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“Know Your Children with Rav Shlomo Katz” is a series about the everyday holy work of raising children with heart, patience, and honesty. Join Rav Shlomo in learning from the sefer Da Et Yeladecha by Rav Itamar Shwartz, author of Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh, and explore how Torah and Chazal guide us in building a healthy, loving connection between parent and child.
This isn’t about perfect techniques or quick fixes. It’s about creating a foundation of truth, learning to really listen, and finding the right “funnel” so that what we want to give actually reaches our children. Each shiur is meant to be practical, gentle, and encouraging, and something you can take home and live with.
Shavua Tov, good morning. We're going to start. Thank you for coming everybody. This month of the month, the rest of the month of Tevet is sponsored by the Arons, l'ilui nishmat Levi ben Yosef and by the Silvers, בתיה פייגא בת ישראל.
And this week is sponsored by the Deutsch family, Miriam's abba's 12th yahrtzeit, מנחם בן שמואל אליעזר. Is that the right name? I said the name right? I copied it from somewhere. Okay.
תהא נשמתו צרורה בצרור החיים.
Yasher koach for all the sponsorship, all the learning. It means a lot and it goes a long way, a long long way, so yasher koach everybody. Last week we had a whole shiur dedicated to the question of can a parent's love for a child ever be complete? Do you remember that? We were talking about this last week.
האם אהבה לילד יכול להיות מושלם? Can it be complete? And we discussed how in its nature it's impossible for things like that to be complete the way that everyone needed it to be and that's embedded in the teva of the briyah.
That's embedded, thank you so much, that's embedded in the nature of creation, that's how it was planned from above and there's a lot more to elaborate on that and it was a very strong, everyone's feedback was extremely extremely helpful and I just want to thank you all for that. It was very very chazak. And today we're asking another question. And of these questions that we're asking, the answer is always obviously no, even though we don't want that to be the answer.
And that is the question, does a child always feel their parent's love? Is a child walking around constantly with that that they do know to be true but do they always feel it? Now can you imagine accepting that answer being no? What would we do with ourselves? Because our hopes and dreams and greatest aspiration is that a child lives and grows up in a home and then has to go out into the world, but even before they go out into the world, that they sense, they walk around with this shield, this shield of love, of clear love, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu loves them and that they know their parents love them all the time. I could flip this question for a second and say, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, do your children know that you love them all the time? Always? Don't say yes to sound smart or holy because that's what you think I want to hear or anyone else needs to hear. You'll probably have a chair chucked at you if you say yes you feel that all the time. I walk around feeling that Hashem loves me all the time, even though you know it to be a truth.
There are moments, this is part of this world, this is part of this dance that we're in, but this same thing also with parents and with children and that's where it gets a bit a shtickel more sensitive and difficult to make sense of and to really know what to do with that. He's going to unpack it today, Rabbi Schwartz is going to unpack it today in a manner that will enable us and strengthen us to keep on doing the best job, to keep on going strong. I believe it'll take a little bit of time but to keep on with the notion of that obviously the answer is no, so what does that mean? And l'ma'aseh what do we do with that being a reality? And while we're learning a piece like this, if we're not davening, then this Torah is mamash like a waste because this is a piece that you have to daven through. All the pieces hopefully we're learning, hopefully anyone's learning, whenever they're learning they're davening, but a piece like this, who wouldn't want to daven over the fact that they want so badly that their children should walk around more and more knowing their parents love them? Their parents love them despite report cards, despite letters from teachers, despite when parents of other kids come and say you know your kid did that and that to me.
So I'm reminded of a classic chassidic teaching that explains the following. There are times and this is very important for us to frame this with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and his children to be the greatest framework for our work and with us and our kinderlach. There are times in life, let's say a parent comes to another parent and says, you know, your kid, the way I heard them speak, their lashon, their foul language is so disgusting and it really endangers and threatens the purity of my child. So there's two types of responses, there's two types of parents.
One parent would say, oh my God, thank you so much for telling me, I'm going to rip into him and make sure that never happens again. Sounds like a responsible adult, no? Taking responsibility and then going weiter with their own chinuch. The truth is there's three types of people. The first one's...
Sock that guy in the face that comes and says something to you about your child. I'm sorry, that's aleph. Bais is the one that answered the way they just answered. But gimmel is the father that says I'm so sorry that you had to go through this and I'm already asking you for mechila and it's my fault.
