Episode 14: Feel at Home(school)! | With Avital Pilzer, a mother in home education

00:00 Speaker 1 One morning, a mother wakes up and decides she’s not sending her children to school anymore. They’ll stay home with her. Why? How do you do that? And in the middle of it all, how do you find time for yourself, for errands, for everything? How does it work? Come listen to Avital, a homeschooling mother. Be ready to be surprised. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet women who have brought their sense of shlichus into a variety of fields. Through their stories, they’ll help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live—that’s what it’s all about. Shlichus as a way of life. Let’s begin. Okay, good evening. Every time I say good morning, good afternoon or good evening, but everyone listens at a different time. But...

01:02 Speaker 2 Whatever time it is.

01:03 Speaker 1 Yes. So welcome, Avital. I think you’ll soon be able to guess for yourselves why it took us six months to find time to meet.

01:11 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Good evening.

01:12 Speaker 1 Exactly. In your case, that makes perfect sense. Come on, introduce yourself. What brought you here? What’s interesting about you?

01:18 Speaker 2 What’s interesting about me is that my children don’t go to school or daycare.

01:23 Speaker 1 What’s called homeschooling.

01:25 Speaker 2 Homeschooling. Yes, it’s called homeschooling, and they learn at home.

01:31 Speaker 1 Wait, start at the beginning. Who are you?

01:34 Speaker 2 Oh, Avital Piltzer, married to Moti and mother of three children. Dov’le is six, Tzvika is three and a half, and Levi is one, and they’re all at home.

01:48 Speaker 1 From morning till night.

01:49 Speaker 2 From morning till night.

01:50 Speaker 1 From seven—from four to seven.

01:51 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly.

01:53 Speaker 1 Wow. Okay, anyone who already follows Avital’s status updates or Instagram probably knows the children a little too, I think, and can really picture it.

02:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:02 Speaker 1 But for anyone who doesn’t, try to describe it for a moment so we can imagine your day a little. Say you wake up in the morning...

02:12 Speaker 2 Maybe it looks a bit like everyone else’s day during vacation, I think.

02:17 Speaker 1 So it’s not like people imagine: you get up, and by eight o’clock everyone has a siddur in hand and...

02:24 Speaker 2 No, no, no. We tried that; it didn’t work for us. No. It really is like vacation. You get up, there are the usual things you do every day, but at a relaxed pace. The children come up with their own things to do.

02:40 Speaker 1 Which is something you provide for them.

02:42 Speaker 2 Possibly.

02:43 Speaker 1 Of course.

02:43 Speaker 2 It’s more like their surroundings offer things to them.

02:46 Speaker 1 Yes. But why, really? Why did you choose this, unlike ninety-nine percent of mothers in the world? Not the world, but here in Israel. Let’s put it that way.

02:57 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s very rare. I think it was a combination of things. I wasn’t all that happy with the schools and daycare options available. I felt like each time, I had to put them in whatever place there was. I couldn’t go around choosing what I liked better and thought was suitable. And I also felt I didn’t have enough time to be a mother. I don’t mean it as guilt, like, “Oh no, I wasn’t with the kids enough.” I felt it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to experience my motherhood more, and the afternoons weren’t enough—when they come home at four and go to sleep at six. But these weren’t thoughts I’d worked through, like, “Okay, what am I going to do? Let’s think of a solution.” They were things running through my heart, and maybe a little through my head. And then COVID sorted everything out.

03:50 Speaker 1 Oh my gosh, somehow COVID comes up in almost every podcast. It changed so many things, and so many things...

03:57 Speaker 2 True. I’ve also heard so many people say, “During COVID...”

03:59 Speaker 1 “This and that happened.”

04:00 Speaker 2 “I left my job and went...”

04:02 Speaker 1 It’s like everyone has a life before and a life after.

04:04 Speaker 2 Totally. Because suddenly it put us in a situation we’d never been in before.

04:09 Speaker 1 Yes. So that’s how you got here, kind of.

04:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

04:11 Speaker 1 Wait, that was two and a half years ago, so the children are now in their third year...

04:17 Speaker 2 Um...

04:18 Speaker 1 Right?

04:18 Speaker 2 I think so, yes. Their third year at home.

04:20 Speaker 1 So how old was Dov Ber?

04:22 Speaker 2 Three. Three and a half. Yes, three and a half.

04:26 Speaker 1 So Tzvika was one?

04:28 Speaker 2 Oh yes, less than a year old.

04:30 Speaker 1 So you started gradually. You began with one older child and a baby, and then, little by little, it’s like a growing school.

04:37 Speaker 2 Yes, and that’s also why you constantly have to be flexible and keep thinking, “Okay, now I can’t leave things on shelves, because I have a baby who pulls them down. So what do we do now?”

04:49 Speaker 1 The approach changes, and...

04:50 Speaker 2 Yes. And how do you include them now? What does this one need? What does that one need?

04:53 Speaker 1 Including them sounds like the biggest challenge to me. Say you have a six-year-old. You can build some kind of daily routine for him, from morning till night, but then you also have to fit in a three-year-old and an eighteen-month-old, and make sure they have things to do too. It’s not just about keeping them from interrupting.

05:09 Speaker 2 Right.

05:09 Speaker 1 That’s incredible. It’s wild. I mean, I...

05:11 Speaker 2 It sounds that way. Right.

05:12 Speaker 1 On some level, that’s the dream. I think, “If only I could”—both in terms of my temperament and actually being able to stay home with the children all day. And you’re doing it.

05:24 Speaker 2 Right. No, it really is a dream. It really is.

05:27 Speaker 1 So what, there’s no daily routine?

05:29 Speaker 2 Um...

05:29 Speaker 1 Or a weekly schedule or anything?

05:32 Speaker 2 No, no. I tried doing that, and it didn’t work for us at all. It wasn’t good for me or for the children. It just didn’t work.

05:39 Speaker 1 Why? Because...

05:40 Speaker 2 Because it stressed me out, having to choose a theme for every day and come up with an activity for them related to the theme I’d chosen. And they wanted their space to play and come up with things themselves. I felt like I was just...

05:56 Speaker 1 Like with the theme you mentioned: “Just let me draw and...”

06:00 Speaker 2 Yes. Sometimes it doesn’t interest them. Then I learned more about Montessori. It’s an approach that focuses more on observing what interests a child, what their interests are, and then making things available to them based on those interests. That works better for us.

06:17 Speaker 1 For each child separately, you mean.

06:19 Speaker 2 Um, yes. But it’s not hard to combine. If one child is really into putting together puzzles right now and the other is into solving math problems, fine—you put out a math problem for him. They’re objects, workbooks, things that are simply available in the space.

06:35 Speaker 1 But surely you have to guide them. He knows how to solve the math problems because someone sat with him, no?

06:42 Speaker 2 Not necessarily, no. No. Maybe a bit more with the written problems, but he solves them out loud. I didn’t sit with him and teach him that; he did it on his own.

06:54 Speaker 1 And is there a curriculum you follow? Do you keep track of what’s happening in schools at that age, for example, or...?

07:04 Speaker 2 Um...

07:04 Speaker 1 Or is it all intuitive?

07:06 Speaker 2 N-no, I don’t keep track. There was a point when I consulted a friend who’s a kindergarten teacher about what children should be doing at that age and what I should provide. I even went on the Ministry of Education website to look for...

07:17 Speaker 1 The curriculum.

07:17 Speaker 2 The curriculum for that age, just to see what he was supposed to know. And at some point I realized that wasn’t the measure. The Ministry of Education has its own benchmarks, but developmentally, there’s a wide range for every age. For example, there can be a year’s difference between five and six, or even more, in when a child is expected to recognize letters.

07:45 Speaker 1 Which is really one of the problems with putting everyone into the same box.

07:48 Speaker 2 Right. If you didn’t know that, you might say, “What? Tzvika is three and a half and he doesn’t recognize all the letters. What am I going to do?” But I know he doesn’t need to recognize all the letters, so I can see that he’s progressing within the range that’s right for his age.

08:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:07 Speaker 2 And that’s enough for me. I don’t feel a need to push him, like, “Okay, if you can already recognize one through five, then let’s do six through ten. Let’s sit down and work on it.”

08:20 Speaker 1 Not at all. You don’t have to meet anyone else’s standards, but rather...

08:23 Speaker 2 Right.

08:23 Speaker 1 Go at the child’s pace, which is cool.

08:25 Speaker 2 Right, according to what interests them. So if there’s a period when letters don’t interest him, or that subject doesn’t interest him and he’s focused on something else, then it’s an opportunity to strengthen that other thing.

08:34 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:34 Speaker 2 And the time will come when he wants to learn letters. It’s also much easier for me, because I don’t have to sit with lists and prepare things in the evening for the next morning. Those kinds of things are very stressful and a big commitment, um...

08:47 Speaker 1 Right. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to keep it up if it meant having to meet certain demands—if it were too much for you. But this way, you’ve found a formula that works for you, and it’s good for the kids too, and...

08:57 Speaker 2 Right.

08:58 Speaker 1 And Montessori—is that something you study somewhere, or...?

09:03 Speaker 2 Um, sort of. I actually opened an Instagram account so I could follow someone who teaches about Montessori. That’s where I get a lot of what I know. And now I’ve also taken a more structured course on both education and Montessori, and I’m gradually putting it into practice. I’ll read an idea and think, okay, if you do this, the kids will respond like that; if you arrange their environment... And then I try it. Since I’m with the kids all day, I can put what I read into practice all day. I don’t have to wait until the afternoon and then—

09:38 Speaker 1 It goes straight into practice. You can do it right away. Your whole day revolves around it, really.

09:42 Speaker 2 Completely, completely.

09:43 Speaker 1 Do you feel more prepared now with Tzvika? Because you went through that whole age and stage with Dov’le—all the things he learned?

09:53 Speaker 2 Um, yes, definitely. Completely.

09:55 Speaker 1 You’ve already got experience.

09:57 Speaker 2 Completely. Even with Levi it’s different. The child stands in the kitchen cooking all day.

10:03 Speaker 1 Apparently.

10:04 Speaker 2 I never imagined in my life that I’d let a child that age into the kitchen. Like, what’s going on? What are you doing in the kitchen?

10:09 Speaker 1 A year and a half—that’s... I can’t—

10:11 Speaker 2 He’s not even a year and a half. He’s little, and he loves it and really connects with it, and...

10:17 Speaker 1 That’s so interesting.

10:17 Speaker 2 I never imagined I’d let a child that age into the kitchen. I mean, there are toy kitchens.

10:22 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:22 Speaker 2 But they don’t want those. They want the real thing.

10:24 Speaker 1 The real thing. Why not? Right.

10:25 Speaker 2 It’s more interesting.

10:26 Speaker 1 If Mom lets them, then of course. Tell me, socially, isn’t it a bit much for them to be with each other all day? Or have you found solutions? Because when I think about it, school is supposed to serve the educational side of things, but in practice it mainly serves the social side. There are kids who go to school and don’t really learn. For them, the lessons are optional—but they do have friends there. So how do you handle that side of things?

10:58 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, I agree with you about school—the whole concept of school came about because it’s simply easier to teach children together. And these days, whenever people talk to me about school, it’s always, “But what about friends?” They can accept the learning part—nobody’s worried that my kids won’t know something—but friends? It’s as if school and having friends are one and the same.

11:21 Speaker 1 Because, between us, most kids don’t really learn in every lesson. It depends on the age, too. I think that in high school, kids take themselves in hand more. But in elementary school, I don’t know—they learn, they don’t learn. In practice, a child finishes elementary school and has mainly made friends and acquired skills, I think. I don’t know, knowledge too, but how much of that knowledge do we really need? Maybe the things that build on each other, like math: you learn the basics and gradually move forward. And reading and all that. But yes, they do learn. I’m exaggerating a bit. It’s just that the social side seems much more significant to me in school.

12:03 Speaker 2 Right.

12:04 Speaker 1 So the question is, how do you bring that into their lives?

12:07 Speaker 2 Well, it’s a process. And if you ask me what takes the most investment in homeschooling, it’s the social side. We don’t live somewhere where it’s easy to just go over to neighbors in the afternoon. And we don’t really have a religious or Charedi homeschooling group to connect with, either.

12:29 Speaker 1 Right, among families who aren’t religious there are groups of homeschooling parents, aren’t there?

12:33 Speaker 2 Lots. There are religious ones too, but those groups are far away. They’re not really practical for us to go to.

12:40 Speaker 1 Getting in the car and driving there—that’s already...

12:41 Speaker 2 If you have to drive half an hour just so your child can spend time with friends...

12:46 Speaker 1 You need it to be nearby and accessible.

12:49 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s less practical.

12:50 Speaker 1 For it to serve its purpose.

12:52 Speaker 2 Right. So first, it’s about understanding how much social time children really need. In my view, children don’t need as much as they get at school, in such an intensive system.

13:03 Speaker 1 Thirty children in a class, times four.

13:05 Speaker 2 And six hours a day, at best. Every day. There’s no day when a child can say, “Today I need a little break from my friends.” He can’t. “I’d like a bit of time to myself.”

13:14 Speaker 1 Even on Shabbos they go to shul, and their friends are there too.

13:16 Speaker 2 Right. Friends all the time, all the time. So I don’t think they really need that much. What we’ve arranged is this: we signed them up for two activities, and one day a week a family that also homeschools comes over. So there are three regular times each week for them to be with other children, and to me that’s enough as a foundation. Anything else—when they happen to spend time with the neighbors or with family—that’s nice, but I don’t count on it. I count on those three regular things...

