of what I hope are really core ideas and then really open up the floor to questions. I'll say two things. I rarely gave parenting shirum for many years for two reasons. The primary reason initially was that the Rosh Yeshiva of Nevaseret told me that it was exceptionally arrogant to give parenting classes before you have married children. And now that I'm on the other side of that, I definitely agree with him. I'm a grandfather twice over, so I just had a granddaughter. My granddaughter's bat mitzvah will be before my grandson's bar mitzvah. That's how close they are in age. So I'm a young grandfather, but I definitely feel like the rishon shiva would allow me to give parenting classes now. But the real reason that I was so hesitant to do it is because my wife, who's a trained therapist, is super anti-parenting classes.

2:56 So it was bad for shalom bayis. She had a very specific reason for being anti-parenting classes, and I want to try just as by way of introduction to parse out why her objection to parenting classes is a hundred percent valid, and why I hope that this is going to be a little bit different. My wife is a firm believer, and certainly I agree with her on this: that parenting is not something that can be scripted. Every child is given to exactly the right parent; only that parent knows how to parent that child. And there's no parenting expert in the world that can replace a mother's intuition for how to raise her children. So I think that sometimes what happens in these parenting classes, and if you've had this experience, then you'll know what I'm talking about. Sometimes there are these hard and fast rules that they give you at these parenting classes, like if X then Y.

3:52 And what often happens then is a deep frustration. That parents, especially those parents, if you were a rule follower growing up, then you really know what I'm talking about. The parents who are rule followers then come and say, "I followed all the rules. Why didn't it work?" And the answer is because there are no rules. That's a ridiculous concept. Very often, what we hear in the world of chinuch, in the world of psychology, is a deep sense of frustration from parents who follow the rules, especially those who knew. I knew I shouldn't have been listening to that rule. It never made any sense to me, and it certainly never made any sense for this child. So I think these parenting classes, while there's a lot of very beautiful intention behind them, are really dangerous when they're not done well. And if somebody's taking a parenting class and they love it, then I'm not talking about that class. Obviously, yours is the exception to the rule.

4:51 But I know in Eretz Yisrael there are these famous rabbis who give these classes, and they're wonderful and amazing. Yet I've heard sometimes the negative feedback of feeling like I was doing something that was totally inappropriate for my child, too rigid, not giving my child the space that I knew they needed. So while that is true, and I think that nobody here I hope should ever lose their parental intuition. I want to try to do something a little bit different tonight, which is not to talk about parenting strategies, but to really talk about in a more broad sense what healthy parenting looks like. And then to apply it to the challenge that we're facing today, of certainly living in turbulent times, which I think probably means something very different in Eretz Yisrael than in America. How do you prepare your children for the conversation of cruise missiles?

5:43 That's not an easy one. I'll share with you at this point. It's a fascinating sociological experiment. Katusha rockets are not even a big deal anymore. When the Houthis send them at three thirty in the morning and send rockets to Israel and we all go into the mamad. First of all, not everybody goes into the mamad anymore because it's become so normal, which is obviously abnormal. People are like, I'm just going to sleep through it. The chances of it killing me are not so high. In my family, we still go into the mamad mostly because of my anxiety, but we still go into the mamad, which I think is the appropriate thing to do. The reaction from my children is very often so ridiculous. Can't they fire the rockets at six thirty in the morning, or three thirty in the morning, really, on the morning of October seventh?

6:33 When the war broke out, and we were actually in the vaseret at the time. At that time, my son was—I always wanted to be that kid. At that time, my son was seven years old, and the initial sirens went off that there were these rocket attacks. The rockets were literally being fired right over the yeshiva. The Iron Dome was knocking them down right over the yeshiva. So when I woke up my children, I said, "There's sirens. You have to go to the mamad." Mikey rolled over and he's like "Why can't they wage war like three hours from now?" And I was like, "That's raising an Israeli child." He's not annoyed that there's a war. He's annoyed that there's a war early in the morning. I don't know what we could possibly do to prepare our children for that. I often wonder, if I'm being very honest with you, I don't regret for one minute living in Eretz Israel. It was the single greatest decision my wife ever made for our family.

7:25 I went along, Baruch Hashem. But definitely she made the decision a number of years ago. A couple Talmidim came to the house and they're like, Rebbe, when did you know that you wanted to make Aliyah? And my wife goes, Yeah, when did you know that? Have you figured that out yet? I was like, I love it here. But I often wonder about the damage being done to our children living in Eretz Yisrael. Not in this war, but in a previous war, my kids were in camp and the sirens went off. They were in a park and they went under the picnic table, which is what you're supposed to do. You go under the picnic table and you cover your head. And you know they came home from camp. I said, "How was camp today? Is it good?" The sirens went off. We went under the picnic table, and they were describing it very naturally. I'm like, "What type of trauma?" Are these kids actually suffering? Which is very different than the trauma that my 18 year old daughter described to me just a couple of hours ago when I was on the phone with her. She's like, 'Everybody failed this test. Such trauma.'

8:20 "Like you're living in Israel with like you know like. Real things happening, like such trauma. I got a fifty on my writ test. And by the way, of course, she's like nobody passed. I was like, of course nobody passed. I'm sure everybody passed, but like nobody passed is a common thing for children to say. When the cruise missiles were sent, that was terrifying. Just anecdotally, I don't know if you know this. One of the funniest things that happened this year after the pager explosions, which were amazing. So in my Mister Openness, so not that long afterwards, Iran sent cruise missiles. A Katyusha rocket hits your house, that's bad. If a cruise missile hits your block, there's no more block. This is very serious business. So we didn't know, nobody knew that the Israeli government had the technology to hack every single phone and to send these alerts directly to your phone that light up your phone and big red thing run for shelter.

9:20 And so this alarm went off, and I'm like, oh my god, it's not even like on an app; they hack your phone. My daughters were out in the Mercado shopping. I was home. We went into the Mamad with the children. It turns out that the Israeli government had the ability not only to hack the smartphones, but also the kosher phones that don't even have texting. But what was really funny is these Haredi kids thought that maybe Iran had the technology to explode their cell phones. So they all threw their phones. In the base manager That's called turbulent times. I don't really know if I'm being honest with you exactly what the challenges are in America, and I don't mean to say that whatever you're dealing with is not nearly as significant as what we're dealing with in Israel. I know that there are significant challenges. I don't live them in the same way.