It's my fault because I didn't really give over to my children yet great enough how to be how to walk how to talk and things you say and things you don't say. The father, the mother that actually takes responsibility over it. Which type of parent do we want to be? I think I know the answer, but let's strengthen ourselves with seeing it through a mahalach that he builds over here, which is very, very fascinating.
האם הילד תמיד חש את אהבת הוריו on daf chaf hei.
It's two sides, chaf hei.
תופעה ידועה ומצויה היא. We have a very known phenomena that takes place.
שהורים רבים מרגישים בלבם אהבה רבה כלפי ילדיהם.
That parents feel so much love in their heart for their children, אולם הילדים אינם מרגישים שההורים אכן אוהבים אותם. And still the children don't feel that parents love them. Parents are loving, they are loving their kids. The kid, the child does not sense that.
That's not their experience. It's two different experiences taking place.
אכן בדרך כלל תופעה זו אינה באה לידי ביטוי בגיל הרך. Toddlers is not so much their parsha.
That's not what they're thinking or feeling. I don't know at what age do your kid does your kid say for the first time you hate me. When does that start? No one ever heard it in this room. What's that? Five? I think five, yeah.
Probably fiveish right? Five, six. Younger than that. Right. We're all saying we're all thinking like thirteen? No.
A shtickel younger than that. So he says let's be real אכן בדרך כלל תופעה זו אינה באה לידי ביטוי בגיל הרך. It doesn't happen when they're really, really young, אולם ככל שהילדים מתבגרים ישנם ילדים שאף יהיו מוכנים להודות בפני בעל מקצוע שהוריהם אינם אוהבים אותם. You know what that means? Put the kid on the shrink's couch and they're willing to admit that they feel their parents don't love them.
כמובן שלא תמיד הם צודקים. They're not always right.
אולם לטענתם כך הם מרגישים. But that's what they feel.
A kid says such a statement, a parent knows that that's not the truth. It's so hard to hold space that that is the child's experience because it's the most threatening thing to that which we hold to be most dear and most precious to us. So when we hear a staggering statement like that, our initial response is to go into defense mode, protective mode, and that's never helpful. That doesn't do anything.
You know, of course you could say no no no I love you, I love you, and if you say the words that's not true, that's already a problem because what are you saying not true about? Their feelings or the statement? You're saying, usually they interpret it to say you're saying that about the way they feel. What do you mean? This is how I feel. Now he says they're not always right. Could be they say that sometimes because they're trying to prove a point or whatever it is, but what they're really saying is a statement about how they currently feel right now.
Now you're gonna say no, selicha, that's not true. Chas v'chalila. So that's a very, you know, we, I'm not in this shiur, but in other shiurim from other people, the validation of children's feelings versus the reality that maybe taking place by you can be two opposing worlds that when not dealt with properly, that friction can cause massive, massive short-term damage and long-term damage. So we're not going to get too much into that because we're not speaking right now about the child's feelings, we're speaking more about how are we as parents dealing with hearing such statements, which in the emes of it being a reality are not true.
You know that that's not true, but how do I balance the fact that that is actually what they are feeling? You hate me. You hate me. You don't love me. What are you talking about? You hate me.
I'm so sorry you feel like that. Imagine a parent says, a kid says to a parent, you hate me, and then you say, oh man, yeah, I'm so sorry that that's what's happening, or I'm so sorry that that's what's going on right now. Kid's sitting there saying you're saying that I'm right? No, no, no, I'm saying that that's what you... So giving space for the child to feel the need to express that in a, you know, in a kovodik way, obviously there's ways even through that in chinuch to give space to a child.
We're not in the world of total hefker. Modern psychology has taken it to a place that the most healthiest thing for a child is that ein shum gvulot that you have to be completely in the name of free speech. It starts at the age of five and you have to give them the autonomy and the ability and the access to say whatever they want to say in the name of being authentic and being real. That's not a Yiddishe concept, that's not a Jewish concept, and we see how far that's taken the world to such an extreme all in the name of empowerment comes through free speech and the ability to really say what's what's in your mind.
