Is There Any Hope for Chinuch Today?

Hi, this is Dov Elkins with our question answer series. Key black writes. After hearing show number 302, what's the matter with kids today? What do I do lemaisa? Give up on the hinukh of my kids? Don't have more kids? It was really depressing especially because it's so true. Yes. It is very depressing. And the answer is I'll tell you an interesting story. Rebbetzin Hella says that her daughter was working in a school. And there was a teacher there who had had a child with very serious handicaps. Physical and mental. And she was pregnant. And one of the other teachers with the tact that only Israelis can muster said to her, "Aren't you nervous that this child is going to be deformed also?" And the woman said to her, "They're not my children, they're Hashem's children. Whatever he gives me, I will be happy to raise." Yeah. I I my mother I'm 67. So, forget about people who are my children's ages, you know. But my my mother used to tell me all the time, "Baruch Hashem, I don't have to raise kids today cuz I don't know what I would do." It's a different world. But the answer is, okay. So, as the rabbi said at the end of Fiddler on the Roof, "Rabbi, as they were being kicked out of Anatevka, rabbi, wouldn't this be a good time for the Messiah to come?" And he said, "Yes, but until he does, we'll just have to wait for him some place else." You play the hand you're dealt. That's it. Yeah, right. To say this door isn't that door and that door isn't that door it's hevel. Hevel havolim. Doesn't make a difference. You play the hand you're dealt. In the 1970s there was a backgammon craze. And I would took out the library all the books I could find on backgammon. They all had different Mahalken, but they all had the same use site. You know, there's a certain element of luck to backgammon, but a real backgammon player doesn't complain about the dice. Sometimes it'll go for you, sometimes it'll go against you. The goal is to figure out how to play that spin the best that you can. And it's the same thing in life. No, you can't be me Irish. No, you can't give up on your Yes, you have to try the best that you can. And yes, you have to you know, stick to it. Do we give up? Absolutely not. We stop having children for Shalom. That's what That's what Miriam said to her father, you're worse than power. Power was going to only on the boys. You're going to also on the girls cuz you're telling people not to have children. Of course we have to have children. Of course we have to raise them. Of course we have to do the best we can. And of course it's going to be much harder. All the books from the past don't help you because they all work with the same basic use site. I am the parent, you are the child, and I'll tell you what to do. And today the child says no. I just heard somebody speaking about this. He says, "When I was a kid, you never butted in on your parents' conversations. If you were invited into the conversation, they asked you a question directly, you answered that question, and that was it." So but I was just at a friend's house, and the teenager sits down and starts talking like like all of a sudden she's one of the adults with an opinion. Back when I was a kid, that would never happen. So okay, but that's the reality. So you can complain about it. We can go on. And Chicken Soup for the Soul tells a story about a guy who got into a motorcycle accident and became a quadriplegic. Couldn't move anything from below his neck. And yet he was a very happy person. And someone asked him, "How could you be so happy?" And he said, "I used to be able to do 20 million things. Now I can only do 2 million things. So, I can focus on the 18 million things I can't do. I can focus on the 2 million things I can do." And that's it. It's our job to deal Play the spin that we got. You know, play the hand you're dealt. Do the best that you can. You put one foot in front of the other. You do the best you can. And uh you know, as as very well as used to say, "Children are not nachas machines. They're not there to make you feel good." You do the best that you can. They're Hashem's children that we have been given to raise, and we will do the best that we can with them. This is Devorah Lavsky with our question and answer series.