10:10 A young man who I was interviewing for the yeshiva was telling me about the anti-Semitism that he's experienced on his hockey team. There are real things that children struggle with, and we've definitely seen. I think that's why the topic of resilient children is one that resonates so deeply with me. I think we, the adults, are seeing that kids today appear to be a bit less capable of handling difficult things. It's not. There used to be a rise to the occasion type of mentality that we had. Our parents shipped us off to Israel. Show hands how many people here went to seminary. So a fair amount. Do you remember foraging for food over Sukkot because your yeshivas or seminaries provided nothing? But you had to rise to the occasion. Young men in yeshiva did not send their laundry out; they ruined all their clothing doing their own laundry for the first time. We didn't have rebbeim constantly overseeing us, even helping us through things that are pretty normal to help us through. We had to learn to do those things on our own. Today it appears to me, at least from what I see, that children are more unsure of themselves, less capable of taking that first vulnerable step, lacking the courage to do so.

11:22 Maybe because they don't think they're resilient enough to handle the challenges. Usually, the rhetoric around this is pretty nasty. Usually, it's like seminary teachers and rabbis in yeshiva roasting these kids. You know, back in my day, I remember you. It was the 90s. It wasn't that long ago. We weren't walking uphill both ways to school. It wasn't that type of environment. I certainly grew up here in the five towns. I grew up in Lawrence. I had a car when I was 16. I don't think life was particularly difficult. But I do think that we've noticed something. And it's worth exploring. What's a real healthy parenting approach? Not a strategy, but a parenting approach to these types of issues. So that's what we're going to tackle tonight. I want to go through just some basic ideas, and then I really would encourage you to ask questions. I know it can be vulnerable to ask questions in a large audience like this. Particularly, you don't want anyone judging you.

12:16 I know that nobody is, but just in case, I remember. I remember many years ago, I was here in the Five Towns, and there was a woman in Gourmet Glot whose child was having a temper tantrum in the aisle. And I was so impressed by her. I would have just yanked that kid up for sheer embarrassment. I didn't want to be that. She got down on the floor with her child and was talking to her child while he was having a temper tantrum in the cookie aisle of Gourmet Glad. I thought that was one of the most brilliant parenting things I had ever seen in my entire life. It's hard to acknowledge that we are all having troubles with our children, including myself. I do feel a little bit like an imposter sitting here as if I've got all this figured out. I don't have all this figured out. In fact, I don't even listen to half the advice I'm about to give.

13:06 But I know it's right. I've done the experiment. I've failed at this enough times to be able to share with you that this is at least the general direction that we should be taking. So the basic approach goes as follows: when we see an oak tree. We sometimes, perhaps often, forget that an oak tree was an acorn. The acorn was very, very little, and yet it contained within it everything it needed to become an oak tree. You do not need to artificially enhance an acorn in any way in order for it to become these enormous oak trees that we see around the neighborhood. It has everything it needs. The only thing it needs in order to become an oak tree is the appropriate environment. It needs sunlight. It needs water. It needs the right soil. But it does not need to be artificially enhanced in any way, shape, or form.

13:59 This may seem like an obvious muscle when it comes to our children—that our children already have everything they need; they do not need to be enhanced in any way, shape, or form. They already have the capacity to become well-adjusted, autonomous adults who can participate in society and be another link in the chain of our mitzvot. The question is: What do our children need in terms of the environment they're in, in order for them to become the people they have the capacity to become? That may seem like a very obvious, Marshall. I promise you, it's not. Most of the time, when I speak to parents that are struggling with their children, they almost always say, "My child is lacking this" And that is a tragic mistake. Your child is already capable of becoming a resilient child. They are already capable of becoming a resilient teenager. They are already capable of becoming a resilient adult.

14:58 The question we have to ask ourselves is not how do I enhance what they are, but what environment do they need in order to become their true self. I want to share with you that there's a man who lives in the five towns. His name is Mr. Richie Altobee. He's finishing up his tenure now. By the by, some of the knowing smiles—that's a very beautiful thing that you've perhaps experienced a little bit of what I experienced. Mr. Richie Altobee now is the principal of Halb for many years. Many, many years before that, he was the principal of Darche, and he was the director of Simcha Day Camp back in its original iteration after it was the Hartman Y. For those who have been around the block a couple of times I was expelled from school in fifth grade. School in this neighborhood doesn't matter which one. After the principal who expelled me, I've had several of his grandchildren in my shir in the summer.

15:59 And my mother's always like "Do you like a little bit? Do you like?" I said, "No, I really don't." She said, "You should." And my mother, I said, "My mother's a really good person." It's amazing to see that she's still in pain from all those years ago. When I was asked to leave school, Rabbi Bender and Mister Altbe were really the only ones in the neighborhood that would take me. Rabbi Herzberg Olave Shalom from South Shore was willing to take me, but I didn't have any friends in South Shore, so I went to Darche. And as you can imagine, it's not easy to go from a coed modern Orthodox school to a black hat yeshiva Darche Torah. That's not it's not a simple transition at all. In a conversation with Richie, not that long ago, in a public conversation He made the point that I was ten years old when I was thrown out of school. He's like, "Yeah, we decided not to give up on a ten-year-old."

16:49 That's pretty crazy. I was ten. You think fifth grade is big in your head? You think fifth grade is big, right? It's just a stone's throw away from eighth grade. That's bar mitzvah. It's a stone's throw away from high school. A fifth grader is ten. And it occurred to me that He had a completely different view of me than I had of myself. Even in my 40s, I wasn't yet a grandfather when we had this conversation, but on the verge of becoming a grandfather, I had a skewed perception of myself. Which was fascinating. Just to think about, wow, I can't believe I never unpacked that experience to realize I was 10. In my mind, I was always that rambunctious kid. I was 10. 10 is like a normal thing. The truth of the matter is, my life changed very much when I went to Darche And it really is counterintuitive. My father ultimately became the president of a major television company.

