Rabbi Scott Friedman

okay okay my name is scott friedman um i live in psych new jersey um i have a yeshiva in tandem fly new jersey it's a boys high school uh it's called the horizontal orisov tanofly and um my background a little background i'm a therapist and i've been working with kids aside from myself working you know on myself and with myself my whole life with kids for uh adolescent boys in particular for a very very long time and i just you know i want to share with you i guess a few i think very very important ideas that it's the way i see the world it's the way i see kids it's where i see people so i'm going to share with you i think two ideas that to me are really really essential when it comes to really anybody it doesn't have to be someone struggling it's really anybody in the world these two ideas for me kind of sum everything up that i've seen and i hope you'll feel similarly if not you know i'm happy to answer questions or to disagree so let me start out with uh two ideas the first idea is that i remember i heard from dr bencion sorutskin who i consider my mentor and really a rebbe of mine from flatbush who has this amazing amazing book that i think really it's called beyond the surface it's uh it's really unbelievable not enough people know about it and he quotes the khazanishi and quotes something that hasn't said that he says that you said that a lot of people think that love and warmth is what children need but he said that's not the case that's not what they really need it's not love and he uses a certain lashon and dr stratzkin uses another and i use another but i'll share them all with you so the hazardous says really what they need is they need to be admired they need to be appreciated and dr strzodzkin says they need to be accepted and hence you know this lecture i guess this discussion is called what does it mean to really accept our children because when i learned that idea so many years ago when i was you know first starting working with people i was trying to figure out what does it mean to accept somebody what does it even mean to accept yourself and i think i'm gonna explain to you where it led me in a nutshell the better word i like to use is how much you like your child it's not how much you love your child that's how much you like your child and you know dr schwetzkin tells an amazing story tells the story of a woman who had a child who was seeing him privately in therapy like twice a week she's spending a fortune of money and the boy refuses even to call home heir of shabbos so she comes to meet with dr seretskin and she says to him you know i understand i'm spending a fortune of money and i'm not seeing any results my kid doesn't even i you know all i ask of him he should call me of shabbos for two minutes say good shabbos and that's it even a phone call like you know i don't even get that out of all the work that's been going on so he says to her you know mrs son so let me ask you a question do you like your child so she says i love my child we told him i love my child i'm spending a fortune between this and the yeshiva and the dorm and the money and he goes out with friends and whatever and i'm i can't sleep at night do you have any idea what i'm going through so i said no no of course i know you love your child that's not the question i asked you i want to know do you like your child she thought about and she said i never thought about it to be honest with you and she said honestly no he's selfish he's difficult he's stubborn he's you know he makes the house difficult he's this he's that he's ungrateful she goes i really don't like him honestly so he says to you know mrs son so would you want to call someone who felt that way about you and it's a very insightful point to be very honest with you um you know i want to talk a little bit about what that means to like our children you know everybody loves their child i think that that's instinctive you know every parent loves their child um even parents that will hurt their child you know physically they might hurt them they might abuse them they still love their children and they're upset with them and they think this is a way of maybe helping them or venting their own frustration whatever it might be but like certainly it's not you know we like our friends hopefully we like our spouses and hopefully we like our children now some some of us like some children more than the others and that i think is another topic very important worth talking about you know the puzzling says that leia hashem saw that leia was a snua that she felt hate hated so uh i saw that uh palm asked he said was it jacob avenue he hated his wife it can't be hated lei meinu yakov vino was he didn't hate his wife so the shot is that because she sensed that he loved rachel more than her it was he hated her it wasn't just that she was loveless it was that she was hated and i believe that every child in the world feels that way every child is an individual every child is so special and when they feel they're second to anybody in the whole world they feel hated they don't feel less loved they don't still feel second place they feel hated and i think it's a natural feeling i want to share with you a story that absolutely changed my life this story is the most important thing i think i've ever learned in my life and you know i hope that you'll feel a similar way i met with a boy in a school i worked in many years ago and i sat with him and he shared with me about his social anxiety this boy had really very very a lot of social anxiety so bad he was always shaking and hunched over he had terrible acne he had a very hard time really functioning and i met with him in my office i remember