Rabbi Peretz Chen | An amazing tool for creating behavioral change in children

00:00 Hello. So what matters a great deal to us as parents? It matters to us, for example, that our children go to sleep on time. Getting enough sleep is essential if they’re going to learn properly the next day—if they’re going to have the energy, the patience, even the desire to sit in class and listen to the teacher. Listen to the teacher. It matters a great deal to us that after dinner they clear their plates and put them in the trash. It matters very, very much to us that our children use clean language, and it matters to us that they do their homework. And it also matters a great deal that they dress in a way that fits the dress code we believe in. Sometimes, precisely because these things matter so much to us, we’re anxious to make them happen, eager for them to happen already, and along the way we do things that, instead of guiding our children in that direction, toward that way of life, actually confuse them. So in today’s class, with Hashem’s help, we’ll learn what the way is, what the method is. It’s not a complicated method. It’s a simple, sensible, practical way to help children change course, to change their behavior in the direction we... we believe in. We’ll see what that method is, and we’ll also see what it takes to make it work, as we’ll discuss now, with Hashem’s help. But first I want to tell a story—a story that will illustrate how to change behavior, how to guide someone toward a certain behavior, how to inspire someone to do something they haven’t done until now. The war began eighty-one days ago, and when it began, of course all our hearts were burning and in turmoil. Everyone wanted to do something that would help, that would make a difference, that would truly help the Jewish people and the soldiers and improve the situation. During this period, everyone has tried, and is still trying, to give their best, their utmost, their hundred percent. I decided to go out every day with my pair of tefillin and help emergency personnel put on tefillin: Magen David Adom personnel, firefighters, people from... the police. And I found out that at a school right

02:30 near my home, there were medical personnel, Magen David Adom personnel, volunteers from abroad, rescue workers from overseas. The school had taken a direct hit from a missile, and there were no classes. After all, during the first weeks of the war, there were no classes, so the medical personnel had set up there. I went over and approached them: “Tefillin. Who wants to put on tefillin?” There I met a very, very nice Jewish man. He was in charge of all the medical personnel at that school, and he was a genuinely pleasant, friendly person. I offered to help him put on tefillin, and he agreed. It turned out that someone else had already helped him put on tefillin, either every day or a few days earlier. We talked. He told me which kibbutz he lived on, and we got to know each other. I started going there day after day after day, and whenever I arrived and this nice man was there, he would put on tefillin. Some time passed, and one day he told me that his son had entered Gaza. His son is an officer in... an officer in the Engineering Corps, one of the men who drive the D9 bulldozers and level whatever needs to be leveled there. When I heard his son was in Gaza, I was honestly alarmed too, because this was at the beginning. Today we’ve gotten somewhat used to soldiers being in Gaza, but back then, early on, it sounded much more frightening than it does to us today. I said to him, “Really? Wow. How is your son?” And almost every day, when we met to put on tefillin, we would talk about his son. When he first told me, I also said to him, “Come put on tefillin. We’ll take a picture and you can send it to your son. Tell him, ‘My dear son, I’m putting on tefillin for your success, so that, with Hashem’s help, you’ll come home safe and sound.’” And that’s what we did. So

04:26 day after day went by, and we would meet from time to time. He would put on tefillin, and I would ask how his son was, because I really was worried about him. After a while, they moved the medical personnel from the school to another location in the city. Later, he stopped coming, and his colleagues told me he had gone to Kibbutz Karmia, a kibbutz in the Gaza border region. He was there with a medical team as well. So, in a sense, our paths parted. Several weeks went by. Then, on a Friday almost two weeks ago, I got a message on my phone from him. He wrote that his son had come out of Gaza, and that the officer who replaced his son there, along with one of that officer’s soldiers, had been hit by an anti-tank missile. May we be spared. They were seriously injured and evacuated to hospitals, and now both are in rehabilitation, one at Soroka and one at Tel Hashomer. He went on to write that he was certain—he felt—that the fact his son had come out, thank Hashem, without a scratch was no accident. “I’m sure the tefillin I put on in his merit protected him,” he wrote. “They gave him the strength to come out safe and sound.” And he wrote to me, “Thank you. Keep up your holy work.” Then he added these words: “I’m continuing to put on tefillin in Karmia too.” Now, let’s understand what this means. This is a Jewish man who put on tefillin at his bar mitzvah, at age thirteen. Today he’s fifty, and he hadn’t put on tefillin in all those years—many, many years. Only now, during the war, when we met, did he put on tefillin almost every day we saw each other. For someone who hadn’t put on tefillin for so many years, it probably wasn’t something that was foremost on his mind.

