Picture this scene. Your eight-year-old daughter comes running in with blood pouring down her hand. Sobbing, she explains that her teenage sister left the food processor cutting blade in a sudsy sink full of water. When younger sibling reached in to get a spoon, she badly cut herself.

In addition to bandaging up the wound, are thoughts of punishment for the older child running through your head? After all, the rule about not leaving sharp objects concealed so that they can hurt someone has been discussed many times.

I actually do not remember if I called out my oldest child’s name in anger (though I’m sure she does) before realizing that the “blood” was actually ketchup and the entire story was a fabrication concocted in the mind of a mischievous, sometimes verging on fiendish, little girl.

Knowing the entire story, in context, makes a world of difference.

The above story is one of many I could tell about that impish little girl with a glint in her eye. She is now a lovely young woman, married, the mother of two little boys and a practicing nurse. Fortunately, her sense of humor has matured while remaining vibrant. My thoughts immediately jumped to her when I saw headline snippets of a hard-hearted and clueless Washington state senator declaring that nurses spend their time playing cards.

The facts were almost as incorrect as in my opening story. Senator Maureen Walsh did say that nurses, “…probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day.” But she was making a point, poorly worded as it was, that was not meant to denigrate nurses or nursing, but rather to point out the difference in the needs of hospitals in urban, rural and remote areas. In a debate on regulations, she was highlighting that rules which make sense under certain conditions can be crippling under others.

My point isn’t whether her argument is accurate or a good one. That should emerge from debate and factual information. However, instead of discovering what she actually said and discussing it, what happened was a public keel-hauling, taking her remarks out of context and stirring the social media pot of venom. Could her words have been more carefully chosen? Of course. Yet, there is not one of us who hasn’t clumsily said something we could have better articulated.

My daughter, who worked in the ICU for two years has, along with her colleagues, missed meals while on 12-hour shifts. They have found it impossible to catch a rest or go to the bathroom. We increasingly treat both our doctors and nurses poorly, if not cruelly, in ways that demoralize them and decrease the care they can provide for patients. Some of that is the result of regulations that sounded good on paper but worked out completely differently in reality. Debate on many issues is desperately needed. A society that plays “gotcha” instead of encouraging open conversation and dialogue, as it did with Senator Walsh, is establishing a more dangerous scenario than the one concocted in my eight-year-old’s imagination.

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If there is one thing that, until now, I have never been accused of, it is being a helicopter parent. If anything, more than a few of our children’s friends’ parents thought that my husband and I allowed our children too much independence. One of our daughters was incredibly upset that we did not sign her up for SAT review classes or care enough about her grades once she attended a ‘real’ high school.

Yet, as homeschooling increases in the United Kingdom, one British columnist has labeled me, by association and after the fact,  a “militant,” “arrogant,” and “controlling” mother who homeschooled to “dominate and diminish” my children. Wow!

To be fair, the author, Janet Street-Porter is willing to debate home-schooling mothers she knows and works with. Her strong language seems to more headline-grabbing than actually insulting. However, I think it is worth analyzing and rebutting her arguments.

While homeschooling has become rather mainstream in the United States, that isn’t so for much of the rest of the world. It is highly regulated in some countries and illegal in others, most notably Germany. When I was teaching my children, the most frequent accusation hurled at us was that we were hampering their socialization skills. That was laughable If you knew our outgoing children and the many friendships and relationships they had, but that tired allegation didn’t even make it into this article.

Instead, the article’s slant is the damage caused to British society in general and their  children in particular by parents take them out of the system. Ms. Street-Porter contends that those who don’t feel the school system is satisfactory from an educational point of view are  selfish to care only for our children rather than working within the system to improve academics for all. I admittedly am not familiar with British bureaucracy, but if it is anything like America, we’re not talking a fix that will be accomplished within the schooling lifetime of any student today.  Things are that bad and the status quo is too entrenched. I know many homeschooling parents who actively work to improve education on a community and national level. Doing the best for one’s own child doesn’t mean that you don’t care about anyone else’s.

