The successful man or woman is the man or woman who is first and foremost successful with his or her family.
When I was growing up, my father, due to my parents’ divorce, was seldom present to guide me, and I had to do most things on my own. As a result, I have worked doubly hard at being a real influence in the lives of my children.
In my other life, my professional life, I often feel like I’m coming up short. My last book sold, but it didn’t sell as well as I had hoped. The television show is shaping up, but will anyone tune in? I delivered a speech tonight and everyone told me it was wonderful, but who knows if they meant it? In short, I’m just like everyone else, with my fair share of insecurities. But as a father, miraculously enough, I sometimes feel as if I’m actually getting through to my kids.
Let me give you an example. My eldest daughter Mushki is a senior in high school, and she’s been applying to colleges. Being a curious father, as well as a writer, I asked her if I could take a look at her essays. She didn’t write the essays thinking I would look at them, so she didn’t write them for me, but she was happy to let me take a look. After reading them, I went upstairs to my wife, and said, “You know what? I might not be the big loser I think I am. I might actually be a success.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Both of Mushki’s essays were based on themes I’ve been drilling into the kids for years. One was about the importance of bestowing dignity, and the other one was about the primacy of family. “I never knew if she was really hearing me,” I told my wife. “But I’m amazed at the impact I’ve actually had on my kids, thank God.”
The lesson here is simple: Even when you’re not sure you’re getting through to your kids, you’re getting through to them. If you make an investment, you will reap the reward. That’s what makes these conversations so important. Success is never immediate, and sometimes it’s nowhere in evidence, but talking to your kids really works.
And, no, it’s not easy—children become increasingly uncommunicative as they grow up—but it’s your responsibility as a parent to see that your family is a family in the truest sense of the word. I think a little mandatory “togetherness” can go a very long way, and a number of recent studies actually back this up. Families who share meals on a regular basis, and make an effort to communicate while they’re at it, have children who perform better in school, exhibit more self-esteem, and feel as if they are more in control of their lives.
In our family, we try to have dinner together every night. More than any other activity, family dinners help define a family. This is family time. No phones, no doorbells, no interruptions. We are all part of each other’s lives, and I want my children to know it and appreciate it.
Taking your son to a Little League game is also important, because every minute you spend with your children is a gift, but that doesn’t define the family. A family is a group of people who live together, and far too many families nowadays live together as strangers. That is why we must make a concerted effort to be a family in the truest sense of the word, and why family dinners are an essential first step. Aside from the obvious togetherness, it provides the perfect arena for these important conversations. Everyone is acknowledged, everyone is part of the conversation, and everyone is listening (whether they want to or not).
In our home, we don’t struggle to make time to talk to each other because it is built into our lives. And the kids look forward to it. They don’t whine and roll their eyes, as they do in some homes. They come to the table to talk, listen, and share. In the course of dinner, everyone is heard, everyone is validated.
We do plenty of other things to promote our sense of family. Several nights a week, for example, I’ll take fifteen minutes to read from the Bible, with my family gathered around me, and I’ll always make an effort to find something germane. If two boys got into a fight in the school yard that day, and my son happened to mention it at the dinner table, I’ll look for a Biblical passage that speaks to issues of violence and vengeance. Not that hard, is it?
When parents call to ask if I can counsel their children, I always tell them that I would be happy to, but only after an initial consultation with the parents. When they show up, regardless of the nature of the problem at home, I always try to determine how much time the family spends together as a family. It’s usually very little, and the story is always the same: We are busy people; the kids are over-scheduled; there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Unfortunately, I can’t accept that as an answer. After all, we all live and operate in the same world. These parents are usually struggling with the urgent versus the important, a concept I dealt with in my book, Judaism for Everyone. So I tell them: “Let’s say you are reading your son a bedtime story, and your cell phone rings, and in your heart you know it’s important to read to your son—you are connecting with him, teaching him to love books—but this call is from the office, and you know it’s urgent. What do you do? You take the call, right? After all, your son will still be there when you’re done with the call, waiting for you to pick up where you left off, but the call will be gone. Sound reasoning, but very unhealthy, because this becomes the pattern. Ballet recital? Well, this conference is going to run long, and I’m sure my little girl will understand. Family dinner? My boss wants me to entertain the new clients, and we really need this account.
“Before long, the urgent takes over, and the important becomes less and less important, until the child himself feels unimportant,” I tell the parent. “That’s why you’re having problems with your child. He doesn’t need me; he needs you.”
Parents tell me they don’t know where to begin, but this is not an excuse, either. One might begin the moment the child comes home from school. “Drop everything and spend the next five minutes fully focused on him,” I suggest. “What he did that day, how much homework he has, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow, and so on. It’s really not that complicated. It’s about making conversation, even if you have to pull it out of him. In time, it will become part of family life, and the family will be stronger for it.
“And don’t waiver,” I tell the parents. “Never forget that, as a parent, you’ve earned the right to have a relationship with your child. Beyond that, you also have the right to expect a little gratitude and appreciation.”