17:42 Rabbi Bender was giving anti-television shmoozes. It didn't exactly work or make any sense on any level. So why is it that in those almost four years that I was in Darche For. Let's say I think I missed a month of school in the beginning of fifth grade. So almost four years of being in darchai, I had this incredible experience, which was so radically different than the experience that I had up until that point. I didn't change in any way. I was the same rambunctious kid. But the environment completely changed And things that I was missing. And again, I have no blame whatsoever for Hafter. I only say it publicly because I really don't think that they were doing anything wrong. I happen to think that Rabbi Bender and Richie were so far ahead of their time that they were doing chinuch that nobody else was doing at that time.

18:31 I remember my fifth grade rabbi when I came in. His name was Rabbi Krauss. He's since retired. He lives in Eretz Israel. I bump into him from time to time. Rabbi Krauss came over to me in the very beginning of school and he said, I want to tell you a policy that we have in our class. I said, "what's the policy?" I'm used to policies, by the way. At this point, those are the two words. Two words I was very used to is policy and potential. By the way, if your child's teacher ever says potential Things are not going well. This is not your child has so much potential. I'm allergic to that word. So Rabbi Krauss told me about this policy called an emergency fire drill. I said, "What's an emergency fire drill?" He said, "Sometimes if I notice a young man who's walking around in the back of the class, I'll just look at him and go emergency fire drill." And then you could walk out and have a fire drill and roam the halls of Darche and roam the fields of Darche. I was very new to the school. I was like, "I like these policies. These policies make a lot of sense to me."

19:34 In sixth grade, I had this Rabbi, an amazing Rabbi, whose name was Rabbi Glenn. He was a taskmaster. But I loved him. I loved him so much that Rabbi Glenn became my bar mitzvah teacher in seventh grade. Rabbi Krauss, I loved him so much that I was going to a camp Mosheva. I don't know if any of you know Mosheva. I was originally in Mosheva summer after fourth grade. Summer after fifth grade, I switched to Magenav because that's where Rabbi Krauss was a learning rebbe. He was the learning director for the lower for the younger kids in the camp. I had such positive experiences that I kept wanting to bring my rebbeim with me. In seventh grade, my rebbe was Rabbi Mordechai Finkelman Shlitah, who today is the mashgiach of Arachaim in Queens. He was like this incredible tzaddik, and I remember these exceptionally warm conversations that we had because he also grew up in a much more modern family, and he and we would walk together, and he would tell me I get it, I understand. And in fact, in eighth grade, I loved Rabbi Finkelman so much that Rabbi Finkelman moved up to eighth grade, and I was initially in his shir

20:34 Because Rabbi Bender knew that I was not going to be continuing on to a more yeshivish high school, and the other rebbe was always pushing the guys to go to serious yeshivas, Rabbi Bender said he has this wonderful relationship with Rabbi Finkelman. The other rebbe is tough as nails and really preparing the guys for these real yeshivish places. It would probably be better for him to be by Rabbi Finkelman. I was thrilled to be with Rabbi Finkelman. All my classmates went to Rabbi Grossman. I went to Rabbi Bender on the first day of yeshiva. I said, "Rabbi, all my friends are there." He said, "Your parents are going to kill you if you go to Rabbi Grossman's place. This is not going to work out well." My parents founded the high school that I went to. They were one of the founding families. I went to Rambam here in the neighborhood. I was in the third year of Rambam. I believe Adiyom was that my parents founded the school in an effort to make sure that I wouldn't be expelled, and it worked. It was close, but it worked.

21:25 So I ended up switching to Rabbi Grossman's class because Rabbi Bender left me. I still have a kasher with Rabbi Grossman. This is an amazing thing that changed. It wasn't me that changed at all. It was the environment. I loved it. I loved it. And the truth is, I say this pretty often. If I've done anything meaningful in my life, there's no doubt that it was those four years in Darchei. Again, we could also talk about other experiences in camp that Richie Altobee. I probably shouldn't tell this story, which means I'm about to. But there was a girl in camp that I was talking to one summer. It was officially not a coed camp, but it was definitely a coed camp. And there was a nurse's office where everyone hung out. And so there was this one girl that I was talking to a lot. Devorah, please don't give it away. Mrs. Spiegenbaum was responsible for more shaduchim. If we had the nurses' office in Simcha Day Camp as a shiduf center, there'd be no shiduf crisis.

22:25 Mrs. Feigenbaum solved the shiduf crisis. I want to tell you about Mrs. Feigenbaum. She had it perfectly worked out because the boys and girls would come. We would be there for a certain amount of time, but she knew exactly the right amount of time to say, "Everybody out." I remember on the first day of camp that summer. My co-counselor—I was a JC, he was a counselor, this guy Ellie. So I remember I came to him on the first day of camp and I said, Ellie, listen You're the counselor. If any kids get hurt, you can't leave the bunk. I have to be the one to take the kids to the nurse's office. Ellie looked at me and said, if a kid gets hurt, that kid is in crisis. You need to be with the bunk so that I can take the kid to the nurse's office. I remember negotiating with them. So we'll switch off. This one girl I was hanging out with there all summer.

23:22 And the next summer she wasn't hired back to camp, and I had no idea why. It wasn't like today where everyone's what's happening and everyone was in touch. I wasn't in touch with this girl much during the year. And I didn't. I'm leaving out certain parts of the story about this, and I didn't know that the reason she wasn't hired back was because of me. And like the third day of camp, one of the upper staff members said to me, he's like, 'Oh, you know, that she didn't get hired back because of you.' I was so angry I marched into Richie's office. In retrospect, it was so ridiculous and I threw up in the drawer. I was like, 'Did you really not hire her back because of me?' And Richie looked at me and he goes, 'It was her or you, and I chose you. Are you really gonna be upset at me?' And it was a huge moment in my life to know that he had my back in that way.

