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Inspire Your Kids/The Rabbi Shmuley way



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chocolate moose




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 07 2006, 11:51 am
Inspire your kids, TV rabbi advises




By JENNIFER M. MACLEOD


Special to The CJN

The ?relations talk? is not the most important conversation to have with your kids, says author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of the book Kosher relations and host of the Learning Channel?s reality show Shalom in the Home.

The best talks are about inspiration.

?Why would I talk to kids about relations? How effective is it? Has it done anything?? he asked during a recent visit to Toronto to promote his book 10 Conversations You Need to Have With Your Children.

Parents dread the three ?stock? conversations: don?t do drugs, don?t get an STD, don?t get pregnant, he said. ?These are the most depressing, morbid conversations?We?re essentially telling our kids ?don?t die.??

In the book, Rabbi Boteach writes that ?telling our children what we want them to be? invites rebellion, so the book helps parents offer ?an image of what they want to be: their own inner voice of conscience.?

On one episode of Shalom in the Home, Rabbi Boteach counselled a 16-year-old who ?did nothing but? paint her toenails? while her mother worked in the background.

Instead of confronting her, Rabbi Boteach, a father of eight, asked her, ?What do you want to be??

The girl replied, ?A fashion designer.?

Rabbi Boteach explained the difference between what you do and who you are. ?There are only two answers ? a good person or a bad person.?

Watching a video of herself lounging as her mother scrubbed, the girl saw what she was becoming.

?You?re not a good person if you make you mother into your dishwasher,? Rabbi Boteach told her. ?You?re only 16 and you?ve already lost control of your life.?

The best approach to influencing kids is by sharing values, he told The CJN.

?We have an RV, we go into nature, [we] go to all the important historic sites,? he said of his own family life.

But his best advice for inspiring kids is to turn off the TV.

?Most TV is stupid. Most reality TV is degrading,? he said. ?Most TV counsellors think their job is to? point out that you?re a jackass. The counsellor portrays himself as Yoshke ? ?I?m perfect, you?re not. I?ll tell you what to do.??

In Judaism, righteousness is about struggle, not perfection, he said, adding that our heroes, such as Moses and Abraham, are flawed, so we can relate to them.

In the same way, Rabbi Boteach seeks commonalties with the families on his show.

?We?re all faced with the same challenges,? he said. ?They have disciplinary issues? I can have disciplinary issues with my kids.?

Rabbi Boteach said he?s proud of his show, which he contends has integrity and sticks to its mandate of helping families in crisis.

He said he spends 70 hours with each family over the course of one week, and the show condenses that into one hour.

?You can do a heck of a lot in a week,? he said.

But does his being a rabbi deter non-Jews? ?They don?t care what my title is? they judge me by a single criterion: can I help them??

Only Jews might hesitate to hand their troubles to a rabbi, he said. ?Jews? denigrate themselves and their faith by thinking they have nothing to say to the outside world.?

Rabbi Boteach said that his dream ?from the age of 16 was to grant Judaism a seat at the table? Christianity and Islam shaped the modern world, yet both are daughter religions of Judaism.?

If there?s one common thread to his many books, columns, and TV and radio shows, it?s that Jews need to breach our insularity and reclaim Judaism?s global influence.

As on Shalom in the Home, in 10 Conversations, Rabbi Boteach tries to translate Jewish wisdom for Jews and non-Jews alike ? with words that will heal not just children, but entire families.

In our society, marriages are failing from boredom, he said. ?We call marriage ?settling down?? we accept the drudgery.

?Husbands and wives don?t inspire each other. Parents don?t try to inspire their kids? they don?t make each other laugh, don?t share their innermost self? They have very functional lives which are very boring.?

Though 10 Conversations draws some examples from his show, most are from his own personal experience.

?I actually sat down with a tape recorder? and [recorded] the conversations I have with my kids, the 10 most important values I want to communicate.?

Whether it?s reading Torah or rollerblading with his kids, Rabbi Boteach says his parenting owes much to his experience as a camp counsellor when he was younger.

?In the same way that a camp counsellor moves all the kids in a bunk, a parent can easily move all the kids he has to,? he said

?Camp has a lot of discipline, a lot of rules ? so why do kids want to go?? he asked rhetorically. ?Because it?s inspiring.

The perfect diet? Try a compliment

America is gripped by diet fever. Thousands of diets are on offer. In fact, if you're cash-starved and want to make a quick buck, just pen a book about a new diet you've conjured up, give it a s-xy name and, presto, you're an instant millionaire. No previous writing experience needed.

You might try and call it something like The Emaciated Scarecrow Look or Thin is In.

