It’s important to know that even after doing all the right things, parents of fragile children need a tremendous amount of patience. Chinuch habanim in general demands huge amounts of patience and sometimes it can take many, many years to see the fruits of our efforts.
Furthermore, parents don’t only need to respond to their children. They should also go out of their way to notice things and draw attention to it. This applies especially to sensitive children, who need the reassurance that all the good things they do are seen and appreciated. This clearly doesn’t apply to the father asking the question above. However, in other cases, if a parent tells his son, “If the rebbi says anything bad about you I’ll right away tell him how amazing you are.” The son might simply not believe him, because he doesn’t believe that his father thinks he’s amazing, which is why he was so worried about the PTA in the first place.
Sadly, many parents praise their children to outsiders, but for whatever reason, never say a good word directly to their children. I recall one person telling me that his father never complimented him when he was young (although there were plenty of complaints whenever he did something wrong). When he grew older, someone happened to tell him, “Your father was always boasting about you when you were a boy, telling everyone how smart you are and how he was sure you would grow up to be a gadol hador.” The man simply couldn’t believe it. “If only he would have said even just one word to me while I was growing up...” he told me.
What a shame to let such opportunities pass by, while our children are growing up and can so easily be motivated by encouragement, love, and praise. While our children need the “left hand” of yirah and discipline, they need the “right hand” to be stronger and constantly giving ahavah. In this way they will b’ezras Hashem flourish and grow, and be a source of much Yiddishe nachas.
