Search results ({{ res.total }}):
Speaking to Our Children
Should we speak to our children about these matters when they are still young, or will that open a Pandora's box?
Question:
I grew up without anyone teaching me about Kedusha issues, and I always thought that I was alone in my struggles and that I was a major loser. It wasn't until after my marriage that I found GYE and read the handbook (especially the "Attitude Principles") that I finally had the right attitude and support to deal with these struggles. I don't understand why our parents and teachers don't educate more about these things.
I took the initiative today and spoke to a 7th grade Rebbe about GYE's booklet called "The Kedusha Talk" and about speaking to Bar-Mitzva aged children about these issues. He gave me a classic answer. "How do I know this is real? Maybe this guy/site is just some nobody. And anyways, I don't want to influence the kids who don't know." Such classic answers. How do I convince him otherwise?
GYE Responds with a few pointers:
1) First of all, the booklet has the Haskama of Harav Feldman Shlit"a, who is on the Moetzes Gedolei Hatorah, and besides for personally vouching for Rabbi Avi Landa, he writes:
We would be negligent in the education of our children if we would permit them to grow into adolescents without preparing them first with adequate tools to help them live as Jews in the un‐Jewish environment they will be living in. The only way is to teach them, before their adolescent drives set in, how a Jew is obligated to deal with his reproductory drive. It is vital that we get our message across to the child before the messages of the culture around him begin to inundate him.
2) In this powerful 5 minute audio clip from Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, he makes a very strong case for educating our youth about these matters.
3) Click here for a 3 minute audio file from Rabbi Dovid Sapirman, a Mechanech of over 40 years, about the importance of speaking to our youth about these things.
4) Click here for a 4 minute audio file from R' YY Jacobson about how parents today are in "Lala land" and don't realize where their children are getting information from.
I think we can use these powerful clips to convince anyone who still has doubts...
P.S. A boy in France translated the whole booklet of "The Kedusha Talk" into French and starting giving it out to schools there. He also wrote to us "If I had only gotten this talk when I was younger, I wouldn't have fallen to where I did and needed GYE later".