Humbled
On our JWRP missions to Israel, we took a class called "The Kabbalah of You." It was a talk about personality types from a Jewish mystical perspective, dividing people into three major types. One of the types is called a "tov" - he or she who wishes to be "good" and do the right thing. Unfortunately, these lovely traits usually come along with a certain degree of judgmentalism for those who are not doing "good" or "right" - yet many "tov"s can't see their own tendencies of judgmentalism.
Guess what? I'm a tov.
I was that mother of little kids who "did it all right." My children were polite and respectful. They said please and thank you and usually shared their toys. I taught them to clear their plates and go to bed on time.
I looked at teens and uncharitably thought things like: Their parents have no control. Are they out to lunch? How do they let them leave the house like that? How do they let them talk to them that way? How do they let that kid get his driver's license? What? He dropped out of school? Wow.
Age is a beautiful thing, although society makes us feel bad about it. With age comes experience, and thus rich potential for wisdom. I now find myself thinking new things, like:
When your kids' problems become your problems, you can no longer help them.
G-d gave the greatest gift to the human race - free will. Unfortunately, He also gave it to our children.
The only things we can truly give our children are love and information.
Give up external control so you can influence lovingly with the power of your relationship.
When parenting becomes about what other people think, you have made other people's opinions more important than your child's needs.
Raise a child according to his way.
I suspect other, younger "tov"s may look at my parenting and be judgmental. I am okay with that. I won't judge them for their judginess. I am humbled by the sheer complexity of raising human beings in a rough world. We are the last generation to know a world before and after technology and in many ways there are no precedents for our challenges.
All I know is this: at the end of 120 years I would like to stand before G-d and say: I did the best I could to raise the human beings You have entrusted lovingly to my care. I tried my hardest to filter out my own ego, other people's opinions, and what was easy. I gave them space, I gave them values, I gave them boundaries, I gave them love.
Judgmentalism be gone - it's a freeing emotion.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruchi
