Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Family, Real Love (35 page)

Money is complicated. People have written tomes on the psychology of money—some yearn for money to replace love they need; others use money to control and demoralize people in order to satisfy their own insecurities. We, Jewish mothers, believe that the secret is to treat money seriously enough to make sure you can provide what you need in this world, but not so seriously that greed corrupts your values. Money should never stand in the way of love, friendship and trust.

Life is short. As our friend once told us, there are no luggage racks on the hearse. We believe you might as well enjoy spending what you want and saving what you want, with no regrets. Give away as much as you are comfortable with while you are still alive so you can enjoy seeing your loved ones appreciate and enjoy the money too. Remember that money is round, and don’t judge people by their pocketbooks. When you leave this world, you take with you your reputation, and you leave your bank account behind. Your good name is more important.

 

 

 

 

T
he most important thing in life you will ever do is parent a child, and that is the one thing you can’t learn in school. Even if someone teaches you how to change a diaper, she will never be able to teach you how to manage things when your firstborn won’t stop crying in the middle of the night. It is a law of nature that you will be the giver and your children will be the takers. They will take the
kishkes
out of you. Count on it. You will also worry about them from the day they are born until the day you die. You will worry more about them than they will ever worry about you. This is the way God made us. We Jewish mothers accept this. So should you.

If you are lucky, you learn the dos and don’ts of parenting from a set of good, loving parents. Our parents believed that we were the most important human beings on the planet. Sacrifices made for our welfare were as natural as breathing; they were unspoken and unforced. This is a value we hope we have passed on to our children; good parents put their children ahead of themselves. If your own parents weren’t the best, then find a parenting mentor. That person could be another relative, a teacher, a friend or the parent of a friend.

Parenting advice abounds. Some rules you will make up as you go along. Here is what we know: The most important thing parents can do is communicate love to their child. Love makes up for a lot of personal flaws. It makes up for a parent who is busy, distracted, worried and forgetful. It compensates for a parent who is messy, is a lousy cook and comes late to parent-teacher night—can you tell we’ve all been there? Luckily, kids are resilient. They will forgive you again and again for your mistakes. The absence of love is the one thing that will cripple children. So make sure your children know you love them, every day and in as many ways as you can.

If you are interested in becoming a parent, you should ask yourself why. Do not have children if you are seeking happiness. It’s not that having kids automatically makes you unhappy, although it can—it’s just that
your
happiness is not the point of raising children. Being a parent means feeling such overwhelming love for your child that it can leave you breathless, but it can also make you feel that same level of despair. The experience of raising a child guarantees that you will feel joy, anger, pride, frustration, wonder, disappointment and awe. It isn’t for everyone. It doesn’t need to be for everyone—we see nothing wrong with choosing not to have children. We are convinced that people without kids end up with the fewest lines on their forehead and the most money saved in their bank account.

Nevertheless, all three of us wanted to be mothers. In our view, raising a child completes the human experience, whether or not that child is someone to whom you gave birth or someone you adopted. There is nothing quite so humbling in this world as watching your own child grow up to become a person who is not you—a person who, despite your best efforts, has a soul, spirit and mind of her own. That soul will defy you, contradict you and ultimately teach you more about yourself than any other person can. Just as you are meant to teach lessons to your children, so are you meant to learn from them. Also, we happen to come from a long line of really good mothers. What’s the sense of having all that wisdom if we can’t force it onto the next generation?

No child is easy, but some are definitely easier than others. What we attempt to do in this chapter is provide you with a set of guidelines that you may not learn in parenting books. This advice comes straight from our hearts and guts—and by guts, we mean
kishkes.

As you will see, to avoid being too preachy, not to mention hypocritical (guilty, guilty!), we have separated several of these sections into “What We Should Do” and “What We Really Do.” Hey, life is full of compromises.

The following are our basic parenting precepts. To us, these are classic “no-brainers,” commonsense, simple rules that need no extra explanations.