06:39 That is, he respected it very much, but he didn’t do it every day because it hadn’t been something he thought of as perhaps all that important, as a high priority. And suddenly, after putting on tefillin day after day after day, almost every day over such a long period, it entered his heart and soul that tefillin are something truly important, truly powerful. He attributes his son’s being saved to his putting on tefillin. When he sent me that message, I was so moved. I told him I had to share a story that would illustrate what he was saying even further. I told him a story I once read about a Jewish woman who, during the Vietnam War, was walking down a street in New York on a Shabbos afternoon. She passed by the Rebbe’s shul, and as she was passing, the Rebbe came by too. The Rebbe turned to her and asked, “Ma’am, are you Jewish?” She said yes. So the Rebbe said to her, “You know, perhaps you shouldn’t carry your bag on Shabbos?” She was carrying her personal bag, a small handbag. On Shabbos, it’s forbidden to carry where there’s no eruv, and there was no eruv there. So the Rebbe told her she shouldn’t carry it. But she didn’t understand what the rabbi wanted from her. The Rebbe said to her again, “You know, according to Jewish law, it’s forbidden to carry a handbag on Shabbos.” And she didn’t understand what was wrong, what he wanted from her. Then the Rebbe turned to her and said, “Ma’am, if I told you that what I’m asking you to do now is for your son’s sake, would you do it?” She said to the Rebbe, “For my son, I would do anything.” Then the Rebbe

08:27 He asked two students who were there to sit on the bench and watch the bag until Shabbos was over. The woman came back after Shabbos and took the bag. About two weeks later, her son, who was an American soldier in Vietnam, called her. He said, “Mom, can I tell you something? Two weeks ago, we were lying in an ambush, and they spotted us. They started firing so many shots at us. Mom, you don’t understand. Bullets were whistling past me on the right and left, and my friends were falling. It was as though something was protecting me, and not one bullet hit me. I came out of it safe and sound.” When the mother and son worked out the timing, it turned out that the drama her son had been caught up in happened at exactly the same time that the Rebbe, in New York, was telling his mother, “Ma’am, for your son’s sake, don’t carry this bag on Shabbos.” In other words, this story illustrates how the mother’s observance of the mitzvah, her keeping of halachah, protected her son. I told this to that Jewish man, because it was exactly what he had told me: that his tefillin had protected his son. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure how to tell him the story. So he said to me—he recorded a message back to me—“I believe it with all my heart. I believe with all my heart that it really is so. I don’t need proof. This is something that happened to me, firsthand.” I think one of the things that made this man suddenly value tefillin so much more than before was that he had been putting on tefillin almost every day, day after day after day. We would meet and talk, and he would put on tefillin. When you do something consistently, day after day after day, little by little it sinks in, and it

10:23 changes something inside. For him, it suddenly took hold in his mind. I don’t know whether he thought this way before, but now he certainly believes and thinks that tefillin have power—and that is true. They have the power to protect and safeguard. But that came about because, for him, it was day after day after day. The power of consistency: something that happens day after day after day brings about change. It does something to a person. There is a book called Ein Yaakov. In its introduction, it discusses which verse is the most significant, most powerful verse in the Torah. One opinion there says that the most significant verse is the verse—the central verse in Judaism: “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” But it says there that Shimon ben Pazi holds that the most important verse is: “The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the second lamb you shall offer in the afternoon.” This verse refers to how, in the Beis Hamikdash, they offered the morning daily sacrifice each day, and in the afternoon they offered the afternoon daily sacrifice. Today, the Shacharis prayer corresponds to the morning daily sacrifice, and the Minchah prayer corresponds to the afternoon daily sacrifice. What is special about this verse? Why is it so important? Why does Shimon ben Pazi say it is the most important verse? The explanation is that the lamb they offered in the morning and the second lamb in the afternoon were offered every day, day after day after day. The power of consistency. They did it every day: on weekdays, on Shabbos, on Yom Kippur, throughout the entire year, year after year. Something done consistently is powerful. That is why Shimon ben Pazi says this is the verse. This is the verse, because its message is that something you do consistently, day after day after day, has

