Chaya

Model it. If we say no to ourselves about something that we want, kids are psychic. They know that we want a new coat, but we have the resilience to say no to ourselves.

Elisheva

I agree. But I don’t think we can just be like, “Well, I didn’t get a new coat, so you can’t get a cool coat.” I think I’m a fairly nerdy person, and I still want to look normal. When I made a simchah, I didn’t want it to look nerdy to my relatives who flew in from America. So we can’t say, “Well, I care about looking nice 17 percent, so you may only care 17 percent. If you care 25 percent, you’re out.”

Raizy

Elisheva, you’re talking from a sur mei’ra perspective. I think it has to be more of an aseh tov thing. You have to put your focus in the right places, and then it won’t be in the wrong places.

I remember when my kids came home from school and were like, “Oh, this guy’s father got a Jaguar, that guy’s got one.” I said, “Good for him.” The end. I was not impressed and they knew it. But when my kids came home and told me about a siyum his friend’s father made, I would go on about how amazing it is. It’s not about deprivation. It’s about living a certain way with a certain set of values.

Ayala

I hear you, but if you have a child who needs to work on a middah like controlling his anger, for example, you can’t just be like, “I’m a very calm person, so therefore my child’s going to pick up on my calmness and overcome his anger by default.” No, you have to actively give them tools.

Chaya

I like that. It’s giving them the tools to be able to say no to themselves. When they’re having that tantrum after you say you can’t have that sweatshirt, and they’re freaking out for two days, they need the tools to get over that upset about a sweatshirt. Maybe that means saying no more often. Kids need to hear the word.

Elisheva

But do you think that saying no too often is going to create a boomerang effect where the kid just wants more and more and more stuff?

Leah

I know a family that lived in a way where the parents bought what the kids needed, and that’s it. Everything else, the kids had to fill in. They got one Shabbos outfit per season, and if they wanted another one, they bought it themselves, that type of thing. There are a number of kids, all married, all very different now. One lives a very simple lifestyle married to a huge talmid chacham; they live on nothing. She grew up on nothing; she doesn’t need stuff. Her brother is the wealthiest person I know. Beyond wealthy, and also no longer frum. And the drive for both of those lifestyles came from the parents.

Miri

So what do you think the parents should have done differently?

Ayala

I think you have to be confident in the tone you set for your house, and live from that place of confidence, and then everyone has bechirah. This case sounds extreme, and maybe the parents should have adjusted when they saw that the second kid really, really needed the stuff — that’s chinuch al pi darko. But if you’re a loving family and your home is a happy place, then everybody has bechirah to follow your path or not as an adult. Look — one kid did, one didn’t.

Miri

This comes up a lot. Just because you value less materialism or you have the adult perspective of understanding that things will spiral out of control, doesn’t mean that your kids have that. Your kid could have completely different needs, Leah. So you need to make sure your kid doesn’t feel deprived. Sometimes you have parents in kollel, and they’re like, “Our budget is limited, we’re not buying that.” The kids didn’t make that decision, so why is it fair that they have the fallout?

Ayala

Finish your thought, Miri, because we are about to have a huge fight.

Miri

I think that to an extent, when kids are older, there are things they can do to make their own money. But it’s not the kids’ fault that you decided something, especially if it’s a little bit more restrictive than whatever the norm is in your area. If it’s not a hashkafah thing, but a budget choice, it’s very difficult for kids who are not on the same page as parents.

Raizy

How is it not a hashkafic thing? Imagine you say, “I decided in my house that we keep higher standards of kashrus.” Your kids didn’t make that choice! How can you force it on them?

Elisheva

But can you force your children to adopt all of your values?

Ayala

Of course not, but it’s about your own value systems. Are you raising your children with the idea that we are privileged to be living this life? Or are you raising your children with the idea that Tatty and Mommy chose this, sorry. If you’re raising your children to feel privileged, then half the battle is gone. My kids want what everyone in their class has, but they are also incredibly proud that their father is learning and that they have something not everybody else has.