Another accusation hurled at homeschooling parents in this article was a reluctance to embrace the necessity of discipline. Again, unless British schools are complete opposites from American ones, most homeschooling families are far more disciplined than classrooms, not less. Parents who are disorganized wimps can scrape by when their kids are out of the house for many hours a day. When the kids are always home, structure and routine usually co-exist with learning and play.

As for the recommendation that children must learn to handle bullying and that homeschooling to avoid it will reduce children’s resilience and ability to get along with others, I think that is completely misguided. Most parents that I know who homeschool in response to classroom, school bus and schoolyard bullying start out as reluctant homeschoolers.  They have worked with their children, the teachers and administration to try to solve the problem, all to no avail. They are making a difficult decision not to sacrifice their children’s emotional health.

The article closes with this paragraph: “Sadly, too many modern parents want to control every aspect of their children’s lives – monitoring their movements via special apps, calling them every few hours to make sure they are “safe”. Home-schooling is just another form of insidious control.”

One of the easiest ways to monitor your child is to put them in a controlled environment for most of their waking hours. In other words, send them to school. My children and many of their homeschooling peers were far more independent and had a wider variety of activities than their friends who marched in lock-step with twenty or so other children of precisely their own age. Dominating and diminishing my children? I prefer to think of homeschooling as assisting my children in reaching their full potential; propelling them aloft rather than helicoptering over them.

Our hearts and prayers go out to our Christian friends whose co-religionists were massacred on one of the holiest days of their year. This is a crime not only against them, but against all humanity.

I recently wrote about the #Walkaway Movement, founded by Brandon Straka, as one of the bright lights on the American horizon. I avoided mentioning one aspect of his crusade that I do think deserves discussion. I would like to do so now. How I can ally with them and more so, greatly appreciate their involvement in affecting the future of this country, while disagreeing vehemently with many of their lifestyle choices?

The movement is diverse in a way that few areas of American life are today. Rather than identifying by color, sexual orientation, gender, age, religion or nationality, those signing on agree on shared ideas. Among them are a love for the United States, respect for freedom of speech and thought, and serious concern about the bullying and hate being promoted by today’s Democrat Party.

Wherein lies the problem? Many, including the founder, Brandon, identify and behave, particularly in the sexual arena, in ways that I not only think of as religiously sinful but consider damaging to the long-term health of a culture. Yet, I am grateful for their presence. For their part, they are not demanding obeisance from me or anyone else for how they live their lives, though I imagine at least some are hurt by what they see as my prejudices. At its most basic, you could say that the relationship is based on the idea, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but I think that is not only incorrect, but misses an opportunity.

My husband and I have cultivated relationships outside our “box” for many years. In the early years of our marriage, this took the form of leading a synagogue made up mostly of young Jews who had a strong ethnic Jewish identity but negligible religious education or knowledge. (If you’d like to know more about our electrifying experiences during those years, check out Judy Gruen’s The Skeptic and the Rabbi, telling her story of reluctantly being drawn to faith via my husband’s teachings.) This meant that the Jews we welcomed into our home often behaved in ways that were counter to our convictions. They drove by car to our home or synagogue on the Sabbath; brought us non-kosher food as hostess gifts and sometimes even approached topics with our young children that made us uncomfortable. We had no difficulty distinguishing between their behavior and them. Over the years, many of them involved themselves in our congregation and began to follow the Torah; others did not. People in both of those categories came to be our dearest friends.

