One of the dynamics that pushed me away from official chinuch shitahs (parenting methods) and thrust me into Hashem’s Arms was the increasingly obvious irrelevance of my own skills and shitahs in parenting.
 
In other words, any success I’ve had has more to do with mazal than any effort or bowling-ball-juggling I’ve done.

Meaning, God did it. Not me.

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't succeed.
 
(“Mazal” is Divinely ordained destiny or Divinely ordained “luck” which can still be changed through certain acts, like moving to a different location, changing your name, changing your deeds for the better, giving tzedakah, and prayer.)

For example, when one son was around fourteen, he came home one day in a strange, discomfiting mood.

Without looking me in the eye, he stated that he no longer believed in God because he just discovered that everything started with a Big Bang.
 
Ironically, I was thrilled. Though he’d reached the wrong conclusion, I took it as a sign that he was starting to really think about things. Furthermore, everything I’d learned over the years, both in science and Judaism, had prepared me for this moment. I’d always read about those off-the-derech kids who had questions, but no one to ask.

But here I was—the kind of parent you could ask! And I had answers!
 
Yet to my dismay, he wasn’t interested in talking to me about it.
 
“But I can explain this!” I said to him. “Let’s sit down and hash it all out. Ask me anything!”
 
He just shook his head.
 
With all my enthusiasm and reading, there was one thing that had never come up: Children don’t necessarily consider their parent the “expert” that the parent may feel him- or herself to be.

Meaning, by the very fact that you are “Mommy,” you may be automatically disqualified from being taken seriously about certain topics, no matter how qualified you actually may be. It depends.
 
At that moment, his younger brother walked in. This younger brother is a year-and-a-half younger than the older brother and they grew up like twins in every way and to this day, still have a very special bond together.
 
“What’s going on?” said Younger Brother.
 
Older Brother told him.
 
Younger Brother’s face broke into a friendly grin and he burst out laughing. “Oh, come on! You don’t really believe that, do you?”
 
Older Brother shrugged and mumbled something, but something in his face changed—a hint of relief, maybe hope. He plopped down on a bimba (those toy riding cars for kindergartners) and started rolling back and forth on it. The younger brother plopped down on another bimba and also started rolling back and forth.
 
In contrast, my conditioning was wagging its finger in my mind and saying things like, “You’re not supposed to laugh at and make fun of people when they come to you with existential questions! And we don’t rock on little plastic riding cars while discussing God’s Existence; we sit at a table with coffee and conduct a proper discussion!”
 
But my personal irrelevance in this matter was so obvious, I decided to honor it by keeping my lips zipped and taking a seat quietly on the side to watch the unfoldings.
 
“Oh, come on!” laughed Younger Brother. “Spit it out! Tell me whatever nonsense you've heard!”
 
Older Brother told him, still mumbling.
 
Younger Brother, still laughing, mocked the concept, using humor and logic, while encouraging Older Brother to keep talking it out.
 
As the discussion went on, Older Brother started brightening and straightening up. Instead of mumbling, he directly challenged Younger Brother.
 
(This was a good sign because it meant that he was realizing that atheism really had no leg to stand on and he no longer needed to fear the doubts these atheistic theories planted within him.)
 
So the exchange continued like this, with Older Brother putting it all on the table and Younger Brother laughing (doubled over at times), good-naturedly jeering, and retorting with compelling refutations.
 
And they rocked and rolled on the bimbas the entire time.
 
Finally, Older Brother was convinced and he rose up off his bimba with a refreshed state of mind: There is a God. All the kofrim and their heresies are a total joke that even a seventh-grader can refute. All is well. Life can continue as it was.
 
And it all had nothing to do with me.

I wasn't a good mother. I was just a lucky mother. And that's all.

I didn’t plan to have my oldest children so close together, nor was I able to make them two boys with such contrasting yet extremely compatible personalities, nor did I create the kind of mind Younger Brother possesses, nor did I create the exact timing of this conversation that enabled Younger Brother to jump in at just the right moment.

Indeed, just the bare fact that Older Brother chose to say anything about his new issue at all is total mazal and had nothing to do with anything I could possibly do.

Some kids keep these doubts to themselves and you never know.
 
In other words, my skills, bright ideas, perceived approachability, and shitahs proved completely irrelevant in the moment of truth.
 
God took over. And good thing He did, because otherwise, things might have turned out very badly.

For example:

• What if Older Brother hadn’t said anything to anyone about his true doubts?
• What if there was no almost-twin brother?
• Or what if there was an almost-twin brother, but they weren’t close?
• And what if there was an almost-twin brother and they were close, but the almost-twin brother didn’t laugh and jeer in the right way? Or did laugh and jeer, but Older Brother didn’t respond well to the laughing and jeering?
• Or what if Younger Brother, rather than laughing and jeering and refuting, suddenly found his own faith shaken by the Big Bang Theory?

 
See what I mean?
 
At the end of the day, the shitahs matter very little.
 
I know many parents who are better parents than (or equally as flawed as) my husband and I, yet they face worse problems with their kids and face problems with several of their kids.

I also know parents who are much worse than us and their kids are turning out with really good middot and frumkeit.
(Maybe some psychological issues, too, but overall, they’re turning out well.)
 
The above exchange is one of many incidences that helped convince me that going according to all these chinuch shitahs (secretly based on pop psychology, BTW) doesn’t guarantee a darn thing. They don’t even necessarily help.

Looking around, I see people following these shitahs to the letter and still having serious problems with their kids. (And feeling battered and frustrated from all the "experts" and shitahs...)
 
Personally, I ran myself into the ground following these shitahs.

And what was the result? I just came away from them with worsening behavior in my children and feeling like I was this profoundly hopeless failure as a mother.

And what good is all that?
 
To really be a good parent, I discovered that one needs to shove one's own ego aside (in a different way than the chinuch experts advise, BTW) and bring Hashem all the way into the picture.
 
The “me,” with whatever skills or traits I have, is actually not so relevant in my child’s life. I’m just a shaliach.
 
Hashem put all our souls together in a certain pattern within specific roles within a particular family unit to enable us to interact and rectify ourselves and each other in a certain way. That’s it in a nutshell.
 
However, our prayers and our own teshuvah are very important and relevant, as are the prayers and teshuvah of all parents for their children.
 
And that’s why I really, really encourage people to turn to Hashem in a very real and open way regarding their children. You know, to just try and see what messages Hashem is giving you via your children, what you need to work on in yourself, and just begging Him for assistance.
 
You can’t set up your child’s life in the way most conducive for that child’s spiritual growth and character development.
 
Only God can do that.

What is “Survivor’s Pride”?
 
It’s when a victim rises up after his or her trauma and says:

“I will NOT be like my abuser!"

"I will not give into my baser nature!"

"I will be different!”

"I will be better!"
 
Survivor’s Pride is the scaling tool victims need to pry themselves out of their pit of trauma and break a possible pattern of abuse.

Well-intended people develop Survivor's Pride after:

• childhood abuse
• coming out of a sick society
• recovering from a traumatic incident
• suffering bullying
• workplace dysfunction
• a terrible teacher
• any number of traumatic experiences

It is also the main way survivors of family abuse become good spouses and parents.

So initially, Survivor's Pride is a GOOD thing.
 
In modern psychology, Survivor’s Pride is seen as a goal of sorts. This is because it’s so necessary and effective in breaking out of trauma and a cycle of abuse.
 
However, it’s like any other form of medication or propulsion.

For example, large doses of vitamin C may be necessary to cure a disease.
Some kind of anesthesia may be necessary to go through surgery.
Pressing the trigger mechanism of a gun propels a bullet out in self-defense, saving your life.

Similarly, an intense dose of Survivor’s Pride may be necessary to propel the person out of the effects of trauma.

But to keep running on Survivor’s Pride eventually leads to what I call “Survivor’s Pitfall.”
 
If a person continues to take large doses of vitamin C beyond what healing dictates, daily anesthesia without surgery, or holds a gun that never stops firing, then their quality of life basically ends.

They end up hurting themselves (or others).

When I was around 7-months pregnant with our first child, my husband and I spent Shabbat as guests in the home of a couple with one five-year-old named “Gitty.”

The mother was a highly intelligent medical professional with an assertive personality.

At one point, Gitty decided she wanted to walk around the table using the seats in which we were sitting. Without further ado, she squeezed her foot into the miniscule space between my husband’s back and the chair’s back, and hoisted herself up.

Startled, my husband scooted forward to give her enough room. (He wasn't comfortable getting all assertive and confrontational with a 5-year-old girl.) She shuffled across his seat, then stretched out her foot to mine. Not wanting to get into a confrontation with the hostess with whom we were trapped for the rest of Shabbat (and who was sitting there pretending not to notice while a satisfied little smile played about her lips) or knock the child off-balance (she was stretched between the two chairs), I also scooted forward.
 
The child made a couple of rounds like this (with my husband growing more and more appalled and me feeling increasingly victimized) before her father noticed and told her to stop while subtly shooting his wife a frown and a muttered inquiry. (Apparently, he felt his wife should have picked up on the daughter’s behavior first because his wife was sitting directly across from and facing us while he was at the head of the table, off to the side.)