13:52 Speaker 1 And at this stage, that’s enough for them.

13:54 Speaker 2 I think so. We’re always reassessing, always paying attention. Every year of homeschooling is a new decision. Motzi and I talk about it: okay, will another year be good? It’s right for Dov, but is it right for Tzvi? Each year we choose again. It’s not, “Well, we’re used to it now, so let’s just carry on.”

14:15 Speaker 1 Just getting by on autopilot.

14:16 Speaker 2 Yes. We’re always checking: does he have enough time with friends? Is he missing it? Um...

14:21 Speaker 1 Do you think a day might come when you’ll put him in school?

14:25 Speaker 2 Um...

14:26 Speaker 1 Them, actually.

14:26 Speaker 2 I don’t know. I don’t even have anyone to draw inspiration from.

14:31 Speaker 1 It’s sort of...

14:32 Speaker 2 Or anyone to look at and say, “How did it go for them?” It’s not like when you have so many people around you whose children have been in second grade. Then it’s not so hard to understand what might happen with your child and what he’s likely to experience there. This feels like walking a path no one has walked before.

14:48 Speaker 1 You’re just diving in.

14:50 Speaker 2 Yes. So we’re constantly looking and asking: Is this good for us? Is this right for us? We always leave the option open, and I prepare for the possibility that one day they will enter a school setting. So I make sure they’re—you know, I take care of everything they need so they’ll be comfortable socially.

15:08 Speaker 1 So they’ll be able to fit in. Right.

15:10 Speaker 2 Yes, so they won’t join and suddenly be in shock: “How do we fit in with everyone?”

15:14 Speaker 1 From zero to a hundred.

15:15 Speaker 2 “What strange kids.”

15:16 Speaker 1 Honestly, walk into any school during recess. The amount of shouting—it really isn’t easy. I think children grow into it gradually. First they’re in daycare, then kindergarten, and so on. But really, it’s like a chicken coop, in terms of the...

15:34 Speaker 2 Right. And then people often say, “You have to send him to daycare, because otherwise he’ll arrive at kindergarten and be in shock.” But you can always say that. It’s like when people say, “Don’t pick him up; he’ll get used to being held.” You don’t have to think that way. I don’t think you always need to worry about that if right now you can make things good for him and let him grow up in...

15:53 Speaker 1 That was, unfortunately, the thinking at the time.

15:54 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

15:55 Speaker 1 Now Bibi has promised free education from age zero, so zero, zero—well, that’s already... Anyway, tell me: most of us—and when I say “us,” I’m talking about mothers, ninety-nine percent of mothers who send their children to daycare or school—we’re with our children for only a few hours a day, and even then we sometimes feel, “Wow, what do we do with the child?” The kids are tired, and how do we keep them occupied? “Mom, I’m bored.” You’re with your children twenty-four seven, so maybe you have some interesting tips? How do you deal with a child who’s bored, and things like that? I’m curious whether that comes up for you, since the children are with you all the time.

16:46 Speaker 3 Right.

16:47 Speaker 1 Because I’m thinking that if they were in “I’m bored” mode, it would never end. It would just go on and on.

16:53 Speaker 3 Right.

16:53 Speaker 1 So maybe they’re more used to keeping themselves occupied. When I think about it, a child at school is used to always having something going on. There’s no empty space: lesson, recess, lesson, recess.

17:04 Speaker 3 All the time...

17:04 Speaker 1 Lesson, recess. And then he comes home. Wait, now it’s neither a lesson nor recess—so what do we do?

17:09 Speaker 3 Right.

17:09 Speaker 1 Now, obviously there are things to do and all that, but I’m thinking that for you, there has to be something—there’s no vacuum, but there’s no schedule either. It’s somewhere in the middle. How do you do that?

17:22 Speaker 3 Right. I think that in a structured setting, there just aren’t that many opportunities to decide for yourself, “What am I going to do now?” So that ability gets a little rusty. I saw it with my Dovaleh, too. We started homeschooling after he’d spent half a year in preschool, and he was confused. He didn’t know how to occupy himself, and honestly, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with him either.

17:47 Speaker 1 Was that hard for him?

17:48 Speaker 3 What, being at home?

17:49 Speaker 1 Actually, everyone ended up at home overnight.

17:52 Speaker 3 Yes.

17:52 Speaker 1 It was during COVID.

17:53 Speaker 3 Yes, we all had a similar introduction to it.

17:55 Speaker 1 Yes.

17:55 Speaker 3 In the end... yes, suddenly we were home all day. What? What do we do? What do I do with this child? And from the child’s side, what do I do with Mom? What do I do at home? What is this? It was a shock. But you learn. Knowledge really helps. Montessori, for example—I didn’t connect with it for no reason. It genuinely helps me. And here’s a tip I can give: set up a play area suited to the children. Have toys that interest them there, maybe three toys—three kinds of toys—and put the rest away. So it isn’t overwhelming and...

18:40 Speaker 1 That kind of overload.

18:41 Speaker 3 Yes, and switch them out now and then. That way, the children stay interested. If a child isn’t playing with a toy, it doesn’t interest him. So take it away and put out one he is interested in, and then the children have something to occupy themselves with. Often they’re bored because they’ve had enough of the toys, or there are too many and they can’t find their way among them. It’s such a simple thing, but once I learned it, I started organizing the play area and doing things like that. The children occupy themselves, and it really makes things easier. Because, as I said, I can’t set an hourly schedule and put together a curriculum and all that—they’re busy.

19:20 Speaker 1 That’s something.

19:21 Speaker 3 They have so many things that interest them.

19:23 Speaker 1 You’re attentive to them, and they learn to be attentive to themselves like that. “I want to do this now, I want to...” To manage themselves, basically.

19:30 Speaker 3 Right.

19:30 Speaker 1 Not “basically”—they really do.

19:31 Speaker 3 No, you’re right, actually. I hadn’t thought of it that way. You’re right.

19:34 Speaker 1 Because it’s a way of learning to listen to yourself. And there aren’t many distractions or much background noise. Is it... am I imagining it right? Is it as pastoral as it sounds?

19:43 Speaker 3 Actually, yes. I feel awkward saying that because it sounds...

19:47 Speaker 1 A little condescending.

19:48 Speaker 3 Condescending, yes. But I achieved it through a lot of hard work. I mean...

19:51 Speaker 1 You’ve got nothing to be condescending about.

19:52 Speaker 3 The mother I was two and a half years ago is nothing like who I am today. I mean, the difference is extreme.

19:59 Speaker 1 That’s something.

20:00 Speaker 3 It surprises me that a person can change so drastically. I had one child, whom I picked up from daycare at four, and I was stressed because my husband wasn’t home in the afternoon.

20:16 Speaker 1 I went into—

20:16 Speaker 3 How am I going to manage?

20:18 Speaker 1 Right.

20:18 Speaker 3 One child! What was going on with me?

20:19 Speaker 1 So did you discover abilities you had, or did you learn them? Or both, really?

20:24 Speaker 3 Both.

20:25 Speaker 1 You got used to it.

20:25 Speaker 3 And there was a lot of work on myself.

20:27 Speaker 1 At the beginning, did you feel okay? Looking back now, did you feel then that everything was fine and you were doing things well? Or did you feel that you needed to go through some kind of process and learn, and that sense of helplessness?

20:39 Speaker 3 At the beginning of homeschooling?

20:40 Speaker 1 Yes.

20:41 Speaker 3 There was a lot of helplessness. Yes. I also kept telling myself, “Maybe he really is missing other children. Maybe he’s missing this or that. Maybe I’m not teaching him, and he must be missing all kinds of things at preschool.” It took me time to understand that, of course, he’s missing things that happen at preschool, but he’s gaining things at home that children in preschool miss. I was comparing all the time. What, I didn’t do Kabbalas Shabbos with him? Every three-and-a-half-year-old experiences Kabbalas Shabbos. How could mine not?

21:09 Speaker 1 Which is something you actually put into practice.

21:12 Speaker 3 Yes. Eventually I said to myself, “Okay, so he doesn’t have Kabbalas Shabbos, but he takes part in the Shabbos preparations. He...”

21:19 Speaker 1 He really welcomes Shabbos.

21:21 Speaker 3 He really welcomes Shabbos. He sets the table. That’s an experience of preparing for Shabbos, too. It doesn’t have to look exactly like what we grew up with and got used to thinking it has to be. It’s something in your head—you have to change your whole way of thinking, completely.

21:37 Speaker 1 That’s interesting, because it’s like that with a lot of things. You know, when we were in Kharkov, there were so many things I thought about: “Oh, my children are missing out on this. They’re not growing up the way I did. They don’t have...” Just all kinds of silly things—well, why silly? They didn’t have Bas Melech in the afternoons, and all these things that, to me, are part of life and part of childhood. And דווקא when we came back here and now they do have those things, I find myself saying, “Well, well.” There are good days. I’m not dismissing it, but they had it great there. I worried for nothing. And I really think that for every child, the childhood they experience is their childhood. That’s what they know. They aren’t comparing it to their mother’s childhood or their cousin’s childhood. And...

22:17 Speaker 3 Yes, in the end, he...

22:18 Speaker 1 It’s interesting. You can look at a lot of things that way.

22:23 Speaker 3 Absolutely, absolutely.

22:24 Speaker 1 Tell me, do people ever say to you, “Are you serious? Are you normal? You’re harming your children”? Do they look at you like you’re doing something strange, or is it actually accepted, say, in your family?

22:38 Speaker 3 Actually, since we started homeschooling, I’ve obviously had reactions from all kinds of people—family, friends, neighbors, so many. But only one woman said that to me. It was right after the first lockdown ended, and she was shocked when she heard we were homeschooling. Think about it: after the lockdown, she’d been going out of her mind with the children. She said, “Tell me, are you normal?” That was the only reaction like that I got. She was genuinely, genuinely shocked. Her whole being was in shock.

23:09 Speaker 1 Because everyone else just takes their hat off to you.

23:12 Speaker 3 But lots of people also told me, “Wow, I wish I could do that.” So many reactions like that. “During COVID, my children were suddenly so calm, and then I realized how intense the structured setting is for them. They come home irritable and overwhelmed, and during COVID there was calm.” So yes, in the end, people did understand where I was coming from.

23:38 Speaker 1 Look, in the end, everyone sets their own priorities in practice, but everyone dreams of being there for their children one hundred percent. That “I wish” means, “I wish I could,” for all sorts of reasons. I think most people just aren’t built for it, because we grew up in a world that runs on a certain system, and it’s very hard to imagine doing things differently. That’s why so many people simply fell apart when COVID began. “What am I supposed to do at home with all my children now?”

24:04 Speaker 3 Right. It completely changes everything you know.

24:06 Speaker 1 People are so used to having a structured setting that sometimes there’s a day off—suddenly it’s Isru Chag or something—and they go out of their minds. “What am I going to do with the children?” Suddenly there are WhatsApp groups asking, “Does anyone have an idea for keeping the children busy tomorrow?” And you’re like, let’s calm down.

24:19 Speaker 3 Right, because people really aren’t used to it. So when a day like that suddenly comes along, how are you supposed to learn how to interact with your children? To learn what works for you with them? How...

24:30 Speaker 1 I think also—

24:31 Speaker 3 How to spend time...

24:32 Speaker 1 When a person is used to having time to herself and suddenly has to find that time—how do you find time for yourself? To drink a coffee, for example.

24:40 Speaker 3 I drink it while they’re next to me.

24:43 Speaker 1 Exactly. So that’s something you get used to.

24:44 Speaker 3 So, about time for myself, I want to say something. I think it’s a little hard to explain, but I’ll try. We’re used to having time when we’re with the children, and then we’re only with the children. We can’t be ourselves. And then there’s time when we’re by ourselves, and the children aren’t supposed to be around. Do you understand? It’s black or white.

25:12 Speaker 1 With them means with them; not with them means not with them. That’s the situation—

25:15 Speaker 3 Yes. When you’re with the children, you’re not...

25:17 Speaker 1 Okay.

25:18 Speaker 3 It’s only for the children.

25:19 Speaker 1 Right, that’s what’s interesting. How do you combine the two?

25:21 Speaker 3 And in the end, when you meet up with adults, that isn’t time for yourself. How is that time for yourself? You’re not alone.

25:28 Speaker 1 Right.

25:28 Speaker 3 Because you’re bringing yourself to it. There’s room for what you want and what you need. So you can do that with the children, too. When you’re with them, you don’t have to do everything they want right now—read him a story, play with him, whatever it is. You don’t have to. If you feel you need to sit on the couch and rest for a bit, or you need to read a book, take a moment to see whether he needs attention. If he does, sit with him for fifteen minutes. Give the other one the food he needs. Put another one down for a nap, for example. I don’t know. And then sit down and read your book. When you know that your needs have a place even when you’re with the children, you don’t go looking for hundreds of hours of time for yourself. That’s what I do.

26:09 Speaker 1 You make room for it, in a way. Is that something you learned over time?

26:12 Speaker 3 Absolutely. Absolutely. Even something as simple as sitting down to eat a meal with them. I’m feeding them, so in my mind I’m feeding them and I’ll eat afterward. I’ll eat later. But why? It’s not as if they’re going anywhere. Sit down and eat with them. What’s the problem? These are things—

26:29 Speaker 1 It’s the handover, like, it’s the...

26:31 Speaker 3 Yes, and then I find that I’ve eaten, and I’m full, and I’m calm, and...