24:13 That's what I think I was missing in my first go around in elementary school. I don't think it was an environment where I felt safe and secure. Darche and Simcha Day Camp wore that for me And that's really the goal. The goal of parenting is not to enhance our children in any way. Our children do not need to be enhanced. What our children need to be is securely attached. What exactly does that mean? We're going to unpack that in a moment, but that's the core concept. What every kid wants is safe attachment. That's what every child wants. By the way, those kids that say you're too all over me, don't listen to the words that they're saying. You have to listen very carefully to the words that they're not saying. Children crave a deep attachment with their parents. That's what they want more than anything in the world. Life is exceptionally insecure.

25:05 We see that. We don't know what can happen from one moment to the next. A dear chaver of mine, not that long ago, just a couple of months ago. He told his wife, Shabbos morning, he said, "I have a terrible headache. I think I need to go to the hospital." She said, "Just go lie down." He said, "No, I think my brain is bleeding." She said, "Your brain is not bleeding." And then he collapsed. And they took him to the hospital, and it turned out he had brain cancer. He has tumors all over his body. He's in the middle of undergoing treatment. Life is exceptionally insecure. We all know crazy stories like this. People who get hit by cars, people who get sick out of the blue, people who pass away out of the blue. Wars that start out of the blue. Life is exceptionally insecure. What our children desire more than anything in the world is safety and security in our loving arms. What exactly does that mean?

25:53 Let's go back to our mussel for a second. If you have an acorn Let's say you plant 100 acorns. And two of them don't grow into oak trees, 98% of them do. The problem is clearly with those two acorns. But if fifty percent of the acorns don't grow, the problem is probably not in the acorns. The problem is probably in the soil. Something is going wrong. When we look at the kids today, we can talk about the lack of resilience. That's certainly one thing to talk about. We see massive spikes in substance abuse. We see, and I'm not talking necessarily about the Jewish community, but if you look at the world at large today. Massive spikes in substance abuse, massive spikes in depression and anxiety, an inability to learn—that's a fascinating one. There are all these studies today showing that our kids are not capable of integrating information the way they once were. Our kids are not able to communicate the way their children once were. So when this is happening across the board, we should probably ask ourselves what's happening in the soil. What's missing? The answer is secure attachment.

26:57 That's what's missing. That's what our grandparents had. That's what our parents, I think, gave us. It's what we're trying to give to our children. But something seems to be coming up short. So I want to talk about two general parts of secure attachment. And maybe a little bit more than that. And then we'll open it up to questions. The first thing is children need parents who are emotionally attuned. That's not a simple thing. Parents need children who are emotionally attuned. We see this all the time that when children, I'm going to say these words, I don't mean them, out of the blue, right in quotation marks, out of the blue, exhibit this maladaptive behavior. It's almost always out of the blue to parents who were not emotionally attuned to what was happening. There's there's a myth There's a myth, and it's really a bad myth.

27:53 My kid got a smartphone. Three months later, he was off the dirt. That is not the way that story ever went. Not once in the history of the world. That's not the way it goes. There are a lot of things that lead up to things that take children away from their families. It's a mistake. It's a big mistake to narrow the focus to one particular element. It's not a true story. These stories are very broad. They require a lot of context to be understood. When a child goes off the derech to point to one thing and say it came out of nowhere, I didn't see it coming. It's not that it wasn't happening; it was happening, but we didn't necessarily see it. Generally, the reason is because we weren't emotionally attuned to what was going on. It's very often eye opening when these children have real conversations with their parents about what was actually going on. Very often, the phone call that I get afterwards is "I didn't know." I would have handled this so differently. I just never knew that that's what they were going through. I didn't know that they were being bullied in school. I didn't know that they were dyslexic. I didn't know that they were feeling bullied by the Rebbe. There's a million things that could go on.

29:05 What we have to be is not only physically present, which we're going to speak about in a moment, but also deeply emotionally attuned to what our children are actually going through. So when we speak about parenting, when we speak about family being a place of secure attachment, what we mean is not just my kids have a safe place in the house. Obviously, that's very important. By the way, I don't know if you remember in Hurricane Sandy back in the day. Do you know how many kids later on after Hurricane Sandy felt it was such an insecure time? We had to leave our homes. I didn't know when we were coming back. COVID for some kids was so insecure they couldn't even feel safe in their own home. One young man told me that his father had cancer during COVID. So he wasn't allowed near his father, and he wasn't allowed near his friends. He was isolated on both ends because his father was obviously at risk.

30:01 His home wasn't a safe place for him. It took him years to understand that he was living for a year and a half with a real terror of what if I kill my dad? What if I'm responsible for killing my father? He was a normal 15-year-old kid going through it. Wanting to be near his friends, wanting to sneak out to be with his friends, but also knowing what if I do, and then my dad gets sick because of me, and his immune system is not up to par. Meaning he physically did not feel present in his home. Home. That's one element. Physical safety is huge. But emotionally attuned parents create a deep sense of security for their children. That's number one. The second thing is actually a little bit more ironic. Because it's something I think that the Jewish community actually does very well And that's a sense of community.

30:50 It takes a village to raise a child. That's not just a saying. That's actually true. If you think about your own childhood, growing up, who raised you? I bet you it's not so simple to say your parents Some of us were raised by an aunt or an uncle or a grandparent. How many of us felt raised by camp counselors, by teachers? By a shul rabbi. When Rabbi Kellmer from West Hempstead passed away It was not shocking to me at all. He was so beloved. It was not shocking to me at all that they wrote a book about him. He really was a tremendous tzaddik. It wasn't shocking to me at all that the parents in the community felt that they had lost somebody special in their lives. What was deeply shocking was the impact on the kids. They really felt like Rabbi Kellmer was an important person in their lives, and they were like, 'What are we going to do without Rabbi Kalmer?' As great as Rabbi Galler is, he's phenomenal.

