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5 Iyar 5759 - April 21, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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How Children Flourish or Flounder
by Chaim Walder

Ours is a world where people are looking for an easy life, a good time, and instant gratification. As a result it is natural that, when confronted with difficulties and obstacles, modern man quickly plummets into despair.

A person's ability nowadays to suffer pain is pitiably insufficient. Society wants things to work out effortlessly as if a robot took care of them. R' Nachman of Breslov once said, "The whole world is a narrow bridge." When something is blocking that bridge, no matter how small the deterrent, many people just back out. They are afraid to face challenges and jolts and do not know how to cope with bad news.

Problem-solving skills are a thing of the past. Resilience -- the ability to bounce back when bad things happen -- is at low tides. Life must flow smoothly, like a pleasant stream.

The results of this "contemporary" outlook are many: emotional breakdown when faced with financial difficulties or minor health problems, inability to meet basic educational needs, excessive giving in to children's demands, solving marital disagreements through separation and, what has become popular lately, a child encountering difficulties, either educational or social, is promptly transferred to another school.

I feel the need to write about this subject since, over the last few weeks, I have seen cases from all over the country each with the following scenario in common: After a child fails in his studies or does not get along well with other students, the parents immediately put him in another school. The problems not only repeat themselves in the new school, but they are much more critical. The parents then backtrack and want to have their child readmitted to the first school, but the first principal refuses.

In many cities, dozens of children roam around for months on end without being part of any educational framework. In most cases the parents themselves initiated leaving the school, or at least waved a white flag when the children pressured them to be put into another school. Only in a small minority of the incidents did the school itself initiate removing the child without concerning itself to find a suitable alternative.

Perhaps we can animate the topic through a more detailed description of a sort of composite case. Yossi (a fictitious name) had serious social problems in school. His father blames the school's principal and teacher. One day the father arrives at the school and threatens the principal. A few months later the family decides to transfer Yossi to another school.

In the second school the problem is even worse. Yossi has absolutely no friends and no social standing. Children treat him badly and, even worse, the children disgrace his father. Yossi runs away from that school and then his parents transfer him to a third school, this time a smaller one. A month later he runs away from that school too, for the same reasons.

To date he has been home for four months. He is destroying his parents, his siblings, and especially himself.

I met this completely miserable and hapless child. He is isolated and bored, without any friends, and with no school prepared to accept him. Even if he somehow manages to be accepted into a school, without the correct treatment he will soon drop out of that one too.

A second case: Eli (also a fictitious name), who is doing poorly in his studies, has loud clashes with his teacher. Here there is also parental intervention and, after a few months, they decide to transfer him to another school. The school's principal advises them to wait a little while he tries to work things out between the child and the teacher, but the parents hastily go ahead and transfer him to another school.

What happens there? Naturally, the same thing. Within a week the child is expelled from the second school because of wild behavior. The parents try to bring the child back to the first school but the principal flatly refuses. "The principal suddenly remembers that Eli is extremely weak in gemora and math and that he does not get along so well with other children," the parents complain to me. "This is clearly an attempt to shake off his responsibility. Why did he suddenly remember that Eli is a weak student? Until now they could deal with him -- and suddenly they cannot? Why are they looking at their own prestige when my child's future is at stake?"

I explained to them that just as parents must take care of all their children -- whether successful or problematic -- so does a school feel a need to take care of all of its students. However, when you "left the family" and transferred to another school, how can you demand loyalty from the school when you yourself had no loyalty? Why should the principal agree to accept a "new" child when the school knows that he has problems?

At the end of a long, humiliating, and tiresome process, in which the parents were forced to sign various agreements with the school's administration, the child returned to the school under restrictive conditions. When the parents complained to me about this I answered them that in my opinion the school should have forced them to even sign onto an agreement with the janitor so as to give them a few more days of tension. "Without doing so you will not learn that a child should not be transferred to another school unless the situation is truly past hope or cure."

These are not the only cases. Such situations have become an epidemic. It shows that we cannot cope with our problems and that we prefer easy solutions -- which are actually not solutions at all.

Someone should make a survey among people who left work either because they were annoyed with the working conditions, the salary, or the way they were being treated, and then quit. If they would be sincere enough to answer truthfully, you would find that a majority are truly sorry that they left. Their previous place of work was no worse than their present one. We do not mean to rule out the possibility of changing places of employment for certain reasons, but someone who leaves because of an argument with the boss or due to disagreeable working conditions will soon see that other places are no better. Only if a person invests time in changing himself can his place in society change.

The same is true with children. When parents see that their child does not make any effort in his studies they must check the reason behind this. They must try to rectify the problem and help him progress in school. If other children do not like him, a way must be found to integrate him with those same children. It is usually worthless to try to solve the problem by changing the school.

The next story will demonstrate what we mean: A person at a medical checkup complained of pains throughout his body. "It hurts me wherever I touch," he claimed.

The doctor gave him a thorough examination and at its conclusion told his patient, "I don't see any problem with you."

"But I am suffering terribly," the man cried out. "Take a look at what is happening to me! When I touch my shoulder I feel terrible pain. When I touch my stomach I feel less pain but it also hurts. When I touch my knee the pain is insufferable."

"I know what's bothering you," said the doctor. "You simply have an infection on your finger. You used your finger to touch these places and therefore you felt pain."

When the problem is with a finger, what should be bandaged is the finger. When a child suffers from a specific problem -- social or educational -- that problem should be taken care of. The solution is not to change the school since the problem is liable to return each time.

There are exceptional incidents where we are sure that a certain school or teacher is unsuitable for the child. This cannot be determined by a parent who by nature is subjective. Only a rav or authorized educational advisor well familiar with both the school, the child, and the child's family, can ascertain this. Even if these experts decide that there are indeed problems with that particular school they will consider the matter many times before deciding to change schools.

Difficulties crop up so that we can try to cope with them. They are not there for us to try to circumvent them. Transferring children from one institution to another in most cases is only running away from confronting the problem.

There are, however, some who have "successfully" tried changing schools. These parents have managed through the change to smooth out all their problems. Some have transferred their child to four schools and five yeshivos. They have even managed, through gifts and persuasion, to sweep away social problems with their child's peers.

This "victory" lasts only until their children have to confront problems alone. That moment must come at some time during their lives, either after marriage or at work or after parents pass away. They will eventually reveal their lack of problem-solving skills and will then understand that their parents were not fighting for them -- but against them.


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