More and more as my kids get older, I have come to appreciate the saying \u201cIt takes a village to raise a child.\u201d<\/p>\n
I used to think it was about basic care, things like checking on a neighborhood kid who fell off a bike, bringing food when there\u2019s a new baby, maybe tattling on kids who are off doing things their parents wouldn\u2019t approve of\u2026<\/p>\n
Or maybe it would include sharing advice. I always loved the books about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and was intrigued by the way the mothers in those stories, when faced with difficult or confusing behavior from their kids, would call others in the neighborhood to ask whether they had ever faced the same challenge and how they handled it. Invariably, those calls would prove fruitless and the mother would turn to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, with her creative (and, in some books, magical) solutions.<\/p>\n
Today, many of us turn to social media as our village for all of the above. We crowdsource ideas about getting babies to sleep through the night, where to buy clothes or go on family outings, and more \u2013 and, of course, coordinate help with basic care, using meal trains and chesed funds and the like. Facebook certainly takes the notion of a village to whole new levels!<\/p>\n
According to Wikipedia, the original proverb might indeed be limited to those areas. But increasingly, I realize that really, there\u2019s still more to it than that. Every interaction our children have forms part of their upbringing; everyone they encounter is, effectively, part of the \u201cvillage\u201d helping raise them \u2013 not just caring for their basic needs, but actually imparting messages and values.<\/p>\n
Sometimes this annoys me.<\/p>\n
Since my oldest was a baby, I\u2019ve had to fight off strangers \u2013 innocent ones, like storekeepers and nice adults in shul \u2013 who want to give my kids candy. Sometimes they ask me first, and sometimes I say yes; sometimes I say no, and then have to listen to their views on how I\u2019m depriving my child \u2013 with the child right there, listening! Sometimes they don\u2019t even ask me first at all. Regardless of my personal ideas about how often a kid needs a lollipop, and whether a Dum-Dum is a choking hazard, my kids are introduced to all sorts of other ideas because there is a village raising them with me whether I like it or not.<\/p>\n
Another issue in which my village sometimes gets more involved than I would like also happens in shul. I have particularly vivid memories of one of my children yelling \u201cAbba!\u201d gleefully every time I would try to take him into shul as a toddler; I would quickly close the door, remind him about being quite in shul, practice whispering, and try again. It was a grueling training experience for at least one of us, but it was important to me: I wanted to get a few minutes in shul, I knew he was capable of being quiet for a few minutes, and I wanted to introduce him to appropriate shul behavior. Imagine my frustration when, after all that, I see adults not only setting a different example through their own conversations, but actually talking to <\/em>my kids in the middle of davening! I certainly don\u2019t expect anyone to live their lives based on the standards I might set for my kids \u2013 but in interactions with <\/em>my kids, maybe it\u2019s fair to ask others to take my views into account?<\/p>\n Then there was the more insidious case of the doctor \u2013 a pediatric specialist in a particular field \u2013 who once made an off-hand joke in my ten-year-old\u2019s presence about how \u201ceveryone hates their mothers.\u201d I was furious. I have been blessedly spared, so far, the screams of \u201cI hate you\u201d that are fairly common sounds of childhood, and while I don\u2019t assume for a moment that it will never happen, neither did I invite this adult to suggest to my pre-teen that she\u2019s expected to hate me.<\/p>\n It\u2019s incidents like these \u2013 the big and the small \u2013 that help me understand the appeal of raising one\u2019s family in a bubble of like-minded individuals, a village where every interaction would support my views.<\/p>\n Except that I could never do it. First, because it would be impossible to find a village of individuals who are exactly like-minded on every issue. But more importantly, because I actually need the village \u2013 including our school, our shul, doctors, cashiers, and beyond \u2013 to offer different perspectives to my children. It might sometimes be annoying, but it really does take a village.