it like it was yesterday and we sat and i asked him to explain to me what he was feeling and what was going on in his life and you know he shared with me and as we talked he explained to him when he was younger he got bullied a lot got made fun of in school unfortunately and i asked him you know what'd you do about it how'd you handle it so he said well i honestly i stopped going out because every time i went out i would get bullied so i didn't want to go to school i didn't want to leave my house i didn't want to go out with friends i said wow that was probably really difficult it must been hard on your parents also like how did they feel how did they handle that and he said well they would always say to me you know of course you don't have any friends of course you're unhappy you don't go out you know how you're supposed to make friends if you never go out and you know both of us he understood and i understood at least intellectually they didn't mean any harm at all they were really wonderful people who just cared about their child and i looked at the kid and i said to him and how did that make you feel and this next you know give and take would shape the rest of my life to be honest with you and it's not saying anyone taught me or i learned in school it was learned in this very moment so he looked at me and he started to cry and he said it made me feel like i was a freak and i looked back at him and i started to cry and i said to him saying that again i didn't even know i said if you didn't feel like a freak you would really be a freak and it changed both of our lives he literally had this unbelievable turnaround i'm sure there were other factors but this certainly was a major part of it and it changed the way i see the world and i see myself and i see people rematching salman shalita who's really um him and dr stratzkin are the two people that i attribute all my chinook to in his book called with hearts full of love which is also an absolute must read for any parent or mechanic so he says that we have an old messiah that if a child is angry or frustrated we're supposed to let him break dishes throw them and break them this is an old messiah it says fascinating right and i want to tell you from my perspective it's so logical see i believe most of people's problems come because they don't know what to do with their emotions you know a lot of people talk about drugs and addiction and the problems with it and it's dangerous and it's harmful and whatever it is but i'll be honest my problem with it is that people are numbing their real feelings and to me that is the worst thing in the world because if a person numbs themselves and they can't feel they can't have solutions the problem is that every single person in my opinion that's doing drugs has somewhat given up an alternative solutions because nobody's been able to help them find them they so to speak weren't able to break dishes enough and i believe so deeply that everyone's feelings are a thousand percent correct just like that child that person was supposed to feel like a freak if he didn't he would really be a freak that's not normal it's normal that he felt that way considering what he was going through and it made me realize something it's true about everybody in the whole world i want to give you a muscle i remember i went to uh the siemens the two ago i believe it was and i live in pseg so we're very close to met life but i decided to take the train because the traffic was going to be terrible so i remember i took the train i don't remember exactly who i was with and i remember being on the train and there was this very i had a lot of like anxiety it was very uncomfortable everywhere you look there were dogs smelling for bombs and you know police like like like it was world war three it was crazy and i had these mixed emotions like on one hand i was like this is crazy that in america we need to have this kind of security for you to go to the cm ashas but then i had another emotion which was like you know what babar hashem at least we live in a country where we have the government who's protecting us in such a manner and something hit me i don't know where it came from but it was fascinating i thought to myself you know if i were a holocaust survivor and i got on that train i would probably have a panic attack i would have a panic attack and i would break the glass on the train and run for my life and everybody there would think that i was a lunatic but the reality is that the body always knows what it needs and that would actually be the intelligent thing for that person to be doing based on their life circumstances see i don't in my world try to understand or have to convince myself that a person and i'm not trying to make light of these concepts they're beautiful but i don't have to like think oh this person's in a shama oh i love them unconditionally no no it's very logical for me i'm a thousand percent sure that if i were in this person's shoes i would feel and act exactly the way this person feels and acts because of whatever happened in this person's life see i don't believe anybody's sick i've never met a sick person in my life i think everybody's healthy healthy people do things like take drugs when everything else has failed if you go into surgery you take medication for it right you get knocked out because you're in so much pain you know i've met all kinds of people kids i've had tamidim who are the valedictorian who have gone through their own ocds you know i don't like these terms because i don't even think they're unhealthy that's a natural reaction to his life circumstances but whatever these terminologies are and then i've you know also had relationships with