Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Parenting Part 6

[Music] do [Music] good evening today we're continuing learning about proper education and we're using the book spear the child by rabbi yakovsan and we are in chapter 5 on page 37 and today's topic is control through prizes last week just to remind you we spoke about the good and bad associations that we have to strive to develop positive association in our child's mind so that he will feel good about doing proper behavior and will continue doing it on his own when they are independent and we should avoid negative association which will put images and feelings of pain and suffering in the child's mind hashadam and today we're speaking about how to use prizes correctly um and as the title of this chapter tells us control through prizes we said that there is education the proper hinuk and there is control and both education and control are needed but control is more basic uh education is more advanced and therefore control educating your children through controlling them is of a very limited use and sometimes we need it especially at the beginning of our career as parents but then slowly we have to um is switched to and use control less and less so that means that prizes provide not real education but rather control technique i want my child to do something and i give him a prize whatever the prize may be and that may work temporarily but as with control always it is limited in its uh scope and therefore eventually the price will stop working and it will need to be increased or it will start working all together so number one the problems with control through prices first let's ask a question do prices solve the problem of control i'll just offer them a price and they'll do whatever i want a prize does not cause resentment or resistance so it's not going to create a negative association and that's good will it create a positive association let's see so again a price does not cause resentment or resistance nor does it create a negative association so perhaps the price is actually the ideal method of control control with no negative effects sounds good and because of that many many parents do use prices but is that so is that the best method of control one more question if the prize is in fact harmless perhaps it should not be defined as a form of control at all maybe it should be considered a form of of proper education long-term education since it would seem that it actually creates positive association and that's what we have to find out if indeed price creates a positive association perhaps we can consider it now the following case illustrates the answer to these questions about half a year ago i made up with my oldest son an 11 year old that i would give him a dollar for every mishnah he learned by heart he has to learn it understand it and memorize and he'll get a dollar in the beginning it seemed like a great idea in a short time he learned a large part of cedar moat and knew it well hundreds of mishnayot however i soon realized that it was a big mistake because two weeks ago he stopped stopped learning with me and instead took a job in a local fruit store i spoke to him trying to understand and he explained to me quite simply that this way he earns more money in less time it's more profitable i don't need to tell you how i felt at hearing this answer especially since before this deal he had never been interested in earning money i'm trying to understand where i went wrong and what i can do to correct it by now the one thing i do see clearly is that offering him more money is not the solution because a person might say okay he overgrew one dollar let me give him two dollars like he may give him five dollars for every mishna that he learns but as children grow so does their earning earning ability grows and if you convince them to do what you want to do only because it's profitable for them they'll earn money then you will eventually have to raise your wages and it's the two problems number one it's going to be very expensive for you and number two they are doing it for a wrong reason they are not interested in learning they are only interested in getting paid and as soon as they find something that pays more they will stop learning this father's error is obvious he thought that the child would perceive the deal just as he the father did from the father's perspective he paid money for the sake of his son's learning torah he therefore assumed that this would provide his son with a beautiful lesson in the value of torah learning but the boy experienced this deal from the opposite angle he did not he the boy did not pay anyone to learn he learned in order to be paid so whereas for the father it cost a lot of money to help his son learn and therefore the father appreciated learning because he was willing to sacrifice a lot of money for the sake of his son's learning but for the son he wasn't sacrificing anything and therefore he didn't see the value of his learning he only looked at it as a tool to earn money since he was learning for money in his mind the learning was just a means to a desired end the money and this is the same with any household chore with their doing their homework with them behaving properly and avoiding misbehaving if you give a prize or you you offer them money for proper behavior all you're teaching them is that money is important and that in order to earn money you have to do a certain sacrifice sometimes you have to do things that you don't want that may be a good lesson in life that you have to work hard for money but that's the only lesson they do not equate your sacrifice of paying them to the value of the good deed that they're doing they're not mature yet the father overlooked a very basic reality of education in order to assess the value of your education or the damage of your education of any experience or lesson the parent must be aware of how it is impacting the child by being attuned to the child's perspective of the experience and this is in fact an important lesson in all our communication when we communicate with our spouses with our children with any human being the meaning of our communication is not what we meant the meaning of our communication is what the other person understands it to be you cannot say this is what i meant he should have understood it like that no your words mean exactly what the other person understands it and if your words for example hurt someone it doesn't matter that you didn't mean it they got hurt that's how they understood it and therefore you cannot say it's their fault they misunderstood no it's your fault for not finding the right words to