April 2012 Order /Seder

First a person should put his house together, then his town, then the world. (Rabbi Israel Salanter). The soul-trait of “order”/seder in Hebrew, clearly expresses the Mussar teaching that encourages us to seek balance. When there is too little order, there is chaos; with too much order the result is inflexibility. Some children are naturally orderly while others need more direction. We can help them by establishing routines for activities such as eating, sleeping, bathing and brushing teeth. Structure will make these routines and others such as bedtime, more pleasant. With the expectation of an orderly routine with stories, songs, cuddling and talking about the day, bedtime becomes a smoother process. Guiding children to keep belongings in their proper place will also teach order at home and in school. If we hope to teach our children to become orderly, we as parents and teachers need to work on our own orderliness. We need to remember that this practice is a process for us all and will take time and commitment. There is power and strength in consistency. Start teaching our children at a young age to find a place for everything including their books, toys and clothing. Cleaning up after meals and wiping up their messes are things that children can all practice to become more orderly. Make being orderly easy and convenient by having hooks and shelves within reach of children. This makes it easy for them to be successful. An orderly life reduces frustration in children, allows them to be in control of their environment and brings opportunities for success. Be patient with yourselves and with your children. Change does not happen overnight but the result will be rewarding! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

March 2012 - Teaching Children Truth /Emet

Early in life children begin to understand what truth / emet is. We all want to teach our children that it is important to tell the truth / emet . But first we need to understand why children lie. Children, like adults, lie when they feel threatened, to avoid punishment, to make themselves seem better through the eyes of others or because they are afraid to trust someone with the truth / emet . What can we as parents do to promote honesty? Be a role model for your child. If your child observes parents being honest in their communication with others they are more likely to be honest in theirs. Give your child the opportunity to be honest without fear. Let them know that if they are honest about something they did wrong you will value and reward their honesty even if you disapprove of their behavior. Try to always be honest with your child. Even in a crisis situation children are better off having honest answers about real life problems. They will be confused and fearful if they feel they are not being told the truth. Give your child every opportunity to be honest. Keep lines of communication open and allow your child an opportunity to explain behaviors rather than feeling like they need to deny them. By age four most children can distinguish truth/ emet from untruth. As parents we need to teach our children that honesty is what we believe in in our home and school. Help them to understand that truth / emet is important in your family as well as in our community. If our children understand that we will still love and accept them even when they make a mistake we will help them to grow up to be honest, trustworthy individuals! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

February 2012 - Compassion /Rachamim

Jewish tradition sets high standards for human behavior and teaches us that the compassionate person not only feels the suffering of another, but takes positive steps to alleviate that suffering. Studying the middah (soul trait) of compassion can enhance our parenting skills. As parents it is common for us to at times be annoyed by our children’s behavior and express this toward them. In our hearts, we don’t want to feel and act this way. So, we need to ask ourselves how would we want our parents to relate to us. When we ask ourselves this question we suddenly become more aware of the challenges faced by young children as they grow and learn. Hopefully we will find ourselves relaxing more, using more humor, expressing more understanding and relating in kinder ways. We, as parents also want our children to grow up to be compassionate human beings. It is important for children to be treated with compassion from their teachers and parents if they are to express compassion themselves. True compassion as a parent involves being very attuned to a child's needs and accepting them for who they are. Be aware that some children seem to be innately more compassionate than others, but compassion is something that can be taught and learned in childhood. How can we encourage this to happen? • Show compassion towards your child. All children need to feel loved and secure. • Model compassion towards others.

 Parents and teachers strongly influence how children act toward others. Be aware that children watch us carefully even when we are not aware! • Communicate compassion

. Have dialog with your children and teach them to recognize what others might be feeling.   According to Jewish teaching, for our response to be truly compassionate, we must not just feel with another person, but also try to see things from the other’s perspective. Then we can all become more compassionate human beings.  Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

January 2012 - Joy /Simchah

According to Alan Morinis the Hebrew word simcha has two meanings: happiness and a celebration together with other people. If your life experiences are in the presence of loved ones, and there’s that sense of togetherness, then joy can be felt. Judaism teaches us that joy and happiness cannot be found by acquiring material things. If we believe that happiness depends on acquiring things and comes from getting what we want, then we will spend much of our lives chasing what we cannot grasp. How do we find joy and happiness? One of the most essential components of happiness is the presence of solid personal relationships. Family, friends and community are necessary in order to have joy in our lives. In Happiness RX: What Science Says interview with Sonja Lyubomirsky, the question “Is happiness a value that’s worth pursing?” is presented. Her answer is that there are benefits “including greater career success, better relationship functioning, increased creativity, enhanced physical health, even longer life expectancy.” Strategies we can model for our children to create a joyful life involve simply practicing the values we have studied in our community at TAE this past year! If we spend our lives focused on these values then we will have more joyful lives. • Gratitude: Count your blessings. • Kindness: Help others in need. • Forgiveness: Let go of anger. • Strength: strive to make the world a better place. • Generosity: Give generously. • Enthusiasm: Strive for a goal • Honor (ourselves and our bodies) Get enough sleep, exercise, meditate. Smile and laugh with your children and help them cherish life’s joys! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