kids who have struggled and suffered mightily with drugs and suicide i'll tell you an amazing story amazing story about someone who was suicidal so there was a boy who went through a very difficult time in his life and unfortunately got very involved with drugs and his parents sent him to uh a certain program hoping that it would help and unfortunately it didn't help and it actually made things worse and when the kid came back so he calls me up one day from his therapist's office and he says to me can you drive me to columbia presbyterian to the uh i guess the psych ward so i said of course you know i'll be happy to drive you and i went and picked them up it was a whole long story and i drove them and while we're driving some you know we were talking and we were very close this thomas of mine and i and we're schmoozing i let him put on music he's got nirvana on the beatles on whatever he's listening to and you know we're just hanging out and we get columbia presbyterian i pull up in front and i say to him whatever his name was you know um beryl whatever you know joe um you seem fine like what are we doing here and he looks at me and he says to me i have nowhere to go so i said what does that mean he goes i have nowhere to go so i said why can't you go home he goes i would never go home i'd rather be here than home so i said to him that's crazy i said all right pack your stuff up let's go you're moving with me and he actually did i'm not telling the story for that reason that's not the point but here's the point so he did move in with my wife and i she's it's a day guess and one night in the beginning he was we were up very late two three in the morning yeah oh i'm so sorry yeah sure i apologize so we we were up very late two three in the morning sitting at my dining room table and he was feeling suicidal and he wanted to hurt himself and i had one policy for him in my house and that policy was that if he's going to do any kind of drug it had to be done only after like 12 o'clock in the backyard can't be done around the children they shouldn't know what's going on even though again of course i i empathize with what he's going through nonetheless i was there for him you know and that had to whatever so he was suicidal and i want to tell you when i was younger what i might have said to him i might have said it's going to be okay i might have said it's not worth it i might have said you know whatever but i didn't say any of those things i said to him if i were you i would also be suicidal actually makes perfect sense i mean how could you not be and to me that is the solution really enough solution is the right word but that's the whole story every yeah i am validating his emotion and i'm glad you brought that up actually because there's a huge difference between emotion and action not every emotion well say differently every emotion needs to have an expression somehow but the question is what is that expression what do we do with it how do we handle that it but as a young kid i don't think he understands great question right so again right so again i just want to clarify never did i say or suggest that he should kill himself in fact i was very clear after those few minutes please don't do that i love you you're so important you're wonderful i want to tell you the truth the reason people suffer is because they don't feel great about themselves you know think about yosef attack right everyone knows jakob avinu gave him right this special kind of love even when he was in mitzrayim with the most beautiful women in the world he was he was thrown in jail not to be with her you know why because he felt like a million bucks even in mitzrayim even in jail he never changed when paro came to him and said you're not safe you're no longer yosef you're not that old jew right cut off your beard and peace and join the modern world right you said no no the saint paul successful yet say yosef allah it's been trying he didn't change because he had something that no one could take from him that image of his father what was the image how much his father loved and appreciated and valued him you see it can't be that we only love and appreciate and value our children when they behave or make us feel good it has to be that we love value and appreciate them for who they are and only for who they are not for who we are if we have shortcomings that's our issue i could tell you as a you know as a manager of a yeshiva my stuff gets in the way also i'm not perfect i apologize to a few kids this week because and again you know you don't know me but i'm very relaxed but even in spite of how relaxed i am you know i i find that at times it's difficult and that's a different conversation rabbi kalash and i are going to have on sunday you know about balan whatever about the individual versus the clown whatever but just back to the point that validation is saying you are so normal not even normal you're correct the way you are is right there's nothing wrong with you when a person feels like there's something right about them they don't want to smoke weed they don't want to do drugs they don't want to run around with random people they're not they don't need those things the problem is i want to tell you something very very interesting so i went through my own stuff as a child as a teenager and you know it's very hard honestly to figure it out what do you do when you're depressed when you're anxious when you don't feel whatever whatever it might be and you might have a lot going for you you know and there are a lot of kids who do i meet kids who you know have a lot of what people think is you know whatever and they still don't feel good about themselves no matter what and