say and there should be a lesson for you all they understood me like me like that that means that i'm not supposed to talk like that anymore instead of telling them next time i say i talk understand me like this no it's not their job their understanding of your words provides you with the lesson and the requirement that now you have to change the way you talk the way you communicate so here the same thing if we want our children to understand something we have to communicate to them so that they understand us exactly the way we want them to if we think they yes they'll get a good lesson from it but in fact they get a negative lesson from it our educational effort is is at best as zero and at worst it's a very negative uh impact the father was not attuned to the child's perspective of the experience but only to his own the unfortunate result of this oversight was that he himself taught his child to value and crave money the father wanted to teach the child to love learning and instead the child did not learn to love learning at all instead the child learned to love money and what did he learn about learning that learning is a means of earning money this should make us realize that control through prices does not cause or does cause harm not like we thought originally that perhaps prizes is the best way of educating with no side effects now we learned that no it does have side effects and it's not education it's only control it's temporary what is the harm that that that this kind of prize control cause it reverses the value system by turning the end the goal into the means and the means into the goal like in this case it turned the the goal learning torah growing spiritually into the means of earning money this doesn't i'm reading note 18 on the bottom this does not conflict with the principle that mitochondria that by learning torah and doing myths vote for a wrong reason you may eventually come to learn and do mitzvot for the right reason meaning if a person learns torah because there is a gain for him eventually we hope that he will love learning and he will say to himself i like it so much i don't need the prize i don't need the gain i'm going i'm willing to learn for free not only that i'm willing to pay for someone to teach me and the same way at the beginning a person might do its vote because he's pushed by society or by his parents or because there is a certain gain he will get a better she do have better marriage or respect from his community or because his teacher will give him a better grade if he pretends that he's praying better so at the beginning of a child's career he may be doing mitzvot and learning torah for a wrong reason but then we hope that he will realize that praying actually is uh very meaningful i like it learning torah is very interesting i enjoy it doing mitzvot is fun and i i want to continue doing it so that is the idea of mitochondria that even though the child performs mitzvot and learns torah for an ulterior motive eventually the holiness and the involvement in torah and mitzvot will encourage him to do the mitzvot and learn torah for the right reason because that is the will of hashem that is the right thing to do and now we're saying prizes don't accomplish that we might say i will give a prize to my child to clean up to do his homework to learn torah to say because and that will inspire him to do it on his own eventually in most cases like the example we read that doesn't happen and the opposite happens by paying the child we might only develop his love for money and not his love from its vote so let's see how he resolves this this conflict since as we said above this principle applies only when one does strive to reach the level of performing it for its own sake from the beginning which means from the beginning the person says you know i really understand that i should be doing mitzvot and i understand that i should be learning torah but i have obstacles my eterna or my financial situation or i'm busy but you know i need a push and so the push will come in the form of pressure from society the respect that i get the the financial gain but in the back of my mind i know that really i should be doing it for its own sake this is just a help that i need to push myself to do the right thing and because the person started with the right thought in mind i want to do it just i'm too weak and i need help and that help is the ulterior motive and eventually when my situation changes i become stronger i overcome my yetzerara i will be able to do the mitzvot and learn torah without help without the prize without the extra payment but if the child is not interested in doing the right thing he's not interested in doing mitzvot or learning torah zero interest and we tell him learn because you're gonna get paid the interest will not grow and that's where education comes in we have to first explain to the child why it is good for him why it is important for the world and make him realize that he really should be doing it and he might say yes i agree i want to be doing it but i have so many things that pull me away i have my friends basketball i have books and i have the phone and so many distractions so because i'm gonna get paid okay fine i i i welcome it because i want to learn anyway but if we don't uh use the educational part as well and we'd only use the prize then the child will never grow to start doing mitzvot or learning total for the right reason now we're going back to the text on page on the bottom of page 38. since it since prizes have detrimental effects it is like any other form of control which must be followed and corrected by a new measure educational measure so again to remind ourselves control means a temporary effort to educate it's only temporary means it's a long term educational measure if we inspire a child if we make the child feel good about what he's doing then he will want to continue doing it long term but if we control the child by forcing him or by threatening him or by even positively giving him a prize it will only be temporary when a child is motivated to perform by means of a prize then steps must be taken to cause the child to feel good about the behavior itself cannot say oh i'm happy he's doing what he's supposed to my prize system works i also have to speak to him about it and i have to increase his understanding and love for the mitzvah again when we use prizes to motivate children we have to also cause the child to feel good about the behavior itself only steps will which make the child feel big and gratified about what he has accomplished can correct the detrimental effect of the prize and help the child internalize the