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Category: Aggression
Question: Hi Slovie, Is it possible to meet you for a one on one answer to a question. I have a question that been eating at me and I can't seem to work it through myself.
Thanks so much.
Answer: it is best to reach me through the hineni building...
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Category: Discipline
Question: dear slovie,
i would first like to express my feelings about your book that i just put down. i would like to say that this book really opened my eyes to a new inspirational light on not only parenting but on love life and true happiness.what moved me the most is reading about ur upbringing and ur appreciation to ur parents for giving you exactly what u needed to become the exceptional person you are today.you came from a pure generation and the 'old ways' is very hard to bring back today. youve reached out to soo many people with ur incredible insights and u grab peoples attention through love on jewish life NOT BY FORCE and thats the most effective way in bringing am israel closer.thank you.
Well as for me,im a mother of 3 ages 6,4,2.and im so grateful for these beautiful gifts from hashem and i cherish them so. i have a little issue with my middle child (they say the sandwich child).she has a tough character and doesnt take no for an answer.she has a hard time even with the teacher disciplining her.i have the hardest time getting her dressed in the morning and especiallygetting her to bed at night no matter wat i do!(i even one time took all her stuff out of her room as punishment to the point where the only thing left was her bed,and she still didnt care)i find the only way getting alittle through to her is through complimenting her but the min i get angry at something she does,she goes back to her original self. i really crave for that patience u wrote on and hiow to give each child his undivided attention and i started doing that with her everday for an hr after she comes home from school,can u give me more tips on how to discipline for home as well as school,thanks
Answer: Thank you so very much for your beautiful email. I...
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Category: Discipline
Question: Dear Slovie,
I have a toddler of two and a half. On the way home from visiting my in laws he woke up from a short nap in the car. Of course he was very tired and kvetchy. He asked for a candy and I did not want him to have one so he started screaming. My husband said he " needs a whack" and we have decided against smacking. It upset me very much that my husband gets so angry and just wants to smack. At first I left him to scream and scream then I decided to "distract" him. and started talking to him about purim and what we're going to do (because these were candies for mishloach manos). He stopped screaming and all was ok.
Do you think I dealt with it ok? I fear that I might have been to soft but I just felt that he was tired, he had been in the car in traffic for 2 hours, he was hungry, and it was understandable from a 2 year old. I was very upset with my husband. He always just wants to smack and scream because he says the kid isnt learning anything. He is generally such a well behaved boy, just in his terrible toddler years( i prefer terrific toddler)years and I dont know how to get my husband to see that its normal and we dont need to scream, insult, threaten, smack. He began telling my son if u dont stop screaming you cannot have on purim..my son screamt louder and he said ok you;re not getting (of course he will though) but I totally disagree with this method.
Answer: my dear friend,
It saddens to hear that you are t...
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Category: Challenges
Question: Hi Slovie
I am a mother of 4 children. My third duaghter, age 7, has recently done some worrying things, and I am unsure how to handle them. I feel guilty that she always receives the least attention, since she was a baby, for various reasons, and so I am most lenient to her, and give in to her the most, which I believe may have contributed?
