Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Parenting Part 5

[Music] do [Music] good evening today we are continuing learning about hinuk proper education from the book spare the child and we are in chapter 4 page 30. and today's chapter is called association what does association mean number one defining the concept before we start i just want to point out again that this book is advanced study but at the same time it's advanced study of basic concepts and therefore it may seem repetitive it may seem um too technical but stay with us and you will benefit and you will enjoy you will see results because if you gain the foundation then everything else will be much easier now the author of navardok addressed a form of entertainment that was popular at the time dancing beers traveling gypsies would exhibit huge bears who danced to the tune of the flute the altar asked what are we seeing here do these gypsies have a technique to teach bears to appreciate music and to enjoy dance obviously not this was not the cheerful sight of a music loving beer it was brutal cruelty these bears were not motivated by love of music but by pain after capturing the bears as cubs the trainers would lock them in cages with hot coals spread across the floor the tortured cubs would bounce up and down in pain while the trainers sat nearby with flutes playing the same tune again and again with time the cubs began to associate the tune with their pain and would begin jumping automatically at the sound of the melody because of the pain it caused them now note 17 says that researchers initially assumed that the bears danced because they expected to feel that pain again further research however showed that the music created an actual sensation of pain not just fear that the pain may come imagine that these bears when they were little were forced to stand on coal hot coal and they bounced up and down while music was playing and now when they grew up every time they heard that same music they actually experienced pain and because they feel pain in their feet they start jumping up and down that looks to us like they're dancing to music now we're on page 31 this illustrates the concept of association association that means you connect one event with another you connect music with pain and now because of such a strong connection whenever you hear music you feel pain association can be manipulated manipulated to create an artificial connection between two things which are actually unrelated and association can be positive or negative if a person experiences two things simultaneously for a long enough time he will he will feel as though the two are inherently connected associated as if they are truly related to each other even though they're only connected in time that they used to happen at the same time but not in any other way the mind begins to perceive one as inevitably involving the other this is what happened with the bears the extended connection of the melody with the pain was artificial but it caused the sound of the music to arouse feelings of pain this concept is equally relevant to human beings as the following quote demonstrates now we're going to learn about the negative association first and then we're going to learn about the positive association and how should we use them in educating children now negative association and he's quoting um a boy who is speaking about his past i can never forgive because i can never forget and i can never forget because it isn't just something from the past it is happening today every day it's become a part of who i am it is with me all the time and it makes my life hopeless and depressing i literally can't look at the gemara at the volume of talmud when i just open a gemara i can feel literally my tutors pinches put downs and the suffocating feeling i don't know if you'll understand but i do not just mean to say that i remember what he did to me then i mean to say that i feel what he is doing to me now it's like it is happening every time again this is very similar to the story i said in the first class that one of my rabbis could not pray in a regular synagogue because every time he would enter regular synagogue and open a sidur he would right away feel that his parents are there looking at him criticizing him punishing him that he's not praying well enough now the way that he came out of it was that for the rest of his life he had to pray in a in a synagogue of a yeshiva for boys that just recently became religious and he was seeing them and he saw that nobody is forcing them nobody is punishing them they are coming and praying willingly and happily and looking at them he was able to create a different feeling instead of remembering and feeling how his parents made him feel he was seeing their happiness and he could relate to it and he was able to pray so in in reality his parents while wishing good they crippled him that he could no longer pray in a regular synagogue so the same thing happened to this boy because his tutor was mistreating him pinching putting him down making fun of him criticizing and and forcing him to learn if he developed a feeling that his brain still feels every time he opens a gemara he feels depression he feels pain and he's suffering looking at an open gemara i know that it's the tutor it's not the gemara's fault he apparently thought that my poor parents paid him their last hard saved pennies to make me the victim of his frustrations temper cruelty and other bad character traits he seemed to think that my parents hired him to make me hate gemara and distance me from learning fine so i understand that it's him not the gemara but that makes no difference the fact is that i can i can't even bring myself to participate in a daf yomi shiur i'm done with learning gemara i will not forgive him for the rest of my life and certainly not at the entrance to gehenam he sent me there how and why should i forgive him very sad quote now we turn to page 32 this letter demonstrates that even when the victim is aware of the association issue and understands it it does not remedy the damage the boy writing this letter stresses that he understands that it was the tutor and not the learning itself that i was at fault that caused the pain he understands the process and that the connection between learning and the feelings of pain and humiliation is an artificial one yet his understanding does not help him