When we shifted our professional focus away from our Jewish community and onto the national stage out of concern about the anti-Godly direction the United States was taking, we again forged friendships with those different from us. In this case, our new relationships were mostly with Christians. While we agreed on the moral vision for the country, our theologies were not congruent. Since we all took God and His book seriously we could work towards a mutual goal, however this meant putting our differences to the side. In our case, we truly were (and are) completely not disturbed by the notion that some of these individuals are convinced that we will not meet them in Heaven. (It actually amuses us that some secular Jews who profess not to believe in an after-life and Heaven at all, get highly offended at that theological view.) We respectfully listen as our Christian allies pray in Jesus’ name.  Our Christian friends, on the other hand, put to the side their religious duty to share their faith (evangelize) and rather do what they can to support our religious needs. Once again, we count many of these Christians as dear and cherished friends.

I see the #Walkaway group as another example of this kind of alliance.  I think that many in this group have mistaken ideas and I’m quite sure many in the group think I do too. I can embrace them for their political decisions without embracing everything about them.

Knowing something of history is imperative for making wise choices in life. However,  trying to live as if we were still in an earlier  era is an easily made mistake.  When the Jewish Reform movement first started in Germany during the  1800s, those Jews who abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, did so deliberately rebelling against God. At that time and place, Orthodox Judaism sought no common ground with Reform. Instead what was needed was vigorous opposition to this distortion of Judaism.   By contrast today, most Reform or completely unaffiliated Jews aren’t rebelling; often they are extremely serious about the only version of Judaism they’ve ever known.

When European pogroms against Jews were regular occurrences in many countries, frequently encouraged by the local priest, the answer was not to form a Cossack-Jewish friendship society. But that is no longer today’s world.  For the most part, anti-Semitism today stems from Islam and secularists.

And when sexual norms began to be shattered during the 1960s, whether through the birth control pill, the normalization of homosexual behavior or the  deprecation of marriage, loud voices of opposition were required. However, many of those living by those new rules today are not revolutionaries. They are often following a path that they believe to be good and normative.

I still think that when Jews desecrate the Sabbath, it is a problem. I still think that homosexual activity is a sin, along with many other behaviors (like gossip) that are completely accepted today. Yet those who do these things are not automatically my enemy. A common theme one hears in the #Walkaway stories is how supporting President Trump or even having something positive to say about any Republican is enough to end decades of friendships and destroy family relationships. Yet, what I read and hear is not a desire to reciprocate the venomous feelings towards these ideologically pure “progressives,” but a wish that these estranged loved ones can overcome their hatred.

At this time in history, the right thing is to build alliances with anyone who doesn’t think that those who disagree with him should be physically, emotionally or financially attacked. It is time to stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who feels that the power of government should not be used to impose thought control over the populace. It is time to find common ground with anyone who is willing to let each American live by his or her beliefs rather than strip us of our freedom of speech, religion and assembly. There may be numerous areas of disagreement, but, disturbingly, today there is an ascendant group that is trying to crush those with whom they differ. At a time such as this, new friendships and alliances are needed. There may be other times when doctrinal purity must be emphasized. Now is not one of those times.

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A Practical Parenting Golden Oldie: 

Thinking “I told you so” is gratifying. Saying it might be crass, but thinking it feels pretty good. Reading a Wall Street Journal article entitled, What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind? I definitely underwent an “I told you so” moment.  My husband and I tried as best we could to structure our children’s upbringing according to 3,000 year old Torah principles rather than to the latest issue of Psychology Today. After all, when the newest fad passes you don’t get a chance to press “rewind”. For instance, if you teach your children to call you by your first name when the currently reigning psychologist explains how that will foster closeness, you will struggle to regain lost authority five years later when the most recently crowned psychologists reject that reasoning. 

One commonly accepted view that my husband and I disregarded was a prevalent concept of “adolescence.” We did not accept it as an inevitable stage during which our teenagers would automatically behave recklessly because their prefrontal cortex wouldn’t fully develop until a few years later.  We certainly expected their judgment to improve as they matured, but we were never tempted to excuse destructive, impulsive behavior by blaming it on biology. We anticipated their making proper choices and overwhelmingly, they delivered.