Can you imagine if we walked around actually telling people what we think about them? Uh-oh like what what certain emotions, what certain visions, visuals make us think chas v'chalila. So how do we do this? So he says like this in the third paragraph, כמובן שכאשר הורים כאשר רוצים להתמודד עם אותה הרגשה, that when a when a family wants to, when you want to deal with that feeling, ראשית צריך לבחון מה הוא מקורה, where is it coming from, what's the source of a statement of a child that says you hate me, where is it coming from, where is it rooted, ורק לאחר מכן נוכל לבדוק כיצד לתקן אותה, but only afterwards we could figure out how to fix it. What's interesting here is that he's describing how men usually, how husbands usually respond to wives as opposed to wives to husbands because the initial response of a man is I need to fix this now. That's what happens to parents, that's the triggering that happens by parents when they hear from a child such a statement.
And here the Shchina needs to be even more in the front, and the Shchina needs to hold space for let's figure out what the source where is this really coming from and only then can something like this be repaired, only then can something like this be repaired. So far you're with me? Yeah?
ברוך אתה ה' אלקינו מלך העולם שהכל נהיה בדברו. Amen.
נקודת ההנחה הראשונה היא שעצם ההרגשה אינה נכונה.
We start off by saying that what they're feeling, the hargasha is not right, it's not true, sheharei kaamur because as we're under the assumption, לא קיימת מציאות שהורים אינם אוהבים את ילדיהם, there's no reality, there's no such a thing that parents don't love their children. That's what we say, that's what we tell ourselves. There's no such a reality, there's no such a scenario that this could be valid, this could be true, ein davar kaze. Ein davar kaze.
That's that's what happens inside to us, like that's how we're usually operating from that place of all day long if there's a silent soundtrack and it had words, it would say basically that what we're projecting to our children all day long is don't you know I love you, don't you know I love you, I'm doing this because I love you, I'm punishing because I love you, I'm doing this because everything is because I love you. That's what we're under the assumption of. This is true at every age. Parents that their kids are already out of the house and they're already children, they already have their own children, and then the mother knows, the grandmother knows, it's not my place anymore for chinuch, that ended or some never get to that realization that you know parents you don't have to mechanekh or you shouldn't mechanekh your children once something shifts in life that they start their own home.
You can give an eitzah in a nice and sweet way, a loving way, but they're under the assumption, grandparents are already under the assumption at whatever age, is that when they give, make comments to their children about how they are as a spouse or as a parent to child to a child, I'm just saying this because I love you, I'm just saying this because of my experience and my nisayon. Again, I feel like I'm the only one that either you're being very tznuot in your I can't tell right now because I'm like, do you know what I'm talking about? That's my yeah okay. No because it's important you have to realize in these types of shiur when no one is like it's not for me. You understand? It's not me, maybe a shtikl, but not really for me.
It's that in the room people deal with these types of things all the time, but sometimes they're under the impression that we're probably the only ones that go through such things. So it's important that when things like this are realities in our lives that people don't think that they're the only meshuganes. Like Hanan Ben Ari's great new song אני לא המשוגע היחידי. the only meshuggana that's in the room, right? Yes.
It's all fixable and I'm coming from both ends. It's all fixable. That's like so everybody can like breathe. As a bubby you're saying this? Bubby, baby, and sister, everything, yes.
B'ezrat Hashem. So again, nekudat hahanacha harishona, our first assumption is שעצם ההרגשה אינה נכונה, it's not true. You don't - we don't hate you and you know that. She'arei kamur, because it's impossible, there's no such a metzius, there's no such a reality that parents don't really love their children, which is true in the core, but that's not what's being interpreted in the home.
That's not what's being given over in the relationship. That's not being expressed. It could be a truth that you have that's not being expressed. Beram yadu'a hadavar, we know, שבכל שקר חבוי ניצוץ מסוים של אמת.
There's a state, there's a phrase for this in English. How do you say this? What's the phrase? In every joke. What's that? In every joke. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, nachon.
They say that about jokes. Here he's saying, well what's the, what's the, in every, I guess there's an element, right. So here he's saying also in every sheker, like for a parent that's a joke. A kid says "you hate me", hah, what are you talking about.
In every joke there's a shtickle truth. So too with every, every type of sheker, there's a spark of truth, and in Chassidus they would say, why is it there? To be redeemed. To learn from it, to pull it out. This is a much, much, much larger concept, but in a nutshell there's something that's called Shviras haKeilim, shevirat hakeilim, and it all, all the truths in the world got dispersed all over Tohu, all over chaos.