“Oh!” said the wife with obvious delight and just as obviously fake surprise. “Come here, Gitty, and sit next to me!” she said pleasantly.
 
Would you do this to your Shabbat guests?

Is that how you treat a pregnant lady?
 
And how do you think my husband felt as the girl placed the dusty soles of her shoes on the bottom back of his Shabbat suit while forcing him to eat on the edge of his chair? How do you think a 7-months pregnant woman feels forced to sit on the edge of a hard chair while eating?
 
And why was this intelligent, assertive, cultured woman behaving this way?
 
Well, I know this woman’s parents and I also know a bit about how she grew up, and her behavior is SO COMMON in people who grew up with...physically abusive parents.

Survivor's Pride goes something like this:

• As an abused child, she realized that constantly threatening or hitting one’s children with a belt is really bad and unnecessary. (This is the first step in Survivor’s Pride and is often experienced at a very young age.)

 

• She resolved not to do it as a parent. (This is the second step.)

 

• But at some point, she realized that she possibly could repeat this terrible behavior herself and needs to actively prevent it. (This is the third step.) Either she saw anger in herself and/or she came across that tired old psych-notion that people who suffered abuse are quite likely to become abusers themselves.

Note: 80% of people abused as children do NOT become abusive parents.
They DON’T.
Yes, abusers were themselves abused. That’s true. Behind every abuser is some kind of abuse. Victimizers were previously victims at one point.
That’s the 20%.
But it doesn’t mean that victims eventually become abusers themselves. The vast majority don’t.
So if you were abused, do you have a higher chance of becoming an abuser yourself?
Yes, you could become one of that 20%.
But it’s much more likely that you’ll be one of the 80%.

Modern psychology has ingrained this idea that if you’ve suffered abuse, it’s like being bitten by a werewolf:

• You’ve been infected and now you’re going to turn into a monster.

Not true.

But because this notion has been flung around so often for so long, people believe in it.

Because any honest self-aware person sees ugly attributes in him- or herself which, if left unbridled, could lead to becoming abusive, people take this notion to heart.

Consequently, it makes people very afraid of their own self, causing them to spend their lives walking on inner eggshells so as not to awaken the monster they’re convinced is secretly inside.  

I’ve seen this more times than I can count.

Anyway, back to this particular woman (and many other survivors of abuse):

• She waits for trigger situations to occur.

(Trigger situations are those that her parents responded to with physical abuse. It could be spilled milk, a dawdling child, a hyperactively overtired child, a crying child, or anything else.)

• And when she’s finally a mother and she finds herself in those same trigger situations and she responds differently (yet another step of Survivor’s Pride), she feels great.
  

• She has overcome her upbringing! Yay! She really IS different than her abusive parents! She has broken the cycle! Her kids are going to be better, too! She did it! Woo-hoo!

And yes, she feels very accomplished. She is soooo proud of herself.

So that’s Survivor’s Pride and how it works.

The problem is that Survivor’s Pride is exactly that: pride.
Gaavah.
Chazal very clearly and repeatedly tell us that God cannot be in the same space as a gaavtan, as one who experiences pride.
(God can’t be in the same space as a liar or flatterer, either.)

In fact, gaavah is so problematic while humility is so ideal that mussar books almost always dedicate entire chapters to either gaavah or humility...or even to both.

In the above example with Gitty's mother, it looks like our hostess was kind of sadistic, right? She’s obviously enjoying our discomfort. She enjoys using her child to torment her helpless guests.

Right?

Nope, that’s not what was going on.

Usually, people in the grip of Survivor’s Pride disassociate a bit.
 
In a trigger situation, they hyperfocus on themselves.

It becomes all about them: their reaction, their victory, their proof of having overcome their “programming” and keeping their imagined inner monster at bay.
 
And while they will say—and sincerely believe—that they are acting in their child’s best interests, it’s just not true.

Yes, they very much want to act in their child's best interests. But at some point, the Pride in Survivor's Pride gets in their way.

At that moment, they are disassociated and their child isn’t really there.
Neither is anybody else.
 
Suddenly, it’s all about them.

"Permissive parenting" isn't the same thing as operating in Survivor's Pride Mode.

Yes, some permissive parents are responding to strict or repressive childhoods.
But in contrast, permissive parents...

• usually don’t really care about their children
• aren’t ever really thinking about them.
• may be unconsciously angry at their children, and so leave them to their own devices.
• can be passive-aggressives who allow their children to act out the parents’ aggressions and annoy the wits out of other people.

 
In contrast, parents acting on Survivor’s Pride think about their children all the time, even obsessively. They are willing to go to great lengths to do whatever they think is best for their children regardless of time, costs, efforts, or anything else.
 
Parents functioning within Survivor’s Pride are constantly competing against the memories of their own parents AND against their own imagined inner monster.

They often don’t realize how foolish or irresponsible they look to outsiders.
They often imagine that observers are secretly amazed at or admiring of their supernatural patience.

I once watched as a mother shuffled around the house with her 12-year-old son attached to her.

He held on to the back of her shirt and didn’t let go. She couldn’t walk normally or faster than he allowed. He continued to hold on even as his mother bent over to pick up a toddler or needed to do things in the kitchen. He wore a foolish smile the whole time and she had that same self-satisfied little smile I saw on the mother of Gitty in the above example.

(Mothers operating under Survivor’s Pride always wear this same little smile when they disassociate in the face of their child's challenging behavior.)

Now, I found this very hard to watch. Personally, I would be going out of mind if one of my kids had attached himself to me—and such an episode wouldn’t last more than a second by me—so it was very difficult to watch it for so long.

But I knew how she'd grown up with a very rage-filled, abusive father and a detached mother, and I understood what was going on in her mind. She was gliding around in the joy and satisfaction of knowing how her parents would've responded to such a child and how much more tolerant and patient she was as a parent. (She'd expressed this kind of thinking on several occasions before.) She was high on the pride of being mitgaber (overcoming a negative character trait).

After her son finally detached himself, she turned to me with a glowing smile.

“Your son is very attached to you, isn’t he?” I said for lack of a better thing to say.

“Oh, he is!” she enthused, bursting with pride and an ear-splitting grin.
 
Well, she and her husband ended up having some unbearably challenging issues with this same child—and some of their other children too. And the challenges just kept going on and on.
 
I’ve seen this with a lot of Survivor’s Pride-oriented parents.
 
That self-satisfied little smile while their kids are going bonkers or screaming or acting like jerks...or while the Survivor's Pride Parent is slaving away, cooking up an exhaustive meal or performing intensive cleaning while sick or about to go into labor.
 
And so on.
 
There are different manifestations of Survivor’s Pride (it depends on what they interpret as the root problem in their dysfunctional family), but as long as they’re operating under Survivor’s Pride, they’re not really focused on what their child needs.
 
While in Survivor’s Pride Mode, the focus is on the parent’s needs.
 
And this will always lead to problems because in chinuch, the focus must be on the child.
And a parent must strive to give that child whatever the child actually needs (not wants, but needs), no matter how challenging that is for the parent.

And you can’t do that while you’re in Survivor’s Pride Mode.

You want to. You're a good person and you really want to give your child what he or she truly needs.

But believe me, you ultimately can't as long as you're cocooned in Survivor's Pride.
 
Even more importantly, God isn’t really with you at that moment that you’re feeling sooo proud of yourself for (yet again!) overcoming your childhood.

If God isn’t really with you, then you can’t have siyata d’Shmaya in raising your child.
_________________
So just to be clear: Survivor’s Pride is a great and necessary tool.

It really is wonderful that you're overcoming your trauma and negative programming.
 
God created Survivor's Pride for your benefit, just like He created vitamin C, anesthesia, and gun triggers.
 
Yet eventually, you need to wean yourself off of it.
 
But how?

The most effective antidote to pride is the acknowledgement of God’s Involvement in every single thing.
 
If you’ve managed to overcome trauma and abuse, it’s because of God’s Compassion toward you. It’s because of His Great Love for you.

It's a sign that God has big plans for you.

You wanted something good—to be a better person than you were raised to be—and Hashem happily helped you along that chosen path.
 
Even more, He imbibed you with that good desire in the first place.
 
In Instilling Humility in Children, Sarah Chana Radcliffe recommends taking pleasure rather than pride in one’s accomplishments.
 
And that sounds about right.
 
Judaism emphasizes joy. God wants you to be happy.
 
So if you accomplish something, it’s very important to say “Baruch Hashem!”
Thank God!
Thank You, God, for enabling me to be different than my parents.
Thank You, God, for enabling me to better.
Thank You, God, for enabling me to achieve my goals.
I feel soooo happy!
I guess You must really like me a lot.
After all, I see that You don’t do this for everyone. You didn’t do it for my parents, for example.
But You’ve done it for me. Wow. Gosh…well, I love You too. Thanks!
 
I felt like I needed to say all this because I’ve seen too many good people stumble while trying their best and juggling all those bowling balls thrust on them by well-meaning Survivor’s Pride.