December 2011 - Generosity /N’divut

"If you have money in your pocket, you give money. If you have no money but there's food in your home, you give food. If there's no food in your home but ideas in your mind, you give helping words. If there are no words in your mouth but love in your heart, you offer your heart itself." Alan Morinis

Holiday time is a wonderful time for families to talk about generosity and to help children learn by emphasizing giving rather than receiving. Schedule a giving day when the family cleans out their closets to donate their unused items. Get the family involved with a charity event. Purchase food items to donate to a shelter.

Go to a soup kitchen, senior center, or hospital. When generosity is part of our lives, there will be less wanting things for ourselves. At the end of each day we need to ask our children and ourselves, “What did you do to make someone else’s life a little bit better?” Share with your children when you have done something for others. Teaching by example is one of the most effective ways to influence your preschooler's behavior. Talk to your children often about generosity, giving, and how they can give of themselves each day. It’s amazing that the more we give, the more we get out of living. Preschoolers will have moments of generosity but these moments won't be consistent and won't always happen when it’s important to us as adults. It is normal for preschoolers to think of themselves first. Young children place a great deal of value on their personal possessions. That is why it is difficult for them to share. Whenever your preschooler does share or show generosity, tell him or her how happy it makes you. Use the word share often with children. “I will share my lunch with you.” When doing something that looks like fun to your child say, "I'm planting in the garden do you want to share my shovel?” The more you use the word "share" the more meaningful and attractive it will be. Discuss other people's wants and needs with your child. "You're trying to socialize your preschooler to see a world bigger than himself," says Wayne Dosick, a rabbi and the author of Golden Rules: "The Ten Ethical Values Parents Need to Teach Their Children." Some additional reflections discussed include teaching your preschooler that sharing their toys can be temporary and that they can set some toys aside for sharing. It isn't easy to share everything. Showing gentle disapproval of selfishness and praising generous behavior is also explained. Teach your preschooler the family position on generosity. Let them know clearly and enthusiastically that in your family you share generously! -Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

November 2011 - Welcoming /Hachnasat Orchim

Teaching Children Hospitality - In Jewish theology, Hospitality is considered a form of compassion, an act of righteousness and a legal obligation. If we have homes that are open and welcoming then our children will learn to also be open and welcoming. For adults hospitality is an easy concept to understand. • Open the door and be inviting as guests arrive. • Make guests comfortable. • Generously offer your best food. • See to the needs of guests. Are we intentional in teaching our children to be welcoming to others? Do we take a little extra time and involve our children in the tasks necessary to prepare our homes for guests. Do we involve them in choosing foods that our guests would enjoy eating? Do we employ their help to clean and prepare for guests, showing that we want our home to look nice for our guests? As adults the secret to making this work in our busy lives is to make it simple. Treat guests, children and their parents as you would treat your family. There is no need to cook a gourmet meal. All guests’ need is warmth, not excess. Keep it simple and one more person for dinner will be a joy and not a chore. There are simple things we as parents can do to teach our children to be welcoming to guests. Before guests arrive talk about how it's important to share with our friends. Remind children that they can play with their toys anytime but their friends will only have a few hours to play with them. Encourage children to greet friends as they arrive. As each friend comes to the door for a party or play date encourage your child to come and say "Hi, Come in. We are playing in my room right now." After a play date or a party is over let children know that it is important to walk each guest to the door and say, "Thank you for coming.” Remember, if they are only three or four years old we can’t expect perfection, and practicing a new skill always feels awkward and uncomfortable at first. With practice it will soon feel natural to them! Children working on being good hosts and hostesses also need to learn that there is still work to do AFTER guests leave. Clean up again! Returning toys to their usual places is a job that children of all ages are able to do. Even writing a thank you note or drawing a thank you picture is wonderful for children to practice. Teaching children to be thoughtful, welcoming hosts and hostesses is important. It takes a little time and effort on our part, but the investment of time is well worth it! Make welcoming guests into your home a family affair! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

