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Boundaries 3

June 27, 2005 by

Boundaries are inextricably tied to two other concepts: trust and respect.

As the child grows, matures, and becomes more capable and the parent begins to give up control of the child, the child needs to be encouraged to be honest and trustworthy. If the child is respectful of the parent, the parent is more easily able to withdraw control from the child. However, any dishonesty on the part of the child invites the parent to intrude. You might say that the slogan of the parents of a young child is “trust but verify.” If the child is consistently honest, then the verification can be done infrequently, but if a child’s behavior becomes suspicious, then the parent must investigate.

For example, one day, I noticed my then four year old son walking into the house with one of his hands holding a Styrofoam cup and the other covering it. He walked to his room, then, shortly afterwards, walked back outside. In a few minutes, he was walking back with the cup, once again covered by his other hand. He had that “sneaky walk” that children adopt when they are tiptoeing to keep parents from hearing them, but he was aware that I was watching. After several repetitions, I asked him what he was doing. He said, “Nothing.” The next time he went outside, I went into his room and saw no evidence of any objects he could have been carrying into the room. I decided to open his drawers and began with the bottom one. As I opened the drawer, maybe 50 bees began to fly out of it. Just as I was beginning to shoo them out of the open window, my son came in and started yelling, “My bee collection! You ruined it!” He was heartbroken.

It was then I learned that if you are not sure what your child is doing, the best thing to do is to go and investigate. As much as we need to respect our children’s privacy, we also need to know that they are not doing things that are harmful to themselves or others.

In the early years of childhood, children might bring home things that don’t belong to them—from school or from a playmate’s house. Later, as they reach adolescence, they may have drugs or alcohol, and as parents, it is our job to protect them from bad habits and antisocial behavior, even if it means entering their private space.

Once, when one of my sons was about 14, I went into his room to clean. I saw, lying out on a table, a small plastic bag containing white powder. My son was honest and trustworthy, I thought, but I also knew that most parents whose children use drugs are shocked when they find out. I called his school immediately and asked to speak to him. When he got on the phone and I asked about the bag, he seemed puzzled and then he started laughing. It was bicarbonate of soda that he had taken along with him on a bus ride the day before when his stomach was feeling queasy. He thought it was funny that I would suspect him.

It certainly would have been out of character for him to have gotten involved with drugs, and as I learned over the years, it was the farthest thing from his mind, but it was important to verify that he was all right. Had he not been, we could have dealt with the problem before it became worse.

It is a fine line that parents need to walk. We need to respect our children and their boundaries. We need to not get involved in their friendships and schoolwork and other aspects of their lives that they should be able to handle by themselves, yet, we need to be there like smoke detectors, ready at the sign of danger to intervene in appropriate ways.

Part of the respect that we need to maintain for our children has to do with speaking with them directly, with not talking about them and their personal issues with others unless there is a good and sufficient reason.

Occasionally, I see children in my practice who have some important fear, phobia, or behavior that is difficult for them. The children whose parents are helpful and supportive are able to overcome their problem much more easily than those who have been labeled or stigmatized by parents talking too freely to others about it or worse, embarrassing them in front of others.

Children are people under construction. We need to protect them and respect them and we need to know when and where to intervene and when to keep out and keep silent. That is why parenthood is an art and not a science.

More on boundaries in a future article….

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting, Relationships

Boundaries 2

June 18, 2005 by

Parents can assist their children to develop the kinds of boundaries that allow them to grow and develop as capable, competent human beings. Here are some of the boundary issues that parents can effectively manage.

1. The child talks about people (children, a friend’s parent, a teacher) that the parent has never met as if the parent knows who they are. “I’ll be so excited if Janet comes today!”

If the parent doesn’t know who Janet is, he or she should ask, “Who is Janet? I don’t think you have mentioned her before.” This is a simple way of reminding the child that what he has experienced is separate from his parents’ experience. It allows the child to understand that he has knowledge and experience that is different from that of his parents and therefore different from other people.

2. The child begins speaking before noticing if the parent is paying attention or even while the parent is talking to someone else.

The parent should respond, “I need you to wait until I can give you my attention. I want to hear what you have to say, but right now I am not able to do so.” The child needs to learn that the world does not revolve around him. Being the center of the world is a tremendous burden and responsibility. Having a sense of where he belongs in the world is important. The child should understand that he is very important to his parents and grandparents and he is also important to his teachers and caregivers, but there are other people and things in the world that are also important and that he is not the prime concern of everyone in the world. This helps the child define himself and his place in the world and relieves him of the burden of running the world which little children who are overly catered-to possess. Such a burden leads to magical thinking (“If I wish bad on someone, something bad will happen”) and feelings of guilt and reinforcement of feelings of omnipotence if something bad does happen.