you know it's very difficult to figure that out like what do you do and i want to tell you something fascinating i finally realized that what i told that boy is exactly what every individual needs for themselves you know the difficult thing with therapy in my opinion very often it feels like you're going to a therapist to fix you to tell you how to make yourself right but there's something inherently wrong with that it's backwards there's nothing wrong with anybody really a therapist job in my opinion is to help a person feel their feelings the feelings will do its own job if we let it you know if a person cuts their finger and they bleed it will heal and if a person i have a you know whatever i don't i know i'm being recorded but i can think of someone cause i don't want them know what i'm talking about i can think of someone who's you know been dealing with a certain difficulty for a very very long time and i once said to him in my opinion part of why you're still struggling with this thing not in any judgment of course is because you have a broken arm and you refuse to let it heal like could you imagine if you broke your arm and you walk around all day like what's wrong with my arm like what it's broken you have to let it heal sadness is a natural feeling it's a healthy feeling you know i have a talmud who told me that he's afraid to share his feelings because when he shared with his mother many years ago that he was depressed and suicidal she said to him okay so we're gonna go to the hospital we'll obviously have to get you help and he said ever since then he never opened his mouth ever again to anybody and i told the mother obviously not in an attacking way she's an amazing wonderful person and she felt terrible she said but i was just trying to help him i said of course you were but from his perspective that's not what he heard that's not what he took away he took away you're not allowed to have these feelings and to me yeah please sure yeah so again it's what i believe what i said to that boy which is that's okay like i'm so sorry that you're feeling that way oh my god like i'm here for you i want to help you you might say is there someone you want to speak to like you have to let them the problem was let's say differently it's not what was said it was the feeling he got from what was said he must have felt that that was a way of solving the problem right basically that's exactly what she said over here oh my goodness you're feeling depressed let me take you to the doctor and right so again right here let me clarify so then i would say the difference is when you say that about a a sore throat or strep the child for whatever reason doesn't feel judged in any way for it and isn't um yeah whereas here for whatever reason again each child and mother is different and the way it's said i mean again i heard i think it was uh i forgot it rabbi solomon maybe said the first whatever he said you could say the same thing and it comes out totally different the reality is that it comes down to does the child feel that we are there to understand his feelings to help him or we're there to i always say i say all the time children are not problems that need to be solved they're not problems that need to be solved you know that they're people with feelings and they're normal healthy people actually and if we would just try to um try harder i guess to see them and understand what's going on inside of them every time i'm just telling you every time i've sat with someone every time you'll see i always say if you watch a movie of a person's life in reverse you will always see what caused that thing you know i believe a lot of children you know don't want to be from unfortunately because they feel that that froomkite killed their relationship very often with them and their rebbe them and their parent them and their family them in their community whatever it might be so if that did that why would anybody want to be a part of that right so i didn't dive in enough or i didn't show up on time or i didn't learn well enough or i got in trouble because it was a very famous funny story maybe you've heard it before but there's a story of a boy and the rebbe said he had terrible add and uh he met with the mother he said to the mother i have an idea i don't want to embarrass the boy every day we're going to give i'm going to say to the sheer i need a cup of coffee and this boy is going to volunteer to go out he's going to take his medicine that's my reminder to take your medicine and he'll come back with my cup of coffee and whatever and so like after a month the mother came in to meet with the rebbe said it's going unbelievable the the child's a different person it's mom it's unbelievable so the mother goes home so happy this govaldik you know it's working out this plan is so genius so the mother says to the kid your rebbe is so proud of you you know it's so nice every day you're taking your medication i'm so happy it's working out he goes yeah i put the medicine in the rebbe's coffee every single day so the the truth is that um it's um so again these are the two principles i really want to get across i mean i i i have a lot i could say but the two principles that i find to always always be true is that it's not how much we love our child it's how much we like them love everybody you know love you know you love all your children you don't not not you i'm sure but people us i'll tell you one more story it's a little personal but i know somebody whose second child was uh acting up a little more difficult than the first the first was like very straight very you know followed all the rules straight a student the whole thing second not so much doesn't didn't want to