I often talk to my children about this very topic: “Let me ask you this: Why do you think God included the edict that you must honor your parents in the Ten Commandments? Why is that one of the cardinal rules of morality? Why is that up there with ‘Do not kill’? Isn’t it puzzling? That this business about ‘honoring your mother and father’ is a key element of morality?
“Well, I’ll tell you why it’s there: It’s a form of gratitude. Your parents gave you life. They fed you when you were helpless; they loved you when you were alone; they cared for you and nurtured you when you were at your most vulnerable point. God is saying, At the very least, you must honor your parents for everything they have done for you. It is the ultimate evocation of gratitude. You don’t have to fawn over your parents, but God expects you to be human enough to be touched by their love.
“Your responsibility as kids, then, is to show your parents, always, that their efforts do not go unnoticed.”
The obligation, as you may have noticed, is to honor one’s parents, not to love them. This is because the Bible in its wisdom understands that a child may not always feel love for his parents. There will be times when he is angry, frustrated, bitter, even hostile. Let’s face it. Parents do make a lot of mistakes in rearing their children, and often the child feels wronged. But this doesn’t give him the right to treat his parents with disrespect.
You need to talk to your children about this, and regular, dinnertime conversations are a good start, but they are only a start. Regular conversation needs to become part of the family routine; beyond that, we get into questions of tradition.
In my family, as is obvious, the traditions are those of Orthodox Judaism. We read the Bible, observe the Sabbath and Biblical festivals, go to synagogue, keep a strictly kosher home, and live by the Jewish values of community, charity, hospitality, and humanity. I teach my children everything I can about their heritage because I want them to remember who they are and where their people came from, but I also insist that they not become insular or exclusionary. “As long as a set of beliefs leads to a righteous, generous, and moral life, it is holy and Godly,” I tell them.
To me, religion is about identity, and identity speaks to character. The child who knows himself—be it through routine, tradition, or faith—is strengthened by that self-knowledge.
It goes without saying, of course, that every family has its own history, and its own traditions, and its own religious practices (or nonpractices, as the case may be), but in one way all families are alike, and that—as I noted earlier—is in the way we tend to pass our flaws on from one generation to the next. I only repeat this because it’s worth repeating: This is a mistake you should work hard to erase.
I often tell my kids: “Divorce often begets divorce. Violence certainly begets violence. And a man who was raised by emotionally distant parents runs the risk of becoming a distant parent himself, in large part because he knows nothing else. But we are responsible for our own actions. We can look to our personal history to try to figure out why we turned out the way we turned out, but we can’t use that history to condone bad behavior. If a man was yelled at as a child, it doesn’t give him the right to yell at his children.
“I want this family to be the healthiest family it can be. That is why we have these conversations. So we can talk about everything.”
Parents come to me and tell me that their children don’t want to talk, that they’re sullen and curt and monosyllabic. And I tell them, “That’s just not acceptable. No matter what mistakes you may have made in the past, your children need to know that you are a family. This is not negotiable. Inspire them to answer and share.”
Not long ago a woman came to see me about her fifteen-year-old daughter. “She wants nothing to do with me,” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong, but she does everything in her power to avoid me and shut me out of her life. When I try to talk to my friends about this, they all say the same thing: ‘It’s okay. That’s what they do at fifteen.’ But I can’t take it. I feel so unappreciated. I do everything for her, and all I want is a relationship with her, but she won’t even look me in the eye. I only found out she had a boyfriend because one of my own friends told me about it. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?!”
As I see it, there are basically two ways of dealing with this problem. The first is through guilt: “I slave all day waiting tables so you can eat! It would be nice if you showed a little appreciation from time to time!” That doesn’t work. A parent must never be put in the position of a supplicant. And even if the child softens, it’s only temporary. Besides, do you really want to elicit pity from your children? The second way, the right way, is through inspiration, and that comes down to reinforcing the inescapable fact that you will always be a family, regardless of how your child happens to feel about the subject.
Let me give you an example. There was a man on our television show who had been adopted at a very early age and, for a number of reasons, had never felt sufficiently loved by his adoptive parents. I encouraged him to confront his father about his true feelings, and he did so with great respect. “In life, you only get one father,” he told him. “You’re my one and only father. That will never change. So you and I are going to have to learn to be closer. We have no choice. You can’t choose another son and I can’t choose another father. This is it. Let’s make it work for both of us.” They aren’t there yet, but they are both working on it, and true progress has been made.
I tell my kids, “I am your father, and you must never forget that. I have made my share of mistakes, but I have always tried to do the right thing. And it’s all because I love you and want to be connected to you. I cannot tolerate any distance between us. I never want to be shut out from your life. In everything I’ve ever done for you, there is only one thing I have ever wanted in return: for me to be in your life, and for you to be in mine. And I have the right to expect that. That’s what being a family is.
“Other parents will say it’s a rite of passage—that kids rebel, that they don’t want to be close anymore—and that’s fine. For them. But that’s not this parent. Everything we have ever done in this family is designed to bring us closer together. That’s been the priority, and it’s something I will not negotiate. You will have a close relationship to your family.”
You might not get though to them that night, or the following week, or even three months from now, but you will get through to them.
As Bishop Desmond Tutu noted, “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.”
And always remember: Words that emanate from the heart penetrate the heart.