And these very good people are really suffering as a result.

I hate suffering.

I hate suffering myself and I hate to see other people suffering, especially if they don't really have to.

So to sum up:

• Hitgabrut (Overcoming)? Yes, 100% YES.
• Pride? No.

After the initial boost of Survivor’s Pride, the survivor must switch into Gratitude-Based Survivor’s Pleasure in order to continue the path of becoming an emotionally healthy person and a truly good parent.

The path to Survivor's Pleasure:

• Acknowledge your accomplishments - they're real!
• Take pleasure in your accomplishments.
• Thank God for all the good things you're managing to accomplish.
• Remember: Hashem really loves you and wants you to be both happy and good.

Well, I hope this helps.

It occurred to me that my recent chinuch/parenting posts may seem to be contradicting themselves.
 
On one hand, I very much support Rav Shalom Arush’s Chazal-based recommendation to use your issues with your children as your mirror. For example, if your child is rebelling, then examine your heart and deeds to see whether you are rebelling against Hashem in some small way.

This requires self-introspection and a willingness to look at the less-than-wonderful parts of yourself. (Knowing all the while that regardless of what you find, Hashem still loves you very much.)

On the other hand, I criticize many current chinuch methods precisely because they are so nitpicky against parents (particularly mothers). They apply invasive scrutiny to the parents in an effort to dig out what the parents are “doing wrong” so as to correct the parents’ behavior and thus, correct the child’s behavior.
On the surface, both seem to require a great deal of scrutiny and are critical of the parent, blaming the parent for the child’s behavior.

So what’s the difference?

First of all, when someone else is scrutinizing you, you are subject to all their biases, regardless of how objective they mean to be.

These biases can be based on your cultural or ethnic background, on their instinctive impressions regarding your personality (do they have preconceived notions of quiet bookish people or of fun-loving extroverted people?), on your behaviors (which might be innocent or even good, but press the “trigger” of whomever you are consulting), and so on.

This is true across the board. And I’m no exception either.

But when you ask Hashem to help you figure out what you need to work on in yourself, as reflected by your child’s behavior, you are more likely to get the correct answer.

Unlike human beings, Hashem has no prejudices against different backgrounds and ethnicities, He doesn’t get “triggered” due to previous bad experiences, and does not prefer one personality type over another—He made them all Himself.

Best of all, Hashem is All-Seeing and All-Knowing, which your chinuch adviser is not.

Have you ever had someone tell you the truth about yourself—but you just couldn’t hear it?

I have.

And I’ve seen others have this, too.

Even if the messenger delivered the message compassionately, something inside you just couldn’t let it through.

You weren’t ready, it wasn’t explained in the way you needed at that time, their delivery was all wrong for you, the splicing pain of the message overwhelmed the message itself—or whatever.

Sometimes, the messenger is mostly right, but the truth of the message is wrapped in that person's misconceptions about you and your situation, making it hard to dissect what you need to keep and what you need to discard.

But when you ask God for the message, you tend to get it in the “tone” and “nusach” that you need. You also get the right amount, not so little that you dismiss it and not so much that you feel overwhelmed by it.

Also, Hashem is Truly Loving. He loves you more than you love yourself, more than anyone else could ever love you. So you are getting the message without any ulterior motives or misconceptions on the part of the other person.

Just Love.

This is a huge boon to teshuvah and becoming the best you can be:
Your flaws and faults and bad character traits are all FROM HASHEM.

They aren’t “you.”

No matter how many time you were called to task based on a particular flaw, no matter whether you were nicknamed “The Terminator,” no matter your high school class voted you “Most Obnoxious” in your graduation yearbook, and no matter how obvious this flaw is…it isn’t you.

It isn’t your fault.

Hashem put it there.

Either He designated you to be born with it OR He designed you to respond to certain life events (as chosen by Him) by developing those particular flaws (again, flaws chosen by Him).

These flaws and the process of rectifying these particular flaws are The Reason you exist in this lifetime.

This is critically important.

(I need to constantly remind myself of this, too.)

When a chinuch adviser starts picking you or your spouse apart to figure out what you’re “doing wrong” that is causing your child to behave however he or she is behaving, it is ends up being this critical, shame-inducing, nitpicky negative spiral that never seems to end.

When you do it with Hashem, it becomes objective. It’s no longer about you and whatever the chinuch adviser or “experts” or pet psychological theory thinks is wrong, but what needs to be polished up according to The One Who Created You and Your Problem in the First Place.

You are now looking at a beautiful and pristine diamond (you!) that merely has a piece of gunk (your flaw) wedged between its sparkling edges, whose gunk simply needs to be carefully carved out so that the beautiful and pristine diamond can regain its original exquisiteness.

In this sense, your child’s problems are not your fault.

Your child’s problems are not your child’s fault either.

Even if your child’s problems are your fault—maybe you were indeed abusive, which drove your child into self-destructive or criminal behavior—it’s all set up by Hashem for you to fix as best you can.

And you can.

It can be horribly humiliating to have another person point out your flaws, even if they do so nicely and lovingly.

It depends what that flaw is, but when dealing with deep-seated flaws being reflected at you by your children’s behavior, it can be pretty cringe-inducing.

Yet Hashem already knows all about you. He SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED you with those flaws, whether you were born with them or whether you developed them in reaction to life events. Either way, that was His Plan. So He knows. It’s you who is in denial of certain negative aspects within yourself, not Him.

So no need to hide it all from Him...just bare your soul!

When you consult with a person, admitting your flaw (if, between the two of you, you’ve even honed in on the correct “flaw”) is merely half the battle.

(Or sometimes, it’s only the first baby step in an endless number of baby steps.)

At that point, you and the adviser often feel the need to sketch out a plan of action (which often needs to be re-evaluated and amended—repeatedly). This plan may or may not be effective. It can even be harmful.

But with Hashem, it depends.

Sometimes, just acknowledging your flaw (especially if it was gruelingly cringingly excruciating to acknowledge) sparks an immediate change in your child’s behavior.
Sometimes Hashem does most of the work, sometimes you do, sometimes it’s equally hand-in-Hand—whatever.

He’ll let you know how much you need to do beyond the Confession part of things.

But regardless of what path you’re supposed to journey on now, the mere act of acknowledging your flaw to Hashem sparks a powerful process that can’t happen any other way.

Hope that clarifies things.

For a concrete step-by-step example of how this process works, please see Chinuch and Cheshbon Hanefesh: How It Works.

May we all succeed in raising our children and ourselves to polish our diamonds to perfection.

So far, this blog has posted a lot on the faults within the chinuch framework as far as parents go, and the failings of classes and consultations to help (or to help as much as you need, even if they do help you some), despite the adviser's experience, hard work, and best of intentions.

You may be wondering what a chinuch class based on actual Torah hashkafah, without any pop psychology disguised as Torah, might look like.

So...we've discussed emuna, emuna as it relates to chinuch (raising children), self-introspection and teshuvah, prayer, the vital importance of developing a relationship with Hashem, and so on.

For example:

• We know that Rebbe Nachman of Breslov emphasized dancing to sweeten din and that the Kli Yakar explained that singing and dancing (especially after a miracle was performed for you) leads to Heavenly Forgiveness of sins (please see Parshat Beshalach and scroll down two-thirds to the photo of the Reed Sea).
• We know that thanking Hashem for both the good and the bad brings great blessing and compassion.
• We know that being in a state of joy is essential for receiving Divine Blessing.
• We know that a lot of chinuch methods don’t really work OR don’t work for everyone.
• We know that many commonplace self-improvement systems and chinuch methods, including those that have been frumified, still contain a non-Torah root and therefore miss crucial points.
• We know that many chinuch classes and consultations with chinuch experts can leave you feeling bad about yourself, overwhelmed, frustrated, confused, or despairing.
• We know that prayer is more effective than anything else.
• We know that any ordeal in life should inspire us to scrutinize our deeds, confess our mistakes and sins to Hashem, and make amends however possible.

 
But maybe you still feel that you need some kind of class or support group while you’re raising your children—and legitimately so. It's only human to feel that way.

Therefore, if an effective chinuch class was truly based on Torah sources, then what would it look like?

It could look something like this:

This could mean:

• The fervent reading of one chapter of Tehillim, particularly one with a lot of Hallelukas or Hodus ("Hodu l'Hashem ki Tov - Praise God for He is Good!") or one of the many other praising/thanking chapters.
  
• Each person takes a turn expressing gratitude for at least one obviously good thing: “Thank God, my baby is healthy.”
• Each person takes a turn expressing gratitude for at least one obviously negative thing: “Thank God, the baby woke up every two hours last night; yes, of course, I feel like sludge, but I know that somehow, getting up every two hours is for my best and therefore, something to be grateful for.”
• You all could sing a song in English, like “Baruch Hashem, I feel so good” or a Sephardi piyut or a Chassidic niggun.
• You could say all together, “I love You, Hashem.”
• A combination of the above
• Your own idea

This could be carried out in any of the following ways:

• Someone relates an inspiring story (either the facilitator every time or the participants take turns each week)
  
• Someone talks about something that happened with their child and what message they got out of it (again, either the facilitator or the participants)
• Someone talks about something with which they’re stuck regarding their child, and the facilitator and/or participants ask helpful questions direction or mention a similar situation they experienced and what they learned from it, or some other kind of helpful support. (This kind of thing can be pretty sensitive and backfire, so it depends on the group and the facilitator as to whether this is actually a good idea.) This should always been done in a validating, positive manner that emphasizes the positive attributes of the mother and the child.
  
