Sublime

Parents with children are like prayer leaders with kohanim. Our children need to be filled with love so that they in turn can love others. If they are not loved, they enter the world as empty vessels, devoid of the one thing that matters most: the capacity to love others.

Parents with children are like prayer leaders with kohanim. Our children need to be filled with love so that they in turn can love others. If they are not loved, they enter the world as empty vessels, devoid of the one thing that matters most: the capacity to love others.

Unfortunately, most people experience their first “relationship difficulty” in the first eighteen months of life. Experts in child development call this critical period the “Attachment Stage.” Having a close bond with one or more caregivers is important throughout childhood, but it is essential in those earliest months.

Parents and teachers, always keep this crucial fact in mind: your attitude and your gaze mean everything for a child. Getting a child’s attention through visual and verbal contact ensures that she shares your attention and increases the chance that she will retain the information you are trying to convey.

Great parents coach their kids in how to feel their feelings and choose their actions, which is to say, how to respond instead of react.

Children love it when parents take them seriously and recognize them as real people with their own tastes. Like all human beings, children crave respect. They like to know why they are doing things, and they balk at demands for unquestioning obedience.

It is important that they not be perceived as manipulative and not paired with requiring something of the child.