3. The child enters the parents’ personal space.

The child should not be permitted to rummage through parents’ belongings, get in the middle of their discussions, or sleep in their bed. Children need to know that parents also have boundaries and that they want and need privacy. They can be taught by analogy, asked if they would want someone to go through their things without permission or interrupt them when they are speaking. Teaching children to respect parents’ boundaries legitimizes their desire for boundaries.

4. The child becomes insistent that the parent buy him or her something while in a store, repeating his or her request many times or beginning to have a tantrum.

The parents must tell the child it is the parents who decide what will be purchased and nagging and pleading are not helpful. The child should never be rewarded for whining. That means that nagging, pleading, and whining will not be effective means of persuasion. Parents should tell children that they will listen to a request and then decide based on the merits of the request but they will not be blackmailed by poor behavior.

These are only some of the ways that parents can enforce healthy limits. More about boundaries next time…..

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting, Relationships

Boundaries

June 15, 2005 by

Let’s say I take you to a big open field and tell you that I have bought you a gift. Part of the very field we are looking at is to be yours. Your first question would likely be “which part?” I could then say something like, “oh, it’s from around the middle of that clutch of trees to about 30 yards to the right.” You might then ask, “But how far back does it extend?” You want to know the boundaries of your land. Without boundaries, it is not a distinctive entity that you can understand and value. It is just part of an undefined mass of land.

It is the same thing with human beings. Physiologically, we are independent entities. When we emerge from our mothers, we begin breathing on our own and despite our dependence on our parents for food and clothing and shelter and love, we otherwise are able to carry on our physiological tasks unassisted.

However, psychologically and emotionally, we are not separate because cognitively, we do not understand that we are separate beings. An infant does not have the ability to conceive of his or her mother as a separate being. When the baby is folded into the mother’s arms and feeds at her breast, the baby is unaware that two organisms are involved. The baby only feels safe and warm and sated.

It is only as the child grows that he or she begins to see his or her mother is a separate entity. It is at that precise moment that the child really starts to define himself. Now he knows that Mommy has ears and Daddy has ears and that he has ears too. From now on, parents are teachers, advisors, and assistants and sometimes servants too, but they are separate. However, even the young child doesn’t want to take full responsibility for his life, so when he gets into a difficult situation like someone blocking his entrance to the sliding board or another child taking his ball, mother or father is enlisted to solve the problem.

As the child grows, parental intervention should decrease. The more able a child becomes, the less help he needs. Sitting back and watching the child handle things on his own and then signaling approval helps the child feel capable and competent. Rushing in to assist when the child is struggling with something is giving the child a no-confidence vote.

Five year old Julie is building with blocks. She is building a tall tower. It is beginning to wobble a little. Her father is watching. He has several options. He could go over to Julie immediately and show her how to stabilize her tower. He could wait until Julie asks for help. He could encourage Julie to think about how she could solve the problem. He could tell Julie that he knew all along that it wasn’t going to be a stable tower and doesn’t she understand that the way she built it was foolish. Father’s reaction will have a lot to do with how Julie feels about herself. Will she feel competent? loved? valued? supported?

One such incident does not usually change a person’s life, but repeated no-confidence votes, repeated interventions when a child is tackling a problem he is capable of solving, teach the child that he either is incapable of thinking or worse, that he doesn’t have to think—someone will come and do it for him. Worse than making the child feel inadequate, what it often does is blur the child’s boundaries. A person who doesn’t have boundaries doesn’t have a full sense of self. He never feels complete. He is a person who will constantly be looking for others to make himself feel whole. He will cling to others in a needy way, become angry if he feels let down, and will be the first to devalue others for not being all he needs them to be.

In short, the more careful a parent is in establishing healthy boundaries for his child, the happier and more functional the child will be.

Boundaries are established in many ways. Children should be encouraged to learn and accomplish. Their efforts should be recognized. Parents should work with their children in an educative or advisory role, but they should not do the work for them. Children should be encouraged to express their creativity. Their creations are part of what helps them define themselves as individuals.

Rules that are reasonable help the child understand what is permissible and what is not. Within the rules, the child feels safe to express himself and isn’t worried about parents suddenly disapproving of what he is doing for no reason that the child can fathom. If Susie knows that she must come inside when the street lights come on, then she isn’t confused when one day she comes in and she’s too late. There is something that the parent can point to and the rule can be learned and her life can become more predictable.

