Your child may interpret anything that you say in a way that differs substantially from the way you intended. Your words will be taken out of context, changed, and modified in order to assure the child and his peers that you are guilty.
The child has to live with himself. He has to feel that he did no wrong and that the problem lies elsewhere. He may readjust facts and issues until he feels satisfied. The child can create and adjust reality in order to prove that he had good reason for his actions. This is likely to be unfair to the child's family.
He also has to live with his peers and with his psychologists or other authority figures.
Silence is a good way to limit your child's fuel. The less he can say, the less he can justify his needs by readjusting reality.
Read about childhood rebellions
Read about parenting
Find out about the Jewish Parenting Forum
Find out about other Jewish and Hebrew forums
Are you required to read this webpage for a course? Do NOT print out the article. It is copyrighted.
Your exercise for this article is as follows:
Copyright © David Grossman. World rights reserved. This article may not be printed, forwarded, reproduced, or copied in any way or in any medium without written permission from David Grossman.
