Dear Rabbi Gruen,
I have a question about my son, who is five years old. He’s a very sensitive child, easily upset or triggered, and I’m not always sure how to treat him. For instance, he has three shirts that he refuses to wear. I’m not sure what I should do. Should I give in and not force him to wear them, given his sensitivity? Or should I tell him that these are the clothes he has and that he has to choose one of them? Thank you.
QUESTION
If it’s a question of which shirt to wear, and the child has seven shirts and only likes four, it’s often not worth making a big deal over it, especially if you haven’t yet demanded that he wear each of them. And as you seem to know well, sensitive children take things so much more to heart than less sensitive types.
The question you ask, like many others, is one of balance. The extremes of never backing down or always giving in are both wrong and damaging to both parent and child.
The Maor Vashemesh (in Parshas Matos) famously warns us in no uncertain terms of the negative consequences of lack of discipline. He writes, “All Jews are obligated to guide their children, while they are still young and don’t yet have a yetzer tov. At this stage everything they do is due to their yetzer hara, which is why one must guide them and supervise them to ensure they are not stubborn or full of rage. Children need to moderate their behavior, and if a child doesn’t [for example] want to eat a certain food, his father should force him to eat that precise food in order to divorce him from this terrible middah. If, however, the father ignores [this behavior] repeatedly, then he will end up accustoming his child to behave in this way and his character traits will only worsen over time and he will end up being an angry and arrogant person for the rest of his life...”
Wow.
Allowing a child to grow up thinking that he can always get his way and that those around him will always guarantee his comfort is doing him no favor at all. Even if a child truly is sensitive and easily hurt and angered by any resistance to what he wants, his parents have to be extremely cautious about how far they indulge him.
The key to striking the right balance is knowing one’s child. When it’s a matter of shirts and not of halachah, involving the child in the shopping expedition can be a simple way to avoid conflict, even if he’s only five years old.
But what if the child is twelve and the question is far more significant than dress preferences? The Torah warns us that once a child reaches the age of bar mitzvah, parents must be wary of meting out punishment, as hitting an older child could provoke them to strike back.
The Pele Yoetz notes that this warning is applicable not only to children who have reached the age of bar mitzvah, but to any child, even much younger, who, due to his nature and temperament is likely to respond inappropriately to being sternly disciplined. This is something that many parents struggle with, and understandably so, because it truly is difficult to know how to be mechanech a child who is trying to become independent and simultaneously behaving wrongly.
Furthermore, what was right at age two is not necessarily right at age five; and certainly what is right at age five is no longer going to be appropriate at age thirteen, and so forth. This seems obvious, but it isn’t always easy to notice how a child subtly changes as he grows up. It’s not unheard of for parents to still be imposing their opinions on grown-up children, and for older children to be expected to continue to submit. Sadly, in many cases, teenage or grown-up children of overly controlling parents rebel against their parents’ failure to recognize them as independent people and distance themselves from those parents.
I am not condoning active rebellion, and certainly children of any age are obligated to be respectful of their parents. However, parents also have an obligation to adapt their relationship style to the age and level of maturity of their children, and the halachah makes it clear that if they fall significantly short, they are considered responsible for the repercussions.