26:36 Speaker 1 And it’s not that you couldn’t find time to eat because you were with the children, but—

26:39 Speaker 3 Yes. Because sometimes you’re irritated with the children, and then you realize you’re hungry, or you realize you’re tired or preoccupied with something. So make room for the things you need.

26:47 Speaker 1 In the middle of it, you mean.

26:48 Speaker 3 Yes, even with the children.

26:49 Speaker 1 Not like, “I’ve put the children on hold, locked them away, and now it’s time for myself; afterward I’ll bring them back.” Just find that time in between.

26:56 Speaker 3 At first, for example, I tried doing that with a screen. At some point in the afternoon, say around one, I’d tell them, “That’s it, I need a break. I need one if I’m going to make it to eight tonight. I just need a break.” Then I’d put on a movie for them, but they wouldn’t really watch it. They’d come looking for me because they needed—

27:14 Speaker 1 They missed you.

27:14 Speaker 3 My attention. It didn’t meet their needs, and I’d just go crazy. Then there really was a period when I felt I had to have time for myself, and I said, “Okay, what do you want? Time for yourself—what does that mean?” I didn’t really know, because it was an emotional need that wasn’t being met, and ultimately I needed to address that emotional need.

27:35 Speaker 1 To figure it out. What exactly was it?

27:36 Speaker 3 Yes, what was bothering me. You can’t just survive the day so that you can have time for yourself in the evening. What kind of life is that?

27:42 Speaker 1 Right.

27:43 Speaker 3 Once I understood that and started making more room for my needs and putting myself first—and I think every mother needs to do that, even if her children aren’t homeschooled—because when you’re calm and full and comfortable and feeling good, everything will be okay. Even if the children have cereal and milk for dinner, or whatever else happens. In the end, whether their mother is calm or not makes all the difference.

28:10 Speaker 1 So that’s presumably something you learned over time, too. You probably had to spend a few days feeling irritable before...

28:15 Speaker 3 Exactly. Exactly. Right, that’s what I’m saying. It takes time to learn how to be with the children. But when you’re constantly apart from them, then suddenly with them, then apart again, it’s very hard to even realize that you need to look for a way to be with them.

28:31 Speaker 1 I think it’s also that zero-to-a-hundred shift built into the system. They go to school for ten months, and then for a month they don’t go at all.

28:40 Speaker 3 Right.

28:41 Speaker 1 Or during the holidays, they’re home with their parents twenty-four seven for a week, and then they go back to being at school all day until four. It’s crazy. Just for comparison, imagine if school ended at eleven or twelve every day and then they spent time with their parents, but it was that way all year. I don’t know, some kind of balance. Instead, the child doesn’t know what he’s doing now, the parents don’t know what to do with him, and the mother has a job, too, because... it’s crazy.

29:06 Speaker 3 Right, the parents have packed schedules too.

29:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

29:09 Speaker 3 So suddenly, when you’re home with the children, there’s a void in your routine too. Where’s work? Where’s getting up in the morning, making sandwiches, and heading out?

29:18 Speaker 1 Right.

29:18 Speaker 3 It isn’t simple.

29:19 Speaker 1 It’s a different life. Everything is really different.

29:22 Speaker 3 Right.

29:22 Speaker 1 If someone starts doing this and suddenly leaves a job for it, or something like that, it’s practically starting life over.

29:31 Speaker 3 Right. I actually started while I was working.

29:33 Speaker 1 So you left your job for this?

29:35 Speaker 3 Um, I left—

29:36 Speaker 1 What do you mean, you started while you were working?

29:38 Speaker 3 During COVID, I was working from home.

29:40 Speaker 1 Oh.

29:41 Speaker 3 And I had a job I really loved. It wasn’t a case of, “Ugh, my job is awful, so staying home is an option.” I still miss my job to this day. At the time, I was working from home, and Motti was on unpaid leave, so that gave me room to work. Then, when the whole unpaid-leave situation ended and he started working, we said, “Okay, we can’t both do this,” because we couldn’t spend the whole day running around covering for each other.

30:13 Speaker 1 And they didn’t make you go back to work?

30:15 Speaker 3 Um.

30:16 Speaker 1 Or did they?

30:17 Speaker 3 No, it was hard for me. It was hard because I worked with people, and I loved them and had grown attached to them. And they were very disappointed when I left. I worked with people dealing with mental illness, and—

30:28 Speaker 1 Wow.

30:28 Speaker 3 It was very hard for them.

30:29 Speaker 1 How did you do that remotely?

30:31 Speaker 3 On the phone.

30:32 Speaker 1 Really?

30:33 Speaker 3 It didn’t work with everyone, but yes, on the phone. Um, later we went back to in-person meetings, too. And I don’t have a driver’s license, so the children and Motti would be in the car, and we’d all drive to my workplace. They’d drop me off and go to a playground. It was quite a production. Once he couldn’t back me up anymore, it was no longer feasible, because homeschooling requires someone to be present. Or you have to split the day fifty-fifty—

30:57 Speaker 1 To treat it as a job, you mean.

30:58 Speaker 3 Yes. It’s a full-time job. It needs to be organized; you can’t do an hour here and an hour there. It doesn’t work. So that was it. I left my job, and now I’m doing this a hundred percent, while Motti helps out as much as he can.

31:14 Speaker 1 Did you just do it, like, “Three, four, and...” or did you say, “Let’s try it”?

31:19 Speaker 3 Um, not “Three, four, and...” No.

31:22 Speaker 1 Actually, it was already the end of the school year. So you had a few weeks. If I remember correctly, there was the lockdown, and then they went back for a few weeks.

31:31 Speaker 3 Right, there was a little bit of the school year left.

31:33 Speaker 1 So that was kind of a—

31:34 Speaker 3 Yes, we said—

31:35 Speaker 1 Pilot period.

31:36 Speaker 3 Exactly. We said we’d try it for the rest of that school year and until the start of the next one, including vacation, because vacation doesn’t really—

31:43 Speaker 1 Right.

31:44 Speaker 3 Make much difference to homeschooling. Then we said we’d decide about the following year. Our main concern was the financial side. We weren’t worried about socializing or things like that, just the finances. And then we saw that we were managing. So we said, “Okay, one more year, and then we’ll think about it again.”

32:00 Speaker 1 Because you can’t really make a long-term decision about something like that when...

32:03 Speaker 3 It’s hard when you’re still at the beginning. And there’s an emotional difficulty too: taking myself out of the mainstream.

32:09 Speaker 1 Right.

32:10 Speaker 3 Like, I’m very odd. I live differently. I’m on a different schedule. I don’t have school experiences to talk about with other people. It’s very unusual. On the first day of school, we were out walking around, looking at the balloons people had put up all over Givat Ze’ev, and suddenly I felt so—

32:26 Speaker 1 Like an outsider.

32:28 Speaker 3 No. I felt like a stranger. I said, “Everyone else is going to school, and we’re the only ones going back home.”

32:34 Speaker 1 That’s strange. Yes.

32:35 Speaker 3 Yes. And this year was the first time it didn’t bother me. I was happy and said, “How wonderful that for us it’s an ordinary day.” An ordinary day. We get up at a relaxed pace, eat breakfast at nine, and don’t have to rush to school and start some kind of race. But it’s hard the first time. All the concerns and all the questions people ask me now—“What about socializing? What about the finances? What about this? How do they learn? How will they know?”—I asked myself all of those things, because I didn’t know. When we first thought of homeschooling, we searched for it on Google. We didn’t even know where to find information about it. We didn’t know how to do it.

33:11 Speaker 1 So you suddenly said, “Wait, maybe we’ll keep the children home? That’s okay, that sounds nice”?

33:15 Speaker 3 Because it was good for us. I really enjoyed being with them, and they were really happy at home. They were doing so much better. You could clearly see it.

33:24 Speaker 1 Do you think that without COVID, you would never have come to this?

33:27 Speaker 3 It’s hard for me to imagine. Maybe much later.

33:30 Speaker 1 It must have been somewhere in the back of your mind.

33:32 Speaker 3 It was, like, the experience during COVID. It sort of built on things that were already inside me, but I don’t think I would have thought of it on my own. It’s wild. It’s a wild thought. Yes, yes.

33:48 Speaker 1 Was Tzvika in a program too?

33:51 Speaker 3 A little, yes. Half a year, even less. Yes.

33:54 Speaker 1 He doesn’t remember.

33:55 Speaker 3 No, he doesn’t remember. No.

33:57 Speaker 1 Tell us, do you lose patience sometimes too, or is it just us?

34:01 Speaker 3 No, come on, I think I’m human too.

34:05 Speaker 1 What does that look like? Just kidding.

34:06 Speaker 3 No, actually, I had a time with that too—

34:08 Speaker 1 Kids, everyone out of the house. I’m locking up. Just kidding.

34:11 Speaker 3 Oh wow, you know, sometimes I’d get so... Actually, it hasn’t happened to me in a long time now, but there was a time when I got so... I even went into my room. I said, “I’m locking the door, and nobody knock, because I have to calm down.”

34:21 Speaker 1 And then someone would—

34:22 Speaker 3 Of course they knock. And Tzvika would be crying at the door, “Open up for me.” They won’t let it go, and that’s good. It’s good that they won’t let it go, because it’s as if they’re telling me, “You don’t have the privilege of shutting us out. You’re our mother.”

34:33 Speaker 1 That’s really working on your middos. Listen.

34:35 Speaker 3 Completely, completely.

34:36 Speaker 1 Obviously you’re a different person, especially you.

34:39 Speaker 3 Very much. And how I love myself this way. Really. I think I’m a much better person.

34:46 Speaker 1 You have to be patient, you have to be calm, you have to keep a level head and not lose it. You don’t have that privilege. These are your children. Actually, I guess you could say that about any teacher too. As I’m talking, I’m suddenly thinking—

35:01 Speaker 3 A teacher doesn’t have that privilege either. What, are you going to scream at your students? You can, but it’s not exactly appropriate.

35:06 Speaker 1 As I’m talking to you now, I’m suddenly thinking: Wait, you’re basically doing what teachers do, but with your own children and fewer of them. So actually, it’s okay.

35:16 Speaker 3 On the face of it, it’s simply—

35:18 Speaker 1 Why does it sound so, so intimidating?

35:21 Speaker 3 Because we’re afraid of our children. We’re not used to being with them; we don’t know what to do with them.

35:25 Speaker 1 A teacher is with thirty other children every day for eight hours.

35:28 Speaker 3 But they’re not yours. What do you care? I mean, however much you love them and all that, at two o’clock—I don’t know when school ends, I don’t remember anymore—that’s it, it’s over. You go home, and even if you think about them in the afternoon—

35:41 Speaker 1 It’s not the same thing.

35:42 Speaker 3 Their parents are responsible for them. Your children are your responsibility.

35:46 Speaker 1 Yes.

35:47 Speaker 3 I also think that, in a way, that responsibility is frightening. We’re on this constant treadmill of guilt all day long. Why did I yell at him? Why did I say that to him? I didn’t do enough.

35:56 Speaker 1 Twenty-four hours a day.

35:58 Speaker 3 Yes, and you can’t. You can’t live like that twenty-four hours a day.

36:00 Speaker 1 I also think it’s because school is so normal to us. We grew up with it.

36:05 Speaker 3 Right.

36:06 Speaker 1 So the alternative seems so strange, as though you’re doing something abnormal. It really is going against the current.

36:16 Speaker 3 Completely, completely. I don’t even know what example to give that’s comparable to school.

36:22 Speaker 1 Right.

36:22 Speaker 3 It’s one of those things where you don’t even think there could be another option.

36:28 Speaker 1 Yes. Had you heard of homeschooling before, or did you just say, “Maybe we’ll keep the children at home”? Is that even a thing? Has anyone ever done it?

36:34 Speaker 3 No, well, I did a project on it—

36:35 Speaker 1 So you did know it existed.

36:36 Speaker 3 In seminary, I did a paper on it for my degree. Because as a child I was a shlucha—we were shluchim in Saratov—and that made me want to show how children of shluchim are more creative because of their circumstances. You know, all those things they learn at home and in a different way, at least to some extent. That was—

37:00 Speaker 1 Wait, how old were you when you were a shlucha?

37:02 Speaker 3 It was for three years. Seventh, eighth and ninth grade.

37:05 Speaker 1 You lived there.

37:06 Speaker 3 Yes, and it wasn’t like Kharkov, where there are lots and lots of shluchim and a community and everything.

37:10 Speaker 1 Yours was just one family, right?

37:12 Speaker 3 There was one other family, and that was it. So, really—

37:16 Speaker 1 Avital speaks Russian, just so you know.

37:18 Speaker 3 Yes, if anyone needs someone who still remembers some Russian.

37:22 Speaker 1 You helped me with that once, remember? In Kyiv.

37:24 Speaker 3 Really? I don’t even remember that. Today you know Russian better than I do, which is amazing.

37:29 Speaker 1 When I sprained my ankle and you went to the clinic with me.

37:31 Speaker 3 Oh, right. Right.

37:33 Speaker 1 That did happen.

37:34 Speaker 3 That did happen.

37:36 Speaker 1 Oh wow, listen, that’s crazy. So yes, it really is something... Wait, so you wrote a paper about it.

37:42 Speaker 3 So I can’t really—

37:43 Speaker 1 It was brewing, then. It was brewing inside you.

37:45 Speaker 3 —distance myself from homeschooling. So I knew a little about the concept, but it’s wild. Even today I say—

37:50 Speaker 1 Now it seems so simple.

37:51 Speaker 3 And I think, even now, [unclear], I say, “Wow, that’s an extraordinary idea.” But COVID was extraordinary. It was an extraordinary situation.