31:46 They really did lose somebody in their life that raised them. So it's not only being securely attached and having our emotional needs met in our homes; it's also having our emotional needs met in our community. One of the things, ironically, that creates safety for children is a deep connection to Yiddishkeit. That's a port in the storm for many kids, especially those that don't realize it. Those kids that are running away from Yiddishkeit—they're missing something very big in their lives. Because what the research now shows is that a deep sense of connection to your heritage is an important part of feeling attached. There's an irony to this whole off the derech thing. The kids are literally leaving the thing that they need. So it's not only that they're leaving their parents; it's not only that they're leaving their communities. They're even leaving a belief system that's really important to them, and that's part of the tragedy of watching these kids. Who are throwing off these values?

32:43 Why is this so difficult? Let's just talk about some very obvious things. I want to share with you that I have been studying your half of the species for a very long time now. And I don't know all of your language. I'm trying my best to learn it. It really is learning a foreign language, but I know these words. I understand what you mean when you say the words. I'm done. Have you done that? Have you done that like today, right? I know there's a point And I know exactly what it looks like. I even know the direction that my wife is walking as she says the words. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done means that the stress overload is so far above and beyond what I'm capable of handling that I literally. How many people am I triggering now? It's fascinating to watch in the audience. About 75% of you are going like, 'Don't say it,' and the other 25% are looking down, which is amazing to watch. 'I'm done' means I'm so overextended. The stress is so intense. I have nothing left to give.

33:56 One of my favorite stories that I heard from Rav Moshe Weinberger Shlita is he tells the story about Rav Shaya of Karastir. That when Reb Shaya was not Rebbe, when he was just the gabai, by Shalosh Shudis, he was giving out the bokalach. He was giving out the challerols from a bag, and his Rebbe was watching him very intently. And one of the Hasidim asked the Rebbe, what are you watching Reb Shaya do? He's just giving out bokalach. And the Rebbe said that bokalach, that bag has not had bokalach in it for a long time. Reb Shaya is pulling out bokalach that don't exist. It's like a miraculous thing. So when Riveinberger was telling over the story and I was listening to it, the first time I heard it, I was like, as he was saying it, I feel bad saying this. It's not a nice thing even to say about myself.

34:44 I was rolling my eyes. It's like another tzaddik story. It's another Rishayilis story. It's beautiful, but what's the purpose? Riveinberger told us the nimshal, and I was like, okay, that's blow away. The nimshal is how many of us are reaching into a bag that has no bokalach left and pulling out bokalach? Right at six thirty at night, I think that's the time when it's always right when it's like bath time and dinner time and homework time and your husband just walked in. There's a level of exhaustion that's like the breaking point and then the words 'I'm done.' What are the chances that we're going to be emotionally attuned parents in that moment? Zero. There is no chance that in that moment, when your daughter walks in and goes, 'She hit me,' there is no chance you're going to go, 'And what was that like for you?' There's no messiah in the world. I don't care if you're the biggest sadikas mother who's like doing chesed for everybody. I guarantee you, it's going to be some sort of snapback. You need to leave right now. You are in danger, and you don't even realize it. I'm done. There's a level of stress that we experience.

36:07 Moms and dads. I'm going to put in a good word for the dads too. We'll get to that in a second. The level of stress that we experience is not normal. And for the record, previous generations didn't have to do it. There is this thing that we've created with. And again, I don't want to talk about why yeshiva tuition is very expensive. Homes are expensive. Mortgages are expensive. Insurance is expensive. Eggs are expensive. Although who knows what Acha Shairish will do next, the need to have a dual-income home makes it impossible. You have to wake up in the morning before your children and leave as your children are getting off to school. If God forbid a kid is sick, now what are we supposed to do? The level of exhaustion that women are experiencing is so high. How are we supposed to be emotionally attuned parents? I want to put in a good word for the men for a second.

37:05 Just hear that. Just hear that. It's gonna be okay. We're gonna get through it together. It's hard for us too. It's hard for us too. Me too. It's hard for us too. Different type of me too. I want you to know that in my mind today An average balabas is a hero. Is a hero. I'm lucky. I get to spend my days in yeshiva. A guy who wakes up, goes to minyan, goes to the daf yomi. I'm just assuming he does mdy. Goes to work, stops in the middle of his day to daven mincha. Comes home, davenes maariv, spends some time doing homework with the kids, spends some time with his wife, and then goes to sleep early because he's got to wake up and do it all the next day. That is exhausting. We're not going to be emotionally attuned parents with this level of exhaustion. I'm talking about just practically.

37:55 I don't want to say it's impossible. It's certainly very difficult. Another, again, I hate to say it. Obviously, it's a beautiful thing. We should be zocher to go to smachot all the time. Baruch Hashem, our community has grown. And today, in the five towns, if you get a wedding invitation for Lakewood, the words are your muttering under your breath. I don't even go to Brooklyn. Even to go to Brooklyn, I have to sit on the Van Wyck or the Belt Parkway in Nashville. I can't handle this. I have to leave the house at six thirty to basically miss the shmorg, make the chupa. I can maybe stay for ten minutes of the first dance. I gotta get home. It's ten thirty at night. I have a babysitter. The amount of stuff that we're doing is not normal. We're not capable of parenting this way. Is the problem pretty clear?

38:47 We can't be emotionally attuned parents this way. An interesting thing that happened in modern society, it happened in the Jewish community too, though not exactly in the same way. It used to be when you lived in the shtetl, who lived in the shtetl with you? Everyone Everyone. Your grandparents lived in the shtetl. Your aunts and uncles lived in the shtetl. Your cousins lived in the shtetl. That's why your family name was the name of the shtetl. Imagine, what's your name, Mordechai Northwoodmere? Like that's not a name that doesn't roll off the tongue, but it used to be. What's your name? Mordechai Brisker, Mordechai Perjan. They had come from towns. That was your family was in a town. You grew up literally. It takes a village. We don't have that in the same way anymore. Where does Bubby and Zevi live? Where do my cousins live? Like I don't see everybody all the time.

39:33 It's not the natural, normal way. I want to add one last piece. I'm not here to bash technology. I think it's a mistake for us to pay attention to the symptom and not to the root. But I do want to say that the children today are growing up in isolation. They really are. They're isolating themselves with the phones. I've been in America now for a week and a half. And I've seen the difference between the schools that have a policy that when the boys walk in, they hand in their phones and they literally can't get them the rest of the day, versus the schools that don't have it. We're talking about two different universes. A week and a half ago, I was in UCLA in Los Angeles. They really are very strict on this phone policy, like super strict on the phone policy. It's obviously beautiful outside because it's Los Angeles. What we're doing here in the Five Towns, I have no idea. There are places where it is warm right now. I'm happy to be here with you, but this is not our best decision.