• A combination of the above
  
• Your own idea

Group prayer is very powerful, especially when carried out with a lot of heartfelt sympathy for whomever you're praying.
This part of the hour can play out in any of the following ways:

• Everyone can pray for everyone else in the group now via Tehillim, bakashot, special prayers written for success in raising children, or personal requests.
• Someone can make the declaration that they’re about to dance to sweeten tzaar gidul banim (the difficulties inherent in child-rearing), and then everyone can break out into the hora.
• You all can dance with your hands up in the air and clapping.
• You can call out each other’s names in prayer while dancing, i.e. “May the following people have nachat d’Kedushah from all their children: Sorah Rivka bas Ruchel Leah! Oreet bat Doreet!" Etc.
• A combination of the above
• Your own idea

________________
It doesn’t matter much what order things are done, as long as gratitude and praise to Hashem are offered first.

Fathers can also get together and do this.

The above are just suggestions.
Anything based on authentic Torah principles should work.

May Hashem pour forth tremendous blessings and success in all your chinuch endeavors.

At this point, if you haven't noticed already, I’m admittedly cynical regarding chinuch “experts.”

I don’t deny their sincerity or dedication in helping children and parents.

But…

• Many of them are stuck on one kind of idea and can’t see around it.
• Too many of them base their methods on Western psychology: shooting the arrow of psychology first and then later drawing a Torah bull’s eye around its tip.
• Many of them have their method, their way of doing things and seeing things, and they can’t see beyond that.
• Furthermore, many have been teachers (meaning that they obviously enjoy spending LOTS of time disciplining and interacting with children) and don’t seem to understand that other people would never voluntarily spend their days in a room full of 20 third-graders or 30 ninth-graders.

What I mean to say is that parents may love their children a lot, but may not be at all inclined to relate to them in the way the former teacher/chinuch expert relates to children—for better or for worse. (Good teachers are sometimes terrible parents.)
______________
I also can’t help noticing that many of chinuch people utilize methods that indulge their particular personality. If they’re high-energy multi-taskers, then the method calls on you to be a high-energy multi-tasker. If they tend to be emotionally detached, then the method calls on you to be emotionally detached.

How convenient!

Furthermore, the personality of the husband is never taken into account in any serious way. The father and how he relates to both his wife and children results in an undeniable impact on the home, for better or for worse. In this respect, mothers who attend chinuch classes are often related to as if they’re widows.

But most of all, one family is way too different from another to successfully follow one kind of shitah.

Example #1: The Serene & Lovely Family
I used to love watching a mother and her three little girls walking down the street. They all wore flowing summer dresses (including the gracefully pregnant young mother) and matching straw hats. The little girls were so well-behaved, the mother didn’t need to hold their hands (except for the youngest) as they glided along the sidewalk (unlike me, who practically needed to chain my boys to myself to prevent them from darting into the path of oncoming cars). The young mother had a naturally serene personality, a kind and loving husband, and they owned their own apartment and could afford household help to boot.

Example #2: The Bursting-at-the-Seams Family
Within the same neighborhood lived another family with 5 kids. This family consisted of a gang of 3 boys and a girl who were all energetic, adventuresome, fearless, diagnosed with ADHD, and were great friends who helped each other into and out of many scrapes. At the tail end of the siblings was the kind of highly sensitive emotionally intense little girl whom many parents find even more difficult to deal with than a hyperactive child. Due to poor finances, the family lived in an apartment too small for their needs. The father thought his children (except for one) were just awful and consequently had no patience for them, blaming his struggling wife for many of the problems. In addition to the in-home struggles, the mother also had to deal with routine phone calls from the school complaining of the boys’ disruptive behavior and from other parents who politely requested that her son not play with their son anymore.
___________________
Does any rational person really think that you can give over to each of these mothers the same advice and same method and expect it all to work?

Yet you’ll have these two types of mothers sitting in the same chinuch class, listening to the same advice and receiving the same guidance.

And yes, I fully realize that chinuch people do acknowledge that there are very different situations and personalities, and that raising boys is different than raising girls (I’m not talking easier or harder; that goes according to individual—but it is different), and so on.
But tachlis, those running a chinuch class have a very hard time practically applying this knowledge.

Ultimately, the point is that when people tell you that they highly recommend a chinuch method, you really need to question it.

(Note: These questions are mostly for yourself. I don't think people should go around whacking other people over the head, so I don't recommend that you directly ask people these questions. Many chinuch instructors and advisers either aren’t aware of the real history behind their methods or cling to certain methods and ideas for unconscious and personal reasons. As a result, they’ll find some of these questions threatening rather than enlightening, and will likely just feel attacked.)

• What is the exact philosophy of this method?

 

• Where did it come from?

 

• What is the method in a nutshell? (Be alert if the answer is that you need to actually sign up and attend months of classes to find out because it’s just not explainable in a nutshell. Bogus. For example, I can say that Rav Arush’s method is basically to use the child’s problematic behavior as message from Hashem regarding what you need to work on in yourself. There’s a lot more to it than that—please read the book!—but that’s it in a nutshell. I can also state that I use this method constantly - and used it with some seriously thorny problems - and that it works.)

 

• Who says this is the authentic Torah view? (And I don’t mean the mere haskamah of a rav who hasn’t thoroughly reviewed the method because he is basing his haskamah on the recommendation of someone he trusts AND/OR on his impression of the proponent’s sincerity.) Did the approving rav sit down and thoroughly review the method?

 

• Who is the person behind the method? How old are they and where are they from? How did they come up with this shitah? (People—including experts—are more influenced by their culture and time than they’re often able to acknowledge.)

 

• What sources can they point to show that their method is based on Torah? (And again, I don’t mean the haskamah of a modern-day rav. I mean sources in Chazal.)

 

• (If there are claims that this is the Torah method used "pa'am"): If this is the authentic & most highly effective Torah method used by all Jews “pa’am,” then why did it not prevent the vast majority of Jews from becoming Communists, Reform Jews, or secular Leftists?
  

 

• What do you consider the father’s role in all this?

Well, I hope you found this helpful.
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Because so many people really do feel the need for a chinuch class and some guidance outside themselves and their own talks with Hashem, I'll be posting on what a chinuch class based on authentic Torah sources might actually look like. Stay tuned!

Despite the best of intentions, chinuch experts (for all their experience and expertise) can often miss the forest for the trees.

They have their own blind spots.

They may be very good people, good parents, and have good intentions.

But they definitely also miss things and focus on the wrong things.

For example, I know a couple with great shalom bayit.

They really like each other and they never fight. They talk to each other so nicely.

In fact, the wife once confided to me how grateful she was for her husband’s personality, describing him as a diamond and a gem, saying that she was afraid to share this with other people because she’s afraid of ayin hara.

Furthermore, they both have invested positively in their children’s chinuch since their first child was born.

Yet they have problems with some of their kids, and a couple of the problems are pretty severe.

Frustratingly, they struggle to get useful help from chinuch “experts.”

Because the frum world decided a few years ago that all spiritual problems emanated from a lack of shalom bayit in that child’s family, this couple has been relentlessly subjected to ever more intrusive probing and prying from well-meaning advisors to find the lack of shalom bayit that “must” be in there somewhere.

The root of the problem (and its solution) is elsewhere, and the parents need to a cheshbon hanefesh with Hashem in order to find it.

Yet all these advisers and experts cannot give up their elusive search for whatever Holy Grail is currently in style (like the supposed shalom bayit issue) they’re convinced “must” be there.

But this elusive search sideswipes some basic truths:

• Parents are people.
• People can never be perfect.
• Only God is Perfect.
• Therefore, parents never will be.

 
And all this scrutinizing, delving, and obsessing ultimately will not solve anyone’s chinuch crisis. (Again, it can help. But it cannot solve.)

The problems come from Hashem and therefore, the answers are to be found with Him.
Going at chinuch from a spiritual angle is not easy or smooth or pain-free.

But it is most effective.

I've seen repeatedly that Hashem gave each parent the wisdom and insight necessary to raise each of their children.

So why do so many parents, especially mothers, insist on spending copious amounts of time and money on classes and consultations with chinuch advisers?

While it's true that even the best parent possesses some kind of blind spot (or even 10 blind spots) with regard to his or her children...but chinuch "experts" also have blind spots!

Furthermore, those blind spots are really for you as the parent to dig in and discover. Other people simply cannot help with that as much as is believed by the masses and the "experts."
 
And speaking of blind spots…

In private, chatty conversation with chinuch advisers, I’ve heard some very disturbing statements.

