I was recounting a story to my grandmother the other day about the cultural differences between the United States and Israel regarding how children are viewed and valued. In the United States, good children are seen and not heard. Americans love to see smiling cherubic faces dressed in spotless clothing, toted about as designer accessories that serve as testimonies to their parents’ fertility, success, and personal legacies.
The ideal child is one who is frozen on a Laura Ashley catalogue page, an extension of who their parents want to be themselves – slim, pretty, stylish, active, happy, and forever young. What happens when our tiny lap dogs nip at an unsuspecting admirer patting their heads? What is the reaction when our children don’t behave as the beautiful and silent collector dolls we need them to be in order to magnify our own image of success?
When I became a parent, I soon found that my new extension of myself was not the compliant infant action figure I needed him to be. He would complain at the worst moments (like when I was trying to show him off to friends and relatives). He was awful about cooperating for photographs. He loudly decided he was ready for his lunch right when I was sitting down to my own. He messed up multiple trendy baby outfits over the course of a 24 hour day. In short, he wasn’t the baby I had been promised by Gymboree. He was his own person from day one, and if we were going to get along, I had to learn that he wasn’t simply an extension of my own ego, but his own little person. We had to learn to compromise.
While my child schooled me about his individuality rather quickly, as I’m sure many babies have schooled their unsuspecting parents, we tend to assume that this lesson doesn’t apply to other children. We still expect other people’s kids to be porcelain LLadro figurines when we see them in restaurants, stores, or any public venue where they are on display. If they shatter our peace with loud noises, crying, fidgeting, we are completely unforgiving. I think the farther out we are from having our own babies, the more we forget the lessons of parenting young children. We tend to romanticize our own infants as well as our own parenting. “When my daughter was that age, I never allowed her to behave that way!”
Many years ago, I was a working mother with one very opinionated toddler, a baby, and another one baking in the oven. Coming back home from downtown on the Metra train, I stewed over a dilemma. I didn’t have enough diapers to get through to the next morning and I needed to go to the store. My babysitter insisted on leaving promptly at 6pm. My train wouldn’t get me home much before that time. It was always a race to the finish line to relieve my babysitter; I was always worried that she would quit if she felt that I was taking advantage of her.
There were no quick convenience stores on the route from the train to my apartment. Any stop would require going into a larger grocery store or Target, which would mean at least a 15 minute delay. I pictured rushing in the door at 6:15pm to my babysitter’s glare, as she told me that this was not the first time I had been late coming home, and that she’d had it. She wouldn’t be coming back in the morning; I would have to find someone else to watch my kids. I would have to call in sick the next day, and the day after that, until either I found another quickly screened babysitter, or lost my job altogether. I went straight home.
The only problem with this plan was that my toddler didn’t do stores. Taking him to a store was a certain tantrum, and my son’s tantrums were a 9 on the Richter scale. A simple 5 minute task like buying diapers could turn into a 45 minute battle. That night was no different. As I walked in the door, my babysitter walked out the door promptly at 6pm. Still in my own coat, I bundled up my two charges, and heaved the baby onto my hip, careful to avoid knocking him into the other baby bump inside my belly. My toddler led our small party down the stairs and we made our way to the car and into the intricate straps and fasteners of their car seats. Target or bust.
Once we were at the store, unfastened from the car, and refastened into a cart, I tried to make a beeline for the diaper section. Damn their crafty marketing! In order to get to the baby section we had to pass a minefield of toys. Shelf after shelf of magical dream worlds beckoned to my toddler. I imagined I was racing a boxcart, looking like a lunatic pushing my boys faster than safety allowed, past the legos, the soccer balls, the action figures, the costumes, the clacking/clucking/coo-cooing dolls that called my son to come closer. Despite my best attempt to rush past temptation and get to the diaper aisle unscathed, my son was faster. Before I knew it, he had unclicked himself from the cart and made a beeline to a $50 dollar electronic Darth Vader mask. I caught up to him in the middle of having an animated conversation with the heavily breathing Darth. A child comforting an alien in the midst of an apparent asthma attack.
“This! Buy this!” he demanded.
Of course we wouldn’t buy it. We were here for diapers. I was praying that my debit card had enough money on it for diapers. Even if I had wanted to buy a Darth Vadar mask meant for a 12 year old, for a 2 year old, I didn’t have $50 to buy it. I almost grabbed a $5 action figure as a bribe to forget the Darth Vadar mask, but thought better of it. This was a life lesson. We can’t always get what we want when we want it. I was not about to encourage impulsive spending – it would only teach him that he could demand unreasonable things every time we went shopping. Well, you can probably imagine how that went over.
After putting the mask back on the shelf, my child threw himself onto the floor in a kicking and screaming frenzy. My cart, with the baby in it, seemed to be rolling farther down the aisle away from me as I attempted to lift the red-faced, tearful mass while not getting my baby bump kicked by little feet in the process. Lifting him horizontally by a leg and an arm, we made our way back to the cart as a pair of ice dancers performing an intricate stunt. People stared, people glared, all conversation seemed to stop as the only sound was the siren of my son’s screams and the squeaky wheels of the shopping cart.