40:28 Certainly, you can come to Eretz Yisrael. There's a new Riviera being built, right on beachfront property. Highly recommended. It was amazing to see. They have a whole outdoor seating area. All the kids are talking. They sit outside and talk to each other. And then you go to other schools that don't have these policies, and the kids are literally lined up on the floor, just on their phones. They're not talking to anyone. They're literally in isolation, which means that if the goal is to create secure attachments This device is the ultimate expression of I don't feel attached to anything, and I could just sit here in isolation. That's why kids have such trouble coming out of COVID. I don't know if you know this term. There's a term called NPC. NPC stands for non-playable character. Non-playable character is what the kids called the kids after COVID who never came out of COVID.

41:23 There were kids that came to school and they wouldn't talk to people. They were called the NPCs, non-playable characters, or the characters in a video game that line the side of the video game that you can't actually interact with. I interviewed a kid senior year right after COVID. I said, 'How's your year going?' He said, 'Terrible. So many NPCs.' I was like, 'I don't know what an NPC is.' He explained it to me on an interview. I pride myself on speaking seventeen-year-old, eighteen-year-old, like I have all their words. I never heard of this term before. There's a deep sense of isolation that our children are able to have today, especially when they're feeling detached. And this is not even talking about the change that's happening in societal values. I don't want to say anything. I'm being recorded, but you can all figure out what I'm talking about.

42:11 But there are values today that are so distorted. Growing up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, if somebody had told us that this would be common, we were like, those things are disorders. You could look in the DSM. Those things, everybody knows, are not healthy. And today, those things are not only healthy, but they're championed. So these global changes are also a place of deep unrest for our children. Which means the following. When our children are not resilient Or any number of other things, is that disorder? Or is that ordered? And that's a big shift. Our children make perfect sense. Just because we don't understand them Doesn't mean that they don't make sense. Think of it like a question. That's what parenting is. It's your children are behaving in a way that obligates us to ask the question: What is this child going through? That's the question that we're obligated to ask.

43:08 And then we have to figure out the answer. Our children do not have disorders; they're perfectly ordered. Children who grow up in this environment Who don't have emotionally attuned parents, who don't have necessarily safe homes, who don't have safe schools. We're living in these turbulent times. It makes sense that kids wouldn't be able to learn as well. Wouldn't be able to communicate as well. Wouldn't necessarily think that they can rise to the occasion in turbulent times. Especially if we conflate protecting our children from secure attachment. Lots of parents think, "I need my kid to feel secure. I'm going to protect them from anything bad happening." That's not what secure attachment means. In fact, it's the opposite. Teaching your children that they can do hard things is a great expression of secure attachment. It means I trust you to be able to go through this process, and I'm right behind you.

44:04 As opposed to solving every problem for our children. My mother-in-law is the sweetest woman in the world. I don't think my brother-in-law's ever done a paper. She was the original ChatGPT. She was and you know my mother-in-law. I'm not exaggerating. The that's not that's not. I'm not criticizing her. Those kids never would have done those papers. Maybe that would have been for the best, but when we protect our children, we should not conflate that with parenting. Parenting means it's okay. Maybe you'll fail. You'll pick yourself back up. You can do this. But if we don't have that emotional attunement to them, and we're just running around protecting them, they're not going to be resilient. Why would they be resilient? When did they ever learn that they could be resilient? So our children make sense. I want to add one more thing. Which is peer attachment.

44:59 Why are kids today so attached to their friends? It wasn't always like this. It was very, very hard at a certain point in history to go off the derech. It was very hard to engage in maladaptive behavior that your parents didn't approve of. The reason was because if you were securely attached to your parents, that was your place of safety. But if your kids don't feel particularly safe at home, don't feel particularly safe in school, I want to tell you the nicest kids are the ones with this maladaptive behavior. When I was growing up, the druggies in the nineties were the nicest kids, totally nonjudgmental, would never bully another kid. They were often the kids that were bullied themselves. They were the nicest kids. It's really comfortable to find safety in that place. So it's an interesting thing when we see kids joining a peer group.

45:51 And then behaving like that peer group. So what's our response to that? It's like, I can't believe they're behaving that way. Really, you can't believe it. That peer group is a tremendous place of safe attachment. If we want our children to feel securely attached, we have to create that attachment consciously. And that's really hard because we're swimming upstream. How am I supposed to do that when I have no time for myself? How am I supposed to do that when I'm under all of this stress? Our children are playing charades. They're acting out exactly what they're feeling. They don't have the emotional language to be able to communicate it. So when our kid starts going off, and let's say for example they're not resilient, and they don't know how to pick themselves up afterwards. We can say, what's the game of charades that they're playing? What are they communicating?

46:40 What they're communicating is they need us. That's what they need. All children need their parents more than anything in the world. Those kids that are screaming loudest, 'I hate my mother. I hate my father.' They're screaming that loudly because that's how much they need their parents. So our responsibility is De-stress when we can. We have to be willing to let go of certain things. We cannot do everything. Self care, but I want to say this because I know this is going to be hard for some people to hear. There's two versions of self care. One is deeply selfish, and the other is not. Self care for the sake of self care is not something we should be proud of. But self care that's really rejuvenating, so that I can be of service to my children, is something that everybody needs to be engaging in. There is a point where you see with some people that self care is not about giving for others; it's just a point of exhaustion where they have no capacity to recuperate.

47:34 But healthy self care is really important. Creating opportunities for meaningful connection with our children, and I want to finish with this. I had amazing parents. I'm exceptionally blessed. There's an irony to the fact that my father was the president of this television company. He wasn't around that much. My father told me one of the most painful things I ever did to him is that when I was a little boy, five or six years old, my father would fly all over the place for business, and one day he was leaving the house like 6:30 in the morning, and I saw him leaving. Obviously, I have no recollection of this. I ran after him. I ran to the door. I opened the door as he was leaving. I said, "Bye, Dad. I'll see you tomorrow." And my father said it broke his heart. It broke his heart that he liked I wouldn't be seeing him.