Think about this: You are taking a course. The professor announces that you must hand in a paper at the next class session. How do you feel? Would you want to know what subject you need to write about? Would you want to know the required length of the paper? Would you ask if you needed to use references? The more you know about the paper, the better equipped you are to write it and the lower is your level of anxiety.

Now imagine a child in a waiting room. The mother says, “Behave nicely.” What does that mean? Can he go and get a book to read? Play with toys that are there? Talk to mom? A better structuring instruction might be, “come and sit on my lap and I will tell you a story,” or “you can go and play with the blocks or other toys.” The better defined the “playing field” is, the safer and more secure the child feels and the more likely he or she is to be able to meet the standards set for him or her.

These safe external boundaries translate into the development of a healthy sense of self in which the child feels confident and safe. The child knows where he begins and ends and he understands that others are there for love and affection and support, but not as auxiliary parts of himself. He learns to be self-reliant and to value the things he accomplishes.

There is much more to say about boundaries, so come back again if you’d like to learn more.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting, Relationships

The longest way ’round

June 9, 2005 by

When I was a little girl, I would often read ahead in one of our reading books at school while the class was engaged in something I had already done. I came to one story, however, that had a word that I didn’t understand. Oh, I could pronounce it fine. The word was “detour” and I was able to sound it out. I knew that it was pronounced “det-our” (debt hour.) Of course, since I was reading ahead, I couldn’t ask the teacher what a det-our was, but I thought I would understand when I read the story.

Well, it seems that someone was in a car and was driving home when he came to a det-our. For some reason, he could not proceed and tried to go another way. There was a det-our, but he didn’t want to take it. He went through forests and woods and who knows where else, and finally, after many hours, reached home. The great denouement came when he found out that by taking the det-our, he would have been home much faster.

So I had read the story and still had no clue what a det-our was. When I got home, I asked my mother what a det-our was. She asked me what I was talking about, so I showed her the story. She told me that the word was detour and she explained to me what it meant. I went back to the story and suddenly it made a lot more sense.

There was a refrain at the end of the story that went “the longest way ‘round is the shortest way home.” What it meant was that if the person had followed the signs, and not taken the “shortcut,” even though he would have driven farther, he would not have encountered as many obstacles and would have arrived at his destination a lot faster.

I think of that lesson sometimes when I see people with their young children. In a typical scenario, when a child misbehaves in public, the parent responds in one of several ways.
1. He/she is oblivious
2. He/she ignores it
3. He/she tries to distract the child
4. He/she calls to the child and verbally corrects him/her
5. He/she gets up and picks up the child to hold and/or to talk to

The shortcuts of remaining oblivious and ignoring the behavior are a lot easier for the parent. The parent can maintain composure and relax. Of course it doesn’t stop the behavior and for the child, there is no learning. If the behavior is self-reinforcing (like drawing on a wall or taking cookies from the cookie jar at the wrong time, it may even become strengthened and therefore more likely to recur.

Distractions often are effective, but they lack the educational aspect that can prevent a future occurrence of the unacceptable behavior.

Verbal correction, depending on the tone, may be helpful. Many parents, however, correct in such a tentative tone that they are actually giving their children mixed messages. “Honey, I would prefer if you didn’t color all over the table with lipstick” may, for some children, sound like there is still an option. Verbal corrections usually are only effective once the child has a real sense that he/she has a parent who will follow up if the behavior doesn’t cease.

Getting up to get the child, holding him/her, talking to him/her and explaining what the problematic behavior was and why it is unacceptable takes a lot of work, but it is the most effective way to teach a child how to behave in a socially acceptable manner.

For example: Janie is playing on the monkey bars and another child starts to climb. Janie starts shouting, “Go away! This is where I am playing!” and then pushes the other child. The parent then gets up, takes Janie from the scene, holds her and explains, “Janie, you must not push other children. The monkey bars are there for you to play on and for other children as well. There are lots of things that we need to share, and this is one of them. And you must never hurt another person.” The parent then takes Janie back so that Janie can apologize and then play nicely.

All of that takes energy, but sometimes the longest way ‘round is the shortest way home, because after not the first or the second or the third time, but eventually, the child begins to understand that there is a consistent message about how he/she is expected to behave.

The effort expended by parents in the early years of their child’s life is well rewarded and is far less than the energy that would be required when a child who has not been so trained becomes a teen who engages in dangerous and/or illegal behavior.