The author of the WSJ article cites the latest studies showing that real life experiences drive the maturation of the impulse controlling parts of the brain. She mentions how cultural psychologist Barbara Rogoff studied Guatemalan Indians and found that their children could handle machetes quite competently. Yet western teenagers basically sit in classrooms, an activity which often starts when they are toddlers and continues for years on end. They may very well be acquiring information; they are not acquiring wisdom. Wisdom means understanding how the world really works. It comes from interacting with people and things, slowly developing a variety of skills. This is best achieved with a mentor who gradually accords his or her disciple greater independence. Information has potential value, but activating its potential means applying, practicing, testing, reassessing and utilizing the raw data.

As our children grew, we helped them develop skills. At tender years they worked in the kitchen, using the stove and sharp knives at ages which would have made Child Protective Services uneasy.  They learned to read charts and check the gauges in a boat’s engine room, to care for infants and toddlers, to do their own laundry and to earn money in ways which probably didn’t meet child labor laws. In varying degrees they learned to sew and work with wood and how to use public transportation and navigate bureaucracies. They studied as well, but book learning and safe, cocooned adult-directed activities didn’t consume their entire time. As they proved themselves capable of shouldering responsibility we gave them more freedom, and for the most part their teenage years were a delight.

While discussing the later arrival of impulse-control in today’s times, the author of the above article also says, “…for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. “ For those of you who don’t have time to wait for the next psychological revelation to explain the mysterious reasons for the earlier onset of puberty, let me suggest an important component.  I believe that just as our actions influence our brain development in the prefrontal cortex, they also influence our hormones.

As a society we now give our children less and less freedom to roam and ramble and to push their physical limits. We provide them with an increasing number of electronic gadgets keeping them entertained and isolated in the home rather than playing in the streets. We organize their sports, arts and learning rather than allowing them independence. We do this (in my opinion usually to a much greater degree than is necessary) in the name of protecting them from the dangers which lurk outside. But at the same time we expose them to levels of sexuality which would have ranked as pornography in earlier times. We dress five year old girls like tramps and think it’s cute when little boys learn to parrot lewd expressions. This past week I was in a hotel room and flipped through TV stations. Three minutes of a popular show aimed at pre-teens were so brazen that I couldn’t watch it.  We force our children to lose their innocence in sexual education classes and bombard them with too much information as mommy and daddy host a revolving door through which boyfriends and girlfriends pass. We force intimate, private actions onto a public stage and we push our children into front row seats.  Lacking a shared moral compass in our society we contribute to early puberty with premature and excessive exposure to sexuality.

There may be satisfaction in seeing the world come to accept something which I never doubted. But I would gladly give up that satisfaction and instead be part of a correct-thinking community. It is incredibly difficult to defy the downward gravity of a society bent on devolution. Those of us who believe in timeless truths rather than transitory trends have a hard path to hoe – preferably shoulder to shoulder with our children as we guide them along.

Originally published Feb. 8, 2012

A ‘Your Mother’s Guidance’ post by Rebecca Masinter

I was thinking about chapter 40 in the book of Exodus. Ancient Jewish wisdom describes how  God wanted to give Moses the honor of assembling the Tabernacle because he hadn’t been involved in the contribution and building process.  The words used by one transmitter are, “she’lo asa Moses shum melacha b’Mishkan,”  “for Moses had not done any work for the Tabernacle.”  Excuse me?

Is there any person, perhaps even including the main craftsman, Betzalel, who was more directly involved in building the Tabernacle than Moses?  Who was it who communicated every instruction from God regarding the donations for and the construction of the Tabernacle? Who carved and brought us the two tablets which are the center point of the Tabernacle?  If you look at the Scripture describing the Tabernacle, Moses is part of it over and over and over.

What can it mean when ancient Jewish wisdom says, “Moses hadn’t done any work for the Tabernacle.”?

I have not yet learned an answer to this question.  Nonetheless, here is what I do have for you.  Doesn’t this scenario sound somewhat familiar?  Can you think of anyone you know who may at times feel that they aren’t doing great things? Accomplishing what they could? That they are somewhat anonymous in the larger world?  And yet… this person is behind everyone else’s accomplishments !