to conquer the emotional damage he suffered on the emotional level unlike the logical one the learning continues to arouse feelings of tension and anxiety anxiety now in our times we have ways to fight with this we have techniques whether some would will go to mainstream psychology or some will go to alternative therapies that help to overcome these associations and if you know someone who is suffering from them tell them that they don't have to leave to to live with the these negative associations for the rest of their life they can reprogram their mind and they can forget their their bad associations and they can develop new positive associations there is help available however we do not wish on anyone and especially our children that they should be damaged and require such treatment so that is why we're learning in order to avoid problems so our goal is to make sure that we don't create negative associations with good things things that we want our children to love we should not make them think with pain about them now this is what we refer to as negative association the term refers to instances where the association connects negative feelings discomfort tension humiliation or actual pain with activities which may actually be neutral or they should really be pleasant and positive when negative association is sustained for long enough it causes the negative feelings caused by the control to become linked to the activity itself and it can lead the child to hate his own good behavior in other words negative association causes a natural feeling of resistance and repulsion toward the activity with which the negative experience is associated in one sentence negative association is the integration of negative sensations into neutral activities you connect you combine tension discomfort stress pain with neutral or positive activities anyone in the field knows of many cases where negative association is so pronounced that the child seems incapable of overcoming the negative attitude that has become ingrained ingrained in him he is no longer in control of his emotions it is simply beyond his control we see many boys who find that sitting next to an open gemara or even just entering a bid midrash causes them dizziness nausea and migraine headache there are also many girls for whom doverning praying causes unbearable anxiety and agitation and there are unfortunately many many cases of boys and girls for whom the whole concept of youth of spirituality and hashem serving hashem is a source of pressure and stress these are the devastating effects of negative association undeniably such extreme cases only occur as a result of ongoing control which was both extremely intense and also sustained for a long period of time again control means that the parent is forcing the child to do something right there for for that moment and does not create a good feeling in a child that would inspire the child to continue this good behavior in the future voluntarily so again control means pressuring criticizing forcing putting down hurting threatening in order for the child to fulfill the request to fulfill the command and that is called control and that will create a negative association these are again the devastating effects of negative association however anyone who engages only in control and not in control but not education for future is very likely to see matters reach this extreme level if the only method you know is control forcing the child to do what you want right then and there then eventually it will reach the level of negative association naturally any form of control loses its effectiveness with time as the child becomes accustomed to it the parent or teacher then has to push more and push harder it does not take long for his efforts to reach severe and extreme degrees in addition there are cases where the child is almost forced in the wrong direction because he he experiences so much pain and suffering that he runs from it like from a fire despite the facts the fact that the methods of control were not terrible but constant pressure constant worry of the child oh again i have to do it again i have to do it i'm so sick and tired of it how long can he continue he tries everything possible to run away from that activity control without will typically cause parents or teachers to make difficult demands of a child specifically in the areas which are naturally difficult for him this process is almost automatic and it's a vicious cycle the more the parents see that the child is not responding the more they're going to pressure the child the more the child sees that the parents are pressuring him and causing him more stress the more he is going to withdraw and refuse and rebel and the more the parents see that he is refusing a rebellion the more they're going to try to control and force him and this continues and gets worse and worse and worse now he explains how this happens step by step the more difficult something is for a child the more failure he looks will experience in that area the more failures the child experience the more the parents and teachers will come come down hard in terms of both quantity and quality and it may be that the child is really not a bad child it's just maybe the teacher doesn't click with the child maybe just that year is difficult for the child child in his development maybe the child is not mature yet to understand the material and you have to give him another year or two and then he'll develop beautifully by himself maybe he has a friend or a classmate that bothers him maybe he's not feeling well maybe he can't see the board maybe he needs glasses there may be something that is bothering the child and he cannot do well in that subject instead of investigating what's going on instead of helping the child encouraging him being patient the the easiest and most common thing for parents and teachers is to criticize push put down make fun and force the child to do more of the same boring thing that he is not capable for some reason at that stage in his life as the controlling measures become more frequent and more intense the negative association becomes stronger and stronger when a serious negative association develops in an area that is already hard for a child it is liable to reach a state where the child is simply forced in the wrong direction it can reach a point where the child simply cannot overcome the difficulty