positive behavior itself again when the child internalizes the positive behavior he will continue doing it long term if he uses the good behavior as a tool just to earn money or get a snack get what he wants then the behavior will be put aside as soon as he doesn't need the reward or if you can get the reward elsewhere so that's our goal we have to make the child love and understand what he's doing this brings up another point it is very important to motivate children through material rewards now with speaking about the positive side of prices yes it is common and it works but only if you use it in a smart way if you rely only on a prize it will backfire you will be happy that it works in the beginning but then all of a sudden it will stop children receive prizes money and all sorts of other rewards for volunteering in activities such as groups father and son learning learning programs vacation time learning programs and so on myths of activities and they get snacks they get mentioned in the newsletter and it sounds good aren't we all moved by the sight of pure innocent children raising their sweet voices in torah or to heal him but precisely because these activities are so valuable they have to be conducted delicately and cautiously when such projects are initiated impulsively without careful thought and foresight they can have a very detrimental effect if the focus is the price then the child will try to find the the minimum amount of time that he can spend in order to get the price and the minimum quality of learning or the mitzvah in order to get the prize he will ask himself if i come a few minutes late will i still get the prize if i leave a few minutes earlier will i still get the prize if in the mid in the middle i talk or i walk out to the bathroom for coffee will i still get the price and if yes then i will do everything possible to still get the prize while doing the minimum and the same will be cleaning the house doing the homework any activity we want the child to do if we are encouraging them to do it only through a prize the quality and quantity of their work will decrease to the minimum just enough for them not to lose the price so again if such projects are initiated impulsively without thinking through how can i keep my child interested in doing the mitzvah and doing it well and happily and not only for the prize that the prize should only be help to encourage the child there should be other reasons that the child is doing it there have to be lectures stories inspiration praise muhammad says a person with a w with a wise heart will collect mitzvot but the fool of the lips will become weary the fool will become tired rabbagh explains that the fool refers to a person who tries to achieve his goal without first thinking about the steps he will need to take toward those goals and so he will do a project he will run around trying to organize but if he doesn't think through all his efforts might not produce the desired effect he will only become tired of his efforts and he will not produce effects this foolishness will ruin his efforts and he will never achieve his goals similarly the fool will speak impulsively without first considering the truth and purpose of his words he is therefore called the full of the lips the verse contrasts the person with a wise heart who will follow disciplined and planned programs in order to achieve his goals with the fool who follows his ideas impulsively and acts at random without thinking it through here's an idea oh let's do that he tries doesn't work oh let's do this and let's do this and let's do this and then nothing works he eventually becomes worn down and frustrated by his fruitless efforts the person with a wise heart plans his actions in advance through careful thought to ensure that he will achieve the desired goal the full of the lips on the other hand pays attention only to the surface level of an idea or initiative we see that all the time in our modern world where political parties claim that they have solutions but really it's only band-aids they only look at the surface at the problems and they say oh we'll do this and people say yay it's so good it will solve the problem they get excited but then after a short while they realize that it didn't solve anything it was just a band-aid but the wound was still infected and uh the society only gets worse and worse so again this surface level of an idea and initiative is symbolized by operating with the lips instead of with one's mind so such a fool proceeds impossibly without thinking and as a result will often miss his mark or even work against it it is critical for people involved in such activities and programs both the sponsors who pay for the prizes and those who actually run them the organizers to realize this important point the prizes themselves have no educational effect they simply get the child to perform which is a control which means if you want the kids to come to the program give them prizes but once they are at the program you have to educate them cannot leave them by themselves because the only thing that will be on their mind is the ticket only the snack the prize they will not be affected at all by the learning or by performance of mitzvah and again the prizes themselves have no educational effect they simply get the child to perform and the fact that prizes alone do not lead to hinuk invariably means that they can be detrimental instead of giving the child a positive message who give him no message at all or the opposite message the message that material prizes and money are important they cause children to set their sights on material goals which ultimately work against the goals we are trying to establish for them therefore anyone involved in these initiatives must ensure that they will include real as well real education this means finding ways to call to to cause the children to connect to the activities themselves and to come away feeling inspired and elevated let's take this point a significant step further the problem with the prize is not only that it puts the child's focus on the prize in each particular instance there's another problem control through prices causes the child to strive for material goals in general not only that in this instance the child will ignore the mitzvah and focus on the money but his whole life goal will now be more materialistic more financially based he will start thinking more about money dreaming about money planning about earning money the detrimental effect can be very broad it prevents the child from developing the ability to sense pleasure in spirituality he will equate all spiritual activities to the amount of