Torah Perspective
How to Parent Your Difficult Kids | WATCH
If you want to understand the deepest Torah approach to dealing with rebellious teens and why love, not force, is what saves them, watch this.
Every morning I wake up 130 19-20 year old boys in Yeshivat Lev Aharon. Some of them mumble things you wouldn’t say in polite company… and then one boy writes in the group chat, ‘The rabbis are so annoying in the morning.’
For a second, I wondered, Maybe I am too tough?
Then I remembered something my father told me from 40 years ago. Back then, toughness worked. Today? Not anymore.
Teenagers now… they’re carrying things you don’t see. And when a kid is struggling, the answer isn’t more pressure, it’s more heart.
And if you think this is just modern psychology, it isn’t. This goes all the way back to Yitzchak Avinu. He knew exactly who Esav was. He wasn’t blind. But he also knew:
“If this child is slipping, I need to hold him closer, not push him harder.”
Sometimes the greatest strength… is gentleness.