37:59 Speaker 1 Right, but hold on. What do you mean, extraordinary? It’s actually the normal thing. In principle, a parent has a child and is supposed to raise that child. Right?

38:07 Speaker 3 Right.

38:08 Speaker 1 No?

38:08 Speaker 3 Right, but you’re used to sending the child off. You know, I sent my two older children—

38:11 Speaker 1 Who decided that what we’ve ended up with is normal?

38:14 Speaker 3 Right. I sent my older children to programs when they were six months old, and I felt like, wow—not at four months, at six months!

38:22 Speaker 1 You beat the system.

38:23 Speaker 3 I’d managed to keep them at home for so long. And it was so hard for me, and I told myself, “You’re not a good mother if you can’t let your children go.”

38:33 Speaker 1 Because that’s what the world says. That’s what the world says.

38:35 Speaker 3 Yes, and today I think, what do you mean? Isn’t it natural for a six-month-old baby to be with his mother?

38:40 Speaker 1 Right, but who decided at what age it stops being natural? You understand?

38:44 Speaker 3 Because you have to go to work, you have to...

38:47 Speaker 1 I’m saying that the world is set up so that this is the norm, for a thousand and one reasons. It developed over the years. But in principle, a child is supposed to grow up with his family. People used to grow up in extended families, in clans, in tribes. There wasn’t school.

39:00 Speaker 3 Right, that’s how it used to be. Even cheder started at a certain... Babies didn’t go to cheder.

39:06 Speaker 1 A father teaches his son Torah, and it says that a father has an obligation to teach his son Torah and a trade so he’ll be able to support himself one day. What I’m trying to say is that maybe that’s what’s normal, and all of us are the abnormal ones. We’ll never be able to settle it, but—

39:21 Speaker 3 No, I think school—the whole program, at least for the younger ages—goes somewhat against human nature. I really mean babies, and—

39:30 Speaker 1 Up to around age two or three.

39:32 Speaker 3 Yes.

39:33 Speaker 1 Right.

39:33 Speaker 3 Why is it hard for a child to go to daycare? Because it isn’t natural. It’s okay to do it. I put children in programs too, and I needed to go to work; sometimes there’s no choice.

39:43 Speaker 1 Ideally, a child—

39:45 Speaker 3 Yes, but it’s perfectly okay for a woman who can stay home with her baby to do that. It’s not a sin that she isn’t working.

39:51 Speaker 1 I think it really is also a matter of what you grow up with and what you see. It looks normal to you and feels normal to you.

39:57 Speaker 3 Right.

39:58 Speaker 1 In Kharkov, I didn’t have a program for my children until age two. Kindergarten started at two. There was no daycare, no such concept. So the child was at home with a caregiver and also spent relatively many hours of the day with me, compared with a child who goes to daycare. And now I have a five-week-old baby, and I can’t see myself putting him in daycare this year. I don’t know what will happen later, but to everyone else it seems normal. It makes me anxious because I’ve never done it with any of my children, and it seems strange to me, and early, early, early—much too early. It really depends on what you’re used to.

40:30 Speaker 4 Right.

40:30 Speaker 1 It seems strange to me. But on the other hand, yes, that’s it: a woman’s maternity leave ends after three and a half months. Bye. I mean, what are you supposed to do, really? Even with all the difficulty.

40:41 Speaker 4 Right.

40:41 Speaker 1 And you’re going against nature and against your instincts, but...

40:44 Speaker 4 And it’s very hard for them. I don’t think I’ve met a mother for whom it was easy.

40:49 Speaker 1 Right, but that’s how the world is set up and everyone does it, so it seems normal. Maybe I’m the only one who’s somehow off because it’s hard for me, and...

40:55 Speaker 4 But sometimes that’s how it feels. No, you know, I felt that way. I felt there was something wrong with me for being so attached to my child, or something like that. And I was a young mother too. I didn’t know.

41:03 Speaker 1 “Let go.” Yes, everyone says, “Let go.”

41:05 Speaker 4 Let him go. And that’s really where I am. I said earlier that knowledge makes a big difference. When you know what your children are supposed to be able to do at each age, what their developmental abilities are, and what they need at each age, you can respond to those needs. If I know it’s good for a child to be with me at his age—how old is Levi? A year and four months—then I look at it differently.

41:34 Speaker 1 Yes.

41:35 Speaker 4 And you behave differently with them because you know that. So you don’t feel bad about having your child with you.

41:40 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s interesting. You’re saying you really went through a process. At first, it was hard for you to be with them all day, and you didn’t know how you would do it. I think that could give a lot of mothers hope, because I see you homeschooling and think, “Wow, she has so much patience.” And you’re saying that’s something you can develop. Of course, we can always grow by working on our middos, but the gap is just...

42:02 Speaker 4 Right. No, I’m telling you, I couldn’t. One afternoon with one child, and I’d be anxious that my husband wasn’t going to be home that day. And back then, we were still at a stage when he was home a lot of the time.

42:11 Speaker 1 Present, you mean—an involved father.

42:13 Speaker 4 Yes. And then he started studying, and then Tzviki was born, and I really couldn’t—it was something else.

42:18 Speaker 1 You were falling apart.

42:19 Speaker 4 How do I put them both to bed? I’d call him crying: “What do I do? They won’t fall asleep. How am I supposed to bathe them?” I felt so helpless. And today, I’m...

42:30 Speaker 1 What an incredible difference.

42:31 Speaker 4 I could happily have more children. I manage; I’ll learn what to do with them.

42:36 Speaker 1 I’ll send you mine.

42:37 Speaker 4 Watch out.

42:39 Speaker 1 Don’t give out your address here. Tomorrow you’ll have a crowd at your door. Tell me, if you were made education minister for a day and could change anything you wanted, what one change would you make to the education system? We’ve already talked about all sorts of things in the education system, but what bothers you most? What feels most urgent?

42:59 Speaker 4 I’d make classes smaller.

43:02 Speaker 1 Wow, after all the...

43:04 Speaker 4 Of all the subjects we’ve talked about, that’s the one you went straight to.

43:08 Speaker 1 You’re saying eight hours a day, but with ten children.

43:11 Speaker 4 If I have to choose just one thing out of everything: smaller classes.

43:16 Speaker 1 Why?

43:17 Speaker 4 Because then you can really reach the children.

43:20 Speaker 1 Have some kind of contact with the...

43:22 Speaker 4 Yes. The staff can actually work with the children, more closely, more one-on-one. And the children have more quiet, a more reasonable environment to spend those eight hours in—not a noisy, noisy, noisy environment. It doesn’t matter if there’s one caregiver for every six children if all twenty children are in the same...

43:47 Speaker 1 Room.

43:48 Speaker 4 In the same room. The noise is so tiring. It...

43:51 Speaker 1 It really...

43:52 Speaker 4 Overwhelms the children.

43:53 Speaker 1 Again, who decided this was normal?

43:56 Speaker 4 Right.

43:57 Speaker 1 It’s crazy.

43:57 Speaker 4 I really think it isn’t normal.

43:59 Speaker 1 So it isn’t normal.

44:01 Speaker 4 I worked as a caregiver in a daycare center. I can tell you it isn’t normal.

44:04 Speaker 1 Wait, in a daycare center? But the groups there are a bit smaller, I hope.

44:07 Speaker 4 Like I said, I was a caregiver, and there was one caregiver for every six children. But there were three or four groups in one room. So it was still very intense. It’s very hard to have any calm. It’s very hard to just sit with the children.

44:23 Speaker 1 Or simply take a walk.

44:24 Speaker 4 You’re constantly running from one child to another, changing diapers. Okay, so I hurry through changing this one because the other caregiver needs to get through hers, and then we have to feed them quickly, and then they have to go to sleep quickly. All the time, you have to—you have to be doing something.

44:36 Speaker 1 An institution.

44:36 Speaker 4 Things.

44:36 Speaker 1 You know?

44:37 Speaker 4 Yes. But when do I sit with him and build a tower? I don’t know. Or hug him and talk to him? I came to work at a daycare center because I wanted to work with children, and then I realized I wasn’t really reaching the children.

44:50 Speaker 1 Wow.

44:50 Speaker 4 There just isn’t time. It really is crazy.

44:52 Speaker 1 That’s a stressful picture.

44:53 Speaker 4 That’s how I experienced it. I expected more; I wanted to be there for them more. But I think caregivers who run small daycares out of their homes manage that better. Usually they take fewer children, a number they can handle more easily. I hope so.

45:07 Speaker 1 Interesting. So you’re saying that, in a way, there’s an advantage to home daycares, where there’s just one group. There’s more room...

45:17 Speaker 4 For the children. Yes, yes. Even Dubaleh was...

45:20 Speaker 1 Even though there are fewer staff members overall.

45:23 Speaker 4 Yes.

45:23 Speaker 1 And there’s no director.

45:26 Speaker 4 You can still manage. It’s true that it’s harder when they’re little and there are six small children, but it’s a bit like having your own children. It’s in a home setting—or even if it isn’t, it’s a space with a reasonable number of people. After all, when we grow up, we don’t... That isn’t what our lives are like. People say school prepares children for life, but how many of us...

45:50 Speaker 1 In the end, we’re at home.

45:51 Speaker 4 Spend eight hours a day, every day, with thirty-five people? That’s not... Maybe only people who work in schools.

45:59 Speaker 1 Right, and it’s crazy.

46:01 Speaker 4 Right.

46:02 Speaker 1 It’s hard for teachers too. I think a teacher comes home and needs a moment to recover before seeing their own children. And many don’t even get that moment. They come home with their children.

46:11 Speaker 4 Wow, that really is hard.

46:12 Speaker 1 It’s a very, very overwhelming setting. Very, very draining.

46:16 Speaker 4 Right. The number of people makes a huge difference.

46:20 Speaker 1 Listen, it’s crazy, really crazy. I’m interested in that feeling of... I think every parent should feel this way. What you presumably feel is that you have full responsibility for your children’s education. In other words, you can’t say, “Well, they’ll learn A, B and C at school, and I’ll fill in the gaps.”

46:38 Speaker 4 Right. Honestly, that was hard for me at first.

46:40 Speaker 1 You have to teach them to daven. You have to teach them the Torah stories. How do you actually do that in a way where—even if you don’t feel you’re doing it perfectly—you feel you’re meeting some goals? Do you set goals for yourself? How does it work? Or do you just go with the flow?

46:57 Speaker 4 No, really, like I told you, there’s the beginning, and then there’s what comes afterward.

47:00 Speaker 1 Yes.

47:01 Speaker 4 At first, that part was very hard for me. I was really frightened by the responsibility. I felt something similar before Dubaleh was born. I thought, “There’s going to be a baby here, and if I don’t feed him, no one will.” That responsibility was frightening; I really felt it. And it was the same when I took them out of their educational settings. I thought, “If I don’t celebrate a Chassidic date with them, or teach them about a Yom Tov or something, they won’t know about it.” That really scared me. But today I see that when I take care of myself—for example, with davening, when I work on making sure I daven a shortened version every morning, when davening has a place in my own schedule—it’s easier for me to make it part of the children’s day too.

47:51 Speaker 1 That’s interesting. How do you find time to daven when they’re with you all the time?

47:55 Speaker 4 Listen, it’s not that hard to find five minutes to daven.

47:58 Speaker 1 Five minutes? Three children can do a lot in five minutes.

48:02 Speaker 4 True, but it’s a whole day, and they keep themselves busy. They’re not...

48:06 Speaker 1 I think the whole atmosphere is different. The pace at home is different. It’s not like you get up and think, “I’ll just daven for a second, and meanwhile...” There’s a different rhythm.

48:16 Speaker 4 Yes. They wake up in the morning and go play. If they’re hungry, they go to the kitchen to look for food.

48:20 Speaker 1 Just like in nature.

48:22 Speaker 4 Yes.

48:24 Speaker 1 What a touching scene.

48:24 Speaker 4 So I can find five minutes to daven. The difficulty for me is doing it consistently, and being consistent about it with them too. That’s one example. Another is Chassidic dates, which are important to me. But it might be 10 Kislev, and I have a sick child, or I’m not feeling well, or I’m tired—maybe I didn’t sleep the night before.

48:44 Speaker 1 What do you do on the day?

48:44 Speaker 4 I can’t put on a whole production right then. It won’t work. I can’t invite the neighbors over and arrange something.

48:48 Speaker 1 Even when you’re feeling well and everything’s fine, how do you actually celebrate it as a real celebration? Or maybe it’s just in my head that a celebration means lots and lots of children.

48:57 Speaker 4 It’s like Shabbos. You can simply create an atmosphere: put on a white tablecloth, bring out...

49:02 Speaker 1 Actually, we used to do that every Shabbos.

49:04 Speaker 4 Set the table nicely.

49:05 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

49:05 Speaker 4 Like, everything that feels festive to us as a family, like a celebration. Blowing up balloons all over the house, anything that makes it feel festive and special. Buying something special to eat, making pancakes for breakfast. I don’t know, for example. But I don’t always have the energy to put in as much effort as I’d like. And this is where that understanding really matters: first of all, I need to take care of myself. When I take care of myself first, whatever I do will be great, because the children aren’t expecting anything. I’m the one with expectations about what 10 Kislev is supposed to look like.

49:39 Speaker 1 Right.

49:40 Speaker 4 But they’re not expecting anything.

49:41 Speaker 1 Again, that’s what’s in your head, how you’ve pictured it.