How many times does the wife and mother in a family feel that everyone else is doing things, stretching, growing, and they are only the facilitators in the background?  We register our kids for activities and lessons, drive them there, and help them practice their new skills.  Who’s the one noticeably accomplishing?  The child obviously—we just provide support.

We run our homes and provide the background support that allows our husbands to grow in their careers and life paths.  When we do our job well, it allows everyone else to do their jobs well, but to an uneducated eye it may seem as if we’re doing nothing while everyone else is doing everything.  It is even possible to look at ourselves and our Tabernacles and think, “I haven’t done anything!”

This struck me last night as I was listening to my son practicing his Torah reading (again) for his Bar Mitzvah. Please God, on that day he will be up in front of the congregation reading the Torah for the whole community.  It may look as if I had nothing to do with it.  But truly, I will be behind his success just as Moses was behind each part of the Tabernacle. Yet in a way, it will look to those present as it looked in the desert—as if Moses, “had not done any work for the Tabernacle.”

Maybe that is why Moses gets the final task of actually putting it all together—the final step of creating a Tabernacle where before there wasn’t any structure.  Yes, he wasn’t directly involved in contributing or building, but in reality he was everywhere and everything.  And we are the same.  We mothers may sometimes feel that we’re not accomplishing, but, just like Moses and the Tabernacle, we are really the force behind everything that everyone else in our family accomplishes.

Dennis Prager’s thought-provoking columns are always interesting to read, and I agree with his arguments most of the time.  A column this week is an exception to the rule.  You can read it here, but to sum it up, he suggests that just as men as a group have more aggressive natures than women do, women as a group have a tendency to being malcontent.

Dennis’ thought process started when he recently read Betty Friedan’s seminal book from 1963, The Feminine Mystique. In January, 2015, I too, decided that, as a book that helped launch the feminist movement, it was worth a read. Like Dennis, I too commented that having achieved more than Ms. Friedan imagined, women today should be rejoicing. Instead, we see many women who are bitter and discontented. I wrote an article asking, “Could it be that…women are just complainers regardless of what is happening?” Dennis and I answer that question differently.

I do agree that, in the aggregate, women and men have different natures. Women are more emotionally driven than men are, a quality that, just like male aggressiveness, can help or harm society. If women adulate and even adopt men’s aggressiveness, as has sometimes happened in history, the world becomes a cruel and vicious place. If men adulate and adopt women’s emotionalism, as has happened in our culture since the 1960s, the world becomes an unhappier and less productive place.

On issue after issue, men have failed to be men, falling prey to emotional and illogical arguments ranging from, “a woman’s body is her own,” when there is clearly another human being sharing that body, to the culture-destroying, “intentions matter more than results.” Most of all, both men and women emotionally embraced the attitude of victimhood, seeing happiness and fulfillment as an obligation that society must deliver. Men and women have chosen and been taught not to take responsibility for their own lives, but to depend on the government and others.

People respond to a false sense of victimhood in different ways. Real injustice can be fought; fake injustice cannot. Men are more likely to respond to this frustration by taking drugs, committing suicide, getting into fights or taking stupid physical risks. In the past decades women increasingly respond by becoming both unhappy and political activists. As we chase God out of our lives, we are supremely less well-equipped to elevate gratitude and appreciation over bitterness and sullenness.  As I wrote in my Musing on this topic, “Those of us who wish to be happy need to inoculate ourselves against that virus, surrounding ourselves with women looking for realistic joy rather than victimhood.” That is true for men as well. Sorry Dennis, but sinking into misery rather than counting our blessings is a human failing, not a feminine one.

P.S. I received a lot of positive comments on last week’s Musing about vaccinations. I also received private messages appalled that I would write this during a measles outbreak. I wish those who wrote privately telling me how irresponsible I was would have posted publicly as well.