and make the right choices it's not in his control sometimes the embarrassment and the the stress that is put on the child forces him not to do what we're asking him to do and we all know it if somebody screams at you or disrespects you while making a request a demand you have a natural feeling that you don't want to do what he is asking and that is a proper feeling because if you see that the person is not treating you well that may be a sign that he doesn't have your interest in mind and as such we have a built-in mechanism that if somebody does not wish me well i will not follow their lead i will not do what they want me to do because it seems to me they don't have my interest in mine at the beginning of our discussion we asked why many children dramatically fail specifically in areas where their parents or teachers invested great efforts the answer we gave was that the parents or teachers were investing their effort in control and that control on its own without being set right by true education gives rise to resistance and rebellion but we now see that the harm caused by such forms of control is even more severe the child will not only refuse to obey the parent to clean the room to wash dishes to keep to to do homework it's going to be a long-term permanent disability in the child's life control on its own leads not only to resistance and rebellion but also to negative association for the rest of the child's life that is why the worst failures will often occur specifically in the area where the most efforts that is efforts to control were invested the children were brought to a point they do not want to choose the right thing because choosing right hurts because choosing right means doing what my parents forced me to do and they caused me great pain and i don't want to feel that i am being victimized and i have to do what my parents told me when they used a terrible method for it due to the feelings of resistance and rebellion that they developed because they were forced they cannot bring themselves to do the right thing and even if they did do the right thing they would have a very hard time doing so due to the negative association so even the person who says you know what it's the right thing to learn let me go and learn he will go but he will not be able to learn because it hurts too much he'll sit there he'll space out he will find every excuse to leave the person will try to come in and pray he will not be able to concentrate he will think about more pleasant thoughts and he will find every excuse to get up and leave this also explains how loving and dedicated parents can end up can end up employing harsh control on a constant basis and thus create an extreme negative association because they love their children they want the best they don't know any other method so they think that they have to they think they're obligated by torah to use control and in fact they sin not only against their children they also sin against hashem because they distance their child from service of god this parents who engage only in control without distinguishing between control and will almost automatically fall into this trap without even realizing it and everyone knows when you say something and the child doesn't do it and you raise your voice and you repeat it again and again next time it's going to be that much harder to convince your child to do it because nagging screaming criticizing creates this negative association and the child will try to avoid that task unless he is really really forced and even though he knows he will be forced again and again he says i know it's going to be bad for me but still i cannot help it i cannot do what my parents asked me to do because it hurts too much if they force me again if they twist my hand i'll do it but i'm not going to do it voluntarily even though i know i'm going to get into trouble that's that's how that's how bad it is this is a harsh and difficult reality to swallow it is also hard to write about but the issue cannot be ignored because to do so would bring e about even more even worse results ignoring these principles is what led to the heart-rending cases presented above it is critical to review these points internalize them and integrate them as the most basic principle of again the principle is that while at the early stage of child's development you have to use some control but as they grow you must slowly replace control with renuk with education where you train the child with a positive method with encouragement with positive reinforcement with explanation with happiness with with uh showing the child why why it is good for his own life now and in the future while it why it will make him more successful while white will make him more happy that is which will cause the child to want to do it voluntarily negative association connects negative feelings to the good behavior itself it exacerbates the difficulties of the of a child's struggle and intensifies the experience of their failures this is the first kind of association the negative association the kind that we have to avoid now on page 34 paragraph three we will speak about positive association how to use the concept of association connecting two distinct things blending them in one into one in our mind how can this be utilized successfully in education now again he is quoting a real person i heard your speech on the subject of association and i want to relate something about myself in this context i am now in colo this is a yeshiva for married man who learned torah full-time i am now in colo but i grew up in a very weak home in terms of religion i learned in a semi-religious school co-ed continued in a somewhat religious high school and then joined the army very similar to what happens to many kids in in the united states they are raised in a semi-religious home they go to a somewhat religious school and then after elementary school or after high school they enter secular world and they are diluted even more the time of my service was largely characterized by the very low morale that prevailed in the months following the yom kippur war the difficult war for the jewish people many of my good friends drifted away from judaism but i who came from a relatively weak background remained strong and grew in my observance surprisingly why at the root of my unusual story was an important factor the elderly rabbi of amshanov the rebels shul