Parents are their children’s primary and most important educators. It’s important to take an active role in helping one’s child to develop into a responsible, caring person. There are no shortcuts. It’s hard work. But it’s worth it.

Filed Under: Family life, Parenting

Intentional Parenting

May 28, 2005 by

Recently I was involved in a discussion about teens who were doing destructive things. These teens were not taking drugs or getting drunk, but they were involved in destroying things—smashing windshields, setting fire to trees, and defacing public property.

Someone said, “But what is a parent to do? Parents can’t follow teens wherever they go.” That is, of course, true. The problem is that once the children have reached their teens, the measures that need to be taken are pretty drastic because the parents have not been successful in their early training of these children.

I think of childrearing as a process through which parents teach their children how to live their lives. It involves instruction in a large number of areas. It starts in the crib and if the parents stays “on message,” by five or six years old, the child will have gained a structure that will help him function for his whole life.

The internal structure of the child, akin to the framework of a building, includes basic trust, honesty, respect, caring, giving, curiosity, cooperation, feelings about others, feelings about his or her own body, etc.

From the earliest days of a child’s life we cuddle them to give them a sense of security, we feed them to let them know that their needs can be met, and we protect them from danger by making sure that their environment is safe.

Later, we teach them that we need to share, that other people have needs, that hitting others hurts them and that instead of hitting, we can “make nice.” We teach them that they need to stay safe and to listen to their parents. In short, we indoctrinate them. By age five or six, if we have done our job, the child will look disapprovingly when someone throws a piece of trash on the ground. They will understand that it is not desirable for someone to shout in a quiet place. They will have a sense of what it means to live in a civilized society where people respect each other.

If we teach them when they are still young, they will carry those attitudes with them for their entire life. It doesn’t mean that they will never throw trash on the ground and never shout in a quiet place, but it does mean that they will know that it is not the right thing to do. They will have heard maybe a thousand times that this is a world that we need to share with others and that we cannot just be thinking of ourselves.

To teach these lessons, parents need to be consistent. Children need to see their parents’ actions as reflections of their instruction. Parents cannot expect their child to be respectful if they are not respectful. They cannot expect their children to be kind and caring if they are not kind and caring. They cannot expect their children to be honest if they are not honest.

Sometimes I speak to people about what I call intentional parenting. What it means is simply to sit down and think of what attributes parents want their children to have and then to focus their behavior and instruction in that direction. If parents have a picture of what their child should be as a teenager—not what sports he or she should excel in or not which subjects he or she could be a genius in but what qualities he or she should have—then their efforts are more likely to be effective.

Being a parent isn’t easy, but if you survive until they are out on their own, you can expect to enjoy the results…. And if you are really lucky, you might have a chance to see your children meet the very same challenges.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting

Coping Skills

May 18, 2005 by

Everyone knows that people are born with their individual packages of abilities. Some people are excellent at doing mathematical calculations, adding multiple digits in their head before they enter kindergarten. Some people have musical talents that seem incredible. Recently I saw a piece on television about a young man whose first drawings were of staves of music and who was writing symphonies when his age was still in the single digits. Similarly, there are people whose bodies are so flexible that at young ages they already are doing amazing gymnastic feats. Indeed, we are not all created equal.

Of course environment is an important intervening factor. A home environment that allows a person to grow and develop in his or her field is very important, and indeed, most of the geniuses we hear about might never have achieved such stature without the support they got from their parents.

There are other talents that are less visible and less recognized. One of them is resilience. Some children seem to be born emotionally stronger than others. They seem to land on their feet no matter how much they are buffeted. These children possess a strength that most people don’t recognize: coping skills.

Coping skills are what allow a person to act in their own best interest in the worst of circumstances. They are what enable people to endure difficult situations without screaming or panicking. They provide for people a mechanism for dealing with difficult situations. Instead of taking the advice, “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout” (The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert A. Heinlein) these people find a constructive response.

Once I had a young girl as a client. Her parents were going through a long and acrimonious divorce. It included public scenes, accusations, threats, and a lot of yelling. She was brought to me so that I could provide support. During the first session I asked her what she did when her parents were having a fight. She said that most of the time she would go to her room, close the door, and listen to music or call a friend. Sometimes she would take a shower. Sometimes she would go out and take a walk.. She proceeded to give me about ten more ways that she coped with her parents’ fighting. I was astounded. Here was a young girl who had the ability to make the world safe for herself by finding something to do to distract herself from the helpless and sad feelings that she could have been experiencing.