October 2011 - Strength /Gevurah

Strength /Gevurah :The quality or state of being strong; ability to do or to bear; capacity for exertion or endurance, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; force; vigor; power; as, strength of body or of the arm; strength of mind, of memory or of judgment. (ARDictionary) How do we demonstrate to our children what this means from a Jewish perspective? We express gevurah by how we live our lives in our homes, in our communities and in our world. We all make decisions that affect others. Do we correct ineffective or unjust situations? Do we make positive changes? Do we speak out to make a wrong right? Do we qrovide guidance and support to others and seek justice? Do we stand up for what we believe in and what we know is wrong? Are we a voice for those who cannot stand up and speak for themselves? Inner strength allows us to confront daily situations and serious challenges, Gevurah/strength involves sorting through our lives, our decisions, our actions, our feelings and deciding what to keep and what to discard. One practice suggests that we review our life each night before bed, deciding what to remove and what to hold on to; reviewing the events of the day; and asking forgiveness for any wrong we may have done, knowingly or unknowingly. Expressing Gevurah/strength requires good judgment and action. Let's ask ourselves and our children to imagine what we can do to make our world a better place and with all our might , strive to make it better. Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

September 2011 - Enthusiasm /Zerizut

Zerizut in Hebrew is what many parents would call "hop-to-it-iveness," that spark inside you that makes you get up and go. It's often counted as the first quality necessary in spiritual growth, because growing spiritually is simply too hard for someone lacking this quality. What should this mean to a child? Expressing joy in each task as they give it their best effort. Keep in mind that daydreaming, low effort and procrastination all look the same in a child. Parents can model enthusiam to a child who is not willing to attempt a task, or to a child who is attending to a task with low effort. Enthusiasm means: Our work is done with a smile! Our whole heart is put into a chore! Smile and have a happy heart! "It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; throught sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest." (Greek Proverb) Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

May 2011 - Modesty /Tzniyut

One extremely important Jewish value and one that is most overlooked, is the concept of tzniyut (modesty). What do we want to teach our children about modesty? How do we intend to model it for them? Many in the community tend to think of modesty as an Orthodox issue. But modesty is a Jewish issue. Modesty isn't just about dress. But also means making good choices about how we look and act. When we dress in a way that is modest, modesty in speech and behavior tend to follow. To model modesty for our children, when we speak to others try to maintain humility and dignity. Try also not to speak negatively about others. Modesty in speech also relates to the positive things we tell people about ourselves. We should be careful to not spend an excessive amount of time bragging to others about ourselves, our families, and our worlds. Some things can and should remain private. One of the better-known instances of the term "tzniyut" in the Bible occurs in the Book of Micah. In Chapter 6, the prophet Micah proclaims, "You have been told what is good, and what God requires of you; only to do justly, to love mercy , and to walk humbly or modestly (hatzne'a) with your God." This helps us to understand the important Jewish value of tzniyut. Just as we carry ourselves before God with reserve, with dignity and without arrogance, we should also carry ourselves in our daily lives. Our children live in a world where everything is in the open. It would be a gift to ourselves, our families, and our community to give this concept of modesty attention and model it in attitude, dress, speech and behavior for our children. Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

April 2011 - Patience /Savlanut

The ability to wait and have self-control is necessary for success in pre-school and beyond. Practicing patience at an early age helps children to improve their relationships and social skills. Teaching patience to children at a young age reduces meltdowns in public and helps them cope with difficutl situations all through their lives. How can we, as parents and teachers, help teach our children to have patience? Model patience! Be aware of your words and behavior and even your body language when you have to wait for something. Children are very perceptive and detect subtle signs of impatience. Whenever your child asks for something it is not necessary or even benficial to respond immediately to therequest. It is important for children to learn to wait. Patience level is different for every child and their ability to wait should increase with age. Provide children with a specific response as to when they can expect their request attended to. For example, answers such as "When I am off the phone," "When the timer goes off" of "Tomorrow" are clear and direct. Avoid a response such as "later" which can be unclear to children. Help your child learn to avoid the frustration of waiting by providing suggestions for what they can do while they wait! It is important to teach your children to have patience with all things but even more important is that they have patience with themselves! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

March 2011 - Honor/Kavod

According to Jewish teaching, honor is due to each and every human being, not because of what they have achieved, but because they are a human soul. As parents and teachers, and therefore models of behaviou to our children, we need to develop the havit of honoring others. The first step in that direction is to catch ourselves whenever we are being inwardly judgmental or critical of others. We then need to refocus our attention away from the judgment we are making and back to the essence of that person. Another form of honoring about which Jewish tradition teaches, involves the simple act of greeting people. Jewish tradition urges us to take the lead in greeting any person wee encounter. Be the first to greet, to say hello or even just smile at another person. This is such a simple practice but it is a poerful way we can model honoring others to our children. Encouraging the following behaviors will cultivate children who honor others. Treat other people the way you want to be treated; be kind and polite to others; listen to what other people are saying when they speak; and stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