And our job in this world is to travel this world and not just say "I'm with emet, whatever is totally emet to me, that's what I'm sticking to", but it's to also realize that when you're, when you're placed in front of something that's a sheker, that there's an avodah for there to you. This is how the Rebbe sent shluchim to the world. It's also what he told Bibi when he was going into the UN. You're walking into a room that's completely sheker and dark.
So you should, he would have said, therefore you shouldn't walk into that room, but we don't hold like that. We hold that no, there's certain rooms if you're on the level to walk into to redeem sparks, to pull out sparks of truth. For a parent to come to the place of understanding that in statements that are not true by children are hidden sparks of truth, ashrei hayoledim ha'eilu, praiseworthy are truly- praiseworthy are parents like that that are willing to go to that place, but lucky children, children that have parents that have the ability to not have the knee-jerk reaction of "it's not true", but rather say "let's, let's sit with this. This is an - this is an opportunity.
This is an opportunity to discover something". It's very hard and so worthwhile. So again, Beram yadu'a hadavar שבכל שקר חבוי ניצוץ מסוים של אמת ועלינו לזהות היכן הוא וכיצד מטפלים בו, we have to identify it and figure out how to deal with this. The - it's b'yadi, he has like a disclaimer here, אומנם מסגרת זו אינה עוסקת בפתרון בעיות.
This sefer, we are not problem solving. We're not explaining here, "this is how you actually solve these problems". What we're doing is addressing the nefesh and saying awareness and consciousness must come before anything, and only from there you could start to build.
אומנם מסגרת זו אינו עוסקת בפתרון בעיות אולם הצגנו כאן דוגמה של בעיה נפוצה, but what we did here was we presented an example of a - of a problem that's very much apparent and found quite often.
בכדי להבין כיצד עלינו לבנות את החינוך מלכתחילה. This is all in order to explain to us how to build this chinuch job that we have. We have the love job and we have the chinuch job which we spoke about last month. We have the love which is a parent that's the basis, and then the chinuch it can only be built over that love באופן שימנעו בעיות מסוג זה.
This is what this sefer is trying to help us do. Seder hadvarim. The order of things. Where things are placed.
So just to refresh in our memory, the first layer in the world of relationships between parents and children is that which you taste already the moment the child is born, obviously the mommy tastes this way before the the child is born, actually born into the world. It's the moment they they say sense that connection, whether they actually feel a kick or they already sense that this new entity is being formed in their in their body and thus begins now this love. They can't explain it, you didn't do anything to earn it, it's just there, mutba beteva habriya, embedded within the framework of nature. That doesn't stop once the baby's born, it grows, and then when they actually express an emotion, it starts to tamper with that which we knew to be an absolute, an absolute truth.
So he described, we spoke about that. Above and upon that comes the framework of I'm not just here to just feel the love, I'm here to mechanech, I'm here to educate, I'm here to also Hashem trusted these neshamos and put them in my, I don't want to say possession. I think a better word is, I don't know if jurisdiction works, but in my actually domain is not right. In your care? Care, yeah, in my care in order to also perform a something that's called chinuch, that's called mechanech.
That's the seder hadevarim. We're not going here into problem solving, we're just trying to form a framework upon which we can make sure to avoid as many problems as possible.
כפי שצוין והודגש רבות, second to bottom paragraph. I already apologize, I have to leave a few minutes early today.
כפי שצוין והודגש רבות as has already been expressed a lot and will be expressed frequently.
כל הורה אוהב את ילדיו ודואג לכל צרכיהם, every parent loves their children and is trying to do their best to fill all the needs a child has.
שהרי המציאות מראה שכל הורה משקיע בדרך כלל את מירב החיים כפשוטו עבור ילדיו, reality will come and show us that once from the moment you become a parent, most of your real kochos in the world are invested in making sure that your children have everything that you that you need. I was watching an interview with one of the survivors of Be'eri, someone that lost a wife and a child, and I think he also lost a leg.
And he was speaking about the tovanos two years later. What's the tovanos? What kind of a, how do you say tovana? Takeaways? Yeah, but it comes from the word bina obviously, tovana. It comes from like a takeaway but from coming from an inner place of intelligence and of of looking at life and experiencing life, yeah, an insight, insight's better I think, yeah. So he was saying, first speaking about obviously what he felt about his neighbors in Aza, his hitpakchut, his waking up.