49:43 Speaker 4 Right. As far as they’re concerned, if on 10 Kislev we had a farbrengen at a messy kitchen table, said l’chaim and a possuk, and afterward they got a sweet they really like—what more? They heard a story about that Rebbe. Yes, that does it for them. They feel it; they feel the celebration. And 10 Kislev comes around every year. It sounds a little presumptuous to say, “Well, next year,” because who knows how long we’ll live? But what I mean is, there’s always another opportunity. So if it isn’t on this date, then on the next date I’ll do something closer to what I’d like it to be, um...

50:20 Speaker 1 Right.

50:20 Speaker 4 But first of all, me. I need to take care of myself before anything else.

50:24 Speaker 1 Wow. Do you think it’ll be more challenging when they’re older? Because then they might compare, or start hearing about what’s happening at school and what everyone does there, and feel like they’re missing out? Or do you think you’ll be able to handle that?

50:41 Speaker 4 Um, I don’t think... It doesn’t really scare me, because I say: Interested in school? Go and take a look. I don’t feel like I’m hiding something from them, as though they’re missing out and one day they’ll discover it and say, “How could you hide school from us?” They know there’s such a thing as school. Dovaleh also wanted to go to first grade. He saw a Menucha Fuchs video about first grade and got excited about it. He wanted to sit in a classroom all day and do homework. That’s what he wanted. But ultimately, whatever a child comes to you with, you have to understand what’s at the heart of it. What’s behind it? All he really wanted was to feel that moving up to first grade meant something special for him. We made a page of expectations, and he told us what he wanted to have. We wrote it down, and he has it. He’s happy, and he doesn’t want to go to first grade outside the home anymore. So often we get alarmed by what children say, when what they really want is something else. Because my first thought was—

51:36 Speaker 1 To express themselves.

51:36 Speaker 4 It must be because he doesn’t have friends. Of course that’s why he wants to go to first grade.

51:40 Speaker 1 That’s probably where it touched a nerve for you, as you’re reminding me—

51:43 Speaker 4 But I’m saying, if they want to go to school, they’ll go to school. I’m not hiding school from them. They can go, and I’m pretty convinced they’ll come back home. I think they’re better off at home. They have lots of space, they learn independently, um, and they have so much room to express themselves and their ideas. You don’t have that in school. It really is a different life.

52:08 Speaker 1 That’s interesting. At the beginning, you said you realized you didn’t have a choice of schools. If you live in a certain community and belong to a particular group and so on, you more or less have one kindergarten, one school, and that’s it. First of all, that really is sad.

52:26 Speaker 4 True.

52:26 Speaker 1 I just wanted to say that; I’ve remembered it now. And second, it suddenly occurs to me that in a way, you’re quite free to move, at least in theory. If your husband’s work doesn’t have to be where you live, and the children aren’t enrolled in schools, then you could sort of live in any corner of the world, because your children learn at home. Do you see what I mean? It’s homeschooling, it’s—

52:45 Speaker 4 Move somewhere on shlichus. What’s the problem?

52:47 Speaker 1 Right.

52:47 Speaker 4 You don’t need a school anyway.

52:48 Speaker 1 You’re “suffering” anyway, in quotation marks. So—

52:50 Speaker 4 Right.

52:51 Speaker 1 Do you see what I mean? Do you feel you have that sort of ability to adapt and move around, or...?

52:59 Speaker 4 Um, not really.

53:00 Speaker 1 I mean, you’re not tied to a school or those institutions.

53:04 Speaker 4 In that respect, yes. And often it was also because of the social side. You know, we considered moving—

53:10 Speaker 1 Right.

53:10 Speaker 4 To Kiryat Malachi, to Migdal HaEmek, to places with a larger community, so friends would be readily available, so to speak, and we wouldn’t have to work so hard at it.

53:19 Speaker 1 Right.

53:21 Speaker 4 But in the end, it isn’t really like that. Emotionally and practically, apart from the effort we have to make to find friends for the children, we’re happy where we are, and moving would be hard for us. So it can seem that if you need to move and your children are enrolled in schools, that’s the difficulty. But that isn’t always the difficulty. Sometimes it’s simply, uh—

53:43 Speaker 1 A million other reasons.

53:44 Speaker 4 A million other reasons. Yes. It doesn’t work for all sorts of other reasons. Even with work, sometimes it’s less convenient.

53:50 Speaker 1 But when it comes to friends, it really is about quality, not quantity. Just because a city or a community has lots and lots of people doesn’t mean they’re all friends with one another all day. They may get along, but that doesn’t necessarily meet their need for friendship. In the end, everyone has their few good friends. You don’t need thousands of people around you to feel that you have friends.

54:13 Speaker 4 True.

54:14 Speaker 1 So I guess what you have there is enough for you. Isn’t there a Chabad community there?

54:18 Speaker 4 A small one, and—

54:20 Speaker 1 Compact.

54:21 Speaker 4 Yes, and not quite as close-knit.

54:25 Speaker 1 Not like those other communities.

54:26 Speaker 4 I also told myself: “You want a community? Build a community.” But that’s so hard for me, because I’m really not that kind of person. There’s a reason I haven’t gone on shlichus. It’s really not my thing.

54:34 Speaker 1 You’re on a different kind of shlichus.

54:34 Speaker 4 I want to live somewhere with lots of farbrengens, where I do myself a favor and get out of the house now and then for a class or something. It’s hard for me even to go to things that already exist. So in a place where there isn’t much going on, if I want farbrengens and events for Chassidic dates, I have to organize them. That’s really, really hard for me.

54:51 Speaker 1 Right.

54:52 Speaker 4 But I said to myself: Instead of constantly looking to move—and I don’t really want to move—make what you need right here. So we started working on the social side, for the children and for me. I need friends too. I started to, like—

55:07 Speaker 1 Why did you choose Givat Ze’ev in the first place?

55:10 Speaker 4 Wow, honestly, I have no idea. It was just really far from Migdal HaEmek.

55:15 Speaker 1 Like...

55:16 Speaker 4 I wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere that felt like a blank page, somewhere unlike any place I’d lived before. That’s what I wanted, something fresh, so I could—

55:25 Speaker 1 Have a fresh start.

55:25 Speaker 4 Be with myself a little more, find myself a little more.

55:29 Speaker 1 Well, it worked. You found yourself.

55:31 Speaker 4 Wow, I did. Honestly, I never would have imagined it. I never would have imagined it. But then, nobody imagined the pandemic either. I really connect the two, because it’s entirely because of the pandemic.

55:40 Speaker 1 Wow.

55:40 Speaker 4 I don’t think I would have thought of it on my own. And even if I had, I would have—

55:44 Speaker 1 I think it’s a combination. You said you once did a project on it, so it was somewhere in the back of your mind, and then there was a kind of trigger.

55:51 Speaker 4 There were things there, all sorts of feelings, but fewer concrete ideas.

55:57 Speaker 1 Right.

55:58 Speaker 4 And starting homeschooling is hard. It means rebelling against all—

56:01 Speaker 1 The conventions.

56:02 Speaker 4 This whole institution of school. School isn’t something you... You can choose which school, you can choose what to wear, things like that, or which kashrus standards you follow. But not going to school at all seems completely out of the question.

56:16 Speaker 1 True.

56:17 Speaker 4 Even when... I mean, I thought about it and said, “This is crazy. We’re doing something bizarre. We’re that far outside the norm.”

56:24 Speaker 1 You told yourself, “Sleep on it and you’ll wake up thinking straight.”

56:28 Speaker 4 Honestly, it was just... Well, that didn’t really happen to me. These were choices I made, but it took incredible courage. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

56:36 Speaker 1 I think that even more than making the decision, your incredible courage showed after a week, when you saw how hard it was and kept going. You gave yourself a chance to change, learned how to manage it and gained knowledge. Don’t you think?

56:48 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

56:49 Speaker 1 Because people—I mean, most people—tend to get excited, do new things and try things out. Where they get stuck is after they’ve started and it gets hard.

56:59 Speaker 4 Yes, but I’ll tell you, it wasn’t hard for me. I mean, it’s true that being with the children was complicated, and I felt guilty. Guilt was the main thing I felt all the time. It was really strong, and there were all sorts of challenges with the children, but I very much wanted to be with them. I really love them, and I genuinely enjoy being with them. Even when it was hard, I said to myself, “Well, work is hard too.” The difficulty of being with them and dealing with them didn’t deter me. It was more the fear of stepping outside the norm, doing something different, something crazy, something that goes against what everyone else does, and standing behind that choice.

57:35 Speaker 1 Yes.

57:35 Speaker 4 To choose...

57:36 Speaker 1 Yes, to stand up for yourself.

57:37 Speaker 4 Something that’s good for me, but it’s not accepted. It’s really not accepted.

57:42 Speaker 1 So naturally that brought up a lot of questions for you: Why am I doing this to them? Why this way? How will they manage? How will they make up for it? And then you had to keep answering those questions for yourself.

57:49 Speaker 4 Right. All the ques... Like I told you, every question people ask me, I asked myself. I didn’t know the answers. I just found them along the way, and it’s a long journey. It’s been two and a half years since we started.

57:59 Speaker 1 Wow.

57:59 Speaker 4 That’s a long time. And Levi was born in the middle of it. I mean...

58:04 Speaker 1 Right.

58:05 Speaker 4 I’ve also heard a few times that people think homeschooling is for people who have money and time.

58:12 Speaker 1 Like it’s a privilege.

58:13 Speaker 4 Yes. As if I started homeschooling because I had the financial means and the time. But we didn’t have money, and we didn’t have any time at all. It was the busiest period. My husband was also diagnosed with cancer right after the first lockdown. We had the children at home, and we had just decided to keep them home.

58:34 Speaker 1 Wow, that was... Wait a second. Was that just before or just after?

58:37 Speaker 4 After.

58:38 Speaker 1 Wow.

58:38 Speaker 4 Just as we’d said, “Okay, we’re homeschooling, how wonderful,” and we’d started going to meetups and driving to the beach once a week, and then...

58:45 Speaker 1 That’s crazy.

58:46 Speaker 4 And then there was a lot... Boruch Hashem, it wasn’t anything dangerous, and that significantly reduced how hard it was to deal with. But practically speaking, it was very hard. For about three months, I worked like nobody works anywhere. The juggling I had to do! And the children stayed home because we chose that, not because we had time, and not because we had money. Do you understand? And at the beginning, too...

59:14 Speaker 1 That shows how much you truly wanted it.

59:15 Speaker 4 Because it was important. Yes.

59:16 Speaker 1 A deep desire.

59:17 Speaker 4 Because we really wanted it. And at first, every year we assessed it based on our financial situation. But after a year and a half, it had become so important to us, so much a given, that we said, “We’ll figure out how to arrange our finances so we can do this.”

59:31 Speaker 1 Around that, yes.

59:31 Speaker 4 Yes, and then...

59:32 Speaker 1 It’s important.

59:32 Speaker 4 My husband went out on his own. You need courage to become self-employed, too.

59:35 Speaker 1 Right.

59:35 Speaker 4 But he said, “As an employee, I can’t support the family on my own, and we want our children to be homeschooled.” So he became self-employed. In the end, when it becomes the central priority, you can arrange everything around it. Your financial situation isn’t necessarily what will prevent it.

59:54 Speaker 1 Interesting. Do you feel you’re giving something up in life for this, or the opposite—that you’re choosing it? I mean, it’s first on your list of priorities, and it’s your choice.

1:00:06 Speaker 4 It’s my choice. And I’ll tell you, I think my story is a little different, because it was actually with the children that I found myself. Suddenly I discovered my love for the whole world of children: the psychology behind it, parenting, that whole world of parents and children. I once saw that Neve Hachotech[?] wrote, “I used to think I didn’t like reading books, until I found a book that interested me and finished it. Then I discovered that when something interests me, I devour it. I can read really well when it’s about that.”

1:00:43 Speaker 1 So this is where you found the thing that...

1:00:45 Speaker 4 Yes. I was always saying, “What?” And each time I’d start a course of study and not finish it, and so on. Then suddenly, with this, every sentence or detail I read somewhere about the subject stays with me. I’m full of this knowledge just from following someone who shares information on Instagram, reading a book about education, and of course putting it into practice at home. But in the end, I found what I love through being with the children.

1:01:14 Speaker 1 So you’ve actually found fulfillment.

1:01:16 Speaker 4 Yes. I really do find fulfillment with the children. Completely. It’s not as if I have some other... They fit right into my story.

1:01:26 Speaker 1 Right, and that’s part of it. It’s also what you share. It’s very interesting, because you don’t just share moments from life with them; you also write insights and things like that.

1:01:33 Speaker 4 Right?

1:01:34 Speaker 1 Wait, anyone who isn’t following you has to follow you. Leave a number at the end. Actually, tell us now so we don’t forget—a phone number people can use to follow you.

1:01:41 Speaker 4 Zero five eight, seven seven zero, one five four one.

1:01:46 Speaker 1 We’ll say it again. Just kidding—go back and listen.

1:01:48 Speaker 4 Yes, exactly.

1:01:51 Speaker 1 And people can find you on Instagram too, Avitali. Right?

1:01:53 Speaker 4 Seven seventy. Yes.

1:01:55 Speaker 1 It’s fascinating. And bear in mind that when you watch it, every so often you get a little pang of guilt, like, “Wow, how does she have so much patience?”

1:02:02 Speaker 4 Oh, I really try to share the process, more than anything. It’s important to me to share the process. Maybe I miss that a lot of the time, but I want people to know that it takes work. I’ve worked on myself for all of it. I was so not like this. I put a lot of effort into every single thing in order to do it differently.