What do you think of a chinuch advisor who says:
“My husband isn’t so excited when I give birth to a girl. He’s a lot happier when I have a boy. And I understand him. I mean, with boys there are lots of mitzvot like the brit milah, learning Torah, and things like that. But really, what’s so special about a girl?”

(And before anyone starts crabbing about “Torah” attitudes toward women, the couple involved are from a highly educated secular Western background AND the Pele Yoetz, the Ben Ish Chai, the Chida, and Menekes Rivka all speak against that attitude as being  NOT Jewish.)

And that’s just one example.

Do you think that such a person can transmit successful Jewish chinuch in the authentic Torah spirit?
_____________________
Furthermore, I've either been told of or personally experienced so many incidents in which the "expert":

• insisted that the parent's evaluation of the situation was wrong when the parent was indeed right
• insisted that there was a specific problem, yet that "problem" didn't even exist for that particular family and was simply imagined by the "expert"
• identified the problem well enough, but recommended a solution that was all wrong
• treated earnest and desperate parents with disdain, condescension, or like aliens
• got way too controlling and involved past healthy limits
• displayed narrow thinking, like [THIS METHOD] is the "right" way and was unable to see when the parent has a different but equally good or even better way
• could not realistically understand the challenge of extenuating circumstances, like a difficult spouse, interfering family members, a problematic school, etc.
• seemed unable to offer chizuk or validation, but only condemnation and exhortations or, when pushed to the wall, a half-hearted, "Oh. Well, I guess that's okay...maybe..."
• seemed incapable of embracing different but equally good parenting styles and natures
• used cult-like scare tactics on the parents
• seemed unable to tell parents when they were doing something right, only when they were doing something wrong (or wrong in the "expert's" eyes, anyway...)
• projected too much of their own self into the method, i.e. if the "expert" is a highly energetic multi-tasker, than you must be too. Or if the "expert" easily disassociates and remains calm by nature, than you must also be that way. Or if the "expert" has an innately authoritative nature that makes children instinctively obey, then you must also, etc.
• WAY, WAY too much emphasis on fashionable theories and practical hishtadlut and techniques with only lip-service given to spiritual hishtadlut (This is the BIGGEST fault among chinuch people as far as I'm concerned)

Yes, of course a chinuch expert or course can help.

I have seen how much time and energy and good will chinuch people invest in helping parents and children.

But they only help. They aren't really able to do as much as believed.

Ironically, a lot of the time, the can harm or harm as much as they help, meaning that the harm and help run along in parallel lines.

Like a lot of people, I also used to leave a parenting class or book with the feeling that "NOW I know what to do! And I can do it!" And as long as I jumped exactly as impossibly high as the expert or book instructed, then yes, things often worked out well.

But if I missed an inch? Then...BAM! Splat.

The other really big problem with any kind of adviser (including rabbis and rebbetzins – but not gadolei hador) is that they have major “group sinat chinam” issues.
(This is even often true of psychologists and other types of therapists.)
Many are incapable of seeing past a person cultural or ethnic background. In contrast, if you talk to a regular Jew like your neighbor, the young mother sitting with you on the park bench, or your shaitel macher, they will usually treat you like...you.

But if you speak to some kind of authority, they often cannot see you, but only your group.

Interestingly, they never stereotype their own group, but only everybody else’s.

Yes, this is inconsistent.

So that means that if you are American and they aren’t, they will cram you into whatever stereotype they have about Americans and never let you budge from there, no matter how unlike that stereotype you actually are—and no matter how untrue that stereotype may be.

And they do this with every group.

For example, I’ve had British friends tell me that American or Israeli advisers told them that the problem with the British mother’s mothering is that she is cold because she is British.

Now this is weird to my mind because I know so many warm and loving British mothers. In fact, I get kind of envious of British children because I also want a mummy who says to me in that lovely lilting British voice filled with warmth: “Come here, my darling little precious Dassie!”

(It just doesn’t sound the same with an American accent, does it?)

In contrast, haven't we all seen that there are cold American mothers and cold Israeli mothers?

So if a British mother is cold, it is likely not because she is British but because of whatever reason that causes any mother to be cold toward her own children.
 
I can tell you a lot about this “group sinat chinam” phenomenon because my husband is frum from birth (non-chareidi frum) and I am not, my husband is Israeli and I’m American, my husband is Sephardi and I’m Ashkenazi, my husband is male and I’m female. (You think I’m just joking with the last, right? Nope. Sadly, there are rabbis and rosh yeshivahs who don’t much like women and rebbetzins who don’t much like men.)

So between the two of us, we’ve gotten whapped with stereotyping from all sides.
At this point, I don’t consult with ANYBODY in official capacity about ANYTHING. And I haven’t for years.

The last time I tried was over a decade ago and it was over the phone with a chinuch guy. One of the first questions he asked me was whether my husband was Sephardi and then he started stereotyping, and I realized that this guy would not be able to hear me or help me, so I politely got off the phone. Lucky for him it was over the phone, because at that point I was so fed up with this type of thing, I wanted to throttle him.
 
If I have a halachic question, I either call a qualified rav and speak with total anonymity omitting even the most superficial personal information (although I can’t hide my accent or gender) or my husband asks a qualified rav he knows who has the ability to see people as individuals even outside that rav’s own group.
 
But I digress.

There is massive denial about the impact of other factors in a child’s life.

Because of Western psychology and feminism, the mother’s role is seen as the be-all end-all in chinuch. However, reading Torah-based texts written by real tzaddikim shows that rabbinical Sages do not express this opinion.
In fact, they stress the importance of the father’s role.

Furthermore, the child’s school can have a greater impact on the child’s spiritual state (for better or for worse) than the parents, no matter how good (or bad) the parents are.

Other factors, like your child’s community (if problematic for that child), a traumatic experience, the family's financial situation, or a dysfunctional parent can also hurt the child’s attitude toward Torah.

For example, there are ex-spouses who are so nasty and abusive, the family suffers  as much or more than when the parents were still married.

This means that if you’re a mother whose husband does not do what he should as a father and husband, if your school does not give your child a genuine Torah chinuch (regardless of how “frum” the school is considered), and if your community is not good with person-to-person mitzvot, then you can be the most amazing mother on this side of the universe, and you can still have serious problems with your kids.

Most mothers hate to hear this. People have so little control over extenuating factors that many mothers cling to the false belief that if only they parent their children “right,” they can overcome all the other negative influences in their child’s life.
(They believe this because they've been fed a skewed populist interpretation of what the Gemara means when it refers to a woman as "ikeret habayit/mainstay of the home.")

It’s just not true. (Not necessarily, anyway. It CAN be true, but often isn’t.)

However, PRAYER can make all the difference. And by prayer, I mean self-introspective, heartfelt prayer in your own words. (Of course, you can say Tehillim, do 40 days of Perek Shira, and all the rest. It is all very helpful. But in serious situations, you also need to add cheshbon hanefesh and personal prayer in your own words.)

Prayer can transform an impossible situation into a successful situation.

Again, there are no guarantees. I'm not promising anything.

It's really all up to Hashem and what He has in mind for you as far as your soul rectifications go.

But Hashem slings trials our way to get us to turn to Him. Insisting on finding just the "right" shitah/method or just the "right" adviser runs contrary to turning to Hashem and is the opposite of what He wants and why He sent you the hardship in the first place.
 
And yes, chinuch “experts” do encourage parents to pray and engage in time-honored segulot. But at the same time, they also tend to scrutinize what the parents are doing “wrong” as far as their derech hateva hishtadlut and place enormous emphasis on methodology and practical “doing” (including medication, which is playing with fire, especially when you’re talking about children who are still developing).

Finally, one of the worst things you can do to a person is to take a way their hope.
There are many different kinds of marriages. Regarding shalom bayit problems, you have the following:

• One parent is very good and the other is very problematic
• One parent is kind of problematic and the other is very problematic
• Both parents are kind of problematic
• Both parents are very problematic.

 
So it’s like this:
IF a person is very problematic, no amount of counseling and theories and advice will get them to change.

And just telling one spouse that as long as they shut up and go along with the problematic spouse does not create shalom bayit, NOR is that a united front.
(It is, however, a good way to ensure that at least half the kids grow to resent and even hate that passive spouse.)

That is a cold peace, like what America had with the USSR, it's not shalom.

And according to today’s chinuch theories, any child growing up in the above situations is likely condemned to going off the derech.

Whichever spouse (usually the mother) is most pliable will be pressurized to perform heroic feats of parenting (as defined by whatever chinuch expert she consults) while at the same time constantly hear a message of despair, that no matter how hard she tries, her children just  won’t turn out well.

Only it’s not true.

Hashem decides, not us.

And not chinuch people.

That’s why I’m very, very pro turning all those efforts toward spiritual hishtadlut, like personal prayer and a self-accounting using your child’s undesirable behavior as your guide. 

God can turn around even the worst, most hopeless situation.

And that's the truth.