This guy was like carrying the the degel of the smol, you know, this guy was one of the ones that would help transport them to get medical help and, you know, all the the classic story of of what happened over there and if we don't wake up what's going to happen more and more all over the country, especially in our backyard over here. It's the same exact thing, actually no, it'd be much, much worse. So he woke up, he's one of the ones that woke up. But then he said, they asked him, okay, but עזוב את כל זה, but what about like ke'ilu just life? Like, imagine that wasn't the issue, halevai.
He said, I started thinking, at the end of someone's life, he said he's never heard someone say, man, I should have put more hours at home at work. No one ever says, I should have put more hours in the office. Everyone if they do have some feeling of regret in terms of their life investment, they always say, I should have spent more hours at home. No one's ever said, I should have put more hours in the office.
And even if they would have spent more hours in the office and they would have made more money thinking that that's what would satiate the family, everyone at that place of deep insight knows ze, that's never a person's real emes when they're about to go to olam haemes. He's saying, when you think about it, most of the kochos that most of us really put into life is making sure that we're taking care of our children's needs, even if we do spend a lot of time in the office, in our minds what we're thinking of is that when my child is cold next winter and they need new boots or a new winter coat, I don't want my wife to even have to think about this for a second in terms of can we have it or not. Everything should be provided for my children. The greatest gaivah, holy gaivah, the greatest pride a parent can have in this world is that they feel that they're taking care of their child.
There's no greater pride, there's no there's no greater sense of pride, holy pride in this world. And he's saying we actually invest most of that time. Third line, ואילו לא היתה לו אהבה לילדיו, if he didn't... have love for if a parent didn't have love for their children הרי שהוא לא היה משקיע זמן כוח ומשאבים רבים עבורם they wouldn't they wouldn't put in what they put in.
אם כן כיצד ניתן להבין תופעה כזו if that's the truth and most of us know that that's really the way we live our lives אם כן כיצד ניתן להבין תופעה כזו how could we speak about the phenomena that he mentioned in the beginning of this shiur שלאחר כל ההשקעה המרובה after everything we've put in ישנו ילד שסבור כי הוריו אינם אוהבים אותו there's a you could have a metzius that a child can come to the assumption that the parents don't love them. Again going back to a defense mechanism response to that a parent could say who put that shirt on your back who put the food in the fridge you say I don't love you? Right now did you hear I'm not saying any of you have ever said that. Kayam it exists that people will actually say what are you talking about look I'm providing everything for you. The kid is silently responding they don't have the words for this but what they're really saying is you call that love? That's an obligation.
That's an obligation that you have. That's not love. That's a chiyuv. And then you hear those words and if a parent would if a child would actually be able to express that and a parent would be bold enough to hear and listen to those words that's like the that's the wake-up call of all wake-up calls.
The differentiation between an obligation and expression of love. Now the truth is you could do the same exact thing in terms of providing while expressing the love. It doesn't mean you have to do more things necessarily. Each case to its own.
It's just a matter of when you're doing what that which you're going to do anyway don't confuse an obligation that you have with the another obligation. And that the second obligation we're speaking about which is the next piece is how much time do you spend expressing that which you think they already know? Verbally physically like all these things. How could so he's the question he's leaving us here with how could it be that a kid can come to such realization? We've more or less answered it already but let's see how he develops it.
הסבר חלקי לתופעה כזו in a way that we could partially explain this phenomena na'utz bidvareinu hanal it's already embedded in what we spoke about last week.
אילו האהבה של ההורים לילדיהם הייתה אהבה מושלמת which we already said last week is impossible if parents' love for their children could be a complete unit הרי שילדים היו מרגישים זאת באופן טבעי ללא שום עמל ויגיעה the child would feel it naturally. You wouldn't have to do much.
אולם כיוון שאף אדם לא נברא שלם but since no person was born complete despite what you may think גם ילדינו אינם שלמים our children aren't perfect either.
הרי שאף שהאהבה קיימת אולם מכיוון שאינה שלמה אכן בעומק הנשמה האהבה היא שלמה והילד מרגיש שאינה שלמה even though love exists but since even he's saying despite the fact that in the depth of the soul of course our love for our children is shalem but the child isn't feeling that it's shalem.
לכן תיתכן תופעה של ילדים הסבורים כי האהבה של הוריהם אינה קיימת כלל. By a child you either love me or you don't love me. Like by a child it's either you either completely love me and you know exactly how to love me or you hate me. There's no there's no in between.
That's what he's saying over here. Think about that for a second. In the mind of a child there is no like a little bit. It's all or nothing to them.
