What happened to our son?

Lev Katsin


"Don't you think your behavior has changed lately?" I asked a student at Sinai Academy, a Jewish school in Brooklyn.

"My behavior changed, but I didn't change," the teenager retorted. "I just stopped being afraid of my parents..."

Outward obedience can be deceptive, writes Rabbi and Doctor Avraham Twersky ("Successful Relationships," p. 10). Parents often delude themselves into thinking they control their son's behavior. He obeys them only out of fear, realizing that obedience is the only way to get toys or candy. But by obeying, the child thinks, "When I grow up, I'll do what I want." Indeed, when a child reaches adolescence, many parents wonder, "What happened to our son?" But there's nothing surprising. The parents simply didn't understand how good behavior can be a manifestation of mere outward obedience, without touching the child's soul and value system. Therefore, parents should strive not for immediate obedience, but for the development of their son's personality, which will manifest itself in the future.

The wisest of men, King Solomon, wrote: "Train a child in his own way, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it!" (Proverbs 22:6). If parents force a child to follow a path that is not in keeping with his nature, then as long as he fears them, he will continue to follow that path, explains the Vilna Gaon. However, if they succeed in directing his nature "in his own way," the son will continue to follow that path throughout his life.

"Why do good children grow up to be bad people?" Eliyahu Essas was asked during a Torah lesson in Moscow.

– The Torah states that children are initially “bad”, and our task is to raise good people from “bad” children!..

“From the age of five they study the Torah, from ten – the Mishnah, from thirteen they fulfill the commandments,” teach the sages of the Talmud in the tractate “Ethics of the Fathers” (5:25).

The law that a boy from the age of thirteen and a girl from the age of twelve are obligated to observe the commandments was received by Moses on Mount Sinai, and we find a hint of this in the Torah. Bezalel, the builder of the Temple in the Sinai desert, was thirteen when the Almighty "filled him with the spirit of God, wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and ability in every craft" (Exodus 31:30).

According to the sages, every boy's soul is filled with goodness from the age of thirteen (a process that lasts a lifetime). With the birth of a child comes selfishness, desires, passions, and instincts. But only at thirteen does the child's soul begin to be filled with the "striving for goodness," and the inner struggle between good and evil begins to manifest.

In this struggle, good must not so much destroy as subjugate evil, writes Rabbi Avraham Pam. Human nature can be directed toward good. Even envy can be channeled toward good, by envying the wisdom and good deeds of others—to increase one's own wisdom and do good...

But is a child's soul truly filled with a "desire for goodness" at thirteen? It's precisely at this age that obedient children become disobedient teenagers!

Well, there's no contradiction here. The growth of the body is accompanied by the growth of the soul. Physical strengthening must be accompanied by spiritual strengthening, so that the good in a person can direct their nature toward the good.

Moreover, it is possible that when a child reaches thirteen years of age and gains a certain independence, beginning to make his own decisions, the goodness hidden in his soul may emerge, which he does not under duress, like a child, but as an adult who independently chooses his own path of goodness.