We all want to send our kids to the perfect school. It has perfect teachers perfect students and a perfect curriculum that fits your child perfectly. If you’ve found it let us know! Meanwhile the rest of you should consider the following:

Perfection Can Be Boring

Perfection is enjoyable for a short while and then it gets boring. It’s challenge that keeps us hopping! We need a problem we can sink our teeth into.

Fortunately Hashem has made sure that we’ll never be in short supply of this kind of stimulus. He shows His trust in our ability even from a tender age to deal with life’s difficulties. Moreover He prompts our growth and development by sending just the right-sized problems for our current stage of emotional and spiritual maturity. Hence unfair teachers mean classmates too much or too little stimulation difficult languages to decipher — among other prompts — are scattered before children as they march back to school at this time of year.

It is up to parents to show their trust that their kids can negotiate whatever Hashem puts before them. It’s up to parents to show kids that problems aren’t the exception in life but rather the very “stuff” that life is made up of. Instead of rushing to clear away every difficulty parents can help provide their children with a problem-solving skill set that will serve them well in life.

Discomfort Is Tolerable

The survival skill set must include a tolerance for discomfort. If the child is not in the class with his or her best friend the parent must feel that the show can go on. If the parent panics the child learns that uneasiness is unbearable. He won’t be able to cope. On the other hand the parent could choose to display confidence in the child’s ability to be flexible patient and resourceful (“I know it’s disappointing. It would have been so nice for the two of you to be together. I guess Hashem wants you to branch out a bit and discover new possibilities. Who knows — maybe you will discover a surprising new friend in the class this year!”).

The parent’s conviction that Hashem sets the stage benevolently can help the child adopt the attitude that he is in good Hands. Moreover he can feel that he has a trustworthy Helper through all difficulties; he is not alone.

Stress-Management Skills Are Necessary

It’s not wise to let a child play near a body of water without ensuring that he knows how to swim. Similarly sending children into the adult world without teaching them how to manage stress is highly irresponsible. The imperfection of school life brings lots of stressful learning opportunities. The goal once again is not to remove the stress so that the child won’t suffer but rather to teach the child how to deal with life’s problems.

Let’s say that the child finds homework unbearably tedious or hard. The parent can show the child how to find the best time and place in which to work how to break up the task into smaller more tolerable bits how to take pauses for rest and refreshment how to reward himself for task completion how to reach out to others for help and so on. Such steps will serve the child well throughout life giving him useful strategies for managing overwhelming tasks. Instead of giving up running away or using addictive habits to numb the pain the child can problem solve. He or she can figure out how to minimize pain and maximize coping.

Another example: let’s say that the child feels left out socially in the class. She’s too old for the parents to make “playdates” for her or otherwise intervene so she’s just miserable. Again the solution involves teaching the youngster effective stress-management skills. If you can’t be happy the way you want it to be (i.e. with lots of friends) then be happy the way Hashem arranged it to be (i.e. on your own).

The parent can also help the child to explore other ways to fill her time constructively and pleasurably: hobbies volunteerism creativity family activities and so on. Thinking outside the box is a vital life skill. There is always more than one way more than one path to happiness. Parents can teach this lesson to their children pointing them confidently in new directions. The “one-size-fits-all” cookie-cutter lifestyle is unrealistic and because it doesn’t work it induces great pain and suffering. Instead parents can uphold the belief that Hashem sends challenges in order to open new doors. A child’s loneliness can be the impetus for tremendous accomplishment and creativity that might otherwise have lain dormant.

School of Life

There are many other challenges that arise during the course of every school year. Find solutions where you can easily do so but don’t worry excessively when you can’t. “Unsolvable” problems may actually provoke the greatest education of all.