go to school making trouble in school whatever it was so i i uh i met with this person and i said to them i said um you know i have to be honest with you i i think your child senses that you don't feel the same way about them as you do the other child and they feel you resent them and as we talked what i found out is that this person was a young new mother and she felt that the second child had taken away her ability to be a perfect mother to the first the first was working out very nicely behaving acting following orders whatever it was the second one now was rocking the boat making that much more difficult and internally it was hard for that person even though they didn't realize it consciously because they felt like less of a mother now like they're getting in the way of my perfect idea of my family of my whatever it is and they said well you know she's difficult i said yeah i believe that i'm sure she is i said but i just want to tell you something you got to work it out you must learn to like this child as much as you do your first and they said i i don't know how to do that and so that's its own conversation but you have no choice you absolutely must and i could tell you that hashem that it was something this person was able to work on and they were able to and the child's flourishing today not like the first child not a straight a student you know not different natures but in their own way govaldik doing unbelievably well and i just i'm telling you it's my opinion that every child that feels like a million bucks every child who feels like they are right the way they are and like we appreciate them just the way they are you know i always tell my tommy don't marry someone with the hope that something will change that is very dangerous when you get married you must accept the entire person everything about them it can't be we're going to get married and then oh maybe they'll start to do this or that or this it can't be you can only get married to someone you accept from day one the way they are and the same thing is true with our children we have to it's not just accepts you accept to me is almost like okay nebucha i'm stuck with this child you know i'll do the best i can that that is not acceptable honestly this child is our child brought into the world by us and they're honestly telling the truth they're perfect the way they are now it doesn't mean they're making great decisions well for them they are unfortunately they've been through a lot and they're hurting something is bothering them so they make the decisions that they make but you know what when we learn to teach them i'm sorry i i forgot this point okay this is a very very important point i can maybe end with this point even so let's talk about now what acceptance really means let's talk about what it means for our children even for ourselves as one mother said to me yesterday very very well you can't really accept your child if you don't accept yourself which is very true it's a thousand percent true you know if we have our own stuff we can't possibly accept um other people certainly not our children it's very it's impossible because uh often it feels like a reflection on us so i i just want to talk about what it means to accept ourselves so this was something i worked for many years on because i never really understood it and people tried to explain it to me i tried working on it myself and then i'd be like okay i just have to accept myself and then i'd get mad at myself because i wasn't accepting myself and then i'd be sad that i wasn't able to explain the whole thing and then i finally realized the same nakuda accepting myself was exactly what i had learned from that other boy in my office my lack of being able to accept myself was something i had to accept even that feeling is a real natural healthy feeling for me because of whatever my life led me to that gave me that feeling you know i'm gonna share something a little private even though my wife i'm sure wouldn't want me to you know i used to get not often i only had a few but i had a few panic attacks in my life from anxiety and whatever i never knew where they came from honestly no idea i was never able to figure it out and i went to a doctor this that whatever and different people tried to help but really no one was able to and if you've ever had one they're the worst thing in the world i mean they are scary absolutely scary and the way they healed which is crazy i couldn't believe it was actually this idea when i stopped being afraid of the panic attack and instead i embraced it and i accepted it and more than accepted it i i validated it i embraced it i valued it you know i read in a book uh called living the truth by keith ablow even though i don't think i'm supposed to quote him i think he did some bad things but he said something very good in the book he talks about that when a person you know if you have a cold you have to you have to let it all out if you hold it all in you're going to get sick it's got to come out and i think that anxiety depression these type of things are feelings that are trapped that people don't know what to do with and when i finally let the anxiety out of these panic attacks and when they came i would say you know what you're scared and you're uncomfortable and this is bad but you know what it's actually really good this is the body doing what it needs to do and i never necessarily figured out what was it i don't even know that i needed to i just needed to respect that whatever was going on is what needs to go on and i could just tell you you know this comes up all the time with tommy dim with with kids you know uh there's a boy who's going through a hard time i don't want to