<\/p>\n What if I accidentally overdo the anti-candy message, and my kids might be inclined to rebel with a cavity festival \u2013 but the shul candy man helps provide a balance? Maybe they feel stilted in shul and I don\u2019t realize it; maybe a few words with a friendly adult can help them feel more positive about the whole shul experience\u2026 And maybe the experience of learning how to respond, or not, to those friendly adults will help strengthen their own foundations and relationship to communal prayer. Maybe, even, my child will indeed one day develop strong negative feelings about me (chas v\u2019shalom, lo aleinu<\/em>), and would be afraid it was something wrong in her if she didn\u2019t have a context for realizing those feelings can be (though don\u2019t have to be!) a normal, healthy part of growing up.<\/p>\n Maybe our children\u2019s entire development requires that they learn from a variety of teachers \u2013 not just their parents \u2013 both in school and out.<\/p>\n I was privileged to learn in Israel at a post-high-school institution of Torah learning with a faculty that represented a wide spectrum of philosophies and personalities. Aside from the obvious benefits of simply seeing such different individuals work together with respect, my classmates and I had an incredible opportunity to learn a variety of perspectives \u2013 all rooted deeply in Torah \u2013 and find what spoke to us. There were the teachers who told inspiring stories, the teachers who fired up our brains with Talmudic analysis, the teachers who taught us how to delve into midrashic interpretation or compare a Rashi to a Ramban, the teachers who constructed the most beautiful charts to help us follow details of practical halacha\u2026 Together, they built us a beautiful village in which to grow.<\/p>\n As an adult, I still need a village for my own growth \u2013 a rich, varied village. I need the friends I can learn with, the friends I can laugh with, the friends I can do both with. I need the friends who do the things I do and I need the friends who don\u2019t, the friends who think the way I do and the friends who make me throw up my hands in exasperation \u2013 but who exhilarate me with their conversation. I need the strangers in the supermarket and the barista with the piercings and the tattoos who smiles and remembers how I like my coffee. I can learn from them all. If ever I run up against something in my village that\u2019s not great for me \u2013 I need that too, because it helps me fine-tune who I am.<\/p>\n As a parent, I want the same for my kids. I need it; they need it. How can my husband and I possibly teach our children everything they need to learn, in the ways they need to learn it, when we\u2019re only two (fairly similar) people? Even if it\u2019s sometimes annoying when they\u2019re exposed to a perspective that doesn\u2019t speak to us \u2013 maybe it will speak to them. Maybe it will give them a richer framework in which to begin to determine who they are; maybe they will find that they are not exactly like their parents, but that there is plenty of room for them to grow into fine, upstanding individuals.<\/p>\n And maybe they will only be able to fully appreciate what we can<\/strong> teach them if they\u2019ve been exposed to other ideas. It\u2019s hard to simply dictate a set of rules or beliefs in a vacuum; sometimes we need to play off of other perspectives, both to better define our own approach and to provide a contrast through which our audience (in this case, our kids) can understand what we\u2019re trying to say.<\/p>\n So yes, I beg all the responsible adults who make up our village to be mindful of your impact when interacting with my kids \u2013 maybe even with me \u2013 and I\u2019ll do my best to do the same for you and yours. But I also want them to see you for you. I\u2019ll need your help if I am to raise them in accordance with my values, which I hope you respect enough not to consciously undermine \u2013 and even if it\u2019s sometimes annoying, those values include welcoming you to enrich their lives in all sorts of ways that I would never be able to accomplish myself.<\/p>\n Sarah C. Rudolph is a Jewish educator and freelance writer. She has been sharing her passion for Jewish texts of all kinds for over 15 years, with students of all ages. Sarah\u2019s essays have been published in a variety of internet and print media, including Times of Israel, Kveller,\u00a0Jewish Action<\/a>, The Lehrhaus, TorahMusings, and more. Sarah lives in Cleveland with her husband and four children, but is privileged to learn online with students all over the world through\u00a0www.TorahTutors.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0www.WebYeshiva.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More and more as my kids get older, I have come to appreciate the saying \u201cIt takes a village to raise a child.\u201d I used to think it was about basic care, things like checking on a neighborhood kid who fell off a bike, bringing food when there\u2019s a new baby, maybe tattling on kids<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133529,"featured_media":59807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\n
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