Raizy

Rav Moshe Feinstein is famous as having said that that’s why most people stopped keeping Shabbos in America, because their parents said, “Es shver tzu zein a Yid.”

Miri

One second. This has nothing to do with Shabbos. Shabbos is a mitzvah, and it’s your responsibility as a parents to be mechanech children for the reasons why and why you love it. On the other hand, a $500 coat is not inherently right or wrong. If I say this is not what we do, but they go to school and their best friend is wearing the coat, then it rings hollow.

Raizy

No, it rings hollow if you care and you say you don’t.

Ayala

Okay, I’m going to give a different example. Princess Charlotte is not going to be allowed to wear red nail polish when she grows up. Nobody’s going to feel bad for her. Nobody’s going to say, oh, poor princess, I’m so sorry for you, we’re going to change the rules for you.

Miri

Unless she goes out of the house and three of her friends are wearing red nail polish.

Ayala

Her friends absolutely will wear it. Only the royal family is not allowed.

Miri

Let’s take it to the nimshal now. Let’s say you’re saying to your daughter, we don’t wear red nail polish because you’re a princess. But guess what? My best friend, Tziporah, is supposedly a princess like me, and she has it.

Ayala

This has happened in my house, more than once. My 12-year-old daughter wanted a manicure  party for her bas mitzvah. A lot of the girls in her class did it.  I’m sure they did. But we’re not “all her friends,” and our standards are not the same. I don’t think it’s appropriate, and I didn’t allow it.

Miri

I don’t know, I don’t think princess examples work when all the princesses in their lives are doing things you don’t allow.

Ayala

What can I say? It worked.

Chaya

Let’s get back to those kids throwing tantrums. They do get over it. Your daughter might have been upset about the no for a day or two, but then she’s back to feeling proud of being part of your family.

Ayala

Exactly.

Chaya

My friend says a similar thing about camp. She always says her girls call up the first day of camp. “Mommy, this one has this and that one has that, and I didn’t get the right sneakers, and I didn’t get the right whatever.”

And she’s always like, “Give it a day. And after that, they see who you are as a person, and you shine for who you are.” The first couple of days everyone’s feeling insecure, and then it passes.

Miri

Okay, I hear that. My mother is extremely down to earth and pared back. She has no interest in anything luxurious. She spends more for quality, but she has a vehement hate of brands and the running after brands. As kids, we totally felt restricted. I remember I so badly wanted a Gap sweatshirt and Gap knapsack. Finally, finally I convinced my mother to get me one from the Gap outlet in Woodbury. It was a completely nondescript black knapsack. I don’t think it had a logo anywhere, but it was from Gap, and I was like, “I made it!”

Leah

Did her approach backfire?

Miri

Totally not! We argued with her night and day, literally night and day. And we were like, “You’re ruining our lives. You’re so mean to us.” But you know what? It did not backfire. So I do hear that there’s, like, an element of just powering through the kvetching.

Chaya

Even if the tantrums are years long.

Ayala

And here’s what we started with. I bet 80 percent of the kids in your class had Gap knapsacks, right? If your mother would have asked, she would have been told to buy it.

Chaya

That’s the scary part.

Elisheva

I’m going to disagree, because I think we want our kids to be frum and committed to our lifestyle. That means they need to have a community and friends where they feel comfortable. And part of that is being normal, being part of the crowd. If you’re the odd one out, it’s very, very hard to feel connected.

Miri

But having everything set up for you so that you’re perfectly primed is not necessarily giving you the building blocks to be a successful adult with a happy adult life.

Elisheva

No matter what you buy them, your kids are going to have plenty of hurdles as they go through life.

Miri

Having the wrong coat is not a hardship. But having the wrong coat and developing the character to be okay with not always fitting in is valuable.