It was knowing her that helped me to understand that coping was indeed a skill that some people naturally possessed and others did not.

Some people, in stressful situations try to go head to head with the person or people who are causing them trouble. Often, that is counterproductive. When others are acting irrationally, then the best response is to stay rational. Often I tell my clients that in a stressful situation, “somebody has to be the grown-up.” Someone needs to keep thinking creatively and decide what the best course of action is. Sometimes it is to walk away. Sometimes it is to remain unruffled. Sometimes it is to comfort the person who is being unpleasant. Sometimes there is nothing to remedy the situation, but the person who copes with it effectively knows that at least he or she remained rational.

Parents can help their children by beginning to teach them coping skills early in life. Explaining to a hysterical three year old, “You don’t have to cry; you can tell me with words,” is the beginning of helping a child to understand that he or she doesn’t have to fall apart when things are not optimal. “Think of how handsome you will look when the barber is finished cutting your hair,” is a way of saying that one can cope with a process for the sake of the result. This will come in handy someday when the child will have tasks that do not give immediate rewards. “You are looking tense; why don’t you go outside and get some exercise” teaches the child that sometimes exercise can relieve stress. Parents should make note of how they themselves cope and teach those tricks to their children.

We are not all born as well equipped as my little client, but coping skills can be taught and practiced. The more techniques we learn, the better we are able to deal with our day to day lives.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Parenting, Relationships

Gardening and parenthood

May 3, 2005 by

One of the reasons I recommend the Writer’s Almanac is that it opens my eyes on a daily basis to the thoughts and points of view of others. Today’s poem “An Observation,” which can be found on the site, is about the tenderness of the gardener’s hand with the roots and the shoots of plants and how that ungloved hand, nurturing and protecting the plant is vulnerable to scratches and thorns. The last line reads “Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.”

I think of raising children and how one needs to be gentle so as not to bruise the tender growing sense of self of the child, but at the same time how parents sometimes feel emotionally beaten and abused in the process. Every parent at some point wonders if it’s worth it. Sometimes it seems that the gentler a parent is, the more scratched and scraped he or she is.

All of us developed within a framework of limits. In some families, the limits are very wide. “No, you may not have a 4th piece of cake.” And in some families the limits are very narrow, “You will sit at the table until you eat that last piece of okra; we do not waste food in this house.” Parents need to determine for themselves which behaviors are permitted and which are prohibited. Then they need to be gentle. They need to remain firm and consistent, but they need to be gentle.

Of course that means remaining ever vigilant as to our impact on our children’s developing sense of self and it means making ourselves vulnerable by listening to and empathizing with their feelings. However, it is our gentleness especially when our children are at their least lovable, that will nurture them and enable them to develop into the kind of people we hope they will be.

Filed Under: Family life, Parenting

Connections

May 1, 2005 by

This is a pretty lonely world. We are born into families who are there to love us and to nurture us, and if we are lucky, we learn to feel secure when we are with our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. They provide a safety net for us and help us learn which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Their responses are the cues that help us to develop social skills.

Later in life, we are not held in the family in the same protective way. If our parents have been able to acknowledge our emerging maturity, then we are more and more on our own to make decisions, to figure things out, to plan, and to work at what we value. The freedom to choose is good and natural, but it removes us from the childhood cocoon.

However, we never really leave our parents and those we are close to. Their ideas, adages, and phrases remain with us for our entire lives. Karl Tomm, a well-respected family therapist has posited that the notion of an individual as a closed, self-contained unit, is an illusion. In fact, he believes that we incorporate into ourselves bits and pieces of all of the people in our lives who have been significant to us. He calls those parts of other people that become parts of us too the internalized other. When we remember what our mother would have said in a current situation or what our father might have quipped, we are hearing in ourselves that internalized other.

Likewise, we spread ourselves around to all of the people with whom we have significant relationships. They may say, “I remember your saying…” Or “when I am upset, I think about what you would tell me to do.”  This he calls “the distributed self.”

Karl Tomm uses those concepts (or at least did when I heard him several years ago) to help couples understand how their spouse is feeling and what motivates him or her to act. When I saw him working with the concept in a case demonstration, I was unbelievably impressed. However, what touched me even more was the spiritual aspect of his theory. It helps me to understand how we human beings interconnect, how people we love never really are gone because they reside in us, and most of all, how important it is to be careful about what we say or do to others. Our words are uttered in a moment, but their impact can last many lifetimes.