The minute I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I rushed out to read as many frum parenting books as I could. By the time I had two children, I enrolled in a frum parenting class approved by respected rabbis and rebbetzins that promised to give over authentic Torah parenting.

Like nearly all the other first-time mothers of my generation, whether FFB or not, there was no bar too high to jump. Bursting with idealism to raise our children perfectly and avoid the problems (especially like off-the-derech teens) we saw around us, we were ready to do ANYTHING we were told.

We saw the impossible as possible if only we would work hard enough and leap high enough for it.

And we did.

And one by one, we all fell, too.

And when I say “fall,” I mean to plummet from the highest heights to which we’d scaled to the bone and come crashing down to the rocky ground in a big gory splatter.

Every generation has its foibles and blind spots. Ours was b’kochi v’otzem yadai:
"with my own power and the strength of my own hands."

According to our observations, parents failed because they didn’t try hard enough, because they didn’t care enough, and because they didn’t invest enough in their kids. There is truth to this, especially in the generation that raised us, but it isn’t always true and even when it is, there’s often a lot more to the story than that.

So why, with all our idealism and resolve, with all those classes and books produced by experienced experts and stamped with the highest rabbinical approval, did so many of us plummet so miserably?

Because a large part of whatever their methods, techniques, and philosophies weren’t based on Torah principles as much as believed.

One of the things that rang a warning bell in my head was how so much of the chinuch methods portrayed as “based on Torah values” so strongly resembled the pop psychology I’d learned in college.

Yet when I tentatively brought this up with one chinuch expert, I got a rattled look, a shocked stammer, and then: “Well, maybe it looks that way, but really, it’s not. As psychology evolves, researchers discover Torah truths without realizing it. But they think they thought of it first.”

There is some truth to that, but not as much as many people like to think.

(Note: As long as psychology remains a Godless discipline, it will simply not be able to reach certain essential truths. And this means that total healing will ultimately be impaired.)

Yet the more I learned, the more I saw that much of so-called Torah chinuch was borrowing VERY heavily from both feminism and popular child psychology.

Just to be clear: I firmly believe that this was NOT done intentionally.

All the chinuch experts and advisers and professionals I've met or read impressed me as very sincere and are willing to invest a tremendous amount to help parents and their children.

Certain concepts simply feel right, so chinuch “experts” went with them.
The issue is why certain concepts feel right.
They might feel right for the wrong reason.
Or they might truly be right for one situation, but cause disaster in another.

Furthermore, when I brought up this unintentional "borrowing" with my fellow mommies, they responded by firmly shaking their heads before I even finished my sentence and said, “No. No, this is the real deal.” And they insisted that if whatever “expert” stated this was an authentic Torah principle of chinuch, then that was that. Even as I tried to suggest that the borrowing was accidental, I met with the same stonewall of denial.

Or there were those who admitted that yes, of course it was from pop psychology, but as long as it was cherry-picked by knowledgeable and respected frum people, then it was okay. (Sort of like what that expert told me above.) We were supposed to blindly trust these people.

So I quickly learned that questioning the foundation for the chinuch methods supposedly based on Torah was forbidden, both to the experts themselves and to their devotees.

Yet as the more I learned, the more I realized that what chinuch experts (unconsciously) often did was shoot an arrow at a wall, and then draw a target around the arrow, then point to it and say, “See? Bull’s eye!”

(Also, emunat tzaddikim/faith in completely righteous people is totally different than blindly trusting regular frum "experts" - even if those "experts" have rabbinical backing from some pretty big rabbis. Some frum people equate the two, and that's unfortunate. We can acknowledge that a rabbi or rebbetzin has expertise in an area, but it doesn't mean that they are always correct or without blind spots. In other words, it is not a virtue to blindly trust "experts.")
______________________________
Currently, a completely different method is sailing through the frum community.
And once again, its proponents claim that it’s based on authentic Torah values.
And once again, its proponents claim that it derived from the methods “shel pa’am” (“of yore” or “old-fashioned”).

Many of the same mothers with whom I attended chinuch classes and exchanged chinuch books have now gone ga-ga for this new method. Not coincidentally, this method shifts blame off the mother, while all the pop psychology-based methods the mothers have been inundated with until now heave a heavy burden of not-necessarily-deserved accountability on the mother.

(After having been constantly and relentlessly held solely responsible for their children's chinuch and resultant behavior, many mothers are famished for a method that relieves that awful unrelenting pressure, which was self-imposed, society-imposed, and "expert"-imposed.)

But the admittedly little I know of this method sounds similar to the method popular prior to Dr. Spock’s 1946 book—and that method was extremely problematic, as discussed in The Last 200 Years of Chinuch I: The Non-Jewish World, and NOT based on Torah, but produced by a few character-deficient doctors.

Torah-based chinuch cannot copy secular-based chinuch and succeed.

It’s just not the way God’s spiritual Physics work.

But as discussed in The Last 200 Years of Chinuch II: The Jewish World,
there is a problem when we talk about “pa’am”—which “pa’am” is meant?

The 1900s? The 1800s? The 1300s? Before the Destruction of the First Beit Hamikdash?
Is the it the pa’am of America in 1885? Of Germany in 1885? Or of Morocco in 1885? Despite them all being the same “pa’am” of 1885, both the Jewish and the non-Jewish communities were very different in each of those countries.

Finally, why oh why do people never mean any Sephardi group when they talk about the chinuch methods “shel pa’am”?

Sephardim have an equally glorious history of tzaddikim and beautiful deeds. Furthermore, Sephardi Jewry did not suffer the same spiritual onslaught as Ashkenazi Jewry. And what they did suffer, they survived more intact. Meaning that even secular Sephardi Jews stripped of their religious externals by the secular Leftist brainwashing and treatment in Eretz Yisrael or by materialism and liberalism in chutz la’aretz still maintain warm feelings toward Hashem, Judaism, and the Torah. And when they do observe mitzvot, they tend to observe them in the traditional Torah way. They feel great respect and appreciation for truly great rabbis and their Torah learning.

(Certainly, this is not true of all secular Sephardim. But the truth of the generalization has been noted by Jews of all backgrounds.)

But going back to the “pa’am” romanticized and glorified by so many:
In my parents’ home, there is a large book extolling the era of Yiddish theater in Eastern Europe...pa'am!
Even as a secular Jewish teenager, I was shocked at the vulgarity and blasphemy displayed in the photos. Had non-Jews profaned Torah concepts with such vulgarity, they would be condemned as terrible antisemites—and these were Jews, likely from a frum background, the men likely products of the traditional Yiddish-language cheder system.

Despite the insistence in some circles today that Yiddish provides an extra layer of spiritual preservation and shelter, Yiddish unfortunately had a secular vulgar Torah-hating history for over a century that ran parallel to its vibrant, holy, Torah-embracing counterpart.

So maybe we should be digging into the chinuch methods used in pre-WWII Iraq or Morocco?

Ultimately, we have our own sources to guide us.

In Mishlei, Shlomo Hamelech commands us to “Educate a youth according to his way, so that when he is old, he will not depart from it.” We have commentaries on this verse, along with statements from the Vilna Gaon and a famous letter from the Ramban to his son. The Talmud also discusses child-rearing. In Pele Yoetz, Rabbi Eliezer Papo dedicates several chapters which cover different aspects of raising children correctly.

But most of all, we have millennia of stories and mussar which tells us the most important aspects of good parenting.

Here are some authentically Jewish methods of chinuch.

You've probably come across them in Orthodox biographies, histories, and mussar books.

Prayer
Sincere, copious, heartfelt prayer, whether it consists of reciting pre-written prayers, Tehillim, or one’s own words. When the Chafetz Chaim spoke of his mother's parenting technique, he referred to her tear-soaked prayer book.

Parental modeling of good behavior
This means a parent constantly strives to improve his or herself via a daily self-accounting and strengthening his or her emuna and bitachon via reading mussar sefarim, talking to God, chizuk discussions with others, etc.

Allowing Hashem to give you whatever message you need when you need via HIS chosen messenger (whoever that might be)
Some of the best advice I or others have received came from unofficial sources. For example, a mother of 8 once mentioned to me: "When you're having a hard day, no matter how hard it is, make sure you smile at your kids at least once - or however many times you can remember to do it throughout the day." She continued, "When you're down, whether you're exhausted or in pain or just plain down, it shows on your face and your children can interpret it to mean their the cause. Just imagine for a moment spending the entire day being taken care of someone with a long face that never smiles."

I pictured it and realized how right she was.

This is very valuable advice, yet I have never heard it in a class or read it anywhere. It came from a "mere" housewife (i.e. a sincerely frum woman who takes her parenting job very much to heart).

Other times, you can learn a lot from people who aren't the ideal parents, but are doing at least one major thing right (and reaping a lot of success from it) and seem to be doing it better than anyone else, and you can learn that particular aspect of parenting from them.

Here's an extreme example:
A mother who'd attended chinuch classes for 10 years and had consulted with countless social workers, advisers, friends, rebbetzins, rabbis, experts, professionals, teachers, principal, youth workers, a mother whose child had been in a variety of schools and programs and medications, finally heard the root of her children's issues from a completely unexpected source:
her tax adviser.
She's not sure how he came up with it, but while they were discussing finance management, he suddenly slipped it into the conversation.

