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During ???? ?????? yesterday, there was a small kid who was fussing around in shul. The father very angrily grabbed the kid and rushed out, while the kid cried “stop, stop”.
It was a very clear overreaction, and was really a good bit of terrible parenting. The kid did nothing wrong, and the father was angry at her and physically abusing the kid (he grabbed her hard and angrily). It was horrible.
But the father probably was thinking that everyone else thought he was a great parent, for not letting his kid disturb ???? ??????. Basically, it was embarrassing him that his kid was disturbing and people would think he was a bad parent, so he got angry. It is very similar to when a kid is having a tantrum in the store and the parent goes ballistic on them–they are embarrassed by the kid.
Someone really should have yelled at the father right there; I wanted to. I wanted to say “idiot, stop abusing your kid.”
We need to change the dynamic so that people are more embarrassed by being bad parents than by their kids’ behavior.
We can start by making parents accept the responsibility for their bad parenting when their kids grow up and have all sorts of issues. I bet you the kid in this story is going to dislike davening when she grows up, and will probably not know why. Well, I know why.
I’d also like to give a shout out (if it’s okay in your topic) to the people who shush when a baby cries during shofar.
Whatever mussar you give the parent, make sure you do not give it in front of the child. (Doing so would be a lot more destructive to her than the abuse you describe.)
No baby should b in shul during shofar!!
Whether the babies should be there or not (and to me it shows mesiras nefesh on the part of the mothers, which is a good thing to show during tekias shofar) it is useless to shush them. All it does is make the mother more embarrassed than she already was. The baby is not going to be quieter because people are shushing it.
pba- why didnt you say s/t to him then?
Poor parenting is not the same thing as child abuse.
Why didn’t you say something to the father?
The father’s temper is the issue here. Fortunately it’s a girl, so her mother is hopefully a better davening role model.
VM,
The shushing is a message to the mother to remove the kid ASAP.
IIRC, it’s a b’feirush’e Mishnah Berurah not to bring little kids to shul.
Presumably, a mother whose child is crying during shofar already knows that she should leave.
popa
Im not sure this qualifies for literal child abuse but it is bad chinuch. The truth is little kids don’t belong in shul unless they can play outside with the other kids. If they are too young or too clingy to their parents they belong home. There’s no inyan to bring a little girl to Shul unless your goal is to bore her to death and disturb your fellow congregants in the process.
Some parents are just plain stupid when it cones to these simple common sense things.The crying babies on Rosh Hoshanah is inexcusable. I mean seriously you want it on your cheshbon that you disturbed a whole shul concentration by Shemonah esrei musaf of Rosh Hashanah?! And you think you’re gonna have a good year?! Naar vos du bist!
“Abuse is defined as any action that intentionally harms or injures another person.” (Medical Dictionary)
I don’t think that the child was abused. I do think that the father was embarrassed. I also think that he should be; a child who might make noise in shul should not be brought into shul. A parent should be embarrassed that he didn’t realize that his child’s stage of maturity. Unfortunately, he reacted to his own shortcomings and not to his child’s.
It will be a great day when we only react to our children’s shortcomings and not to our own. Whether we are reacting to how we were parented or whether it’s to a bad day that we’ve had, it’s hard to always be patient with our children. Let’s first work on our own shortcomings before giving parenting advice to everyone else.
BTW, when we shush a baby, we are telling mom to “NOT BRING A BABY TO SHOFAR!!
Popa, I think you would like Rav Shalom Arush’s new book on parenting (Garden of Education). He thinks we should basically never yell at kids (though there’s a lot more to his philosophy than that). The guy in shul may have realized he was wrong but was just infuriated in the moment. I don’t believe in yelling, but when my kids repeatedly misbehave it really drives me nuts. May Hashem save us from our own emotions!
Pop
Very often kids don’t listen especially when they get into their moods. Also if the father doesn’t want to talk during laining and he needs to drag his disobedient kid out of shul he has no choice but to grab him or her firmly and march him or her out. I didn’t witness the situation but even if I did I really wouldn’t know how hard the father was holding her. However I am pretty sure that if he was hurting her she would have started crying or said ow ouch it hurts or started screeching or something similar. So lets not brand people as child abusers over a minor incident. As much as you think you will be the perfect father you will also get it wrong many times and I hope nobody sees and judges you the way you are judging this man. Lets not be so busy with how this guy parents his kid when it is possible and quite likely under the circumstances that he had no other choice but to firmly walk her out so as not to disrupt the laining.
PBA -Physical and emotional/psychological child abuse will be here to Moshiach comes. What happened was the Yetzer Hora convinced people that when the Torah talks about hitting kids that applies forever. It only applied when the parent meant totally L’shem Shomayim. Nowadays it’s just the anger of the parents. We live in very dark times.
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