I was not specifically talking about the measles vaccine, though my timing may not have been the best, and as I said, I see both sides of this issue. Lack of trust is rampant in many areas of our lives now, and that includes lack of trust in the medical community. In another field, Boeing’s only chance of reviving consumer confidence in the 737 MAX and the company in general means that they have to accept responsibility for their wrongs and explain what will change. Similarly, I think the onus is on the officials  of the American Medical Association, politicians and other in leadership to acknowledge when they have given priority to concerns other than the safety of patients and explain what will change going forward. Certainly, a measles outbreak will encourage some parents who were hesitating to vaccinate to do so, but as long as underlying worries are not aired and respectfully dealt with, I don’t see a change in the basic lack of confidence in the medical establishment that exists among many loving and intelligent parents.

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As parents, we make thousands of decisions for our children’s lives. For a homeschooling mother that number grows exponentially. I think many of us are a bit hard on ourselves, beating ourselves up for choices that, in retrospect, we wish we had made differently. So, it is really rewarding to get positive feedback about something we did and I got just such feedback last week.

On of our daughters is currently studying in a selective and difficult program while earning a highly specialized nursing degree. Last week, she mentioned an advantage she has over her peers in the way that she approaches her studies. As a student in our homeschooling house and then during a year of Bible study in Jerusalem, she was trained to ask questions. She memorized great quantities of material and needed to know many facts, but that was the starting point, not the end goal.

She learned to be constantly on the lookout for conflicting information and anomalies. Studying different approaches to the same topic and then integrating them was a consistent theme. She was encouraged to see the  big picture rather than compartmentalizing information—how did the literature of a certain time and place interact with the history and scientific discoveries taking place? Why is this rare Hebrew word used only in this chapter of the book of Exodus and again in Deuteronomy?  She was encouraged to look critically at ideas and the background of those who made them. 

As our children grew and applied for certain scholarships or schools, we needed to fill out forms detailing what our children had covered in a variety of standard subjects such as English or math. The powers-that-be cared how many hours of physical education they had and whether they were fluent in more than one language. Yet, we were never asked whether our children loved seeking knowledge and if they had tools to do so.

Our daughter’s comment reminded me of the many logic puzzles, cryptograms, ciphers and thinking games we spent time on when they were children. I’m not sure whether I considered those part of “school” or more part of life. Truly, one of the reasons we homeschooled was to blur that distinction. I’m tickled that the benefits of those critical thinking skills are being felt today.

F.R.I.W.A.F.T.T.  You may not be familiar with that acronym, but my husband rattles it it off whenever we are about to navigate a tricky passage while boating.  It stands for: Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread. I’m not setting sail just now, but I am about to weigh in on probably the only topic that is more contentious and leads to more name-calling, recrimination and venom than the election of President Trump. 

I speak, of course, of vaccines.

While this isn’t a topic that I have devoted a great deal of time to studying, I have read a fair bit. I completely get the public health concerns and the worries about those who are immune-compromised and whose health would be at serious risk were they to contract, for example, measles. As the daughter of a polio survivor, I certainly am not eager to see diseases that have been eradicated reappear. However, I simply don’t understand the vitriol and hatred directed at parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.

People I know who are intelligent, kind and fair-minded on all sorts of controversial topics are nonetheless convinced that there is only one reason that parents might have concerns about vaccines: They believe that these people are stupid. Those who are more sensitive might phrase it somewhat more charitably: Parents who don’t vaccinate  are gullible victims of false information. Ostensibly based on that idea, Facebook and other social media platforms have now removed any articles or videos that raise questions about vaccine safety. Not surprisingly, that autocratic attitude actually bolsters the suspicions of those with questions.

The last time my husband and I sailed in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, we were surprised at a change that the boat rental company we favor had instituted. For years, they had marked off a certain risky passage between two islands in bold red, decisively announcing that charter boats were not allowed to traverse there. This year, they instead marked it as a difficult and dangerous passage and explained that any boat damage sustained while going through there would be charged to the boater.