A few weeks ago, my oldest daughter and I were away for a night. My two youngest girls (ages 5 and 7) went into her room, which is strictly forbidden to them, and played with her things. The 7 year old convinced my 5 year old that a number of items were hers, and they moved them to her room (magazines, makeup, jewellery). I required them to help clean up and return the items, but did not insist when the 7 year old left (my oldest was being very mean to her, and is often. Then last week, she returned from a playdate with an mp3 player, which she told me a different friend had given her as a birthday present. It was odd as her birthday party was in November, but not totally unexpected, so I thought no more of it until the mom phoned me to say that her child's mp3 was missing. I retuend it to the mother, and we agreed that her daughter would not be told, in order to protect my daugher from gossiping amongst her peers. She has not asked me about it, and may not have noticed it has gone (I don't believe it was the mp3 player that was important to her, other than for the fleeting moment). I am not sure how to talk to my daughter about it, or what I need to make her do. I thought it was an isolated incident, until her friend came over to play on Friday after school. My daughter had brought home some erasers a few weeks ago, and said she won them in the raffle on Friday (which they do every week, and get small prizes). In the kitchen, her friend said "there are my erasers, I wonder how they got here". My daughter looked at me quickly with a scared look, and then giggled and said "yes I wonder how they got here". I have noticed one other dishonest thing she does. She recently started reading a lot, fairly advanced books for her age. I was thrilled as she is a more active athletic child. Her 2 best friends are almost a year older than her and very bright, and she has been borrowing boooks from them, which I was surprised she was reading at that level. This week I asked her to tell me what the book was about, and discovered that she's not really reading them. I can't figure out if she's pretending completely she can read at Grade Level) or she says she jumps around and reads bits here and there.
I would love your help, to put in perspective how serious these behaviours are, and how to best approach them.
Thanks
B
Answer: Dear B.,
You write that your daughter has receive...
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Category: Discipline
Question: Slovie i have a child in grade 1 and whenever i pick him and his carpool up they (all 4)hound me about buying then shlurpees after school. This bothers me for a no. of reasons but i can never come up with a good response other than annoyance. I dont want 4 kids wining at me every carpool, i feel that they should ask their own moms not me, i feel that i shouldnt feel harassed to buy them shlurpees but can never come up with an appropriate response other than giving in very unhappily or else being the mean mom.Yesterday one of the kids said to me my mom will never buy us so you should!!When i dont buy them i feel like the meanest mom in the world on the other hand i should not feel hararsed to spend $10 every carpool and i have 4 other childrens carpool the same week.
Answer: It is obvious to me that the children sense a weak...
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Category: Communication
Question: Your website mentions weekly parenting classes in Westchester. I was interesting in getting details about this, location, time, date, etc.
Answer: please call the hineni office at 516 371 9202 and...
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Category: Self Esteem
Question: Dear Slovie,
A couple of months ago I went to the lecture you gave in my town and was so inspired. Thank you so much for the chizuk you gave me.
I would very much appreciate your input on the situation I have with my son Y. He is 14 and in the 9th grade in our local Yeshiva. Y. is a good hearted boy and intelligent, but is not quick witted socially. He often doesn't "get" things that people say or do right away. He has been in school with the same group of boys since elementary. They are mostly all good boys and have been nice to Y. over the years. The past couple of years, though, as the boys have gotten older, they seem to be less tolerant of Y. being slower to catch on to what's going on around him. Also, in high school there are many other boys interacting with each other. It is not just his small elementary school group anymore. Y. has told us that he is often called "retarded" and/or laughed at by other boys. He can't think quickly enough of responses to say to them and so just walks away and takes this abuse. We have told him to ignore these boys and stick with the boys who are nice. He does this for the most part, but the taunts and laughter of the other boys crushes his spirit. We told him to tell his Rebbe when boys say hurtful things to him. He refuses to do this because he doesn't want to be called a "rat". Last year there was an incident where a couple of boys blatently took advantage of Y.'s weakness and we felt we had to intervene. We talked to the principal about it and the boys in question got into trouble. Since then those boys hate Y. and everyone in the class now considers Y. a "rat". Whenever someone in the class gets in trouble for anything, they always look at Y. assuming he told on them, even though he didn't. For this reason, he refuses to tell his Rebbeim when he is taunted.
Earlier this school year Y. told me that he is used to the other kids making fun of him and it doesn't bother him anymore. He just walks away from them. This of course hurts me to the core of my being, that my son should be used to being ridiculed and consider this "normal". Lately, though he has been expressing feelings of worthlessness saying that no one likes him. He has also expressed some deep anger that he has toward some of the boys that belittle him. I know this is very unhealthy and want this situation to stop. We have offered Y. to send him to another Yeshiva. He says he doesn't want to go because he doesn't want to leave home. The Yeshiva he goes to now is the only one in our town so he would have to leave home if we send him to another school.
