The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Timeless Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children

Your most lasting legacy, the only one that really matters, is how your children will treat their fellow creatures and the world you’re leaving them.

If boys risk getting their spirits crushed in early elementary school, girls face a different challenge—fulfilling impossible expectations in adolescence.

Perhaps Jewish parents place so much importance on food because at its core Judaism is a table-centered religion.

the prohibition against startling another person.

Judaism recognizes that it is possible to use food as a potent vehicle for holiness and family unity. Through the proper attitude toward food and the proper environment for eating, spiritual ideals can be transmitted into daily living.

According to Orthodox psychologist and parent educator Miriam Adahan, children need an opportunity to learn about the “wave pattern” of emotions. If parents rush in to rescue them from distress, children don’t get an opportunity to learn that they can suffer and recover on their own. TURNING

your main focus should be on short-circuiting arguments, letting go of your wish to reach consensus, and taking advantage of opportunities to let your child practice honoring you.

Jewish wisdom holds that our children don’t belong to us. They are both a loan and a gift from God, and the gift has strings attached. Our job is to raise our children to leave us. The children’s job is to find their own path in life. If

A problem can be fixed, but a true limitation requires adjustment of expectations and acceptance of an imperfect son or daughter. Parents feel hope if their restless child is actually hyperactive, their dreamy child has ADD, their poor math student has a learning disorder, their shy child has a social phobia, their wrongdoing son has “intermittent