1.
Two parents are better than one.
Don’t holler—of course, there are exceptions to this rule. But it’s still a good rule. Two parents
are
better than one. If you don’t believe us, look up the statistics on how the kids of divorce do later in life when it comes to making their own commitments to marriage. If you are a new mother, you are lucky that in the last ten years the expectations of fathers have changed. Neither Sol, nor Bobby nor Bill changed a number two diaper—that we can tell you. Today’s father no longer gets away with walking out of the room merely holding his nose.

2.
Extended family makes a child feel secure.
Grandparents, aunts, cousins—being surrounded by family who care enough to cluck and discipline is good for a child. It’s good for the parents too.

3.
Kids will do what they see you do, not what you tell them to do.
You should parent by example. So play nice with your friends, don’t tell petty lies, and read the newspaper to see what is going on with the world. And don’t forget to call your mother, often.

4.
Act like a grown-up.
You are one, remember?

5.
Kids need structure.
This doesn’t mean your house needs to function like an army base, but your children should be able to count on three meals a day and someone to nag them to brush their teeth and do their homework. Routines give kids security.

6.
Kids need chores.
We expect our kids to pitch in to help with the basics, like setting and clearing the table, taking out the trash, making their beds and putting away groceries. Basic chores make children feel they are contributing to the family.

7.
Say no.
It’s your job to say no to your kids. When they do what they want anyway, be prepared with a reasonable consequence for disobeying you. Then enforce the consequence. (For goodness’ sakes, get up and take the kids out of the theater when they carry on—don’t spoil everyone else’s show). We’ve all drawn a blank or overreacted when our kids have done something unexpected and we can’t figure out an effective “punishment” for the “crime.” Good parenting requires thinking ahead.

8.
Boundaries.
All children need boundaries and must be told the rules. Consistency is difficult, but crucial.

9.
Apologize When Wrong.
We’ve all lost our temper. We’ve all said and done things to our children for which we are instantly sorry. Guess what? If we are wrong, we should apologize. It doesn’t make us weak to apologize; rather, it tells the kids we are human and we make mistakes, just like they do. So when they make mistakes, they need to apologize too.

Our society blames parents for their children’s transgressions and praises them for their children’s accomplishments. We’d rather take less blame and less credit. We can all see that there are great parents who have lousy kids and there are horrid parents who end up with wonderful children. For every neglected child who grows up to win a Nobel Prize, there are children from privileged and protected homes whose adulthood is spent in isolation and misery. Also, two kids who grow up in the same house with the same parents more often than not have completely different perspectives on their childhood. Even as you read this book, you will find Jill saying to Lisa, “Did we grow up in the same house?” Yes. And no.

If you are not yet a parent, you should know that kids are born the way they are born. Relax. You can’t control much of anything, and you probably can’t change that much either, especially when it comes to their temperament. If they are willful and stubborn as toddlers, they will probably stay that way. You can influence the books your kids read and the television shows they watch, and try to set the best example humanly possible, but if they start running with the wrong crowd, you are in trouble. Peers exert a greater influence than you do, and you won’t even know it until your children are all grown up and confide in you all the things you missed along the way. Do not fret about this—you are not supposed to know everything. Your child’s journey into adulthood is meant to contain secrets from you.

You are probably thinking, then why read this chapter at all? If the whole thing is a crapshoot anyway, then why bother following anyone’s advice? Just because you probably can’t change the outcome of a situation, are you then supposed to abandon the struggle? Absolutely not! If there is one thing the Jewish mother believes, it is that despite the outcome, the battle must be fought.

Obviously, some things make a huge difference in a child’s well-being—showing love, giving plenty of attention and setting a good example. So do your best; don’t shirk your responsibilities. But if you have done your best, don’t flog yourself if the child you raised didn’t grow up to be the adult you envisioned. The universe plays funny tricks on all of us. We are meant to learn lessons from every significant relationship. If your relationship with your child or parent is less than wonderful, examine your behavior. If you can look at yourself and absolve yourself of blame, then absolve yourself of guilt. If not, then fix what is fixable before it’s too late. People don’t live forever.