What should we do? Should we go ahead and push him to go to a different school? Would this send him a message of running away from his problems? On the other hand, do we allow him to be subjected to another 3 years of ridicule, being made to feel inferior and having his self esteem chipped away at? We try to bolster his spirits, tell him to stick with the nice boys and reinforce that he is a good person, but needless to say his self-esteem has suffered greatly.
I would so appreciate your advice. Thank you so much.
S.
Answer: Dear S.,
I read and reread your letter a number o...
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Category: Sibling Rivalry
Question: Hi Slovie, I have been attending your Long Island parenting classes for over 2 years, and I am very happy that this season we have been addressing sibling rivalry due to the nature of many frustrations going on in my house. I have a 9 1/2 year old son and a 7 year old daughter. It was her birthday smack in the middle of Hanukkah this week, and my son cannot let go of the fact that her birthday gift/TV is bigger, clearer and believe it or not mounted on a cool swinging stand-all in comparison to the one he received on his birthday a few years ago. He freaked out from the minute she opened her gift, and tonight our Hanukkah was no better. I like to think that I am trying to approach this holiday correctly with one night's present covering 4 nights, one night we give to charity, and the others from small trinkets to tonight - a surprise for both kids (something they did not ask for). So, tonight he had a huge box as compared to his sister, and while hers was a small painting set, he got was a tabletop hockey foosball set. Not only did he not like it, but did not even acknowledge when we pointed out to him that his sister did not compare sizes of gifts! Simply his reaction, to what we thought would have been a great surprise, was quite a disappointment to us! (I am not sure if it is related that he quantifies everything, for example, when I made dreidel shaped rice krispy treats for his Hebrew class, before Hebrew, he said I did not make enough, but when class was over -he probably brought home 30 of them, claiming I made too much!) So, it seems that mom cannot do anything right by her son, and he feels so deprived that I am not sure what to do. Thanks, M.
Answer: Dear M.,
Gift giving can become such a great sour...
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Category: Relationships
Question: My son is going through a nasty spilt with the mother of their 1 yr old son for custody. The mother says she is going to raise their son to be gay. Is it medically and emotionally possible to raise a child to be gay?Neither parent is gay.
Answer: I believe this is just part of the 'nasty divorce'...
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Category: Sibling Rivalry
Question: Dear Mrs. Woolf,
I recently heard you lecture in Toronto and was very moved.I had purchased your book a week earlier totally randomly,read it, raved about it, and then a friend of mine told me you were coming.I bought it beacause it said "by R. Jungreis's daughter",I figured how wrong could I go.I guess the old saying that there is no such thing as coincedense rings true! WOW, you brought to light everything I knew in my mind,and felt in my heart BUT was not sure how to execute it.I grew up in a home where middot were strongly valued, but had a hard time imparting it to my own children.After reading your book and hearing you speak, it gave me such chizuk to put it in to action.It is easy to say"kids of today are different,or it's just to hard to fight for old fashion values..." however you inspired me to find the strenghth inside to fight for this most important job in life which is raising your children to be mentches.I always thought, if I just model proper behaviour they'll eventually learn, but you advised to "explain our actions,our spouses positive actions and it has made such a wonderful difference in my home.My question is as follows, how do you gently remind children without starting to portray yourself as a broken record? I sometimes have a hard time knowing when to step in ,and when to back off so my kids don't tune me out.I know that in school and at friends houses I get nothing but nachat reports on how lovely the children are, but at home I find them constantly fighting,bickering,teasing eachother, and I just have a hard time differentiating between what is normal sibling relationships, and when to step in and give the "you need to have Derech Eretz for eachother...".I would appriciate if you had any advise on this issue.
Thank-You So Much,
Answer: Yours is a most important question. We don't want ...
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