Elisheva

But I’m looking at this from the other side. I grew up wearing Payless shoes. I’m a big believer in Payless shoes. I’m revealing my extreme nerdy roots here. But if I lived in town, it would not be right of me to say to my daughter, “I’m sorry, we’re buying your shoes from Target. That’s it. I don’t care if every single other girl in your class is getting expensive shoes.” Kids do have to be normal, and normal is relative.

Miri

We built a society on conformity. Conformity is valued.

Elisheva

Exactly, we type ourselves by our black hats, or our sheitels. We want people to follow a certain dress code.

Miri

100%. So why are we surprised? Why are we surprised that it filtered into everything?

Chaya

I think there’s another factor. I think it boils down to parents giving in because they are afraid of their kids in general.

Why are kids so entitled today? When we were kids, we worked hard to earn things.  Can someone tell me why girls don’t babysit anymore? It’s the most ridiculous thing. It makes no sense. And parents don’t push their girls to do it. Because the girls don’t want to.

Raizy

Babysitting is a good example because I think it just shows the parents’ fear of their kids not liking them. Parents are afraid to force their kids into doing anything.

Leah

I don’t push my daughter to babysit. She works too hard, she’s tired, she needs to unwind and read at night. At the same time, my daughter has my credit card in her wallet, so anything she needs, she just uses my credit card. She’s very careful with it, that’s why I trust her, but maybe I’m setting a standard for my other kids, some whom I wouldn’t trust the same way. Maybe I’m doing something awful. But you’re right. Why does nobody babysit?

Chaya

I’m using babysitting as an example because I think it just shows the parents’ gross fear of their kids not liking them. So parents are afraid to force their kids into doing anything.

Miri

You need to start early. My son is applying to camp for the first time. Camp is a fortune. And I told him, “Dovi, camp is a fortune. One of the big things in camp is canteen, also a fortune. I think you should be contributing to your canteen fund, because camp gives you meals, canteen is an extra.” He’s not happy with me. He’s like, “Everyone’s parents pay.” And that may be true, but there are plenty of ways he could make money. I’m not putting him in a position where he has to take any specific jobs, but I’m also not going to bail him out if he doesn’t.

So let’s say in a few years, my daughter Shevi says, “I’m not babysitting.” No problem. But the next time you want something that I say I’m not buying for you — that was your option.

Chaya

But what I’m trying to say is that parents don’t say no to their kids. You might, Miri, but we all know that there are many, many parents who don’t. So it doesn’t come up. Parents don’t have opportunities where they’re going to end up saying no because they just don’t. I think one of the reasons there’s no natural consequence between not working hard as a kid to buy the things you want is because the parents also want their kids to have those things.

Raizy

And one of the most basic things of adulthood is understanding cause and effect, right? If you don’t work for something, you can’t have it. If you don’t have a good understanding of that, you can be 50 years old and still be a child.

Chaya

We keep talking about kids as if they’re staying kids forever. Our main goal as parents is to raise our children to adulthood and to raise them to be productive, well-balanced adults. So you could say from today to tomorrow that my kid needs this because he’s going to be left out, and my kid needs that because he’s going to be left out, but then what kind of adult are you raising?

Elisheva

What about when you can get away with it, but your kid’s not cool and confident? Maybe she really does need stuff to fit in?

My daughter struggled socially, and I was very, very makpid on how she dressed, and it made a difference. Is she Mrs. Cool, confident, popular? Absolutely not. But does she fit in enough that she has her two to three friends? Yeah. Would she if she were in charge of her wardrobe? I am highly skeptical.

Miri

There’s a major point here which I feel like is an issue. If your kid is nerdy or struggles socially, let them find the friends that are on their level. There is someone for everyone. You don’t have to be friends with the popular girls.

Chaya

But let’s say you want someone to look in your direction.

Miri

Why can’t you look in their direction? You’ll find someone who’s a good fit for you and it might not be someone in your class, it might be a neighbor, it might be a cousin. And you’ll be happier because you could be yourself. If you restructure expectations so your goal is not to be in the “It” crowd, but to invest in one good friendship, and you teach your kid how to be a good friend, to attract good friends, you’ve given him a valuable life skill.