I whizzed down the diaper aisle and threw in a pack without stopping. Gaining momentum, I raced to the checkout lanes to find them all full. We came to a screeching halt at a 10 item or less line, all heads turning in our direction.
“Someone tell her to shut that kid up!”
“Call security! That kid is disturbing the peace! No one should be allowed to yell like that in a store!”
“Why don’t you buy him some candy to make him quiet? He’ll stop crying if you buy candy.”
The entire time I tried to coax, cajole, threaten, and mind meld my son into silence. If only I were a Vulcan. Briefly, I considered admitting defeat, leaving the diapers, and hauling the kids back into the car without my trophy. However, I had come this far, it didn’t pay to leave now. I had to endure. Red faced and humiliated, obviously the worst parent on the planet with the brattiest kid ever to live, I waited in that checkout line while my son melted into a puddle inside the cart, my baby sitting silent and somewhat confused in the front section. I think I started crying myself on the drive home, and by the time we arrived, had called my husband at work hysterical over the crisis that was already over. I think he was confused over my level of distress. I guess you had to be there.
This experience was a stark contrast to a similar circumstance that occurred during a family trip to Israel. My youngest son was 2 years old, and suffering from a horrible case of shilshul in addition to fever. Why do kids always get sick during vacations? Anyway, on one of his worst mornings, I told my husband that I would stay behind with him. Of course, this idea was not acceptable. We had paid a fortune for the trip, the private tour guide who would be taking us around that day, and we were going to go as a family. It would be a complete waste to stay behind because of a sick child (remember, this is the last kid in a line of many – you know, the one who if the pacifier falls on the floor for 5 seconds or less, you blow on it and pop it back in his mouth?).
Anyway, as you can imagine, the excursion was simply delightful. Changing loose stool diapers in the scorching desert is an experience that no parent should miss out on. At some point, nearing lunch time, my child began to scream in the car.
“He’s just hungry.” my husband said. “We’re all hungry. We’ll stop for lunch.”
I was skeptical. My son was sweating bullets, red faced, and his stomach was making the gurgling sounds of a latent volcano.
We arrived on a street filled with little shops and cafes. I don’t remember much about it because my child’s screams were searing a hole into my very being. However, if I recall correctly, it seemed lovely. We entered a small restaurant and sat down. As we tried to casually peruse the menu, my son whooped, gasped, hollered, and snortled. Everyone went about their business as if nothing was happening, including my own family. I wondered if I was in some sort of alternate reality. I was the only one who could hear my baby’s cries, and he was depending upon me to save him.
Finally, I got up from my seat and took my son out of his stroller.
“I’m taking him outside for a walk.” I announced.
My husband appeared relieved, apparently he was aware of our child’s caterwauling but had chosen to play it cool.
We emerged into the heat, with me patting his back and murmuring soothing words and sounds as we walked. My shoulder was soggy with tears, snot, and the misery of illness. Happy people were sitting enjoying lattes at outdoor cafes, window shopping, and casually strolling in conversation. My child’s cries seemed to echo down the avenue as I walked and bounced and patted. I suddenly became fearful that people would be angry at this rude interruption. Maybe someone would call the police or security? My fears were realized when someone came up behind me and called for my attention.
I turned around to find the tanned face of an Israeli man.
“Here,” he said, shoving a balloon into my hand. “You give it to him.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, people came up to us.
“What’s wrong with him?” a woman asked with concern. “Is he not feeling well?”
“Poor baby.” another lady said, patting him on the back. “Why are you crying?”
I couldn’t believe the level of concern and acceptance. I had been told that in Israel, children are considered a gift. Kids are valued. However, now I was experiencing that love first hand. It was truly remarkable and something that I will never forget.
I know that Jews value children, value the preservation of our people, rely on the continuity of Torah through each generation. To me, the way we treasure our children is one of the main things that separates us from the secular world. Simply having children isn’t what brings us glory, rather, the care and consideration we show to our children brings us glory. They make us better people by the lessons we learn and the sacrifices we make in parenting them.
Lately, I’ve been seeing disturbing signs that some in the Jewish community are falling prey to outside attitudes about the role of children. Children are to be seen and not heard; children are not fully fledged people with feelings; children can be used and harmed and get over it. Children are there to reflect the image we want to project about ourselves, our families, our communities. If an adult victimizes a child, the consequences would be much worse for the adult than the child. Therefore, it’s best to protect the adult, because children are resilient.
Hence, we see an orthodox community celebrating the release from prison of a man charged with bribing a sex abuse victim to drop charges against her rapist. We see respected rabbis pleading for leniency for a man charged with possession of child pornography and solicitation of a minor for sex. We absorb the overall message that an adult’s life is more important than that of a child. Our image is more important than the well being of our minors. We see that when an accused pedophile or those who seek to obstruct justice for a child victim is given a lesser sentence, released from jail after serving time, or has the charges dropped due to insufficient evidence or the victim deciding not to press charges, it is cause for celebration. If we have reached this point where children don’t matter in the Jewish community, it’s time to admit that we have all gone off the derech.