Yes. This whole time I've just been thinking about how this compares to our relationship with Hashem and how we feel about Hashem and how we think Hashem feels about us and this is not mussar at all I'm about to say it's just a mechazek what you're saying is that that's exactly what we spoke about the first two minutes of shiur. It's exactly what we said like mamash those words. And it's so important to and it's good you're bringing it up right I see I have I'm triggered from like when a Rebbe would do that to me in high school if I can that's why I don't want to chalila.
I want to strengthen what we started with. That's you have to always keep it like that in that framework. Tamid. Nachon me'od.
So he says it could be that children are under the assumption their parents don't love them at all. Why? Because they only love them 99%, or they only love them 95%, or they're only able to express that love on a 90%. To the child it's the and really in the world of emet like we said, 99% truth is 100% sheker. You've heard that line before? If you're holding by truth to be 99% true, that means that it's really in the sum total of things there's a possibility to live a life of 100% sheker.
Vezot mikeivan where does this come from, this phenomenon to think that parents don't really love their children? Bless you.
שהם מזהים את נקודת התורפה שבהם ההורה דואג לעצמו ושם הם מוצאים את חוסר האהבה כלפיהם. Okay. What's torpah? Well, weak point.
Yeah, a weak point. I was gonna say like the weak point. Bless you. Gesundheit.
What it means is like this and this is our dor. It's more this is become harder than any other dor if a child looks at their parent involved in something that is fulfilling their own need while they think that it's on the cheshbon of their child, they will that's an opening to harp on that and then make start to create a picture of you don't love me. Why am I saying that in this dor this is more difficult and more sensitive than any other dor that a child could be exposed to a moment that they think their parent is doing something on their own cheshbon as opposed to their cheshbon? Why it's much more common? Can you give me an example? Yes. This.
100%. A million percent. It's because of our pocket computers. A million percent.
Because for you to understand, for a parent to be let's say distracted in a visible way to a child up until our era, so what would the need for like how would they engage in such a thing? So it would be something that would take more ma'amatz than just pull out something out of the pocket or just have ze mamash kach. So the child sees at that moment, now you're thinking, what do you mean I love you, I'm just taking a break for a second. I'm you could even be unless you tell your child, right now I'm texting your teacher or I'm looking at the 80th WhatsApp group that I've been added to from Va'ad Horim or something, in the child's mind, what are they what is the mommy or abba doing? Something more interesting than them. Something more interesting than them.
Disconnecting. Yes. Now why is it something more interesting? How do they know that it exists? Because they themselves are like this too. So they're saying the way that you're using this thing is the way that I'm using this thing.
What do I when I'm in this thing, what am I basically telling the world? Azvuni. This is more important to me. That must mean that when ima or abba or mom and dad are also doing this thing, that's the same thing that's happening. So he says like this, that's a nekudat torpah, that's a weak spot, right? The child sees that and begins to build migdalim.
They start to build towers, imaginary towers upon that. Are we saying over here that a parent shouldn't have a moment that they could do whatever they feel like doing in a bezrat Hashem, a holy and kosher way on their phone? We're not saying that, but we're just describing over here that when the building of love in chinuch isn't built in a healthy and proper way, it opens the gates for children and their imagination to start building these buildings of you don't really love me, which will lead to no, it starts with like this, at this moment something was more important. That means that let's start the building at this moment I'm seeing you, there's something more important than me and my needs right now, which thus means I'm less important, which means which means you don't really love me, which means you don't love me, which means you hate me. Where did it come from? Not always, but he's giving an example, where did it stem from? What's the point of this sefer? Lezahot bashoresh, to identify in the root of things how things begin.
Now this is not true always obviously, I'm gonna keep on repeating, there's no like- chad vechalak clear, complete answers and explanations to every single issue a child has gone through. But he's saying and it's not even, maybe this isn't the greatest example of being distracted by the pocket computer. I don't know. There could be other examples as well.
Maybe it's the way that my parents act when there's friends over and I see them, wow, they're so makpid on the house being clean, mannerisms and all these things, and my mommy laughs so much more when her friend comes over, and when it's just us she barely laughs and then something starts. This is what may begin to transpire and take place in a child's brain. You're completely unaware of what they saw. You're completely unaware of what they've been exposed to and you're also completely unaware as a parent, how could you know what's beginning to transpire inside of them? You don't know beintaim what happened in the meantime.