Filed Under: Parenting, Relationships, Spirituality

How to be a winner

April 29, 2005 by

This past week, Elisheva, Avital, and Dina visited us. They are three young sisters who are very close in age. There was at least one occasion upon which one of the sisters said something to another that made the other feel bad.

When the injured sister told me about it, purely for informational purposes, I am certain, I explained to her that I was not really in a position to make the remark not have been said. In fact, I was powerless to change the past. There are some things we just have to live with. My response was not terribly satisfying to my granddaughter, but it did trigger some thoughts on my part.

Many people believe that when someone has said something thoughtless or insulting or hurtful, there needs to be some resolution of the situation. Of course, in civilized society there often is. “I am sorry, Mr. Durante, that was a thoughtless remark I made about noses” or “Sorry, Mr. Clinton, I meant to ask you if you would like a peach, not an impeachment.” But there are more times that no apology is given and other times that even the apology is not satisfactory. “I’m sorry I said I only tripped because you have big feet; your feet aren’t really that big.”

At times like these, it is important for people to understand that sometimes you just need to live with it and go on. There are rude and impolite people in the world. Sometimes you will have the experience of being hurt or insulted by total strangers, but that doesn’t mean that you are any less of a person.

Things that other people say do not necessarily represent a truth about you. Often what people say about others only gives one a clue as to their own character. It is a wise practice not to become friendly with someone who is unkind to others. Someday, you might end up being that other!

I believe that a person has an inner core, a part of himself that is his essence. No one can touch that.

One of my heroes in this world devoid of heroes is Natan Sharansky. In his book, Fear No Evil, he writes of being held in the Russian gulag in a tiny dark cell, in solitary confinement. Yet, he always knew he was a free man. He never gave himself up. He recited memorized passages from the Bible. He played out chess games in his mind. He devised tricks to play on the guards. They had his body, but they never got close to his soul.

That is how he triumphed. That is how all of us can triumph over the negative people in our lives. We need to hold onto that inner core and know that it is strong and will always remain with us, no matter what others may say or do. That’s how to be a winner.

Filed Under: Parenting, Relationships

The seder is ended but the grandchildren linger on

April 26, 2005 by

This year we had just one extended family of our children with us for seder. Since the seder was over after midnight, my daughter’s three older children stayed over with us. I had forgotten how nice it was to have smiling happy faces greet me in the morning- to see people for whom the world is still full of surprises and possibilities. It was a pleasure to take them to services with me and to have the girls with us the whole rest of the day. They are bright and clever as well as beautiful.

However, we were not prepared for the next installment of the grandchild saga…. Yesterday we received a call from our son that his wife had fallen and hurt herself. We went to watch the children while they went to the hospital. When they returned, our daughter-in-law had a cast that immobilized her knee and her husband had to carry her into the house.

After some talking and consideration, we took their three daughters home with us until further notice. These three girls are very special not only for their own qualities, but because they sing and dance together. This morning at breakfast, we had a complete concert including solos. When I asked them if I could use their names, Elisheva and Avital said I could and Dina said it didn’t matter. All of them are quick and witty and clever and adorable.

So today, I am back 25 years, wondering what to do with these girls for this vacation day just as I had wondered what to do with my children on vacation when they were young.

But for my children, there was no Passover vacation. Their childhoods were spent in Army posts in the US and in Germany. My concern then was how I could pack a kosher for Passover lunch for them to take to school. When they were asking the four questions, they were among a handful in the places we lived. We were strangers in a strange land. Our family possessed a rhythm that was unlike that of our neighbors. People would try and guess what we were doing because our practices were so different from theirs.

Once we had gone to a kosher restaurant in Philadelphia that was run by Israelis and they were selling hats like those worn on a kibbutz. We bought four- two for us and one for each of the children we had then. Our neighbor remarked to me a couple of weeks later that her son had noticed the hats we all were wearing for that holiday we had had a couple of weeks ago. I wracked my brain trying to understand what she was talking about and realized that we had all worn our hats one day. The neighbors were sure it was a custom of some odd Jewish holiday!

We spoke Hebrew in our home and our children never forgot who they were, but when we were able to bring them to Israel for a family vacation, they finally found a place where they belonged.

One by one, they found their way home, and so now, they and their children share the rhythms of our people with the rest of our country, and we are blessed to have all sorts of holiday activities to choose from to entertain our grandchildren.

But to tell the truth, just being with them is enough of a treat for me!

Filed Under: Family life, Parenting
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