Why did they make this switch? It turns out that forbidding a passage that, in fact, was navigable with the correct skill set was the equivalent of waving a red cape in front of a bull. Boaters saw going through that passage as an exciting and daring challenge. When the company in effect said, “Feel free to go, but based on our experience we don’t recommend it,” a greater number of their customers chose to avoid the area.

Without weighing in on either side of the vaccination controversy, here are some ideas that deserve to be discussed in an atmosphere of open debate, fact-checking and courtesy. These aren’t necessarily the issues that those who are more invested in this topic would raise, they are simply those that are popping into my head as I write. I think that anyone truly interested in affecting human behavior in the hope of attaining a healthier society should express interest in discussing these ideas rather than tarring and feathering anyone who raises them.

1. Let’s introduce a bit of humility into the mixture. Can we acknowledge that the medical profession and individual doctors have at times made the wrong call? For anyone who thinks otherwise may I recommend reading The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore. You might also research the medical establishment’s opposition to the theories of people like Joseph Lister or Sister Kenney, and for good measure look into the accepted medical theories that upheld both slavery and Nazism. It is not ridiculous to ask what might be commonly accepted by the medical community today that is going to embarrass and cause individual doctors guilt down the road.

2. In the same vein of humility, let’s acknowledge that, in the course of history, hordes of people suffered and died due to plagues and illnesses that we no longer see or that are under control.  While correlation does not equal causation, it is rather difficult to make the case that the eradication or lack of prevalence of many of these diseases is unrelated to vaccines and inoculations. Reading and researching the devastation caused by disease in the past is a powerful reminder that today we are blessed indeed. 

See how easy it is to find areas of agreement!

3. Can we get some accurate answers to some really important questions?

The olden days of only a few decades ago used to feature debates where facts mattered and where ideas could be developed. Watch an episode of William Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line and then contrast it to a modern “talk show” where unpopular opinions are shouted down and most answers are delivered in sound bites. The end result is that everyone believes whatever they believe and—often for good and valid reasons—doesn’t trust anyone offering opposing information.

This means that in order to actually change minds, when someone with credentials says something, they must then take questions from someone else who is accepted as an authority and similarly credentialed. Anyone making an argument loses veracity when they cite only the opposing views of those who are easy to dismiss while ignoring those who are more difficult to ridicule. Censoring any opposing views, such as is happening in this debate, tends to suggest the weakness of an argument, not its strength. I have read numerous anti-anti-vaccine pieces that all feature the idea that science has disproven any connection between autism and vaccines. Leaving aside whether that is accurate, I have also heard numerous concerns about vaccines where the word autism is never raised. Another article pooh-poohing the autism connection, even if accurate, is meaningless if it ignores other worries.

4. There should be a way to get an honest and unassailable answer as to whether physicians get monetary or other incentives to vaccinate patients or whether there is any threat or punishment involved for a pediatric practice with a high percentage of unvaccinated patients (this would include parents going on social media and blasting a pediatrician). Despite looking for an answer, I haven’t found anything I consider decisive. This matters, because the minute doctors are encouraged to make a decision based on anything other than what is best for that specific patient, then no matter what the original good intentions, parents are correct for questioning whatever the doctor recommends. Perhaps the guidelines for getting a medical exemption are drawn unreasonably tightly so that loosening those guidelines might actually result in more, rather than fewer, vaccinations? Perhaps someone could explain why this health “crisis” merits more draconian policies than other, on the surface more serious, health threats that tend to be downplayed and ignored?

5. Here is another question that should be able to be answered factually and should lead to discussion: Do all  ‘first-world’ countries have the same number of vaccines, composition of vaccines and vaccine schedule? If not, why not?

6. My last contribution for this Musing: There seems to be a growing number of allergies, auto-immune diseases and other problems among the young. How accurate is this perception? Who is doing the short and long-term research to ensure that solving one problem with a vaccine isn’t causing different problems? A corollary to that question is whether vaccines provide inferior, equal or superior protection as getting the disease itself.