There's a whole masechta, there's a whole, they wrote a whole masechet and they have Rashi and Tosfos on it and they have rishonim and achronim and in their mind this is like the emes of all emes. It's a heavy load. And it comes from metzi'at nekudat turpah, finding those moments where maybe we seem to our children as uncaring and not involved and not interested. "You hate me" starts with "you're not really interested in what I have to say." That's where it stems from.
That's the shoresh of what's going on over here. However, to go back to the beginning of this whole series, if the mashpech, if the funnel is intact, if the funnel of love doesn't have leaks, and upon that funnel, there's a world of chinuch that's being transmitted there, that while you're mechanecing, the child is not losing the sense that there's a mabul of love coming through the chinuch, then when the child sees a nekudas turpah by their parents, there's much less of a sikkuy of a possibility that that building of interpretations could be built. That's what he's saying to us. Is this coming across? That's what he's saying to us.
He's not saying those moments of you being distracted won't happen, or he's not saying that the breathers you need won't happen. They'll always happen. But it doesn't lead the children to start interpreting it in the way that they are when the mashpech, when the funnel of real pure emesdika holy love and chinuch at the same time are being transmitted because there are no holes. The bridge is intact, it's flowing through.
That's why we spent the first two, three months just on the funnel for it to be proper, for it to be healthy, for it to check into it all the time to see if there are leaks, to be aware of it. When it's like that, when it's flowing like that, what happens is the child won't jump to a conclusion so fast. There are many, many examples you can give right now. Is anything coming to your mind of an example that could be where a child can misinterpret something that be'emes is like in a minute they could start to go off in their own world of machshavos? Yeah.
So my son's friend recently moved out of his mother's house. They divorced because she's toxic. And it's hard to know what toxic looks like these days. There's abusive, there's berating, there's lots of things that are unhealthy.
I sat with him and I'm like, we discussed what toxic means. Like, if I'm strict about your curfew, is that toxic? You know, like, it's so easy to sort of like misinterpret what the other person's saying. I had to remind him like, make sure you know that I'm not toxic like let's say we're like, like if it's a very simple but like... Yeah.
Yeah. That's a great example. Now it could be that the things that we're under the assumption are actually they get it, they know why I'm telling them this, it's working. They see it by someone else, they start to go into their own minds like you know what, maybe be'emes.
But it's so, honestly it's an amazing thing that the last generation would never act like the way you just shared. Never. Why? Because it's not on you. It's on the kid.
The kid has to come to the realization. It's on the kid to realize that the parents are not toxic in this. That's the whole generation. generations were like this.
Let me tell you that there was a shayla that the rebbes would ask this, they say: How could it be we have a masechta, we have a tractate in the Torah for almost every holiday, right? We have masechet Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, masechet Sukkah. We have masechta Megillah on Purim. We have masechet Pesachim, right? Shavuos basically is the whole Torah that's from the Torah sheba'al peh. What's the only masechta, yom tov, chag, that there's no masechta for? Chanukah.
How much Torah sheba'al peh is there on Chanukah? There's two and a half blatt, there's two and a half pages in the middle of masechet Shabbos on Chanukah. Tell me something, Chanukah doesn't have dinim? Chanukah has plenty of dinim. Ever opened the Shulchan Aruch on Chanukah? Kitzur Shulchan Aruch on Chanukah? There's plenty of them. What does the Gemara say? When it talks about Chanukah, it speaks about the difference between the shemanim and the p'silos that can be used on Shabbos as opposed to Chanukah.
That's a whole sugya. And the Gemara begins there, it says: תנו רבנן מאי חנוכה? And it says: תנו רבנן מצות נר חנוכה איש וביתו. Chanukah is really all about a person and their home. It's the world of Chinuch, Chanukah, Chinuch.
The question was, how come there's no masechta called masechet chinuch? How could it be? The Torah covers everything. How could it be there's no masechta called masechet chinuch hayeladim? What's horayot? No, no, that's not a... It's the same word. What is it? Someone who doesn't know anything about it, you hear the word.
No, but it's not, that's not bi-khlal not the area. Yeah, but it's not, that's not... Someone who doesn't know anything about it, you hear the word. Yeah, no, no, the masechet horayos is not about that.
Okay. Could be, yeah, I can understand you could be under the assumption it's talking about parenting. You could say that about any masechta, really. But no, no.