money and pleasure and benefit that he gets physically the now he brings another example the following case will show what we mean i teach a group of bar mitzvah boys there was a kid who regularly helped me set up the room and books before the lesson and put everything back afterwards last summer i conducted two parallel groups this caused more work for the child so i decided to pay him something for his help when vacation ended and we were back as normal with one group and less work the child refused to continue helping without pay so he was a volunteer then he started getting paid and then he did not want to go back to volunteering i had to talk with him trying to figure out what had changed because he the teacher only started paying him more because there was more work and when the work went back to regular the teacher assumed that the child will volunteer again and the child answered angrily what do you want from me you expect me to work for you for free you yourself decided to pay me because you realized that it's only right so why do you suddenly think you can stop paying me and expect me to continue helping you i reminded him that this is not exactly work but a mitzvah his sharp retort was i know it's a mitzvah but your job is also a mitzvah so why don't you also do it for free i wasn't quite sure what to say to this so i shifted to a different track i asked him why he had agreed to help me to for free in the first place his answer was interesting i don't know why i agreed in the first place maybe i was a loser but that doesn't mean that i have to be a loser for the rest of my life wow imagine this is a 10 year old boy speaking and this is very enlightening it demonstrates how apart from failing to achieve a prize can even ruin retroactively in this case the prize caused the child to refuse to volunteer for things that he used to be happy to do and she used to feel good about himself now when he found out he can get paid he regretted all the free help that he provided not only did he refuse to continue doing it he even wondered why he had done it in the past why did he suddenly begin wondering about it now the answer is that when he was not receiving a prize he was motivated by something else something that he subconsciously conceived by himself it was an inner motivation a sense of importance and fulfillment he felt felt good doing something for his rebbe doing something for others he was satisfied he didn't think about payment he wouldn't even ask it for it he was happy and he would continue like this forever but as soon as we told him you know why you get doing it for free you can really get paid for it now he said oh doing it for free is not the best it's not good there's a better way getting paid oh and that tells me that whatever reasons i was doing it for as personal satisfaction doing a mitzvah growing myself becoming a more of a giving person that's not important enough earning money is more important because here you have it the person came to me and said why are you doing it for free you can get paid for it oh now i have a different set of values money is number one if i cannot get paid for it and i'm wasting my life anyway so might as well do something for free for another human being but i'm not going to do anything for anyone unless i get paid however such motivation is subtle and that is why it disappeared as soon as he got paid and he even forgot about it it can only exist to the extent that the person is attuned to it and that is why when a child volunteers it is very important to increase his fulfillment in doing it for free instead of saying you know i'm so proud of my son let me buy him a gift let me give him a couple dollars as my thank you no instead increase his satisfaction and feeling that he's doing something good and important by praising him by encouraging him saying you know what you're doing is so good so important so good you are becoming a giver hashem is happy you're helping others so much that will strengthen the the proper reason for doing the mitzvah instead of giving him the money then he will say oh doing a mitzvah is important because i get paid for it not in itself once the child was being paid he no longer needed to exert the subconscious effort to keep attuned to this spiritual motivation it's much easier to see the reward of money than the reward in allah or the the spiritual satisfaction now it was replaced by tangible and material motivation which required no special sensitivity or focus and this is by the way as a side point the reason why the jewish people complained about complained about mon when hashem sent them the delicious food in the form of man at the beginning they enjoyed it it tasted like anything they wanted but slowly slowly they rejected it and they said we want real food we want to dig our teeth into real meat not into this soft man why because man required them to exercise their mind they had to they had to constantly be focused that this food is given to me by hashem it is spiritual food it's a gift from god and i'm aware of god i'm aware of his gift and i appreciate it and then when i think about any food i want man will taste like it and they said it's much easier just to enjoy the food without thinking where it comes from and without having appreciation just give me a piece of steak i'll dig into it with my teeth and i'll enjoy and i don't need the spiritual enjoyment of man it's much easier to have pure physical enjoyment from the stake so it's the the laziness and and the ease with which you can get physical pleasure without working too much that caused them to eventually say give us real food we don't want this perfect food man so the same thing when we give prizes or money to to our children for doing their tasks or mitzvot they slowly lose the the sensitivity for spiritual pleasure and since that focus was subtle the focus on doing what's right feeling good about what you did subtle and delicate in the first place once he lost it he could no longer even remember or recognize it once we replace that spiritual satisfaction of doing what's right with money or with a prize that became on the forefront of the child's mind he no longer even remembers that once he used to enjoy learning or doing meets what or helping others for free of course i still enjoy learning and doing this what because i get paid so what do i enjoy i enjoy my salary not the activity so we see that the price has two effects it develops material desires and expectations and it ruins the child's ability to develop a taste for spiritual pleasure to enjoy the experience of the good things he does this leads us to the following conclusions control