1:02:20 Speaker 1 Right, but you don’t have to downplay it either. It’s okay that you have patience.

1:02:23 Speaker 4 No, I just don’t want people to think there’s one woman who’s patient and another who isn’t. No. It’s all work; none of it comes for free. It didn’t just fall into my lap from heaven.

1:02:31 Speaker 1 Tell me, as someone who really experiences being with the children and the role of motherhood, like, one hundred percent—not that I’m saying a mother who does more outside the home is any less, but you know what I mean.

1:02:41 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:02:41 Speaker 1 I’m not trying to diminish anyone, G-d forbid. So how do you think our shlichus in the world expresses itself as mothers? We were born into the world with some kind of purpose, and sometimes we keep asking, “Where is my shlichus? Where is my shlichus?” And like you said earlier, “I didn’t go out on shlichus.” But in the end, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us children, boruch Hashem. So apparently a huge part of our shlichus is there. I’m curious where you encounter that during the day—in those moments when you suddenly feel, “Wow, this is where I feel like a shliach, a mother on shlichus. My shlichus is right here.”

1:03:21 Speaker 4 I think it’s pretty much all day. Because I put a great deal of effort into raising them with the understanding that they absorb and learn from everything I do and the way I conduct myself. Ultimately, I’m shaping their personalities. They’ll grow up and be adults out in the world, and what will they do? I’m working on that now, and not blindly. That’s why I study: I want to do things properly, in a way that means they won’t have to go searching for themselves later. I want them to know themselves, to know their strengths, to know who they are, what they’re good at, and what they’re capable of.

1:04:02 Speaker 1 To help them discover their own shlichus, really.

1:04:04 Speaker 4 Yes. I mean, we’re raising people. They’re just short people.

1:04:09 Speaker 1 The next generation.

1:04:10 Speaker 4 Yes. They’re growing. They’re people.

1:04:12 Speaker 1 I love “short people.”

1:04:14 Speaker 4 Right, that’s from Efrat Leket. It isn’t mine, but I really love it. So often people look at children as children, but they’re people like us. What bothers us bothers them, and what feels good to us feels good to them, too. The things we’re able to do well, they can do a little less well because they’re children, but so often we expect them to correct us. So no, every child has their own way, and I try to raise them so that each one can be themselves as much as possible. When they grow up to be adults—and even before that, because even today, when they play with friends, speak nicely to them, and solve problems by talking instead of with fists and blows—I think that’s also shlichus: showing them that there’s another way. But they really don’t hit all that much.

1:05:02 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:05:03 Speaker 4 I think with children you can really... They’re people, people who will soon be adults.

1:05:09 Speaker 1 I think we’re more aware of it and more intentional about it. I mean, say the children come home—and I’m talking about “ordinary” families, in quotation marks.

1:05:19 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:05:20 Speaker 1 The children come home in the afternoon and open the door, and a second before that, you stop and say: Okay, I have a shlichus here for the next few hours—to raise the next generation. Not, “Oh, the kids are back; how am I going to get through the time with them when they’re exhausted?” In a way, first of all, it becomes easier to handle, and it also becomes much more precious. Every moment is precious. Every moment is something...

1:05:43 Speaker 4 It has meaning.

1:05:44 Speaker 1 Yes, it does. There’s much more to it, even though it really is hard a lot of the time. The children really do come home—and sometimes it drives me crazy that they come home so tired from school. I think, why do the teachers get them during their fresher hours...

1:05:57 Speaker 4 And you’re hoping...

1:05:57 Speaker 1 And their better hours.

1:05:58 Speaker 4 That really bothers me too.

1:05:59 Speaker 1 And they get a more tired mother, too.

1:06:01 Speaker 4 Right, right.

1:06:01 Speaker 1 It’s the same thing.

1:06:03 Speaker 4 It really bothered me when I worked at a daycare with other people’s children. I’d get home at four and have no energy for my own child.

1:06:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:06:08 Speaker 4 I said, no, that’s not fair.

1:06:09 Speaker 1 And why not the other way around? Let’s start the day with the children, and at two they can go to some afternoon program.

1:06:13 Speaker 4 Exactly. Let the morning be for my family, and...

1:06:15 Speaker 1 We need something like that, somewhere between homeschooling and...

1:06:18 Speaker 4 But nobody will want to send their children.

1:06:20 Speaker 1 I will. I’ll be the pilot.

1:06:22 Speaker 4 For people like that. Some kind of afternoon club.

1:06:25 Speaker 1 Because not long ago, on Election Day, I was here with the children in the morning. And really, I don’t want to sound superior or anything—there were hard moments—but overall it was so nice and easygoing. And I thought, wow, this is what’s missing. It really is missing.

1:06:39 Speaker 4 Right. I saw someone write that you missed those days when you had a day off.

1:06:43 Speaker 1 In Kharkiv we had Sundays, and it was so nice. Really, one day a week to wake up with the children and have time. Otherwise, the children all come home together, and each one wants to tell you something. But here you have a whole day. You talk a little with this one and a little with that one, go out to the park, and have room to breathe.

1:07:04 Speaker 4 And there’s no pressure to keep to a schedule and get things done, because it’s a day off.

1:07:07 Speaker 1 And I miss that terribly. Sometimes I feel that the pace here in Israel...

1:07:10 Speaker 4 Is hard.

1:07:11 Speaker 1 I really don’t know whether it’s because I came here with different habits—not that I’ve only just arrived anymore—or whether everyone really feels that it’s a kind of race. The children come home fairly late, and there’s no day in the middle to catch your breath. Even on Shabbos, in most communities the children go to shul, come back and meet friends. When are they with their parents? Who really...

1:07:31 Speaker 4 Right.

1:07:31 Speaker 1 How much can a parent educate them in the time they actually have?

1:07:35 Speaker 4 Right, when you think about it.

1:07:35 Speaker 1 It’s crazy. It’s hard.

1:07:38 Speaker 4 At least you can make use of the time you do have.

1:07:40 Speaker 1 I’m trying to think whether there’s some middle ground. Could you tell the teacher, “Okay, my child is only staying until twelve every day”? I’m just thinking out loud.

1:07:49 Speaker 4 I’ll tell you—I don’t want to incite the parents or anything. I...

1:07:52 Speaker 1 Yes, I’ll put a beep over this afterward.

1:07:53 Speaker 4 If my children were in school, I would tell the teacher from the outset that I don’t want my children doing homework. I don’t think it’s fair at all. A child spends so many hours at school. Leave home alone.

1:08:05 Speaker 1 But there really isn’t that much homework these days, comparatively.

1:08:07 Speaker 4 No, I’ve seen that it’s decreasing a bit, but still, I’m asking: why?

1:08:11 Speaker 1 My son, for example, has no homework at all. Only if he doesn’t finish something in class does he have to complete it, but he doesn’t get homework. My daughter has it for one subject, twice a week.

1:08:20 Speaker 4 Because then they come home and you can be with them, and they can be with you. You don’t have to...

1:08:24 Speaker 1 But still, they get home after three. What time did it get dark today? We’re in the short days now. Yes, by four-thirty it’s already starting to get dark.

1:08:33 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:34 Speaker 1 So by the time the child gets home, it’s practically nighttime. To them, anyway.

1:08:38 Speaker 4 Right, it really isn’t much time. But before they come home, you ask yourself: Okay, my children will be home soon. What do they need when they get back?

1:08:47 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:08:48 Speaker 4 And then you give them what they need, because they don’t need you to keep them busy. Maybe they just want you to sit and read a story with them, or eat lunch with them. What do they really need when they come home?

1:09:02 Speaker 1 Right.

1:09:03 Speaker 4 And that’s it. That’s enough for...

1:09:04 Speaker 1 They come home as a group. It’s interesting—we really need tips on how to relate to a group of children of different ages, while treating each one individually. It says, “Educate a child according to his way.” Yes, and it isn’t only according to his way, but when he’s together with several others, each according to their different ways.

1:09:22 Speaker 4 Right, absolutely. That really is...

1:09:23 Speaker 1 It’s something you do all the time. Not “achieve”—that’s not the word. “Achieve” really isn’t right.

1:09:28 Speaker 4 It isn’t about achieving, it’s...

1:09:30 Speaker 1 Being.

1:09:30 Speaker 4 Yes, it’s giving.

1:09:31 Speaker 1 Being with several children of different ages and personalities.

1:09:33 Speaker 4 Giving each one what they need.

1:09:35 Speaker 1 Exactly.

1:09:36 Speaker 4 And attention absolutely meets a need. Often we say, “What is it? He’s tired, he’s hungry, he wants attention.” He just wants you to sit with him for a little while. Are you making dinner? Make it with him. Even if all he does is join you in what you’re doing.

1:09:49 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:09:50 Speaker 4 But that being together—I think that, in the end, is what children need when they come home.

1:09:57 Speaker 1 To be with them.

1:09:58 Speaker 4 Yes. They need a mother, a father, a home.

1:10:02 Speaker 1 Right. It’s a shame there aren’t more hours like that. We need to think of some kind of startup for something at home.

1:10:08 Speaker 4 Big changes like that will take so long to happen... But I think even two or three hours at home—a calm afternoon and evening, when you’re there and relaxed, not running between the laundry and everything else, thinking, “Quick, I have to wash the dishes, I have to make dinner”—things will go more slowly, but you’re gaining two things at once. Say I’m washing dishes, and Levi always comes over, gets right up to the sink and pours water.

1:10:39 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:10:39 Speaker 4 He really tries to help. Then he puts things on the drying rack. He really wants to be involved, and he loves pouring from one container into another. So I say, okay, it’s slower when I do it with him. Obviously, if I wash the dishes alone, it’s much faster. But he gets my attention, and he gets to meet that developmental need to play with water, touch the dishes and do something.

1:10:57 Speaker 1 You really live that way.

1:11:00 Speaker 4 I think so.

1:11:00 Speaker 1 That’s how it looks from the outside.

1:11:02 Speaker 4 Yes, it’s really amazing. You can say: I’ve also accomplished something I needed to do anyway. It’s not as though I can do the dishes and put my child somewhere else. He’s here.

1:11:15 Speaker 1 Right.

1:11:16 Speaker 4 So at least I’ll give him my attention. I’ll get less done. That’s okay. But when you understand what those afternoon and evening hours mean to the children, and how much it means to them to have their parents and their home, I think it’s easier to do that, too.

1:11:31 Speaker 1 Right.

1:11:32 Speaker 4 Even to give up some things you want to do, some chores, and simply be present with them.

1:11:37 Speaker 1 You know, it’s interesting that in the former Soviet Union—Russia, Ukraine and so on—everyone knows that the children there are fairly well educated. They leave school, and many, many of them are good at math and physics.

1:11:52 Speaker 4 And they all have a basic knowledge of history.

1:11:53 Speaker 1 Now, they have three months off in the summer, plus an autumn break, plus another two weeks for winter break, plus a spring break, and Sundays off—Shabbos and Sunday.

1:12:07 Speaker 4 So many vacations.

1:12:09 Speaker 1 And they come out having learned. They learn more, and their school day isn’t any longer, either. At our school, for example, the day ended at one-thirty—not three or four. So I really think something is being missed here in Israel. Something isn’t working. So many hours, so many days a year, and the children don’t come out—I don’t know—with who knows what skills. I mean, we turned out okay, right? But...

1:12:35 Speaker 4 Right. No, I really think—

1:12:37 Speaker 1 Something is being missed in the classroom.

1:12:39 Speaker 4 It’s also the number of children. Think about it—I don’t know how long a lesson is. Let’s say an hour. For part of the lesson, you—

1:12:48 Speaker 1 Forty-five minutes.

1:12:48 Speaker 4 Forty-five minutes. So by the time you get the students’ attention and get started—okay, open your workbooks—and then by the time you teach them something, and then... and then... and then...

1:13:00 Speaker 1 If it were five children, you could do it in ten minutes.

1:13:02 Speaker 4 Yes, I mean, really, the amount of knowledge a child learns in one lesson, they could learn it... Maybe not all children. Maybe some need more time because they struggle more and so on, but ordinary, typical children. I don’t think my children are exceptionally smart in this respect. They don’t need so much time to learn so little material.

1:13:24 Speaker 1 Because most of the time really goes on, I think, first of all—

1:13:26 Speaker 4 Unnecessary things.

1:13:27 Speaker 1 Taking attendance, checking who’s there and what happened, discipline problems, this and that.

1:13:31 Speaker 4 And waiting for children whose bus still has to arrive, and things like that.

1:13:34 Speaker 1 Yes, right.

1:13:34 Speaker 4 You’re also always dependent on the other children in the class, who are moving at a different pace.

1:13:38 Speaker 1 And there’s always a range, all kinds of—

1:13:41 Speaker 4 Right, absolutely right. And you really don’t need so much time to learn. My children really don’t need to sit for so long—I mean, they don’t need to sit and study for hours a day, with lessons and breaks.

1:13:54 Speaker 1 Right. I also really think that, just by the nature of their situation, your children naturally learn many more things from life itself.

1:14:01 Speaker 4 So many more things. And at their young ages, you can see what their strengths are. You can just see them. You can just see them. Like, Dov’le is six, he’s supposed to be in first grade, and he’s a whiz at arithmetic. He’s really good at it, and we didn’t teach him that.

1:14:19 Speaker 1 Because when you go shopping—because I go shopping in the morning when my children are at school. After I... It’s so funny, because I was a teacher for years on shlichus. So this is also really new.

