Today’s children! Everyone knows it’s a ‘new generation’, but parenting itself is the oldest ‘profession’. Is there a secret for effective parenting? Like so many other areas involving human relationships, the Torah teaches us that child discipline has a lot to do with proper and appropriate communication. A fundamental aspect of parenting is instruction with patience and soft tones.
We can see this teaching evident in so many areas of life. People learn with repetition. Some subjects require more, some students require more. But it is unquestionably natural to learn in this way. Parents need to understand that children can only learn or master any behavior if it is taught to them patiently. The entire subject of discipline itself needs to be viewed by parents as a continuing and evolving process. This sometimes requires creativity and even great ingenuity on the part of the parent.
There is a saying that when water falls as rain, it comes down in ‘soft’, individual drops. This is true in all instances and even the greatest hurricane is made up of many ‘soft’ drops of rain. Amazingly, though water has a characteristic ‘softness’, it still has the power to penetrate even solid rock. The constant drip on a hard surface will eventually leave an indent. We can learn from this that if we want our words to truly impact others, they must emulate the rain. Our words need to be soft and our language must be gentle, even if it means repeating the same thing over and over.
This is all the more so in regards to our own children. As written in Mishlei: “[the Torah’s] ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths, peaceful (3:17)”. If we want our children to take a positive lesson from the Torah, we, as parents, must give it over to them pleasantly. May Hashem bless us so that we merit a true understanding of His Torah, and may we give it over properly to our children and our students.
By Adam Suionov
Foundations For Healthy Parenting
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