48:22 And he was machbed after that. Whenever he traveled, he would fly back that night. He would fly to Dallas in the morning and fly back that night. That's a really physically exhausting thing to do. Shabbos morning, we davened Hashkama Minyan because my father did not like davening in the main Minyan. It was always like two types of fathers. My father was definitely not that guy. Shabbos morning, my father played games with us. All the games—chess, checkers, stratego, all the card games that I learned. Shabbos morning was my father's time with us. Sunday afternoons, he was our little league coach. He did not spend a massive amount of time with us, but I knew I was the most important thing in my father's life. It's not about taking big vacations. It's about creating meaningful opportunities for connection. That creates secure attachment in children. If we're too stressed, if we don't have self-care, we will not be emotionally attuned. We're just going to be triggered over and over again, pouring out our stuff on top of our children.

49:20 Taking a step back, taking care of ourselves, investing in our children—that's what our children need to be securely attached. I think I got out all the points. I think we have no time left for questions, so let's ask a couple of questions. Let's handle a couple of questions. Fair? Or we could do the awkward silence thing. That's fine too. Can I ask a question? Please. Are you saying that as an adult you realized you were important to your father, or you realized it then? Because I feel like a lot of us are giving and giving and we don't see that. I don't think I ever would have told my father that I knew it then. Looking back on it, I definitely knew it. I definitely knew it. It's not easy for a teenage boy or a teenage girl to say. I really see your contributions to my life.

50:10 But it doesn't mean that they don't know it. Some of them can articulate it but choose not to. Some of them don't know how to handle the complexity of this. Is also someone who sometimes punishes me So they don't know how to hold both of those things. They don't realize that the discipline you're giving them is in order to create healthy boundaries. But I would say all children know it deeply Whether well. Be able to hear that from them is a different story, but you have to have faith that it's happening underneath. Yeah. I'm not sure how to really give my children. That seems a little bit contradictory. But I'm going to watch you fail. I will. I'm going to watch you make your own mistakes because that's an important part of your growth. Even though I would really like to carry you and protect you from it, I'm not going to. How do you balance that?

51:18 I think it's a great question. I don't think they're contradictory at all. I've got your back does not mean I'm going to solve this for you. I've got your back means you can always come to me. I'm always going to be here Whether it's to be a kind, compassionate, listening ear Whether it's let's talk it through and help you strategize, even offering wise words of counsel that they probably won't listen to. I think those things are absolutely aligned with I've got your back. Don't worry, I won't let you fail. What I'm really saying is you have no capacity to do this. And you don't have the capacity to pick yourself up after you fail. That's a terribly debilitating message to give to our children. Imagine a young man who opens up a Gemara. The words of the Gemara tell him you're an idiot He can't translate the Hebrew or the Aramaic. There's no punctuation. He doesn't know where to start or stop. He doesn't know how to vowelize the words half the time.

52:24 He may not be trained in analytics. He doesn't know how to analyze a dialectic. He might be missing background information. He may not know the chumash or the mishnayos like on beforehand. These the Gemara is really hard. Most boys who open up a Gemara go, the book makes them feel foolish. They close the Gemara. And that's okay. What we would want for our children is to say, that was hard. I closed it. I do want to learn how to learn Gemara. Then they reopen it again, and they might go to their Rebbe and say, how do I do this? And the Rebbe says, every time there's a word that you don't know, we're going to write it on the side of your Gemara. There are strategies. And then the kids learn slowly. I can do this, and then success breeds success. If we don't let our children fail, that is the worst possible message that we could give to our children. The problem is that we're talking about something simple like Amara.

53:12 But what if it's a big fail? What if it's like you're going to get expelled from school, or you're going to get a criminal record? Or you're going to do something damaging to your body? Of course, every parent needs to pay attention to their intuition to know when to step in. But certainly, especially when they're little, kids would never learn how to walk if we didn't let them fall. Every kid learns how to walk because at some point the parent communicated to that child, "You can walk" And they fall and they go, "You're okay. You can do this." And then eventually they just decide, "I'm walking," and that's how they learn how to walk. Why is it any different in school? Why is it any different in social settings? In fact, very often the interventions are the problem. Because the interventions are communicating to the kid, 'You're not okay.' And they are. They really are okay.

53:59 And that's why all these kids that need these interventions School is. Let's be honest, school is not an indicator of success in life. Just show a hand. How many people have used the Pythagoras theorem today? I knew there was going to be someone. Your teacher? Do you teach Pythagoras? I don't mean to denigrate your entire existence. My most successful friends financially flunked out of school. That's a famous line. The A students are there to challenge the teachers. The B students are there to challenge the A students. The C students are there to pay tuition, and the D students are there to pay the endowment. Our kids can do this. They can. And sometimes our systems are too rigid. Adult, you may be able to navigate it, but the message you give to the child has to be consistent. And the child may not be able to figure out what the message of the parents.

54:54 Is trying to convey because they may confuse it. That's okay. That's part of a process of learning to communicate. So we can do our best to be clear. And that's what we can do. We can't do more than that. If the kid comes back and goes, wait a second, so you're just gonna let me fail? Is that what you want to do? Do you want to fail? I don't want to fail. Can you please do this for me? I can't do this for you. It's your project. That's your thing to do. That's a great message to send to your kids. They will not always rise to the occasion right away, but eventually they will. They're just little. Even a 15 year old is very little. Do you remember 15? That's a long time ago. We were very little. One last question Maybe, or not? Yes.