through prices meaning material reward does cause harm it is control which at best is temporary but it can even cause harm first it distorts the child's perception and value system turning his good believer or action into the means of earning money or prize it's no longer the goal and the material reward into the end i want to earn some money so i'm going to join a learning group i'm going to go say to healing because i need ice cream i'm going to help my parents because i need some money when i don't need money i will not help the parents second the more a child gets used to being rewarded the hard it becomes for him to perform for free the price creates the perception that enjoyment can only come from material things and not from the pleasure of doing the right thing that's point number one that prizes have a temporary control effect they do not inspire the child to perform in the future and not only that it can damage his value system and now on page we speak about the second question do prizes create positive association or not above we touched on the question of why a prize does not create positive association to address the question properly we will present it more elaborately through a quote i don't understand why negative association happens automatically but positive association does not what is the difference between a child who prays be because he is afraid his father will punish him and the child who prays in order to get a prize in a case where a child is scared of his father he develops negative association automatically but in the case where the the child prays because his father gives him a prize he doesn't develop a positive association automatically what is the difference between a child who dovens because he is afraid his father will punish him and the child who does in order to get a prize neither the fear of the punishment nor the excitement about the prize is inherently connected to the experience of governing of prayer yet you claim that when the child is threatened with punishment he will associate the tension with the governing itself he sees it as one inclusive experience why doesn't this apply to the prize as well why doesn't the excitement of the prize become associated with prayer itself is there a logical explanation for this and now he will explain the reason negative association occurs automatically while positive association does not is based on two points number one in the child's world prayer and fear of punishment are in the same realm meaning he's not happy about either of them he doesn't want to get punished and he doesn't want to pray and he chooses the best of the two evils okay you know punishment is worse so i'll pray instead to avoid punishment it is also a punishment to pray he thinks for the child governing even without the threat of punishment is just a burden if it weren't neither the punishment or the prize would be necessary and number two the governing and the fear of punishment are perceived as a real cause and effect in other words the only reason for the threat of punishment is that the parent or teacher wants the child to darwin if there were no need to pray there would be no reason at all to have to worry about the punishment so it's the fault of prayer that i get punished prayer therefore the child thinks is bad it's what causes me to suffer association is created when two entities are perceived on an emotional level as one natural unit this is the case with prayer and the fear of punishment because they're both undesirable and one creates the other meaning the demand to pray creates the threat of punishment now on page 43 the prize differs in both respects the child doesn't want to pray but he does want the prize so therefore he sees them as separate as different therefore the two experiences remain completely separate the fun of the prize is in one part of the mind and it does not merge at all with the experience of prayer in fact the opposite is true the prize makes the governing feel all the more burdensome since prayer is the hurdle that the child must overcome in order to get the prize and as i said earlier the child will try to do less of it and with less quality because again it's a hurdle it's a burden i just have to get it over with and my real goal is the prize regarding the second point the child definitely does consider it possible to get a prize without governing which means whereas in the negative the child says i wouldn't get punished if i didn't need to pray and therefore prayer is what causes the punishment whereas here i want the snack but there are many ways to get the snack i can whine i can beg i can maybe bargain for a smaller task and so prayer is not the only way to get it the prize is independent entity not connected to the prayer and the prayer is just one of the difficult ways to get the prize therefore he will not see the prize as a natural consequence of davening it remains very clear to the child that there is no natural connection between the prize and the prayer the rule is material reward never creates a prize is not education nor does it create positive association on the contrary anticipation of a prize trains the child to value the material and makes activities of true value feel that much more burdensome so as a summary of today's class we have to realize that although prizes have been praised and are being widely used in our school system in the united states they are not the best educational method in fact they're not even considered educational method they're considered a form of control which combined with education can produce good results but if it is used by itself it will only harm the child and that shows that that explains why the educational system in the united states is so much weaker than elsewhere around the globe and especially the one that we're familiar with in the former soviet union where there were no prizes but the education was still very high and people loved learning and they learned voluntarily and they were scientists and they were philosophers and they were writers and they pursued high levels of education despite that the higher levels of education did not offer them any money so the educational system there worked and that's what we have to think on our own why what was it in the old school that we're missing now thank you for listening best hashem we should have inspiration to do what's right hashem should help us to make right decisions and bazat hashem we should see the fruits of our labor our children should grow up as good human beings and those that love hashem those that love mitzvot and hashem we should only see happiness from them have a great night