Clean Speech Illinois Volume 2: Week 27 - Teach Your Children

[Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eA15JJl_nE ]

As parents, our job is to set our children on a path to success: to teach them how to earn a living, how to swim, etc. Included in the list of critical life skills is how to speak respectfully and avoid onas devarim, as well.

Left to their own devices, it’s quite common for kids to mock, tease, jeer, bully, make fun of and generally torture each other. People are not usually born with a highly developed sense of sensitivity or great degree of experience interacting with one another.

If parents, teachers and role models don’t intentionally demonstrate and demand good middos, children can cause tremendous, long-lasting harm to one another.?Bullying can impact a kid for life. Therefore it’s critical that we take care to teach children not to speak badly of others.

?There are many excellent parenting books out there. But the best parenting techniques in the world will be next to useless if kids see adults disparaging and bad-mouthing each other.

Nor is it acceptable for adults to speak in a demeaning way to the children themselves. Just because they are young doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings. When you speak to children in a way that hurts their feelings, it’s?onas devarim.

There is a story told of a young man who brought his adolescent son to visit a leading rabbi on the Sabbath. During the meeting, the little boy started playing with something he shouldn’t have. Clearly embarrassed, the father rebuked his son sharply. Afterwards the rabbi noted that the son might possibly have violated a minor rabbinic ordinance, but the father had undoubtedly transgressed a major Torah prohibition:?onas devarim.

This means that if we see one child bullying another, we can’t pounce on them and give them the same treatment. A better technique is to catch them when they’re speaking well of each other and reward their positive speech. “Wow, I saw how nicely you spoke to your friend just now. I have a special treat for boys who speak nicely…”

?Try This at Home:?If you have occasion to be around children today, make sure to speak to them as respectfully as you want them to speak to each other.