February 2011 - Kindness/ Chesed

Our goal is to be a kind caring community where everyone —the children, parents, teachers, administration—treats everyone else with kindness. What does that look like to us and to our children? We help people in need… We are sensitive to people's feelings…. We are never mean or hurtful…. We care about how our actions will affect others. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a kind world? A place where everyone is good to each other and there is no bullying. Children who learn to use words and acts of kindness can have a huge impact and make their home and schools better places. It’s not difficult to teach your children to be kind and that kindness has value. When you do something for others, it makes you feel good. Those great feelings can snowball into your children wanting to do more kind things.Bring more kindness into your family by modeling it for your children. If you run a kind household, children learn what it feels like to be treated kindly. When children have done kind things let them know how proud you are of their actions. If you catch your child in an act of kindness, give them a star on the fridge, and have those build towards a special reward. Read and read again books encouraging kindness to your children. *The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.*The Giant Hug by Sandra Horning.*Koi and the Kola Nuts: A Tale from Liberia by Verna Aardema: "No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."-Emma Goldman Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

December 2010 – January 2011 - Simplicity/ histapkut

For Jewish families interested in improving their quality of life there is a practice of Simplicity embedded in Judaism. The Hebrew term is histapkut — contentment with less. If simplicity is both authentically Jewish and sensible, why do we feel uncomfortable with the practice? Why do we not all strive to live simpler lives? We are parenting in a hyper- commercialized society and there is resistance to limiting consumption for many reasons. It’s difficult to resist our children’s requests, and to resist the expectations of affluent life filled with music and sports lessons, entertainment, vacations, and a stream of new clothes, electronics, toys and sports equipment. In Blessings of a Skinned Knee, psychologist Wendy Mogel says that Jewish values should work to limit these expectations, which are in the long run destructive for children who need limits. In an environment saturated with advertising, it is difficult for parents to resist pressure from their children and messages from society telling them they should give their children every advantage. The real advantage we can give our children is healthy values, and loving family and community. Simplifying life is a process done most effectively with the support of others in our community who are doing the same. Remember, Humility, (Anavah) means that we are not entitled to a hugely disproportionate share of the planet’s resources, even if we have the wealth to pay for it. Looking back also to gratitude, (Hakarat haTov) let’s demonstrate to our children that what we have is a gift, not an entitlement. By training ourselves to be satisfied with what we have we are teaching our children to do the same. If we have a greater emphasis on spiritual rewards and values and focus on community involvement, the quality of our lives can’t help but be enriched! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal

November 2010– Gratitude

Gratitude is simply a way of looking at things. We often learn true gratitude from the ones we feel sorry for. A homeless child can teach us to be grateful for having a home to live in, even if it isn’t our dream home. An ill person can teach us to be grateful for being able to go outside and take a walk or play. A person too sick to go outside was once noted as saying,” I can’t go out. I can’t run. I can’t be out there without fear of getting sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more than you do…I look out that window every day. I notice the change in the trees, how strong the wind is blowing…I am drawn to nature like I’m seeing it for the first time." Children can be trained to search for a silver lining in any situation. Obstacles that get in the way of our gratitude may be golden opportunities if we allow ourselves to look at them that way. Our lives get so busy and hectic that we do not look at these obstacles as possible reasons for gratitude. We are accustomed to noticing what is broken, what still needs to be done and what we want but don’t have. To help teach children an attitude of gratitude play a game with them to try and find the hidden blessing in a difficult situation. Let your children know what you are grateful for and why you are grateful for them. Offer a reward to your child when they can turn a bad situation into a blessing. Work together as a family and find the silver lining around your cloud! Contributed by Michelle Princenthal.

October 2010 – Humility

"No more than my space, no less than my place"

We all understand the importance of our children being independent, but when we are busy or in a hurry it seems so much easier and faster to do things for them. If we do things for them, things happen the way we want them to and when we want them to. We ask ourselves, “How will it look if my child is late for school?” “What will others think if my child dresses in mismatched clothes?” It is easy to let our ego overpower our understanding that children learn and grow only by doing. They need to experience their own successes and failures. It is difficult to see our children struggle and make mistakes. It is also difficult to deal with our conflicting emotions when our children begin to develop independence and need us less. Let us teach our children, then stand back and watch them practice the skills that they will need to become strong, independent adults. Contributed by Michelle Princenthal.

September 2010 - Forgiveness Practices for Parents at Home

I Did It, I’m Sorry Middah of the Month: Forgiveness (or slichah in Hebrew) Do our words and actions help, or hurt others? These are questions that we should ask ourselves and that we should encourage our children to be aware of. The family is the primary character builder in a child’s life. The toughest step in character education is setting a good example. This is often difficult, but with a community approach, involving school, family and synagogue it becomes more manageable! Everything we do and don’t do sends a message to children about our values. When we slip, we need to model what we want our children to do when they make mistakes. Take responsibility, ask for forgiveness and vow to do better! (contributed by Michelle Princenthal)