was in my parents neighborhood and i prayed shaharid there for years the rebbe used to listen intently as i recited the birkota shahar as he did with all other children who prayed in the show and he would answer amen with joy and excitement his shining countenance his radiance the general joy that radiated from everything he did and even the image of his sprightly gate got me through all the trying periods that i encountered i can't explain exactly explain its effect on me but i do know that on many occasions when i was ready to succumb whether to skip a bracha a te fila or some other mitzvah i would see his image in front of me i'm not just being poetic or exaggerating that is exactly what happened this phenomenon caused me to feel that by skipping a mitzvah i would be losing some out on something invaluable sometimes i also had this feeling that i couldn't let him down let me clarify i don't mean to say that i thought he had roha kodesh enabling him to observe me from a far away but i think that for me his image somehow reflected my own inner world it was as though his image made me feel that i can't disappoint my own inner and deeper levels i told this to mahavroota my learning partner in kohler he told me that rabbi zalman awarba who was the leader of our caller had the same effect on him his captivating smile his beautiful countenance the joy he exuded as he learned and as he discussed the gemara with others these all caused my friends to enjoy the experience of learning and connect to it i now contrast this with the sour expression of my son's rebbe with the irritable tone in which he teaches with the tension in his class and it makes me wonder i assume that this is what you were referring to by contrasting positive and negative association but if so your descriptions pale in comparison with the reality of the experience itself so we see here that the option of arabi had a very positive effect on this boy so much so that it created a positive association and now every time he said the blessing he remembered amsterdam he remembered his smile and he gave him pleasure and now saying a blessing gave him pleasure every time he was about to pray he remembered amsterdam and he became happy and now praying made him happy the writer of this letter is exactly right this is the perfect description of positive association it refers to instances where the association connects positive feelings for example pleasantness serenity elevation joy dignity or fulfillment with activities that are essentially neutral positive associations sustained for a long enough time links the positive feeling with the activity itself and causes the child to embrace his own good behavior positive association is a power that causes the child to like and be attracted to the good behavior now here i have to make an important note of course we have to avoid anything that causes negative association forcing threatening pinching beating the child up punishing putting the child down all that must be avoided because inadvertently we will cause the child to hate the activity that we are trying to encourage him to like so that leaves us with a positive association we have to develop positive association in the child's mind we have to uh praise the child we have to smile at the child at the time when they're doing something good we have to encourage the child with a reward but the important thing is that we have to do it honestly it cannot be done mechanically or in a manipulative fashion because the child will feel it and he will also be disgusted and i have seen that in in in in real life where parents or educators it doesn't come naturally from them and it feels so fake artificial and it also distances the child the child also feels that you're trying to control me with your fake smile with your fake praise so we have to truly feel happiness we have to truly feel love for the child and love for the good things that the child does and we have to know that the more sincere we are the the greater the effect will be and we therefore we have to practice when we smile has to be a natural smile the natural feeling of happiness the natural love of our child should be in our hearts and then it will come outside now note that in the second example the description of rabbi zalman auerbach so the first example with ambition of arabic with prayer and the the the example with rabbi zalman was with learning gomorrah the positive association did not result from his direct involvement with his students this student saw how rabbi zalman interacted with other students while learning gomorrah and even though he was not the direct recipient of his smile and countenance but the pleasantness that he exuded was enough to create this wonderful example of positive association this brings us to a fundamental conclusion a pleasant joyous and positive atmosphere is an atmosphere that cultivates we have to create a positive atmosphere in our home and in our classroom even if the child or the student will not be able to do what we want them to do in our grade or in our home at least we will create a positive feeling for them so that in the future when they want when they decide to do it on their own when they mature when they become independent they will say i remember my parents were so happy when i made the blessing out loud they were so happy when i got a good grade on my test in in the talmud they were so happy when i opened the book and learned on my own i want to try it again on by myself and and that good feeling will encourage them to try again i failed in the past but i'll try again because i feel good about it let me try again and maybe they will be mature enough to succeed or maybe they will have a learning partner or rebbe in their life at that moment who will help them to succeed so the point is that if we create a positive atmosphere in our home and in our classroom we will help our child to succeed ultimately even if at the beginning they will fail but at the end they will succeed why because we will create a positive association a good feeling connected directly to that action and therefore the the child will want to continue this good behavior on their own now we continue a pleasant joyous and positive atmosphere is an atmosphere that cultivates education such an atmosphere creates positive association engenders internalization and produces the personality of a happy and enthusiastic