I no longer have prime responsibility for young children, so I do not need to decide whether to vaccinate or not. However, I am willing to bet that most parents and individuals on both sides of the issue are good people. (Sadly, that good-will assumption does not extend to the government, corporations or medical associations.  People in control of portions of those groups have squandered the right to be trusted.) Portraying the pro-vaccine side as wise and noble crusaders and the anti-vaccine side as dupes and fools does nothing to bring about a society with the safest and most advanced medical protocols. Maybe some mutual respect, active listening and responding to serious questions would be more productive? Alternatively, all my writing has done is anger some, disappoint others and contribute to the fracturing of relationships; after all, F.R.I.W.A.F.T.T.

P.S. Please do not leave comments either for or against vaccinating children. This isn’t the place for that discussion. I simply wanted to point out that a conversation is necessary and possible, rather than for each side to dig in its heels and excoriate those who think differently.

The ability to hold discussions, exchange ideas and ask questions is uniquely human.
We lose some of our humanity when we misuse the power of speech.
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Perils of Profanity: You Are What You Speak

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A ‘Your Mother’s Guidance’ post by Rebecca Masinter

The first verse of the entire book of Leviticus seems to have a superfluous phrase.  It begins, “And He called to Moses, and God (God) spoke to him.”  One classic transmitter of ancient Jewish wisdom from the 11th century focuses on that the extra phrase.  Why did God call to Moses before He spoke to him? What is that calling? 

The answer is truly mind-opening both in our relationship with God and with our children.  For all statements, and for all sayings, and for all commands that God gave to the Jewish nation, God preceded the instruction with a “calling,” which is a language of affection, a verbal expression love.  And here, at the beginning of God speaking to Moses from the newly constructed Tabernacle, is the right place to let us know that every time God spoke to Moses, He got his attention first by calling to him with love.

Ancient Jewish wisdom gives us a bit more detail.  Each time God was going to speak with Moses, He didn’t just start commanding him.  First God would call “Moses, Moses” and Moses would answer “Here I am,” “Here I am,” and after that God would speak to him about the commandments.

What I love about this idea is two-fold.  Firstly, the reminder that commandments are not cold, calculated commands, but rather each one stems from an expression of God’s love for us.  But secondly, and of vital importance for us mothers to know: God is modeling for us how to give directions and instructions to our children.  First connect. Then direct.

Imagine this.  Or if you’re brave you can try it yourself.  Picture a family of small children at the playground.  The kids are totally involved and focused on their games and activities and their mother is totally focused on her friends or her phone.  All of a sudden she looks at her watch, sees that it’s dinnertime and calls to her kids, “Children! Come off the playground now. It’s time to go home.”  Often, that won’t go over so well.

Now picture the alternative.  The children are playing, totally engrossed in their activities.  The mother may be talking to her friends, but she is watching her children, making eye contact, smiling at them, and being generally responsive to them. The mother looks at her watch, sees it’s time to go, but before giving the command, she walks over to her children, looks them in the eyes, calls each one by name, and connects with love.  Maybe she takes a moment to ask them if they’re having fun, or what their favorite activity was, or maybe she shares with them what she noticed them doing that looked like fun.  After 15 seconds of connection she says the exact same thing as the first mother. “Children!  It’s time to go home.” 

If you can’t imagine the difference I beg you to try it.  Children who have been collected by their mother emotionally with warmth and love are ready to be instructed and directed, and they respond naturally and positively to that direction.

This is what we learn from the very first sentence.  Before God spoke to Moses with an instruction, He always began with calling him with love and connection.  This tool is a powerful strategy for parents.  For today, try calling your child by name, making eye contact, smiling, giving warmth and love, before asking him to do something.  You may think this will take too much time, but my experience has been that it actually saves time, because a child so instructed is usually happy to run and obey his parent right away.

Let me know how it goes!