1:14:30 Speaker 4 What’s going on?

1:14:31 Speaker 1 But in general, because there I used to shop online, and I didn’t even need to...

1:14:35 Speaker 4 You can do that in Israel too. Some of it, not everything.

1:14:38 Speaker 1 It’s complicated, complicated. Anyway, what was I starting to say? You take a child along on errands, which, first of all, is beyond me in general. I mean, really going around with the children on public transportation, here and there—that deserves a medal in itself.

1:14:52 Speaker 4 I hardly do that at all. I’m waiting until I have a truck.

1:14:55 Speaker 1 I see it and I can’t breathe.

1:14:56 Speaker 4 Until I have a house, that house I can drive everywhere, and life will be beautiful.

1:15:00 Speaker 1 A different life.

1:15:01 Speaker 4 Totally.

1:15:02 Speaker 1 I wish that for you. But what I’m saying is, the child learns so much. He learns about the street, about life, about how you pay in a store, about—you mentioned arithmetic. He’s just living it.

1:15:16 Speaker 4 Right, even with recipes. He comes into the kitchen because it interests him. So he asks questions, he takes part, and then he knows. And in the end, when you’re attentive to children—and you really do need the time to listen to what they’re saying—suddenly, in the middle of a meal, he says something that shows he understands arithmetic, because he’s just thinking about these things for the pleasure of it. It’s amazing.

1:15:44 Speaker 1 Because he also has that empty space to think, right?

1:15:46 Speaker 4 Yes, he says to me in the middle of—

1:15:48 Speaker 1 There aren’t children around him all the time, and...

1:15:50 Speaker 4 Suddenly he realized that half an hour is half of a whole hour. No, another time he said something to me about fractions. And if you have the time to hear what he’s figured out on his own, then you can also add a word or build on it with him, take part in the conversation he’s started.

1:16:10 Speaker 1 Help him understand lots more things in that context, give him more knowledge, and...

1:16:15 Speaker 4 Right.

1:16:15 Speaker 1 In the end, you’re helping him make sense of the world, and he also has more time to think. He has more time to think and ask curious questions, and he has a mother who has time to answer them.

1:16:24 Speaker 4 Right, and he’s curious.

1:16:25 Speaker 1 So in practice, he learns many more things.

1:16:28 Speaker 4 Totally.

1:16:28 Speaker 1 I think if you put him in a test alongside another child his age, he’d win by a mile.

1:16:33 Speaker 4 Depends on the subject.

1:16:34 Speaker 1 No, again, not that it’s a competition, but it’s interesting to see the results of each system. Homeschooling and... It’s wild.

1:16:44 Speaker 4 No, actually, that’s something I remind myself. My children don’t have to be better than anyone who’s in school, because the whole point of homeschooling is that you can let a child go at their own pace. So one child will start reading in first grade, and another will start reading—

1:16:59 Speaker 1 In kindergarten.

1:17:00 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:17:01 Speaker 1 At kindergarten age, not in kindergarten.

1:17:02 Speaker 4 But there’s this feeling that homeschoolers have to prove themselves, and no, they don’t.

1:17:05 Speaker 1 “Your child’s in first grade and reading at a third-grade level”—no.

1:17:09 Speaker 4 Yes, no, no. You have to...

1:17:12 Speaker 1 You have to be very honest with yourself all the time, really. You have to tune out all the background noise.

1:17:17 Speaker 4 Very much so.

1:17:18 Speaker 1 Not what...

1:17:19 Speaker 4 Ultimately, that affects how you are with the children too.

1:17:20 Speaker 1 How does the family feel about it? Do they like it? Are they going along with it?

1:17:23 Speaker 4 I think so. My mother-in-law has been coming once a week, pretty much since we started. Once a week, she spends almost the whole time with the children. It’s her time with them.

1:17:33 Speaker 1 Oh, that’s cool.

1:17:35 Speaker 4 Yes, and it’s part of things. In the end, it’s part of the schedule.

1:17:39 Speaker 1 My mother-in-law, if you’re listening to this...

1:17:42 Speaker 4 Come on over.

1:17:44 Speaker 1 Wow. So that means she’s really excited about it, right? She’s saying, “How cool, I want to be part of it too.”

1:17:49 Speaker 4 Well, at first, when we started—and there was the cancer too—she said, “How exactly do you think you’re going to start homeschooling now? You’re dreaming.” And then she saw we were serious.

1:17:58 Speaker 1 Which is probably what everyone was thinking but didn’t say.

1:18:01 Speaker 4 Could be.

1:18:02 Speaker 1 No.

1:18:02 Speaker 4 She says it out loud. She really does often say things that everyone is thinking. But yes, you’re right, it really was crazy. Today, though, she sees that it’s good. She sees that the children are happy, and she contributes her part too. She does things with them that I don’t do. For example, she makes things with them out of clay. I won’t touch the stuff; it really bothers my hands. So in the end, she gives them something. In kindergartens, clay is a basic activity.

1:18:28 Speaker 1 No, I wouldn’t say it’s an everyday thing, but...

1:18:30 Speaker 4 It’s there. Every kindergarten has clay.

1:18:32 Speaker 1 It’s a regular thing, yes.

1:18:33 Speaker 4 It’s part of the schedule.

1:18:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:18:36 Speaker 4 At least it’s—

1:18:36 Speaker 1 Part of the curriculum.

1:18:38 Speaker 4 Yes, but absolutely, I don’t know, there’s no opposition. It’s more curiosity, actually. I think there’s even starting to be some pride, because suddenly it’s become something other people are interested in. I have followers, a few people who follow my status updates.

1:18:52 Speaker 1 “My grandchild is homeschooled,” you know.

1:18:55 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:18:56 Speaker 1 Look, that’s where the world is going. I think that’s definitely the direction. It seems to me that if you look at this whole story from a distance—what do I mean by “from a distance”? On a macro level?

1:19:06 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:19:07 Speaker 1 Then I think there are two things here that are the most amazing. First, that you took this on—not you alone, the two of you made the decision and went all the way with it. It shows that when something matters to you and you really want it, you can do it against all odds. It’s incredible.

1:19:24 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:24 Speaker 1 I mean, everything you went through at the beginning, how you had to work on yourself. And the second thing is that you really did that work on yourself. You didn’t say, “I need to solve a few scheduling problems here, or a financial problem, or something else.” You said, “I’ll change, and everything will be fine.”

1:19:38 Speaker 4 Yes, because I was having a hard time with the children. I said, “Okay, then I’m not taking the children out of the house. If it’s hard for me, I won’t send them away. I’ll figure out how to enjoy being with them.”

1:19:46 Speaker 1 How I’ll manage it.

1:19:47 Speaker 4 And it’s absolutely possible. You can have a good time with your children. They’re our children. They live with us in our home; it’s their home too. They don’t need to be going somewhere all the time—to school, to sleep, whatever it is. We’re supposed to enjoy being with our children. It’s just hard to get there, because life today really is very intense, very different, and it distances us from that. Having to put your child in an institution at a very young age already changes something inside you about how you relate to your children.

1:20:18 Speaker 1 Exactly.

1:20:20 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:20:20 Speaker 1 Just yesterday was 11 Cheshvan, the day of Rachel Imeinu, who really... she’s a symbol of giving something up.

1:20:28 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:28 Speaker 1 The good mother who gave something up for her Jewish children, and in the end, she was the one who was with them when they went into exile. It reminds me of how you, in a sense, are giving something up, but you’re the one who’s there with them in the end. You give up something of your own, but you gain the greatest thing, which is being with your children. It’s amazing. It’s simply amazing.

1:20:48 Speaker 4 Um, that’s true, to some extent. I think that, in the end, I don’t feel like I’m giving anything up. I’m working on becoming a different person, and I like that person.

1:20:59 Speaker 1 No, you’ve actually found the...

1:21:01 Speaker 4 Yes. I mean, I can be with my kids, and I want to. It comes naturally to me and feels good. We get up in the morning and I’m not stressed, thinking, “Oh no, I have to quickly find something to keep them busy.” No, we’re here, everything’s fine, we’ll go with the flow. I’ll get myself ready first, and then we’ll see.

1:21:18 Speaker 1 Do you sometimes plan things, though?

1:21:20 Speaker 4 What do I do?

1:21:21 Speaker 1 Three, four, and... “Today we’re doing an activity for Rosh Hashanah”? Or is it always really this easygoing?

1:21:27 Speaker 4 If I really feel like it, really feel like it—

1:21:29 Speaker 1 When inspiration strikes.

1:21:31 Speaker 4 Yes, but usually I improvise something for them. When I feel like making something with them, doing some kind of craft together, I might bring out a big poster board. Or say I’m telling them the Chanukah story: I’ll bring a big poster board and draw the characters as I tell it. Things like that. I’m less into putting on a whole production and having to prepare in advance. It doesn’t suit me.

1:21:59 Speaker 1 But I think you’re giving your children an incredible gift for life: that kind of simplicity. These days, institutions really don’t know how to please children anymore. Every year they put in more and more effort. In a way, that’s beautiful and amazing, and it depends on where the effort goes—more into appearances or into the content. And often the two go together. The kids come home from school with these productions from the school network that honestly blow me away. For Chai Elul, for example, they send home a family Shabbos farbrengen kit with a game. On the one hand, wow, how beautiful. On the other hand, you wonder: where’s the simplicity?

1:22:36 Speaker 4 But you know, I—

1:22:37 Speaker 1 As though a child can’t get through Chai Elul without a whole production. Right, because I’ve felt that way too. I understand you.

1:22:42 Speaker 4 No, what I’m saying is, wow, if someone sends me a kit like that, it takes care of Chai Elul for me. Why do I have to do it myself?

1:22:49 Speaker 1 Right, but your children are happy to sit and simply hear the story of Chai Elul. Do you see what I mean?

1:22:53 Speaker 4 Right, we’re always—

1:22:54 Speaker 1 They can do that.

1:22:54 Speaker 4 All the time. I think our whole lives are shaped by our expectations.

1:22:59 Speaker 1 Exactly.

1:23:00 Speaker 4 And children—they’re in a different world, which is why it’s so important to ask them and listen. Dovaleh just had a birthday, for example. I said, “We’ll buy him balloons with the number six, make a nice cake, and do all sorts of things.” Then Motti and I asked him, “What are you expecting for your birthday? What would you like? Should we invite friends?” He asked for Shabbos fish and Yerushalmi kugel, and for just the family to sit together in the evening and eat like we do on Shabbos.

1:23:32 Speaker 1 Do you see?

1:23:33 Speaker 4 And he didn’t want balloons. Out of habit, I said, “Okay, so let’s blow up a few balloons. No?” He told me, “No, I don’t want balloons.” Somehow they didn’t fit with what he had in mind.

1:23:46 Speaker 1 That’s it. He has his own expectations, and he’s happy with that. Really.

1:23:50 Speaker 4 I’m saying, just ask them. Ask them, and they’ll tell us what they expect and what they want.

1:23:54 Speaker 1 But you see, if he were growing up in a school where all his friends probably celebrated their birthdays with this, that, and the other thing, he’d probably expect that too. He’s used to a really pleasant, simple set of expectations, and he’s happy. He’s simply happy that way.

1:24:09 Speaker 4 That could be. Though we have neighbors whose birthdays we celebrate with them all the time, and they make more of an occasion of it than we do with birthdays—

1:24:20 Speaker 1 I mean, at our house it’s not like that.

1:24:21 Speaker 4 That kind of birthday. Yes. I think so, but I also think that if you asked your child what they expected for their birthday, you might be surprised.

1:24:33 Speaker 1 Right.

1:24:33 Speaker 4 Or ask them what they want for Shabbos, or just ask them different questions in general. We’re sure we know what they’ll say and what they want, but we don’t. They live in a different world from ours.

1:24:45 Speaker 1 Right. I remember asking Tomas[?] last year what he wanted for his birthday that year, and he told me, “I really want corn like we had at my birthday in Kharkov last year.” That was what he remembered. I didn’t remember at all what we’d had there, but that was the detail that had stayed with him.

1:25:00 Speaker 4 That was the thing. You could have brought so many other things, but if you hadn’t brought that, then as far as he was concerned, it wouldn’t have been right.

1:25:05 Speaker 1 Right.

1:25:06 Speaker 4 That would have been missing.

1:25:07 Speaker 1 Just getting down to their point of view and...

1:25:10 Speaker 4 Listening to them. Really listening. It’s so hard, because sometimes you find yourself thinking, “Come on, just say it already. What difference does it make?” I think that...

1:25:18 Speaker 1 You know, exactly.

1:25:18 Speaker 4 You also think you already know. And to talk with—to listen to children, you need patience. You need to listen without bringing your own—without inserting yourself into every sentence they say.

1:25:26 Speaker 1 Just listening openly.

1:25:27 Speaker 4 Yes, it’s hard. I’m really trying.

1:25:28 Speaker 1 You need to listen to adults that way too.

1:25:31 Speaker 4 Right, but adults naturally interest you more.

1:25:33 Speaker 1 That’s where you really have to...

1:25:33 Speaker 4 It’s hard to take an interest when your child tells you something that sounds boring to you.

1:25:38 Speaker 1 And to value what he’s saying, too.

1:25:40 Speaker 4 Right.

1:25:40 Speaker 1 He’s not just a child; he has something to say.

1:25:42 Speaker 4 But ultimately, he’s sharing his world with you. He’s sharing the things that interest him. That’s his life; that’s the perspective he sees things from. When you think about it that way, it’s more interesting to listen to them. But it really is hard. It’s a constant...