servant of hashem in contrast remembering the previous point a tense and uncomfortable atmosphere not only fails to produce the desired results but it actually distances the person from success a parent or teacher who exudes tension or who teaches with a sour face in irritable tones or in too stiff or heavy a manner creates a negative association even if he has never punished reprimanded or hurt his charges in any way and i can relate that i experienced it firsthand during covet when our children were home and learning each one in his own room and their teachers were on zoom they want speaker and i could not help it but over here the way their rabbeim and teachers taught and there was particularly one teacher who was speaking in such a way that it even made me the parent stressed out and it made me want to close my ears and that's exactly what my child was doing they were making the volume the lowest possible they were looking away from the screen and they were trying to force themselves not to pay attention to what the teacher was saying why because the tone of voice was so difficult so difficult to listen to that that it caused pain actual pain to to be there and i said to myself you know hashem is so kind he made the virus exactly in the year when my child was supposed to have that teacher and he saved my child from this teacher that at least my child doesn't have to face this teacher daily in a classroom at least it's on a tablet that my child can lower the volume not look at the screen and and lower the suffering somewhat and of course when the year finished everyone breathed a sigh of relief now we have to keep that in mind as as it says the words of the wise are heard in a pleasant manner if you want your words to make an impression speak softly split speak pleasantly and that will help for the person to feel good about it and they will pay attention and they will want to learn they will want to follow your advice now in education a warm bright expression expression is a form of giving while a long or sour face is destructive you're at you are actually being kind to your child or to your student by speaking respectfully to them and by speaking pleasantly with them it's as if you're giving them gifts every day and your children will be more satisfied more content more happy without getting any toys and gifts just by seeing your happy face by seeing your smile when you're looking at them when they come home and you become happy all of a sudden they will love you they will have a good feeling about the home and they will want to impress you they will want to do what makes you happy this is a fundamental point for parents teachers and anyone else involved in any form of to internalize now just to give you an example of what association is so that we can use it to our advantage we all know that uh when we hear a sizzling sound of steak or french fries or we hear names of delicious foods we see pictures of foods we develop appetite all of a sudden we all develop appetite and sometimes people develop appetite when they enter a kitchen they come into the kitchen to charge the phone and all of a sudden they feel hungry all of a sudden they want to eat and if they're lucky enough to exit the kid the kitchen area because someone called them they come out and all of a sudden they say oh i'm not hungry anymore what happened what happened was association they associate kitchen with being hungry and delicious food and the pleasure they experience for eating we associate the sound of sizzling and the smell and the the sight of food and names of food with pleasure and even when we think about it we experience pleasure as they say there is more pleasure in in waiting to eat than in eating itself expectation of pleasure gives you more pleasure than actually being involved in it and this is exactly what we said that association forms such a connection that when you think about it you are actually experiencing the pleasure or shalom the pain from the connected feeling so practically for ourselves next time you feel hungry think is it because of association and i'm really not hungry or is it because i don't have food in my stomach and remember this example when you teach your children am i giving them a good association positive association will they connect this activity with a good feeling and if yes that is a good educational tool and if not then stop it right away if i see that it makes my child suffer it distances him he doesn't want to do it because of my words my expression my tone of voice my volume the words i use then i should change because we don't only want their room to be clean when they live in our house we want their room to be clean when they get married we want not only to to pray and say blessings when they are under our control but we want them to say blessings and pray when they are on their own and therefore we're not doing them a favor by forcing them to do something in a negative way but rather we should learn ask advice how can i present it to my child in a positive way and whenever i see my child doing something whether by chance or voluntarily something good i should jump on the opportunity and i should create a positive association if i see my child picking up something that fell on the floor i should say oh thank you for cleaning thank you for picking it up you're so responsible you're helping me you're keeping the house clean thank you and next time they will pick up again and again and again they will want to be responsible they will want to be neat and clean and they will want to help you because you made an association for them that being neat being clean helping parents makes parents happy and makes them feel good whenever you see your child doing something positive right away use the opportunity to create a positive association praise them reward them and paint in the most beautiful picture of how you are happy and how your life is better because of what they just did now we concluded chapter four on association next week bazat hashem we will speak about prizes and specifically control through prizes whether it is good to give prizes or not how to give prizes properly how to utilize this tool of prizes how often and we will learn something very very important for renuka thank you for listening all the best may we all succeed with our children may we all have not happiness from our children thank you [Music]