12:29 strength and power. It is what can bring about a change in behavior, help us progress, and bring us to new and better places. Consistency—doing something regularly, day after day after day. So if we want to change our children’s behavior, we need to do things consistently. What does that mean? We started with a list of things we would like to change: going to sleep on time, clearing away their dishes, using clean language, and so on. If we try to tackle everything at once, we really won’t succeed. Grasp too much, and you grasp nothing. But if we take one thing and decide, “This is what we’re focusing on now; this is our task. Right now we want the children to go to sleep on time, and we’re not going to let it slide, day after day,” then we set a bedtime. We make sure they’ve already eaten dinner, bathed, and done whatever else needs to be done—all the preparations. At that time, the household settles down for bed; they go to sleep. And we stay on top of it, day after day after day, regularly and consistently. After a while, we’ll suddenly see that it has become part of the routine. The way to succeed is to choose just one thing. If we take on many things at once, it will be hard and overwhelming, and we’ll give up. But if we focus on one thing and really stick with it—this is the thing, this is the task—we will certainly see some progress, some change, after a while. But we have to be consistent. Imagine what happens if we arrive late to work one day and our boss says, “Great!” and gives us a hug. We come in another day, and he gets angry and shouts. Then on the third day, we have no idea what will happen if we’re late. It confuses us. Either he’s always understanding about lateness or he’s always upset, but when you know what to expect, it’s much easier. Of course, it would be better if he were always nice. Yes, but consistency, a regular

14:34 routine, helps us make sense of things. Imagine that the task we’ve chosen is for our daughter to tidy her room and put away her toys. We insist on it today, but the next day she doesn’t do it, and we say, “All right, we’ll tidy up.” She sees us doing it, and we’ve lost it. We need to keep at it every day. If this is our task, then every day we say, “You have to put your toys away. Do you want to play tomorrow? Do you want your toys? Then you need to put them away.” We can help a little, certainly. But we need to keep at it day after day after day, making sure she has a part in putting the toys away. If it really happens day after day after day, consistently, it will gradually sink in. So that is the secret: choose one thing and keep at it day after day, until we feel and see that it has become part of the routine. But there are two things that will help enormously in making it work. First, prepare the household for it. You can’t spring a change on everyone. You need to say in advance, “From now on, bedtime is at ten at night,” or “at nine at night.” “From now on, when we finish eating, everyone takes their plate to the sink or the trash.” Announce it. It is also very, very important that we, as a couple, both know that this is the task—that we decide on it together and tackle it together. If it belongs to both of us, and we know this is the task and give it our full attention, it is much more likely to succeed. After all, we are the heads of the household, the ones in charge. If we are in it together, it is much more likely to happen. The other thing, beyond preparing the household and coordinating between us as parents so that everything is in sync, is patience. Processes take time. If after two days, or after a week, it still hasn’t become the habit we hoped for, don’t give up. Patience! Things take time, and in the end

16:33 They take time. So the message of today’s class is that if we want to change a behavior, to change something at home, the secret is persistence. We shouldn’t give up on it. We need to put all our energy into it consistently, day after day after day. When we do that, we’ll see that, little by little, things sink in. It’s worth starting with one thing, because we’ll have the strength for one thing. If we try to do many things, as we discussed earlier, we’ll get discouraged very quickly. Let everyone at home know about that one thing. We need to wait patiently, because processes take time, and with Hashem’s help we’ll see much blessing and a great, great deal of success. May this class be for the recovery of the two soldiers I mentioned earlier who were injured by that anti-tank missile, and for the recovery of all the soldiers. May they all be healthy and safe. May no one be hurt—not a single soldier, not a single Jew, not a single woman soldier. May the captives come home healthy and whole, in body and in spirit. And may the Jewish people merit the complete Geulah, with Hashem’s help, and the resurrection of the dead, so that we may be together in the flesh with those holy souls, those murdered martyrs who were taken from us so suddenly. May we merit the complete Geulah, with Hashem’s help, and until then, may we have much, much nachas from our children. If you feel the message of this class speaks to you, pass it on. Share it with a friend. If you have something to say—an idea, a thought, a little something to add to what was said here—write it in the comments below. Share that with us too. And with Hashem’s help, may there be much blessing and a great, great deal of success. Thank you very much.