Parents and educators must be attuned to what their children and students need today, based on who they are at this very moment. Do not try to create a child who will make you look good and make you proud in your own social and religious circles. Do not try to force your child to “look good,” so that everything appears normal. Your goal is to allow your children to discover their own depth, their own soul, their own beauty, their own purpose, their own creativity, and their own connection to G-d. You want to make your children believe that they are more powerful than all of their trauma; that they may have “chains,” but their soul and willpower are more potent than all the chains that life conferred upon them.
How do you give youngsters that sense of power? By loving them infinitely and unconditionally. By making them feel and understand how valuable and powerful they are, and how much G-d believes in them, even if they do not believe in themselves. How awesome and perfect they are in the core of their being, which nobody can ever take away. No illness, no molester, no traumatic experience, can ever rob them from their wholesome, perfect, sacred, confident, joyful, holy and Divine core. There is a sacred unshakable purity and sense of wellness in each of us that nothing can tarnish and destroy. We need to show our children they do not need to fear their own challenges, because we do not fear them. They can talk about them, they can look at them, and they can share them with us. We love them unconditionally and we believe that a “chelek Elokah mimaal” – a “fragment of G-d,” as the mystics define the soul – can overcome trauma, abuse, mental illness, and addiction.
Never allow your children’s choices to become a personal affront to yourself, and never sever the relationship. Keep the bonds as strong as ever. Talk to experts who will help you – but experts who believe that a soul is “a part of G-d,” and that every Jew is holy forever, and that – as Elijah the Prophet says (in the Midrash Tanna D’vei Eliyahu, chapter 14) – the Jew comes before Torah. You break the Tablets to save a Jew!
This is not because Torah is secondary. To the contrary, the Jewish soul is one with Torah. “Yisrael, Oraisa, v’Kudeshah Brich Hu Kula Chad,” the Jewish people, Torah and G-d are all bound up in a singular oneness. By breaking the luchos (the tablets) and embracing a soul, you are allowing the neshamah to ultimately discover the Torah etched within her very core.
Stop trying to make your child “fit in” at all costs, even at the cost of his/her miserable future and dignity. Do not worry about what your relatives will say at the next family simcha. Think about one thing and one thing only: What do I need to do to allow my child to flourish, to discover his or her infinite dignity, to feel wanted, loved, cherished, and accomplished?
Talk and Listen – Constantly
We must constantly talk to our kids and listen to them.
UFARATZTA
Rebbe’s Advice
About your questions, it is not worthwhile leaving your job now, as long as you don’t have a parnasa as secure as this one prepared. I am not in favor at all of selling your house for many reasons. ==== Igros Kodesh V30 P46.
We must talk to them about the dangers of abuse of all forms, and always, always communicate with them, watch them, listen to them, be attentive to their state of mind, and build unshakable bonds of trust with them. More than anything, do not make them feel like outcasts, losers, disappointments. Believe in them, so that they can believe in themselves. See them as fragments of G-d, as particles of holiness, as rays of infinity.
Rabbi YY Jacobson
Womens Shiur Tuesday 9:30am (18 Main) Chassidus Shiur Monday & Thursday 7:45am (18 Main) Shabbos: Friday Night – before Barchu (20 Upstairs) Morning 9:00 (20 Upstairs) | After Davening 12:00pm (20 Upstairs)