Chaya

Say the parent didn’t do that. And their kid is 14 years old, and they’re nerdy. Starting from the ground up is a yearslong job. What do you do then?

Miri

Do it anyway because the year is going to pass either way, and she’ll either have a friend at the end or she’ll be miserable at the end.

Chaya

Do you boost them up, like quick fix it?

Raizy

If by boosting them up, you mean covering them in a bunch of clothes, how is that boosting them up?

Miri

They’re not going to make real friendships that way.

Leah

I think that when you see a kid chalishing for stuff, there’s more going on than just the stuff.

I have one child who is very social, very popular. And then I have a child who’s less social, a little bit more difficult, and he needs things like you can’t imagine. I spend more on him than I do on my other kids but maybe that’s not the right thing. I shouldn’t be filling him with things because he struggles socially. But it’s a hard call. I see that he really needs it, and I said before, I don’t want it to become an obsession, either.

Chaya

I think a lot of this goes back to the mothers. Lots of mothers groom this from when their kids are little. They want to pick their kids chevra, so they provide their kids with whatever the chevra has.

Raizy

This is a real thing. I’m telling you. My friend was saying something about how she’s very busy picking her kids’ friends. And her therapist is trying to tell her that she can’t micromanage her kid’s life. But she was like, “My kid can’t be friends with nerds. It’s a reflection on the family.”

Leah

But what about those people who are not like that, they are actually very practical, they just believe designer stuff is just nicer. I have a friend like that.

Raizy

I totally hear that. It is nicer. You look at a floral dress that was made in China, the pattern never lines up at the seams.

Miri

Guess what, girl! Those are not the only two options. It’s not utter garbage or high-end labels. There are other options. There is a midrange. It won’t be cheap, it’ll be classy, and it’ll last.

Chaya

I have a cousin who gives her kids a lot of things. But one of her kids gets even more than the others, and she says it’s about respecting her kid and what he likes.

Leah

I kind of agree with that.

Chaya

Well, you can make that whole cheshbon, and it might even feel all right, but it has such an effect on other people. I think you have to consider that you’re raising the bar for everybody else.

Leah

I don’t think that should be a cheshbon at all. I do what’s good for my child.

Raizy

Okay, what if you say I don’t have time and patience to go shopping for clothes. I’m just going to one store, an expensive store where I know I’ll find cute stuff. I’ll get each kid two outfits and goodbye. That’s great for me. But the fact is, my kids are going to school with a lot of other kids, and now because my kids are walking around with fancy outfits, every other kid (parent) wants it, too.

How much responsibility do we need to hold?

Leah

Zero.

Miri

I don’t think it’s zero, but I think it’s very low. Unless you’re a rav or a mashpia or you have a position of influence, it ranks low. Do what you think is right because you think it’s right.

Chaya

I totally disagree. I think every single person contributes and every person that got a new blank or wears a new whatever, you’re one more person going to Florida in the class.

Raizy

Agree. We’re all part of the klal. We have a responsibility.

Miri

You have a social responsibility to be a good person. You have a social responsibility to do the right thing. You don’t have a social responsibility to buy something junkier.

I will say there are certain things that there’s no reason for, like cars above a certain level. At a certain point, it’s just like you’re just spending to spend. The quality is not increasing.

My husband travels a lot. When he’s leasing a car, he’s definitely not getting something super low-end because he’s spending many hours a week driving, and it needs to be comfortable. But he’s not getting a BMW, because at a certain point, the value plateaus. You spend more, but you’re not getting higher quality. So there is a point where you could stop, and it’s below the point of what society deems as rich, cool, whatever. But that’s a personal choice. You need to say, I have the self-control and restraint to stop at a certain point because it’s the right thing to do, nothing to do with society.

Raizy

Let’s say you’re a gvir. So you say I can make this crazy wedding. Why not? I have the money, why can’t I enjoy it?