Judaism emphasizes hearing the truth from whoever says it. This could be a child, the meter maid, the homeless schizophrenic in the park, the librarian, your tax adviser, or anyone else.

Spiritual efforts
Giving tzedakah in the merit of the child, getting blessings from tzaddikim, etc.

Personally, when I read Rav Shalom Arush’s Garden of Education, I found the secret to successful chinuch in there:

• Perform a regular and gruelingly honest self-introspection (which you are halachically obligated to do anyway outside of parenting) using your child’s undesirable behaviors as your personal springboard
• Discuss the problems with Hashem
• Beg Hashem for success and mercy

Following Rav Arush's recommendations alone reaped me more success than all the years of reading chinuch sefarim and attending chinuch classes (all rabbinically approved, of course!). It doesn't mean you won't have problems. I'm not perfect, so neither are my children. But his method either solved or greatly relieved certain problems that "experts" often insist can only be solved via heavy-duty intervention like intensive therapy, support groups, and a lot of what I call "juggling bowling balls" on the part of the parents.

Yes, our Gedolim have told us that certain methods no longer apply (okay—just one that I know of: No whipping your kid with a belt), but that emendation against physical punishment could have also been gleaned from Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, the Pele Yoetz (who were also against physical or any kind of harsh punishment), or just sitting down and pondering how to truly educate each of your children according to each one’s individual way.

You have to wonder why many people make it so much more complicated than it needs to be.

Personally, I know the reason why I initially clung to all the chinuch methods they whacked against my head, making things so complicated for myself:
It was a certain laziness, bullheadedness, ego, and fear on my part.

But I don’t know if that’s the reason for everyone else.
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Clarification:
Yes, the chinuch problems themselves can be extremely complex: mental illness, difficult teachers, rapidly evolving technology, addiction, serious behavioral problems, social pressures, financial problems, exasperating sibling rivalry, chutzpah, criminal behavior, divorce, death, a sabotaging spouse, and much more. But the remedy is as Rav Shalom Arush describes above. And yes, it's challenging, grueling, long, and painful at times, but not necessarily so complicated.

(Having said that, nothing is surefire. Or easy. Despite your best efforts and copious prayers, it could just be that you and your child were meant to go through certain challenges in life. After all, even Yaakov Avinu and Rivka Imeinu had an Esav. But using the authentic Torah guidance as described above will get you farther than even the most well-meaning and experienced chinuch experts. Ask me how I know…;)

(Go back to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch I: The Non-Jewish World.)

Without realizing it, the idea of “chinuch shel pa’am” (old-fashioned child education) in the minds of most people actually comprises a very narrow window of time in one of two specific locations comprised of Jews trapped within a specific economic status:

• early 20th Century, particularly pre-WWII, but not pre-WWI
• Russia and Poland
• poor

Furthermore, has anyone else noticed that this group was hit very hard by some of the worst spiritual onslaughts in Jewish history?

Haskalah, the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, Socialism, Communism, the mass immigrations to Western Europe and the Americas, Leftist secular Zionism (with a bit of anti-religious and anti-Sephardi eugenics)…

Without any sarcasm or derision intended, whatever methods used then during that narrow window of time didn’t work for a massive percentage of Jews.

If someone is promoting their chinuch method as “the original method used for raising children until Western psychology came along and ruined everything,” then I want to know if it is the method that produced the Chafetz Chaim or is it the method that produced the secular Communists?

(Also, as already stated in the previous post, Western science-based psychology actually came along and ruined everything at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, not the Sixties. The child psychology that started to form in the Sixties and reached its zenith in the Eighties was merely a reaction to the earlier form of Western child psychology.)

And as stated above, the poor weren’t always successful with raising their children while the rich weren’t always unsuccessful. Some children went off the derech in Poland and Russia while some children remained frum in Hungary and Germany.

And so on.

Furthermore, who else has noticed that the Sephardi communities in North Africa and the Middle East did not succumb to the Haskalah or Communism or Secularism or Reform "Judaism"?

Yes, they were affected somewhat by the Haskalah-influence in the 1950s. However, even the eugenicist onslaught by Torah-hating Leftist extremists against the Sephardim upon their arrival to Eretz Yisrael did not succeed in inculcating most Sephardim with the Torah-hatred and atheism found in many Jews from Eastern Europe at that time.

Jews in both groups have also noted that, generally speaking, even secular Sephardim are still rather traditional and express positive feelings toward God and the Torah.

Of course, I'm spouting broad generalities. There were (and still are) many courageously and marvelously frum Ashkenazim during the Haskalah and behind the Iron Curtain, and there are some rabidly secular Sephardim. But nonetheless, based on the general observation, maybe we should be investigating the chinuch methods used "pa'am" in Morocco or Iraq?

Furthermore, some of the methods used "pa'am" were induced by poverty and lack of technology. If you were washing laundry by hand (or scraping your pennies together to pay a laundress) and lugging water from a well, then yes, you were going to very strict with your kids about keeping their clothes clean. Circumstances insisted on this.

Likewise, if you were an underpaid malnourished cheder rebbi who needed to shuffle through snow in old boots to pick up some of your pupils and then come to a one-room hovel to teach 30 boys of all ages until evening, you might not be the most patient and caring teacher. (Unless, of course, you are Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky, who was an extraordinarily patient and understanding cheder rebbi back in Europe.)

When Rav Meir Shapiro revolutionized the yeshiva and cheder system in his area, he didn’t claim that’s how it was “pa’am”—because it wasn’t like that “pa’am”—at least not for the majority, who were poor (because cheders were often for the poor and thus weren’t funded well; wealthier children received private rebbis to their comfortable homes).

The rav saw that better conditions—and better teachers—were needed, so he went about creating and implementing an improved system. Yes, such improvements were certainly in the ruach of authentic Torah. And yes, there was a kind of tradition to it—basically, all students now learned in the same conditions that wealthy Jewish children generally had.

But Rav Shapiro was bringing the ideal attitudes and process shel pa’am, and not a system that developed out of lack of resources and necessity.

Even the revolutionary Beis Yaakov schools for girls had their predecessor in Rav Meir Lehman’s school for girls in Germany in the 1850s.

And while Jewish female literacy was often low, other Jewish daughters in history had been taught at home—sometimes on a very high level—by their parents or tutors. But no one took that into consideration and really, formal schooling for girls was unheard of. (To them, something that took place in Germany 70 years before wouldn’t have counted.)

There was no system “shel pa’am” on which to base Beis Yaakov. Sara Schenirer consulted with the rabbis of her day and based the curriculum on that. But she based her methods on Torah Judaism and emuna.

“Pa’am” in and of itself doesn’t legitimize anything.

It must be based on something in Torah and Chazal.

You can refer to traditional attitudes and guidance “shel pa’am”—such as Mishlei and the Mishna and so on. But the actual methods used often say more about the limited resources of that time than they do about recommended methods as per Chazal.

So next time someone is enthusing about a chinuch method based on the methods "shel pa'am," it's wise to wonder about the actual effectiveness of the method in the face of heavy trials and spiritual onslaughts (like what we face today too).

Romanticization and sentimentality have never been good tools of chinuch.
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Go back to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch I: The Non-Jewish World.

Go on to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch II: The Jewish World.
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In the Orthodox Jewish world, one of the most compelling ways to convince a mother of a particular child-rearing method is to insist that it is the method used "pa'am" or back in the olden days (i.e. before the Sixties).

• But were the methods genuinely effective?
• Did they truly reflect traditional values?
• Where did those methods really come from?
• And most of all, are those really the methods used "shel pa'am"...or are they, too, simply the same flawed science used today?

(Clarification: Not all science is wrong; a great deal of it is true and helpful. But science is also flawed in many respects - especially social science.)

I want to go through a brief history of chinuch/parenting methods, both in the Jewish and the non-Jewish worlds. (I’m focusing on the non-Jewish world in America because I don’t know enough about any other place to do it any justice.)

So let's start off with the non-Jewish world of parenting.
(The Jewish world of parenting and chinuch appears in its own post HERE.

In 19th Century America, parents based their methods on the Bible - specifically Proverbs.

The goal was to inculcate children with morals and Biblical values.

In other words, you wanted your child to be a morally upright person. So parents tried to both uphold in themselves and imbue their children with values such as loyalty, modesty, patience, independence, trustworthiness, honesty, responsibility, reliability, industriousness, neighborliness, and inner resilience.

From the other end, parents strove to distance their children from negative traits like vanity (yes, can you believe that vanity used to be despised?), selfishness, miserliness, duplicity, lying, fragility, and pansiness among others.

In fact, earlier in American history, the most popular names for the colonial settlers were either Biblical names (especially specifically Tanach names) or names like Reason, Constant, and Truth for boys and names like Chastity, Patience, Charity, and Modesty for girls.

Books and treatises on proper parenting existed, but a lot of it was Bible-based and self-evident.

