Kabbalah.info - Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute

The Right Education

Do not tell your children what to do - make them want to do it.

The basic principle of the right education is actually very simple: parents should not tell a child what to do, but only how to do it, if the child asks.

And what happens until then? Parents should use their ingenuity to find alternative ways to awaken in a child the desire to do what needs to be done. This way, the desire for it will be child's own. This is the right education.

It is written that we should "educate the youth according to his way." This means that not only parents but a child as well should clearly see where he is going, and he should want it. Then he will accept education, he will demand it.

Parents who pressure their children, who try to forcefully teach them certain information or habits, raise a broken generation.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, on the other hand, is against any kind of violence or pressure. "There is no coercion in spirituality." No coercion means that everything exists and is done only out of one's own will. What parents have to do is to awaken that will.

Our problem is that no one is doing that and the whole education system is wrong. Hence our task is to help parents understand this principle of Kabbalists - everything stems from a person's free will and all we have to do is to help its free development.

My Child is Jealous, What should I Do?

Sibling jealousy is a natural reaction of egoism.

After the birth of a younger sibling, an older child often becomes bad-tempered. He hates a new baby, feels envy towards it, and even tries to hurt it.

This is a natural reaction of egoism. Parents may try to explain to a younger child how they would like him to behave, but it's impossible to demand a correct reaction from him. It's written, "Educate a lad according to his path." This means that parents have to compensate their elder child for his new position in the family, so that he feels that a good attitude towards the newborn is advantageous for him.

When a younger child is born, a mother feels excited that the family has become larger. An elder child should feel the same. How? For instance, he can receive a present "from" a younger sibling. That is, a child should see that a new baby allows him to derive something positive for his egoism. Otherwise the elder sibling will hate the younger one, as he senses that his mother's attention is switched to the baby, everyone takes care of it, and not him. 

In previous generations, sibling jealousy probably wasn't so acute, because people lived in more modest conditions, or elder children had more friends with whom they could play and thus paid less attention to their younger siblings. But today, parents need to fulfill the desires of the elder children, showing them that they receive something good thanks to a newborn baby in the family.