The Noble Family Leader

The fewer expectations we have, the better it'll be for us in every area of our life. Can you be happy living in 300 square meters (approx. 3000 square feet), when you expected to be living in a home that’s double that size? Can a person be happy with a B+, when he expected a straight A? Who can be happy earning $100k a year, when he expected to be making a quarter of a million dollars?

So many of us have ridiculously high expectations dragging us down, but when people have high expectations of their children then it's torment for everyone involved. If your children aren't living up to your expectations, lower them! Our expectations of our kids are our problem, and we shouldn't be putting our problems on our children. They are learning how to be human beings, and while that process is happening, we need to be shielding them and defending them from our worries, and from other issues like marital peace or money issues.

Parents are the leaders of their families. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that “leading” equates to “forcing”, but that's not what leadership is really about. I’m not speaking about a domestic Saddam Hussein, I’m speaking about someone who's inspired, and who has a vision of what inspired family life looks like.  A genuine leader has values that they really believe in, and they are living those values. When you are around somebody who is living with the value of faith, for example, it’s very inspiring to be around him.

Now, let's translate this definition of leadership into good parenting terms. As a parent, it's our job to inspire our children, which means accepting a higher standard of behavior for ourselves than we do for them. A parent has to accept the responsibility for moving the family towards its goals. The “family outcomes” are up to Hashem, but the parents are the role models and doer’s that the children will look to emulate. 

Now let's take the example of educating our children about Torah and eternal truths. The “domestic tyrant” route would be to punish them for every minor infraction of Torah law: they didn't come to synagogue on time? They're in big trouble! They didn’t want to pray after the meal? They are going to sit at the table until they buckle down and do it! They didn't want to give a little speech at the table about what they learned in school? No dessert for them! That's not leadership: its boot camp, and very few people come through “religious boot camp” with a genuine love for keeping G-d's rules. But if we want to parent with emuna, and really “lead” our children towards choosing a Torah-observant lifestyle for themselves, even when they've left home and are beyond our direct control, then we have to ask ourselves some very direct questions: "Can I really educate my children properly, if I don't really believe in what I'm teaching and telling them, myself? If I'm not inspired myself, is it credible that I'll be able to inspire them?"

If the answer is “no”, don't despair. Rabbi Arush teaches us to believe in belief. Believe in the belief that one day, you too will have emuna, and set that as your goal. Tell G-d that you want to believe in the World-to-Come, and that you want to believe in a loving G-d. Tell G-d that you want to believe that the world is simply a mirror, and that all the trouble that you're having with your relationships is simply one of the ways G-d is using to give you the cues you need to fix and improve yourself. Go for it! Little by little, day by day, you really will get there.

Say you're a parent with a disrespectful, disruptive child: a child who's acting out, and a child who's going off the path of religious observance, G-d forbid. The normal, natural, initial response for a parent is to ask: "What's going on here? How on earth can this be good?" That's actually not a bad starting point, but we need to take it further, and ask ourselves more questions: "Why is this happening? What's the message? How can I relate to this in a productive way?"

Here's one idea of what may be going on under the surface of your out-of-control child: Kids are the purest beings on the planet (and we were that way too, when we were kids.) All kids have the intention, deep down, to be helpful to their parents. If that kid is misbehaving, or acting out, or going off the derech (the way), in a certain sense, it means they've taken control of the family. Yes, it's unhealthy control, but all children need a family, and they will do whatever they can to try and keep it.  If the child's parents are struggling, and the family unit is starting to break apart; that child doesn't want to have a divorce in the family, G-d forbid. If the only way he can keep his family intact is by creating an emergency situation, or “shock”, that will cause the family to come together to fix him then that's what he's going to do.

Maybe this sounds shocking, but in the more than 35 years that I've been a therapist, I've never seen a divorce in a family when a kid was actively suicidal, anorexic, or self-mutilating.

In a very profound sense, the child is sacrificing himself to keep the family together. They aren't hurting themselves just to fight with their parents, or to be difficult. Deep down, that child really wants to be part of the family unit – but the family unit itself is in danger of disappearing. Once we have that perspective, we can clearly see that the real problem doesn't lie in the kid, it's rooted in the parents.

So we have to start with ourselves, and we have to try and inspire our children with our own behavior – and this is especially true if we have a “difficult” kid.  When the parent makes that decision and stands behind it, even when it requires a lot of self-sacrifice, it means the parents are acting as “leaders” of their families, and they are creating the right environment to motivate their children. When parents act like inspiring leaders, they give their kids direction in life, and they help their families to get to where they want to go. Punishments and indifference simply won't do the job, long term. If we want our kids to be healthy, spiritually well-adjusted, happy adults, we need to lead them to that place; we need to make whatever changes in ourselves are required for the family to get there; and if we're forced to choose between giving the kids “too much” or giving them “too little” – let's err on the side of caution, and treat them with as much generosity and kindness as we can! In the long term, it can only give them a tremendous boost, and help them to feel loved, significant and successful.