We sent my daughter Saraleh, a sweet, charming girl, to a wonderful gan. Everything was totally fine until the day she started crying that she didn’t want to go to gan. We thought this was a passing phenomenon. We persuaded her to go by giving her a small treat, and she somehow got to gan.
When my wife came to take Saraleh home, the morah told her that Saraleh had cried the whole time. It seemed strange, but we thought it was a one-time thing; it happens.
The next day, Saraleh made problems again, and the day afterward as well. She sat and cried, or yelled angrily, or simply stared into space without doing anything at all. Saraleh turned into a bitter, angry child who hated gan and fought us each morning anew.
After Purim the morah informed us she was not willing to continue this way. “After Pesach Saraleh cannot continue here.” This was a very painful verdict, both for the morah and for us, but we understood the morah, who was suffering terribly from Saraleh’s behavior.
I told my wife, “We need to strengthen our emunah.” We sat down to learn the sefer Shaar Habitachon, and twenty minutes later, my wife recalled an old story.
Two years ago, she had a gan of her own, and for personal reasons she closed down the gan and gave it over to her cousin, who lived in our area. Some of the parents continued sending their children to the gan that had been transferred to her cousin, and some sent to other ganim. Among the children in that gan, there was one child who cried a lot. My wife told her cousin about this and said, “It’s not so simple to manage with this child.”
This cousin absorbed the words of lashon hara, and when the parents wanted to register their child in the new gan, she refused to accept the child. She claimed that in any case she had to get all the children reoriented and get them to relearn the system in gan. She could not take upon herself a project of this sort – a girl who cried excessively.
The child was not accepted in gan, and my wife had no idea what happened afterward. Did things work out for her in another gan? Perhaps not? She needed to ask for forgiveness from the parents of that child.
We got hold of the family’s phone number, and my wife called them. She tried to reach them several times, and only after repeated attempts did the mother of the child finally answer the phone.
The mother immediately understood the purpose of the call, and she said, “Forgive? Why should I forgive? I absolutely do not forgive! You have no idea how difficult things were for us then.”
And my wife said, “Actually, I do have an idea.” She told her about our challenge with Saraleh’s behavior. She apologized again and again from the depths of her heart and begged the mother of the child to forgive her. After twenty minutes of this difficult conversation, one that was filled with hurt feelings, the mother agreed to forgive her, and they wished each other nachas from their children.
Half an hour after that conversation, my wife decided to call Saraleh’s gan. “How is Sarala?” she asked the morah.
And the morah answered as expected: “I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know what happened to Saraleh, but I must tell you that I do not remember her acting this way for a long time. Half an hour ago she started smiling, playing and participating, exactly as she always had in the beginning of the year. If she continues this way, she can certainly continue in our gan after Pesach.”
The morah did not know about the phone conversation that changed the world.