So the answer was the tzaddikim say is that this masechta called yeladim is the giluy of Mashiach. Only Mashiach is gonna be the one to come and teach it to us, as we know that it says in Malachi, it's the haftarah of Shabbos HaGadol: והשיב לב אבות על בנים ולב בנים על אבותם. Parents and children, their hearts will reunite, find themselves, it'll be one. When does that take place, what is that a sign of? Mashiach, geula.
Therefore, when we're learning such complex issues and topics, and we would love to see well what do the rabbanim say, like where what do the mefarshim say? You could knatch out drashas and vorts and maybe like davar mitoch davar. But it's the last battle, we think it's the Ishmaelites, it's not. The real last battle before Mashiach comes is the orlas halev, it's the foreskin of the heart that needs to be removed and gutsy enough to realize that before Mashiach comes we have to show ourselves by living and showing the Ribbono Shel Olam that we don't go into defense mechanism mode when our child, which is the piece of you that you trust with us, is trying to express itself. This is a shlav of the geula.
That's why these things are so intense and so sensitive. So if you find yourself being like: Wow, this is really complex. Like: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is, that's just a siman of how important it is to spend so much time on hashkafa in this type of avodah.
I have to stop here. What we're going to be doing next week is that we're going to be, as you see the topic of the next segment is חשיבות הביטוי המילולי של האהבה. Do you know how many people I know are mamash in a state of galus in their own homes with their families, with their children? Why? They are unable to express bituy miluli, they're unable to verbally express that which is chai vekayam in their emes, which is love. They just can't do it.
I saw this the first time I saw this left a strong impression with me. This was about I would say like the summer of 2005 or six, so mamash 20 years ago and I remember it happening, no more, this is like 2003, 2004, it's longer. But it just shows you how such an imagery has. You know I grew up in a home, I would ask my father to pass the challah, he'd start crying.
That's like I'm not an example. I grew up in a very, you know, my mother would always tell us how proud she, a lot of bituy miluli, there was a lot of verbal expression. And chinuch we got, you know. The best that they could possibly do.
And I for some reason I maybe I thought that most people are like this. Like that was the same expression if I'd go away for a trip the Birchas Kohanim I'd get the Birchas Habanim my father would give me and the tears whatever. I had a band. At that point I had a band and we started touring.
We would travel different places and in Australia I traveled alone but it was already like a lot of traveling and Europe and America and a few times I could take the whole Chevre with me. So we met at the airport. My family was still living in Los Angeles I got there alone and another buddy of mine we were still single the bandmates most of us. So his father dropped him off and it was the first time his son was going on a trip to Chutz L'aretz.
And this person was already in their mid-20s. And I know the father loves his son. I know and the kid knows it too. But then when it was time to say Tzeischem L'sholom and they parked and they went out of the car and the father took out the Mizvada the suitcase for the son and I'm standing there and the son was like okay and the father was like Hatzlacha Raba right? He gave him a handshake.
And I knew that that's the most the father couldn't do more than that. The kid do that also. That was the first time the kid is going out to feel like you know I'm a successful musician look at me look where I reached I'm going out to the world you know. It was the most the father could have done.
And the Pele is that this son has become such a beautiful loving Abba himself now years later has his own children built his own home. It's an amazing don't try to figure out who it is none of you know who he is I see some of your heads it's no one that your Chevre that the Chevre here knows. It's not someone that's in my life so much now. It's very close in my heart but it's not one of the Chevre that shows up here sometimes.
I never forget that moment of when the father's handshake to me I see it it took it was a three second thing that happened 22 years ago 23 years ago I remember it like it happened right now because of the Hashpa it had on me like that actually exists. And the Inyan is to remember that people like that sometimes would do anything to figure out a way to never do that and to go like that. They would do anything. They would do anything in the world.
So in their generation in the generation that those kids grew up in they would do anything in the world but they never think it's possible to talk or learn about these things especially in a Torah framework. I'm so optimistic about the state of the world because Chasdei Hashem we are living and raising our children in an era where these things that are most crucial to speak about and learn about and talk about is available and is Boruch Hashem being spoken about more and more and more. Now it's not always people don't always get it right I pray that we're always trying to מכוון למקומות של באמת לאמיתו but at least we're giving it a really good shot a really good shot. B'ezras Hashem we'll continue this next week.
It should be a week full of good news for Am Yisroel.