And sure, those early Americans got stuff wrong because in order to understand "the Bible," you really need a knowledgeable, Hebrew-proficient Jew to explain it to you.
But they meant well and did the best they could.

In fact, the morality of that Bible-based American culture shines through its literature, particular its children’s literature.

For example, American literature tended to reflect morals and virtues while in comparison, British literature reflected more fantasy and pagan mythology. (Although American fantasy did exist and British literature, like The Jungle Book, contained morals.)

Compare popular American books of that time, like Little Women and Huckleberry Finn, to  popular British books of that time, like The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and The Princess and the Goblin. And ever since, the most popular children’s fantasies usually come from Great Britain.

Black Americans, freshly freed from slavery (but not from discrimination), also held firm to Biblical values and displayed admirable faith in God and heartfelt prayer.

Unfortunately, the 1890s brought about a movement to apply scientific principles to raising children. The term and concept of “adolescence” was also invented—to the detriment of society. (Previously, you had “youth” or “young people.”)

In 1894, eugenicist and head physician at New York's Babies Hospital (the leading hospital of its time) Dr. Luther Emmett Holt published the Care and Feeding of Children, which instructed mothers toward a rigid schedule of feeding, bathing, sleeping, and bowel movements, saying,

He also called rocking an “unnecessary and vicious practice.”

(While it’s hard to make a diagnosis decades later, descriptions of Dr. Holt sound like Aspergers: “he rarely smiled or laughed and appeared to be driven by a stern sense of duty… He expected the highest standards from his assistants but never gave praise or formed close friendships. Nor was he ever unkind.” Sometimes, those on the autistic spectrum recoil from physical touch and I can’t help wondering whether the doctor was projecting his own disposition onto all children. Furthermore - and in no connection to Aspergers - while he led the movement of the pasteurization of milk to prevent typhus and other epidemics, he was also was accused of conducting 1,000 tuberculin tests on sick and dying babies at the hospital.)

Using Holt as his inspiration, the father of behavioral psychology, Dr. John B. Watson, advised mothers regarding their children in his 1928 book Psychological Care of Infant and Child:

(Ironically, Dr. Watson’s daughter became a secret drinker who made several suicide attempts, one son became a successful Freudian psychiatrist before committing suicide, another son led “a rootless life,” while the fourth son ended up doing well in life after years of intensive therapy.)

Infant Care pamphlets based on these notions were distributed by the US government, which warned against “excessive” parental affection, advising parents to kiss their child only on the forehead and to limit hugs.

A lot of this was supposed to prevent disease and weakness.

This was the beginning of the end.

If you’ve met mothers from that generation, you’ll notice that many possess an absolute phobia of giving a child “attention” or “spoiling” them. In the compelling true story The Mountain Family, the author remembers her mother rebuking the delight she and her siblings were showing in the toddler’s antics by saying, “Don’t laugh, it just feeds the need for attention.”

I’m nauseatingly familiar with that attitude. It was incredibly prevalent with older people from that time period.

I also had an older relative who was obsessed about this. Though I had a plane ticket to visit her as she lay on her deathbed, I called her for fear I would arrive too late. She immediately asked about my baby, my beloved first. Forgetting who I was talking to, I started gushing, “Oh, he’s just fabulous! I can’t stop kissing and hugging him, he's just so wonderful!”

She chuckled knowingly, then said, “Oh, don’t do that—you’ll spoil him.”

“But he’s only five months old!” I protested.

“You’ll spoil him,” she gasped.

Until then, I hadn’t really realized how deeply ingrained this fear of “spoiling” was. I knew it was a major issue for that generation, but this was extreme. The lady was on her last legs, hooked up to machines, and all she could do was worry that I shouldn’t kiss and hug my infant? It’s profoundly disturbing.

(But after I read about Holt’s and Watson’s fear-mongering advice, I understood. Can you imagine if you were constantly warned by leading “experts” that showing your child affection would weaken the child, make him ill—perhaps even fatally so!—and cause him to become a bad person? That is pretty heavy stuff.)

Freudian concepts also twisted their way through all this.

Then Philip Wylie’s 1942 best-seller A Generation of Vipers stressed that overly protective dominant mothers and passive or absent fathers were the source of society’s ills.

So we see that at first, mothers were scared into being disease-obsessed, cold, rigid masters over their children. But 20 years later, being an overprotective and domineering mother was suddenly bad.  (Although Wylie got the problem with passive/absent fathers right.)

Let’s also not forget the discouragement of breastfeeding, trending since the 1890s. By the 1950s, breastfeeding was discouraged by both doctors and the media. One frum woman told me that doctors in the hospital who saw her trying to nurse her newborn compared her to a cow. But she ignored them and kept on going. “I just somehow knew that if Hashem gave this to mothers, it must be the right thing to do,” she said. “And I didn’t feel like a cow at all!”

Then along came Dr. Spock with Baby and Child Care in 1946, which encouraged mothers to trust themselves more and introduced a more relaxed (but not too relaxed) way of parenting that okayed physical affection, too.

While people like to blame Dr. Spock for the chinuch revolution of the Sixties, the truth is that the earlier parenting methods sparked it.

Amid Holt’s and Watson’s movements, other healthier advice popped up—such Dr. C Anderson Aldrich and Mary M. Aldrich’s 1938 Babies are Human Beings with the idea that:

But despite that window of wisdom, the cold and rigid parenting practices ruled.  

If you meet people from that generation, you’ll notice they are obsessed with children “manipulating” people. They even consider infants capable of manipulating fully grown adults. These people will accuse a kindergartner of “pushing” their “buttons” and “testing limits”—as if the kindergartner is behaving with full awareness of his or her behavior and the possible consequences. Muwahahaha! the devious 5-year-old must be thinking!

In reality, I’ve spoken with or read about many people who remember staring at the terrifying adult and thinking—or even saying aloud—“What buttons?! I didn’t touch any buttons, I promise! Just tell me what buttons and I’ll stop!” Because children are literal like that and not as devious and capable of complex thought as that generation was taught to see them.

Inner anger at the constant accusations of behavior they couldn’t possibly be cognitively capable of and being treated like demons obsessed with evil intent, in addition to the very real touch-deprivation—THIS is what probably sparked a rebellion in their descendents.

I’m going to harp on this a bit.

I keep hearing from well-meaning people that the chinuch/child-rearing upheaval we see today resulted from the introduction of psychology in the 1960s, along with a lot of other upheavals.

However, I strongly disagree with this as it never made sense to me.

The narrative goes something like this:
Everything was fine, everyone was happy—and then all of the sudden, normal intelligent decent people were incited to upend everything into a big stressful irrational mess?

No, it makes more sense that the deprivation and rigidity preceding the Sixties led to the insistence of many that “all we need is love!” and “peace, man!” and indulging children, thinking that letting children “be free” and “express themselves” without reserve, over-validating children’s opinions, and so on, are the battle-cries of people who feel severely wounded by the cold, rigid ways in which they grew up.

Especially for children who are born with a more deeply sensitive nature, cold and rigid parenting can make them feel dead inside. It can also make them extremely self-absorbed in an effort to give themselves what they so desperately need, but never received.

(The corrupting influences of radio, movies, and TV - yes, even the earliest and seemingly "innocent" movies - played an unseen yet powerful part in all this.)

Furthermore, if a child experienced abuse, they often received no support or validation, and hence, no healing. Now, I know that people today like to say that people didn’t know better back then about abuse OR healing, but the truth is that abuse of every kind has existed in every culture since time immemorial—tragically.

Prior to the Hollywood-influenced America, people were a lot more pragmatic and aware than people today like to think they were.

Furthermore, Freud really messed things up by insisting that stories of abuse were actually fantasies put forth by the victims (whom he obviously and wrongly saw as fixated tale-spinners).

So if you throw it all together, you have a lot of repressed pain and trauma just bursting for expression and healing.

Part of the reason why so many proponents of what they term “old-fashioned methods” (which largely are, as discussed above, actually pseudo-scientific methods promoted by eugenicists and other warped minds, which were at one point the “new and improved method!”) insist that we must return to these methods because “they worked!” is due to the surrounding decency in society at that time.

Even though TV and movies were already horribly corrupt, the corruption and promotion of indecent values was extremely subtle and had not yet transformed American society into the iridescent and perfumed cesspool it is today.

So it just never occurred to most people to act out in a way that many people act out today. In addition, “acting out” in those times carried severe penalties, both social and legal.

Yes, of course some of the child-rearing methods were genuinely effective and beneficial. And of course, there were also parents who genuinely cared about their children and possessed a lot of common-sense wisdom, good values, and effective parenting techniques.

But it’s a mistake to think that the child-rearing methods worked, when it was really society as a whole that “worked,” and that if we only went back to the child-rearing methods of the Fifties, everything would work out.

Based on everything written here, I honestly do not see much truth in that idea.

So next time someone insists that they are teaching or learning a chinuch method from the olden days or “shel pa’am,” you might be better off taking a moment to ponder what that really means before getting caught up in their enthusiasm.
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Go on to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch II: The Jewish World.