1:25:52 Speaker 1 Right.

1:25:53 Speaker 4 Wherever you can.

1:25:55 Speaker 1 How do you actually give each child one-on-one time? Obviously, you’re not doing “three, four, and...” But still, is there time in your day when you’re just with Tzviki, just with Dovaleh? Ten minutes when they have their mother to themselves and nobody interrupts?

1:26:09 Speaker 4 Um, I can tell you that, for the most part, no. I understand that...

1:26:13 Speaker 1 It’s an issue I’ve thought about many times with families who, boruch Hashem, have children close in age. Unless you make a point of it, it doesn’t really happen.

1:26:22 Speaker 4 Right.

1:26:22 Speaker 1 One-on-one time with a child. I think especially about the oldest children, who have many younger siblings and feel a certain responsibility.

1:26:30 Speaker 4 And oldest children often...

1:26:31 Speaker 1 When does the oldest get to be that child who has his mother all to himself?

1:26:34 Speaker 4 Right, actually—

1:26:34 Speaker 1 Because you really have to make it happen.

1:26:35 Speaker 4 And with oldest children, you often expect them to act grown-up because there are so many little ones below them. So it’s, “You’ll have to wait.”

1:26:42 Speaker 1 But he’s little too, he...

1:26:43 Speaker 4 “Because this one is having a tantrum and that one needs to nurse.”

1:26:46 Speaker 1 Right.

1:26:46 Speaker 4 So he has to wait. But he’s a child.

1:26:48 Speaker 1 Right.

1:26:48 Speaker 4 If he didn’t have younger siblings, we’d treat him differently, wouldn’t we?

1:26:51 Speaker 1 Right.

1:26:52 Speaker 4 I mean, we would—not in terms of attention, but in terms of...

1:26:55 Speaker 1 No, because that family hierarchy affects... Right.

1:26:58 Speaker 4 Yes, but he’s a child. He should have his needs met according to his age.

1:27:03 Speaker 1 That’s something you have to remember and make a point of doing.

1:27:05 Speaker 4 Right, it’s definitely something to keep in mind. My dream is to have a “Mom class.” It’s an idea I saw from Efrat Lekt of Ima Me’amenet: just as you send your child to a regular class, you set aside a regular time that belongs to that child, and all week they know it’s their time. It seems like such a wonderful, sensible idea, but I find it very hard to do. I’ve had it in mind for over a year now.

1:27:28 Speaker 1 Because you need to get a babysitter for the other children.

1:27:30 Speaker 4 Exactly. I need to work it out with Motti and see if...

1:27:33 Speaker 1 I sometimes pick the children up early from school and take just one of them, to give that child one-on-one time.

1:27:38 Speaker 4 Right, right.

1:27:39 Speaker 1 But my other children have a babysitter at that time, so to speak—they’re at school.

1:27:43 Speaker 4 Right. So I do, I do... I imagine...

1:27:45 Speaker 1 Maybe when they’re with their grandmother, you could take a different child with you each time. But then that’s your little bit of time for yourself. Though again, your time for yourself...

1:27:52 Speaker 4 Yes. Maybe I’m just imagining it as something that has to be very regular, and then I don’t take opportunities that are a little less predictable—like when Motti...

1:28:01 Speaker 1 Because that wouldn’t work, and then it...

1:28:02 Speaker 4 Sometimes she doesn’t come, but for now she does, so when she stops coming, I’ll change things. It’s okay. But that’s the ideal, basically. For now, I’m sort of putting out fires. When I see that a child needs something, then I—

1:28:14 Speaker 1 Find the...

1:28:14 Speaker 4 I’ll sit with him. Yes, while someone else is busy, instead of washing the dishes, I’ll go sit and play with him.

1:28:20 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:28:22 Speaker 4 Things like that. I really do hope to do more for them, because I truly think children need it.

1:28:29 Speaker 1 Right. When do you make important phone calls, when you’re not sitting with the kids?

1:28:34 Speaker 4 Uh, I don’t have that many. In the evening, I guess—they go to sleep around the same time.

1:28:38 Speaker 1 Yours go to sleep at the same time too?

1:28:39 Speaker 4 Apparently. They’re asleep, and even early. It’s...

1:28:43 Speaker 1 Well, these days there’s WhatsApp too, so you don’t have to say everything out loud.

1:28:45 Speaker 4 Yes. No, but the evening is mine. In the evening I don’t clean, I don’t tidy up, I don’t prepare anything for tomorrow.

1:28:51 Speaker 1 You do it with them during the day. It’s part of the daily routine.

1:28:55 Speaker 4 Yes, I prefer that.

1:28:56 Speaker 1 I think the effort is worth it. In another year, they’ll be managing without you already, while you sit for a moment with the radio.

1:29:01 Speaker 4 Exactly. It’s also good for their development. And I say to myself, I need time when I don’t have to—I don’t have to do anything. Just: What do you feel like doing now? Just sitting, drinking coffee and doing nothing? Do that.

1:29:14 Speaker 1 Right.

1:29:14 Speaker 4 Really, just like that. Sit and stare at the sofa, at the ceiling, whatever you feel like.

1:29:20 Speaker 1 For now, they’re going to sleep. That’s interesting.

1:29:22 Speaker 4 It’s changing now. Blessed winter time. I love it.

1:29:26 Speaker 1 Wait, can Dovaleh tell the time yet, or can you get away with saying, “It’s dark—wow, it’s eight in the evening”?

1:29:32 Speaker 4 No, but I don’t do that either. I don’t lie to my children at all. No, he sees the time. I also tell them—I think there are a few...

1:29:40 Speaker 1 We feel more tired too because it’s dark already, don’t we? Sort of.

1:29:44 Speaker 4 No, when the clocks went back, I jumped at the opportunity and started doing a different schedule. I changed the order—dinner first, then baths, and all sorts of things that used to be different. So they go to sleep at eight, eight-thirty, and often nine. What can I do? I ask myself, what’s better—that I yell and have a terribly hard evening because I want them asleep by seven-thirty? In the end, that makes the evening a nightmare for me and for them, and then I feel guilty afterward. I want my evening free.

1:30:16 Speaker 1 And the guilt on top of it.

1:30:18 Speaker 4 Yes. So I suffer a lot, and it might be nine, but... But really, once they fall asleep, I can do whatever I want. That’s my time.

1:30:25 Speaker 1 And in the morning you don’t have an alarm clock.

1:30:27 Speaker 4 Just the kids.

1:30:28 Speaker 1 That won me over. Just kidding.

1:30:31 Speaker 4 Waking up naturally. Yes—the kids.

1:30:32 Speaker 1 So could it happen that the whole family wakes up at nine?

1:30:36 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s really rare. Only if we went to sleep very late.

1:30:39 Speaker 1 They really are little, and generally...

1:30:41 Speaker 4 They wake up early. Yes, yes, but we get up at seven or eight.

1:30:46 Speaker 1 Like a normal family. Just kidding.

1:30:48 Speaker 4 Yes, but I think waking up on your own means something too. Not having an alarm clock...

1:30:53 Speaker 1 Really?

1:30:54 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:30:54 Speaker 1 That’s interesting. I heard a talk on a podcast or something—I don’t remember, it was some psychologist who studies the brain—and he said, “For your child’s ninth birthday, buy them an alarm clock and let them wake up to it. Don’t go near their room; don’t wake them up.” It’s the greatest gift you can give them for life: they teach themselves.

1:31:15 Speaker 4 Independence through that.

1:31:16 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:31:17 Speaker 4 If a child needs to get up at twenty past, you set the alarm. Okay.

1:31:19 Speaker 1 Dovaleh is younger, but he was talking specifically about age nine, as a skill children should start acquiring at that age.

1:31:27 Speaker 4 But why would he get up? What time would he set the alarm for? I don’t know.

1:31:32 Speaker 1 No, I think even if it’s set for an hour later, just having a set time. I just wonder whether it really is something that...

1:31:36 Speaker 4 Exactly. I wonder what, what, what...

1:31:37 Speaker 1 Is behind it.

1:31:39 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:31:40 Speaker 1 If I remember what it was, maybe I’ll send it to you.

1:31:42 Speaker 4 Send it to me. Yes, I’ll look into it and come back with conclusions.

1:31:45 Speaker 1 And then we’ll do another podcast.

1:31:46 Speaker 4 That’s another thing about homeschooling: you have to examine everything in depth. Like social life. Okay, so how much social time? What kind of social life? What’s the point of it? You no longer have all those ready-made categories in your head. You have to take every category apart, and apart, and apart, and apart, and...

1:32:01 Speaker 1 Right, but there’s something much more genuine here.

1:32:04 Speaker 4 Right, right.

1:32:05 Speaker 1 You’re really acting with a lot of awareness. You stop and ask, “Why?” You’re breaking conventions and rebuilding them yourself, based on what’s true.

1:32:14 Speaker 4 Based on what really matters.

1:32:15 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:32:15 Speaker 4 Without all those categories that are always in my head just because that’s how I grew up. I’d never examined them.

1:32:21 Speaker 1 Right, because with most children, we parents are busy fitting them into existing categories, and here you’re building them—

1:32:28 Speaker 4 Right.

1:32:28 Speaker 1 Their own framework. That’s incredible.

1:32:30 Speaker 4 Because you have to.

1:32:30 Speaker 1 Their framework.

1:32:30 Speaker 4 I’m glad it demands that.

1:32:33 Speaker 1 Right.

1:32:33 Speaker 4 It really demands that you examine everything so you know what the child actually needs, not what this person or that person said. You can’t live according to what people say.

1:32:41 Speaker 1 According to his way.

1:32:42 Speaker 4 Yes, you also have to understand.

1:32:43 Speaker 1 Simply.

1:32:44 Speaker 4 Understand everything. Then it becomes knowledge, and I love that. It interests me.

1:32:48 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:32:48 Speaker 4 So I gain from it.

1:32:50 Speaker 1 Well, Avital, do you have an interesting closing thought? A special tip, a recommendation, a summary, anything?

1:32:59 Speaker 4 Hmm.

1:33:01 Speaker 1 Something you’d especially want people to take away from everything you’ve said.

1:33:04 Speaker 4 I think, mainly, I’d really recommend trying to see how you can make the most of the time you do have with your children. It may seem like a little time, but even ten minutes of sitting with a child and really being there with them is very meaningful. And also, really, learn. I truly think we aren’t naturally born knowing how to be parents, and any knowledge helps make parenting easier, because you know what you’re doing. You’re not relying on trial and error, you’re not guessing, and you’re not looking back afterward thinking, “Poor child, what did I do?” You know what you’re doing.

1:33:43 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:33:43 Speaker 4 I think that’s very meaningful.

1:33:45 Speaker 1 Maybe you could recommend a specific book? Something interesting.

1:33:48 Speaker 4 I really connect with the “Ima Me’amenet” approach of Efrat Lakat. She has a book, and she also has—

1:33:54 Speaker 1 “Ima Me’amenet” is the name of the book, then.

1:33:56 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:33:56 Speaker 1 Or of the whole approach?

1:33:57 Speaker 4 Of the whole approach. I really like it. It’s a very comprehensive approach. She also brings in Montessori ideas and children’s independence, and she really speaks from the children’s perspective. That’s something I was looking for: someone to explain to me why children behave the way they do.

1:34:13 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:34:14 Speaker 4 And suddenly knowing and understanding what they actually need from us—that’s what I wanted to know.

1:34:21 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:34:22 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:34:24 Speaker 1 Wow. So you read it while you were starting to homeschool, or...?

1:34:29 Speaker 4 Yes, yes, all while it was happening.

1:34:31 Speaker 1 So after you’d started.

1:34:33 Speaker 4 Yes. When I started, I realized how much I had to learn.

1:34:36 Speaker 1 Does she talk about homeschooling there? That’s interesting.

1:34:38 Speaker 4 I don’t think so. Parenting in general.

1:34:42 Speaker 1 Yes, you take it into the...

1:34:43 Speaker 4 I just have more time to try out the tools and practice using them.

1:34:48 Speaker 1 You have a laboratory all the time.

1:34:50 Speaker 4 Right. So maybe I make progress faster because I spend more time practicing.

1:34:54 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:34:54 Speaker 4 But ultimately, any parent can learn how to be a better—

1:34:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:35:00 Speaker 4 Parent to their children.

1:35:01 Speaker 1 Since we’re on the subject, I also want to recommend a lovely book to everyone listening. It’s called Horim Berosh Tov. I can send it to you if you’d like. Rabbi Arad wrote it about raising children from a Chassidic perspective, and it’s very beautiful. I’m reading it, and each chapter is a chapter you need to read about three times, because it’s also—

1:35:19 Speaker 4 Interesting.

1:35:19 Speaker 1 It’s also a little dense. There’s a lot of Chassidus in it, and comparisons to the sefiros and things like that, but it’s very, very interesting. So, just by the way. And that’s it, Avital—thank you. And I have to tell everyone: don’t stop here. Keep following Avital, because this really is a whole fascinating world. We’ll also see how you develop and where you take it.

1:35:42 Speaker 4 Thanks to the—

1:35:42 Speaker 1 We’ll find out the answers to all the questions. Did they eventually go to school? Did they go and then come back? What happened in the end?

1:35:47 Speaker 4 Stay tuned.

1:35:48 Speaker 1 Stay tuned, exactly.

1:35:50 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:35:50 Speaker 1 All right, Avital, thank you so much.

1:35:52 Speaker 4 My pleasure.

1:35:52 Speaker 1 And now, good night for real.