Our beloved rabbi, Rabbi Ira Stone of the Mussar Institute in Philadelphia, gave us this solid and meaningful advice about Jewish parenting:

Raise healthy children who will be able to serve God and develop themselves morally without struggling with their own psychological health.  

    Rabbi Stone guided us through my Conversion and our Jewish wedding 12 years ago, teaching us a beautiful Judaism in the process.  We lost touch with Rabbi Stone for many years; in the meantime Alon and I became parents in Los Angeles.  We struggled to find our own path as parents.  Then, last year, we discovered that our parenting path paralleled the path Rabbi Stone and his wife, Annie, used to raise their own children two decades ago.  How amazing!  Could it be that Rabbi Stone’s teachings on Judaism intuitively informed our parenting choices?

 

    Attachment parenting is a large part of the parenting style we have in common with the Stones.  This means lots of holding, baby-wearing, infant massage, breast-feeding, co-sleeping, and responding to the needs of our babies and children.  These keep us very busy yet also strongly bonded with the new people in our home.  And amazingly, the sacrifice of personal freedom and mobility that accompanies this style of parenting, although very difficult to accept at first, has become one of the best shapers of our ability to follow a spiritual path in life!  As my yoga teachers told me when I was pregnant with my first child: “when you have a baby, her care becomes your yoga practice.”  In other words, focusing completely on another person's needs is a spiritual practice. 

    Rabbi Stone's favorite teaching is that the "other" is a stand-in for God.   With attachment parenting, the baby is the "other" so that loving and caring for the baby is a way of loving and serving God.  In a similar way, the parent becomes a stand-in for God to the baby.  Kitty, our first Nurse as new parents, taught us this concept in the context of her Christian beliefs as she encouraged us to abandon nursing schedules in order to breast-feed our newborn on demand.  She preached, "Newly born and separated from the realm of angels, your baby looks to you, her parents, for sustenance.  What will you teach this baby about her new world and therefore about God?"

      So it seems that devoting ourselves to our children serves a holy purpose:  we teach both ourselves and our children to trust, love, and ultimately to serve God.

    Parenting mistakes, including abuse, are often repeated generation after generation, despite the best intentions of each new parent.  Are we trapped in a cultural paradigm that becomes very specific for each family?  Or is there a way out?  I once heard a radio program about hatred.  The woman said, if you hate your mother for beating you, you will beat your children.  The only way to transcend your past is forgiveness.  But is this enough?  How deep is forgiveness, necessarily?  Can't we say we forgive, yet repress our hurt in a moment of so-called acceptance of our parents?  Hurt that has been shoved down into our subconscious is a demon that will control our behavior in the strangest ways. 
    Aletha Solter, the author of "The Aware Baby", explains that when a parent tries to care for his/her baby in a more demanding, generous way than he/she was parented as a baby, emotional pain can result.  A deep well-spring of grief over his/her own long-ago unmet infant needs can interfere with the ability to parent.  Her advice is to talk and cry and mourn-- to let the feelings flow out-- and thus to heal.
    I remember my journey through such a process with my first child, although I didn't really understand what was happening at the time.  My daughter was very attached to me, especially to nursing endlessly (2 hour stretches, for example), and I was worn out.  Not physically worn out-- in fact I would lie down with her and read or rest, which was very good for me.  But I was emotionally worn out.  I had fallen into a depression and I ached for my personal space.  Yet I couldn't allow myself to leave her crying in order to meet my own needs.  She would accept no one else, not even her daddy, who was reluctant to hold her while she screamed inconsolably.  One evening, when I thought she would let me go for a while, she called me back after 5 minutes, and I just collapsed.  I started crying, and then weeping, and then wailing.  This very deep place in myself was aching and releasing its pain through my voice. Two years later, I was seeing a Buddhist acupuncturist, and complaining to him about my daughter's seemingly endless need for attention and physical contact.  Again I was worn out and irritable.  He said to me that children have a natural desire for connection with parents and others whom they love.  If they are denied this connection in a loving, natural way, they will find other ways to connect, for instance through anger.  He suggested that I surrender to her and enjoy the connection myself.  Probably because I had already begun to heal my own grief, I was able to enter a state of deep connection with her.  Both of us were the better for it.
    A lot of self-help advice tells us what to do—gives us goals to strive for-- but it doesn’t explain how to be the kind of person who can reach these goals in an honest, true way.  For instance, we are told to be patient with and respectful to our children.  This is a great goal, I think.  But what about when I am irritable, sure that they are pushing me too far with their whining?  I become so impatient that I accuse them of being too demanding, needy and even mean.  I forget to respect their voices in the assuredness that I know what they are feeling.  When the moment has passed and I feel regret (often because they are crying or angry), I sometimes remember to apologize.  Other times I justify my actions and believe that I was teaching them to be respectful and patient themselves.  And there are other times when I am irritable and impatient, yet I pretend to be calm.  I don’t yell at my kids; instead I kneel down and talk with them.  Still, my heart is angry and I don’t really hear their words.  Not hearing their words, I cannot really respond to them as they need me to respond.
    Is there another way to be patient and respectful with my children?  I believe the only honest, true way to reach this goal is to feel the respect within myself.  When I am able to look at my children as beings who are as important and beautiful as I am, whose thoughts and feelings and needs are as valid and real as my own, then I can put myself aside in order to listen to my children.
    But what does it mean to put myself aside?  How do I do this?  How do I learn to “look at my children as beings who are as important and beautiful as I am”??  This is a line of thought that parenting books don’t pursue!  In fact, it takes a very disciplined spiritual practice to even begin to put myself aside.
    Parenting as a “Spiritual Jew” is my particular version of parenting as a spiritual person.  Judaism teaches me a discipline that helps me evolve as a person, so that I can eventually love and appreciate other people.  My family members are the closest people in my life, so I focus most of my efforts on loving them.  Yet the challenges of being with others are particular to neither Judaism nor parenting.  Thus, in order to become a better parent, I try to share wisdom with all kinds of spiritually-minded people. 
    Ultimately, though, no book or blog or well-intentioned advice or wisdom will help me act better towards my children.  The solution to this dilemma comes only through sustained, disciplined, focused work on my inner self.  One place to look, within Judaism, for a map of the work on the self, is to the tradition of Mussar.  In particular Rabbi Stone focuses his explorations of Mussar on the effect we have on others.  I would love to hear of other practices and avenues within Judaism that can teach this wisdom.