say what it is in case any of my tommy them see or hear what i'm saying he's going through a hard time in his private life you know one of the things that i've gotten pressure which is again for a different conversation is the structure versus giving kids space and freedom and i admit even i fell into that pressure a little bit i started to give the kid a little bit of a hard time coming on time a little more whatever now my hard times not other people's but still still and i hate to say it i totally lost sight of what i know which is there's a reason he's not coming in and it's not necessarily because he hates yeshiva or because he's a god forbid a you know a difficult person something was getting in the way something was bothering him and i know exactly what it is that's the worst part i actually know and it still got in my way is that amazing like it still got in my way and you know i'm the idiot talking about these things and we're all human so these things get in our way and we all have feelings it's natural but i think what's important is for me so ultimately what i learned you know the the mission says azu usher is samael bakalco so who is rich someone's happy with what they have so when i was younger i thought that meant money you know i wanted to live uh with the ability to live like the khazanesh lived in total poverty the happiest richest man in the world and he got a little older and i was taught that even says that that even applies to our rookneys believe it or not that it's actually unhealthy to always feel like we're lacking in our rookness a different sugya for another time and then when i finally finally hit which was like life-changing for me really means in my opinion someone who's able to accept all of their thoughts and feelings as being natural correct and healthy and that is in my opinion what we need to do for ourselves and what we need to do for other people when we do that for ourselves that means we're allowed to get angry we're allowed to feel sad we're allowed to have a bad day you know we're allowed to whatever it is we're also let's say we're sorry right we're also allowed to say that we're human but i think what causes the problem is that not only of our children but of ourselves we have these expectations that are not natural we're people we have feelings and their people and their feelings and i'll tell you something else i know destler talks about this which is also its own conversation but the truth is and this will probably waste time saying stone's going to believe it in 10 minutes from now but the mathias is we don't really know who's holier you know the kid who's struggling who is like off the derrick but like you know is still holding on to something i could tell you a million stories a great nicest someone shared with arishiba uh a rebbe sent it out he said that someone went through ita and he said that he wants to keep shabbos but the only thing he can't do he can't give up smoking on chaba is cigarettes so until kaimi said what do i do it's a story i read i can't tell you it's true that's what i read so they said satin thought for like a minute which for haim is like an eternity he sat thought for like a minute and he said to him there's a separate issa of putting out the cigarette don't put it out you know the godless for for a person to be able to see people in gray i mean really who knows who knows who knows if the straight a child that i have is is holier than the one you know who who isn't that child really who knows whose struggle is bigger but the truth is it doesn't matter it's really none of our business it's really none of our business it's not even has nothing to do with us the only thing that matters is that this is the most amazing person because if you were in their shoes i guarantee you you would be them that's why you're not them because you're not in their shoes you don't look like them you don't have their emotional makeup you don't have their life experiences i always remember hearing no two children were ever raised in the same home never ever ever every child is raised in their own home my wife and i are different parents today than we were uh how old is she whatever 14 years ago we were different parents and that one didn't have to be raised with you know six others under her whatever and that one didn't have to be raised within you know with a younger sister that one with an older that one with a brother i mean there's so many factors like who actually knows what's you know but i know one thing for sure chlor i know that if that child didn't feel like a freak he'd really be a freak it's so important to know someone is feeling sad depressed whatever it is it is not our job i told her by kayla she said that this was something that also he learned over time and i haven't heard a lot of this it is not our job to make our children happy we're people it is our job to let them be who they are and have their feelings and if we do those feelings will naturally work themselves through and they will be who they are i'll just end on this you know this isn't a person is always supposed to be happy serving hashem but if god forbid someone loses someone who's close to them they said shiva it seems like a contradiction how can how do we have tish above we fast we mourn it seems like a steer it's not a steroid simcha is not i think what people think it is simcoe is the embodiment of the whole self of a natural desire and need to cry hence we have shiva because guess what if someone loses someone close to them and they don't mourn that is not healthy that is not natural it's natural to cry it's important to cry it's important that people are able to be who they are thank you very much