Ayala

And I’m going to get stuck making a crazy wedding because you did.

Miri

Let me just be clear. I am not advocating for “why not” life. I’m saying you have an achrayus to yourself and to your children to be a person who lives a moderate life of restraint because it’s a good middah to be a restrained person. What that means is very personal. It’s specialized to you. It means don’t spend every penny you have. It means set an example for your children. Give tzedakah, do the things with your money that you’re supposed to do, and stop thinking about it so much. And I think the social responsibility contributes to materialism because you’re so focused on how is everyone cataloging you vis-à-vis everyone else in the community, based on the sweatshirt you buy your child? Ridiculous. A waste of your brain space.

Chaya

I agree with that. But there are still facts, right? So we could say the Kleins, they’re really good people, they teach their kids such good middos, and they made a weekend bar mitzvah in so and so hotel, and now the other people are also going to make a weekend bar mitzvah in so and so hotel, and I’m the tenth bar mitzvah in the class. Where am I doing it?

Ayala

Let me put it this way. The Kleins are very wealthy. No one is asking them to make a poor bar mitzvah. They should spend the money that is normal in their circles. Do they need to look at their friends and say,  the Steins are making a bar mitzvah right after me, so they’re going to want to one-up me. And the Friedmans are going to be right after the Steins, and they’re not quite so wealthy, but they’re going to want to do at least what the Steins did. Is there any point that the Kleins need to say, “We’re making the first bar mitzvah in the class. We shouldn’t buy $100,000 flowers even though we can afford it because we’re starting to set a trend?”

Miri

At no point do you need to think like that. If you’re in an inherent position to have influence over others, then that’s something to take into account. If you’re a regular Joe Schmo off the street, it’s gaavah to be like, people care about me. It’s gaavah to say, people are looking at my choices.

Chaya

I think human nature is to follow, and human nature is to be competitive. And because of both of those things, we really have to be careful about how we’re contributing to our group, we don’t live in vacuums.

Ayala

And think of me. I’m the last bar mitzvah, and at that point, it’s become the norm, and my kid will feel deprived if his bar mitzvah doesn’t have what everyone else’s does. But I don’t have the money for all that.

Miri

It’s not my achrayus that people are sheep.

Chaya

Do you believe that there is such a concept as raising the bar in general?

Miri

I think that the problem is that people care. The problem is that you’re allowing someone else’s actions to influence you. And that is not right. You stay moderate because that is the right thing to do.

Raizy

You’re saying stay moderate based on what you think, and Chaya is saying stay moderate based on what other people are doing.

Miri

That’s the difference. Stay moderate because staying moderate is the right thing to do. And if everyone does what they think is the right thing, everyone will be happy.

Chaya

I don’t know. I think you need to be aware of how are your actions going to affect other people. It’s being considerate.

Miri

I’m all for being considerate. I think you’re taking it to a degree to which it doesn’t need to be taken. You should be considerate in your actions and your middos and how you interact with other people.

Planning your own bar mitzvah is not an interaction with other people.

Raizy

So let’s say it’s not a bad thing to do what you want to do, you’re looking inward, you decide it’s okay for you. But what a shevach on a person who can do more and doesn’t.  And by the way, I would say that this is like a time of shmad when it comes to gashmiyus. And in times of shmad, we need extreme measures. So maybe theoretically what you’re saying is true. But for people to be able to rise above, look around and do something more responsible even if they didn’t have to, there’s something to that.

Miri

I totally agree with that.

Chaya

If you agree, then you agree that there’s a responsibility.

Miri

No, I’m saying not out of your responsibility to others, out of the fact that that in itself is the right thing to do.

My point of view is never to be a trendsetter. It’s to not care what the trends are. It’s to stop looking around. I’m 100 percent on the same page as you. I’m just saying the motivation should not be because of the next person or what other people are doing. The motivation should be that I think I’m doing the right thing.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 871)