The main mitzvah of the Seder night is “And the Haggadat for your son.” It is a special night where the family meets for a few hours, many times three generations are together and a special connection is created between all of them. Sometimes, due to the amount of family tension created around this night, it is difficult to connect to its essence and miss the opportunity to pass on the messages and values of the parents to the next generation. Mitzvot and Haggadat for your son guides us throughout the year, to build a relationship with our children that includes a dialogue of values and the passing on of tradition.
In the past, in order to exist safely in the world, people lived close to the extended family and continued the professions and beliefs of their parents and grandparents. Children rarely challenged the world of their parents’ values out of fear of facing life without a family background, and because they were less exposed to different values. Today we live in a reality that has a lot of freedom and possibilities, a reality of a global village where we are all exposed to endless values, ideas, and lifestyles. This reality challenges the ability of parents to educate their children in the values they believe in.
Today, even parents are flooded with cultural messages that challenge values in general and certain values in particular. When the children challenge the parents’ perception, it is not always clear to the parent what his position is and how to respond, so the first step I recommend parents take is to think honestly and openly about what is really important to them in life. Values is a big word that describes a simple thing – what are the things that are really important to you, that you are willing to make an effort so that they are present in your life. Sometimes we carry values from our parents’ house and when we think openly we will find that these are not necessarily our values today. Sometimes we adopt values that suit the society we live in or messages from the media, and here too, in an open dialogue with ourselves we will discover that not all of these values suit us.
Now that the values are decided for you and you chose them not out of fear or blindness but in an informed and mature way, you can start educating. Education for values begins first of all in the way you live these values. Parents can speak to their children about important values, but children pick up on any falsification, and if the values in question and the values they live do not match, it will be very difficult to educate. At the same time, when the values are present in the parents’ and family’s lives, it is possible and desirable to talk about them from a positive connection. An important premise is that children want to connect to the world of their parents’ values, and for this to happen, healthy foundations of connection must be laid.
If the child sees you busy with kindness or devoting yourself to work and you also explain to him why it is important to you, but when he needs you you are too busy with kindness or work it will be difficult for him to accept from you. When the relationship is close and warm, when parents are available to the children and ready to hear anything from them, their values will be absorbed by the children easily. Parents turn to me for help when the children don’t go their own way and I always bring them back to the basic work – work on the relationship and their ability to understand the child and love him as he is. The main investment of the parents should be in the relationship with the children and from there the education of the parents’ values is simple. Of course, part of a close relationship is also sharing the children in your worlds of values through action and speech.
It is very important to understand that the children’s rebellion against their parents’ values during adolescence is a normal and healthy thing. In order for a child to be able to connect with his parents from a mature and separate place and not out of dependence or fear, he must go through resistance and rebellion. To say goodbye to his parents, to see him as different from them, and only then will he be able to return to them. Parents who are scared of puberty on the one hand or those who flow with the children’s search without giving him any resistance on the other hand, lose the possibility that the child will return to them when he grows up. Let them resist and challenge you, listen to them with an open heart and see what you can learn from them at this stage of their lives.
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