Better still, name-associate the book with something really chic like The Rodeo Drive Diet or The Fifth Avenue Starvation Plan and you'll be retiring in six months.

As for me, I have little time to read all these books, and even less inclination to make a mint from a diet plan because I believe we've overdone all the dieting stuff. To me, thin isn't in, but rather "meat is neat." After all, if you're a husband, what would you rather hug and hold: a bag of bones and a rib cage, or soft, supple flesh?

But everything in moderation: Too thin is repulsive and hideous, and too fat is unhealthy and ungainly.

So here is my plan for the perfect diet that works better than anything you can buy, and is both simple and free. It's called The Compliment Diet.

HERE'S HOW it works. Give your wife a daily compliment telling her how beautiful she is.

Tell her how great she looks in her dress, how shapely her new suit is. Notice when she gets her hair done. Compliment her on her nails and manicure (something husbands always miss). When she puts on a nightgown, tell her she looks ravishing (make sure you turn off the TV first).

Practice giving your wife at least five sincere compliments per day. In no time, you will begin to see the benefits. Your wife will begin to live up to the vision you have set for her. Since you told her she is beautiful, she will become beautiful. Since you told her she is thin, she'll become thinner. Since you told her she looks shapely in her new blouse, she'll live to fulfill the vision.

It may take a few weeks, but it will happen. Guaranteed.

Do you know why women put on weight? It is almost always because of a neglectful husband. And if you see a woman who has "let herself go," then it's not her you should be blaming, but the man in her life.

Would you deprive yourself of all the culinary delights a prosperous society has to offer if your husband never even noticed the sacrifice? Would you work out and go to a gym if you came home every day to a monosyllabic brute whose backside was buried deep in the couch and whose head was inextricably attached to the TV?

MOREOVER, so many ignored wives today are sensually deprived. Their husbands don't hug them, kiss them, make love to them, or even touch them. So they compensate for sensual deprivation in one area by making up for it in another. In short, they eat.

And who could blame them? Your out-to-lunch husband makes you feel ordinary and overlooked. But a big dinner makes you feel good about yourself.

Studies show that married women are on average about 20 percent heavier than single ones. Why? Well, as the saying goes, the single woman comes home, checks what's in the fridge and then goes to bed. But the married woman comes home, checks what's in the bed, and then goes to the fridge.

ALL THIS mumbo-jumbo about looking good for yourself is nice, but it will never inspire a woman as much as looking great for someone she loves. Because she doesn't want to be in love with herself. She wants to be in love with her man.

I wrote an entire book on infidelity called Kosher Adultery (before you get any ideas, the book is about how a marriage can be turned into an illicit affair.) The number-one giveaway that a husband is having an affair is him doing something incredibly stupid like arriving home with another woman's underwear around his neck or her phone number tattooed to his arm. That's because men have affairs mostly to boost their self-esteem, so subconsciously they brag about it without even being aware of it.

But a wife cheats primarily because she is ignored and neglected by her husband. So since his ignorance is the cause of the affair, it stands to reason that just as he doesn't know his wife is alive, he also doesn't know that she is cheating on him.

So how does a husband find out? Well, the biggest giveaway is that she starts growing her hair long, buys colorful clothing, exchanges her cotton undergarments for silk - and goes on a diet.

Some stranger started complimenting her and telling her that she was slim and beautiful. So she became slim and beautiful.

Why did it have to be a lover? Why did it have to tear the family apart? Why couldn't it have been her husband? The sad history of relationships has been that the female need for attention is almost never met by the male attention span.

But that is a history we can today reverse. All it takes is a compliment.




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brooklyn




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 07 2006, 12:11 pm
chocolate moose wrote:
Inspire your kids, TV rabbi advises


Studies show that married women are on average about 20 percent heavier than single ones. Why? Well, as the saying goes, the single woman comes home, checks what's in the fridge and then goes to bed. But the married woman comes home, checks what's in the bed, and then goes to the fridge.



Rolling Laughter Rolling Laughter Rolling Laughter Rolling Laughter
Funny but true.
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greenfire




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 07 2006, 12:15 pm
I laughed too!
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amother


 

Post Thu, Dec 07 2006, 12:18 pm
But the married woman comes home, checks what's in the bed??????????????????????????????????????????????????

Most working mothers barely have time to sleep or eat!
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MommyLuv




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 07 2006, 2:00 pm
Who said anything about sleep? LOL Tongue Out
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 07 2006, 5:27 pm
Quote:
Do you know why women put on weight? It is almost always because of a neglectful husband. And if you see a woman who has "let herself go," then it's not her you should be blaming, but the man in her life.


Nobody screaming about this? shock
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