Parental Controls

No Pictures Please...

I'm ready to take Elazar to school, and when I find him by the door, I see that he wants to wear the hot pink gloves he found in the drawer with all the winter stuff. Mind you it is 85 degrees outside. But sometimes as a parent you have to know when to not make a big deal out of something.

The voice in your head is telling you that as a parent you have an obligation to "teach" your children what they are doing is "wrong". Now I could try to explain to Elazar the logic of why gloves are unnecessary in June. Or I could explain that he can play with them in the house, but if he takes them to Gan there is a high probability that they will get lost.

But knowing Elazar, there is a much higher probability that he these words will initiate a temper tantrum, which would only make us that much later getting out that morning, and if I eventually gave in to him, it would only reinforce that if he cries and screams then he can get me to change my mind.

So I just said, "Elazar, what pretty gloves you have on", to which he flashed me his 'I know I'm doing something I'm not supposed to' smile.

So what if we were getting weird looks from all the people in the bus stop, and on the bus, and everyone else we passed that morning. By the next day, he wasn't interested in wearing gloves anymore. I guess he figured out everything by himself without having me tell him what he already knew.

A parent has to know when to control the situation to protect his/her child. However, a parent has to also know when to control himself/herself when the situation may not be perfect, but there is no detriment to the child.

Lag B'Omer with the Gerstens

Kids sitting on "artistic hand chairs" outside the Children's Section of the Israel Museum

Lag B'Omer in Eretz Yisroel is slightly different than in the US. Aside from being permitted to light bonfires almost anywhere, it is also the custom to allow all kids, regardless of age, to stay up all night long with said bonfires. This by the way is the 50% of the country that did not travel to Meiron for Lag B'Omer

So even though American-born Ema and Abba just don't get this holiday, and would prefer that everyone gets a good night sleep (including Ema and Abba), the schools purposely give the kids off the next day on Lag B'Omer, and the pressure of "I'll be the only kid in my class not at the bonfire" becomes too much to bear.

The good news is that you don't have to travel far to the bonfires as they are everywhere. The problem is that no one wants to light the bonfire, until all of the children who made the bonfires showed up. So if you get their early, your just waiting for all the people who come late. You see, kids start collecting (read: snatching any wooden objects from everywhere without bothering to find out if it belongs to someone) wood from the day after Pesach. So for weeks, lining the streets are piles of wood and kids take shifts day and night guarding their piles while others find more wood to add to the pile.

Before the inferno...

It takes a few minutes to the fire to catch, but once it does WHOOOSH, the chill of night is gone and you feel like you stepped into an oven. But that only lasts a few more minutes depending on what the bonfire is made of. Just enough time to sing Bar Yochai at a safe distance.  Then we get to come home with our clothes smelling from smoke

Not too close, kids...

The next day, all the museums are free, so its a good time to check out the museums. When Abba comes home from shul after Shacharis, Ema flips the 5-Shekel coin, "Heads I stay home with the baby, while you take the kids to the museum -- Tails you take the kids to the museum, while I stay home with baby".

So I took the four older kids on the bus to Museum Street (it's actually called that) where all the Museums are. Since the kids have already been to the Science Museum many many times, we started at the Biblical Lands Museum. However, after being there for a few minutes I realized that Elazar and Noam could break a lot of ancient expensive artifacts that were on display, we left to go next door to the Israel Museum.


Baruch Hashem they had a kids section to the Museum, and after looking around at mostly ridiculous exhibits about "sleeping" (I'm not kidding) we found a place the kids could jump around, and then we found a great library with hundreds of books. The kids like reading and listening to stories so we spent about an two hours in the library, just reading and lounging and enjoying the A/C (they had these great bean bag mats and chairs for the kids and Abba to lounge on). Granted any library in any town in the United States is bigger than this library, but for Israeli Standards this was perfect. Hundreds of children's books in both Hebrew and English. 

They even had these Jumbo books of "Curious George" and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

A Whale of Tale...

After we ran out of food and drink supplies, and we fulfilled our quota of "out of the house time so Ema can rest" we headed back home for an early dinner

All the best,
Betzalel