55:44 I just want to say, when I started recording Palmer, you said a lot. I looked at him as a parent figure or like acting like a father. I have a daughter-in-law and 13 kids, and she was kind of when she goes. Who are we talking about? Calmer. Calum. Yeah. Um. So he had 13 kids, and his daughter-in-law said to me,"I'm the favorite daughter-in-law," and I had an opportunity to speak to her daughter-in-law, and I said that you know she said that she's her favorite daughter-in-law, right? I said I told her that all the daughters-in-law say that, and they started laughing. He's like, "I hope so." " Right. Like it was just so funny because really people did look at him. He was an exceptionally beautiful person in that way, really. I have to tell you guys, I have one amazing story with him. I'm not going to tell it now, but I was a young rav And I was Masada Kedushin at a wedding And there was another rav there who wasn't happy with something that I did, and he called Rabbi Kalmer, and then he came to me afterwards and said Rabbi Kalmer said you should change it. So I did. Obviously, I was machniyah myself to Rabbi Kalmer.

56:43 When Rabbi Kalmer found out that this rav did it, he went through the roof. How could you have done that? I never told you to do that. Rabbi Kellamer didn't realize he thought I was the one asking the question. As opposed to this rabbi-like sort of interceding. I had asked my own rabbi if what I did was appropriate, and he said yes. Rabbi Kellamer disagreed, but I changed it obviously because of Rabbi Kellamer. He sat with me at that wedding for an hour, just one on one, paying attention to me because he felt so badly that he may have inadvertently caused me pain. I was just sitting in the presence of someone who really made me feel okay and held. As a young rabbi, he felt like he had made a big mistake, and it was a beautiful thing to witness. I grew up in Farakway. Anyone here know Rabbi Blumenkranz? The Pesach book. Is that right? Which one? Pine and Malki.

57:29 So when I was Rabbi Blumenkranz, all the shalom. The original The original Rabbi Blumenkranz had seventeen children. Seventeen children. And we made a seum in my eighth grade class. Aaron Blumenkrantz was my classmate, and Rabbi Blumenkrantz came in to speak to the class. I'll never forget this. He came in, he sat down, and of course we were all in awe of Rabbi Blumenkrantz. And Rabbi Blumenkrantz looked at the kids and he said to us. I must have a son in this class. I have a son in every class. And we all burst out laughing, and he goes, "Which one are you?" His son raised his hand, and he goes, "What's your name?" But it was clearly a lot of love, a lot of warmth, and I think it doesn't really. People who are securely attached to themselves provide that for everybody. And they—and they're that's why they're so. That's why we love to be in their presence.

58:23 Everyone thinks that Rabbi Kalish from Waterbury reinvented the wheel. He didn't. Rabbi Kalish just did the thing that great people do. He just said "You could be you here. That's okay. I love you." And it's like wow, I know where he got it from. He got it from his own father. I grew up in his father's shul. I remember Rabbi Kairush, and he was first year basic maggid shiur yeshivah Rakhwey. He was the same guy. He didn't really change. It's just beautiful. People create beautiful spaces where people feel securely attached. Yeah. That they are. Is it important? Should they always know throughout their life that they're in a great environment? Even if it's challenging for them? Is this something important that they should learn a lot? I think we can communicate that. I think it's a wonderful thing to say to our kids. You know that this is a place where you can always be yourself, where you're always going to be cared for, where you're always going to be loved. I think absolutely we can communicate that. But when I say communicated, I don't just mean to say it Communication is so much more than verbal.

59:39 Covert communication is as important as overt communication. If our kids don't know that they're in a safe environment, we should also be asking ourselves the question: Why don't they know that? What's missing in the environment that they don't know that? Last question ever. What are you doing? I don't understand the answer. When she's done, she wants to. First of all, I. Yeah. I think it's. It's also important. Clearly It's true. It's also important to know that. And I don't come home at six thirty. And on Thursday nights, I don't come home till one. I get the problem. First of all, I think it's okay to be done. And I really want to say that because And I don't mean just say that in the sense that I'm going to validate your experience. I think it's really understandable. In the same way that I want you to give the gift of understanding to your children, I would want you to give that gift to yourself.

1:00:45 It's understandable that with everything you have going on, you could be done. You could reach that point of exhaustion where there's no more bokalach left in that bag, even the miraculous bokalach or not. I also would want to tell you to give yourself some grace when you do mess up. Because maybe you did snap at your child and say something you're not proud of. Or behave in a way in your home that is not in self. That's understandable, and I think that homes are not meant to be places of perfection. In fact, if anything, being an imperfect mother is an awesome opportunity to teach your children that we're okay with imperfection. We're not trying to be perfect. We're just trying to be as best as we can. We're trying to show up to life in a healthy and an adult fashion. But it's okay to make mistakes, and it's also okay to apologize to your children.

1:01:33 When we do make mistakes, that's an amazing lesson to give them. I don't mean to suggest that the answer is don't get to that stage. I would encourage you to do things in your life that are going to help you not get to that stage. But I know that some of that is impossible. I know that the reality is that the men may not be getting home at 6:30, as you said. And how could I possibly wake up at 6:30 in the morning and go to sleep at 11:30 at night and be a human being on main wine and coffee like it's not. It's not a healthy way of being. My only point is, and I think it's an important one. This is not working So when something is not working We can sit there and rail against the fact that it's not working, or we can do our best to make whatever incremental changes we can in the system.

1:02:22 My wife and I are so glad that she did this, and it was not easy at all. We just made a wedding. It was very taxing on her. There was a women's retreat. Where was it too? Do you remember? Somewhere like in Spain, Portugal. And she went for a week. And it was not cheap. But it was part of the cost of the wedding. That's like the wedding was so ridiculous anyway. It doesn't matter. Do you think? But that's important. And the truth of the matter is, I think anybody who's in Chinuch knows that we're killing ourselves to be whatever we can. I have to drive out to New Jersey tomorrow because I have a Briss first thing in the morning of an alumni, then I have a full day of interviews. I'm speaking tomorrow at Stern. I have a full day of interviews on Thursday, and I'm flying out at five o'clock on Thursday night. I'm also a schmata.

1:03:13 The summers are a time to rejuvenate, if you can. It's like you have to do whatever you can to rejuvenate. Again, I'm not saying this is the absolute answer. I'm saying that this thing where we're burning the candle at both ends, that's for sure not working. So whatever we can do to mitigate that problem, I think is helpful. Thank you so much for coming in.