Renowned psychologist and therapist Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch has delivered last week a a fascinating and inspiring lecture and seminar on parenting teenagers.
Men and women of Crown Heights and neighboring communities came to hear the talk at the Oholei Torah Ballroom, an annual project of Igud Menaheli Hayeshvos.
Schonbuch, a marriage and family therapist in Crown Heights, is the author of “At Risk – Never Beyond Reach” and “First Aid for Jewish Marriages.”
Schonbuch is also the therapist of COLlive.com’s Sholom Bayis advice blog, answering questions on married Jewish life.
VIDEO: The full lecture. Filmed by TorahCafe.com
Had the opportunity to go to a lecture titled “Celebrating Marriage” with R’ Daniel Schonbuch last night at Mayan Yisroel in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, (www.mayanyisroel.net) he was very enlightening and had some great sound advice. Thanks
Thank you for clarifying you position. You have come a long way from post #9! Such a difference in tone. We’re almost on the same page now! I simply feel sad for those who don’t see what I do in religion. However I’m careful not to generalize and say that they should all go for counseling with a therapist.
I too truly wish you all the best. Good Shabbos.
I dont know Daniel Shonbuch, but from his comments on the video, I dont think he is implying sole and unique cause and effect here. Rather, he is saying by being invested in your child, you are much more likely that the child will identify with you and with your value system. Clearly, there are multiple factors for that not happening, but certainly this is a very important one. As a parent of teenagers, I appreciate this reminder from Daniel Shonbuch. To be sure, a very negative experience in schools, with teachers or such, are very harmful to the child’s… Read more »
Both of you — are you really two different people? — are really making the same point, still based on your first impressions of what I wrote in #9. despite my attempts to clarify in #26. I never claimed to have any monopoly on truth, and never intended to paint all who go COMPLETELY off the derech with a broad brush. If you had really read #26, you’d know that by now already. But I cannot force you to get off of YOUR high horse(“haughty”?) and acknowledge that. You (both) seem really hung up on your original impression. Oh well,… Read more »
“However, I do not think this is what draws most people who become ba’alei teshuvah to frumkeit.” What you “think” is irrelevant to this discussion. What you think is based on your own subjective interpretation and personal experiences. There is no reason to conclude that there are a greater proportion of people making the drastic transition from secularism to orthodoxy than the reverse, that are motivated by anything other than seeking “emes”. The point I was trying to make, was that your attempt to broad brush the motives of a kids who leave the community, suggesting that something “must have… Read more »
You asked where I got the impression from your comment that whoever doesn’t think like you is at risk. I quote: “It is not a joke to describe a young person raised in a specific spiritual and values system, who is behaving in ways contrary to that system, as “at risk”. That youth is “at risk” of finding themselves adrift without a paddle! Even if a young person raised frum has taken such a drastic step as to join what you call the “mainstream,” they can benefit from discussing things with a therapist like Rabbi Schonbuch; such an individual will… Read more »
First of all, I am not a therapist of any kind, and I am not Rabbi Schonbuch! Where you (#21) got the idea that I think “someone who doesn’t act exactly like [me] is at ‘risk'” I do not know. Similarly, #22, I do not know where in my earlier post you got the idea that I think that “anyone who doesn’t follow [my] way is at risk and in need of therapy.” Neither of these extreme reactions is what I was trying to say, which I hope I can clear up here. If I conveyed a sense that any… Read more »
every word came from the heart, this generation even more needs people like Reb Daniel Shonbuch for advice and guidence. I wish there was someone I could have asked 25 years ago for advice on how to handle teenagers. Crown Heights you are lucky you have someone, listen to his words they make sence.
Great lecture, great presentation!
Thanks COL for this very valuable service
Boring delivery! Next time just give us the text to read!
I think that the fact that you think that your way is right and that anyone who doesn’t follow your way is at risk and in need of therapy is abnormal and that you should seek a therapist to discuss your demons with…
I think that you totally missed #1’s point. What I believe he was trying to say was that it is very egoistic to say that someone who doesn’t act exactly like you is at “risk”.
That sounds very much like the crazy people who go around on the subway screaming that if you don’t accept ________ then you’ll burn in hell for all eternity.
Maybe it’s people like you who turn kids away…
Just because you disagree with the message.
Shonbuch is sharing facts with us, facts, which I find so important for myself, as a parent, to be reminded of.
We all lead busy lives, but we should never should lose sight of the impact small gestures have on kids.
This is valuable information – and I feel that Daniel Shonbuch is doing us a great service by bringing this to our attention.
An ounce of a prevention, is worth a pound of cure.
to all those with negative comments
i hope your parenting improves sooner than later
You do realize, that based on your mode of reasoning, the opposite would be true as well. If a young impressionable Reform Jew suddenly decides to take the “drastic step” of becoming a Baal Teshuva– and it is drastic relative to the way in which he or she is raised, one could also argue that “something must have gone very wrong somewhere” along the way in order to bring on such a transformation. It’s highly dubious that a typical college student who attends the local Chabad House made a “benign, reasoned, philosophical decision that resulted in them saying, “Hmm, I… Read more »
Compliment
Accept
Encourage
Empathize
Find the Good
Phenomenal lecture – very, very insightful.
Many thanks
nice to see someone in the this farce of a community has his head on straight.
to bad most of the ppl in the audience have a 3rd grade education and could not understand his vocabulary lol oh well
He says that a secure child is secure in his need to explore and take risks (yes, ‘safe’ risks). How in the world does this happen in a healthy way in our community? If a kid so much as wants to explore wearing a different color shirt, he’s labeled as a rebel! Just a few short years ago, and even for some people today, a kid who liked baseball was deemed ‘at risk’!…so, puleez! don’t talk about normal ‘exploration’! we don’t allow it!!
He ignores ,peer pressure, boredom, abuse from outside the family, schools that do not answer children’s questions, etc.
How do you define normal and mainstream?
To the naysayers, you’ve got to be a parent in order to understand parental concerns. I’m just a young mother, and I already can take pointers from this talk!
Our daughter was seriously at risk and we brought her to R. Schonbuch. He saved her life. He’s warm, insightful and changed our lives. All parents should listen to his advice.
It is not a joke to describe a young person raised in a specific spiritual and values system, who is behaving in ways contrary to that system, as “at risk”. That youth is “at risk” of finding themselves adrift without a paddle! Most teens who ignore the ways of the community in which they were raised do so because they feel they were failed by the community, not because they sat down one day, examined all the options in the world, and made a benign, reasoned, philosophical decision that resulted in them saying, “Hmm, I think I’ll go ‘mainstream’.” The… Read more »
Very interesting. clear and calm presentation
Great speach thank you I just feel bad if the school would care for our kids when they r young then we wont have to worry about all this teenager stuffffffff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wonderful.
a real eye opener
really really good advice.
i’m an experienced educator, so i truly appreciated his presentation.
thanks for posting
Daniel Shonbuch is a marriage and family therapist, not a psychologist. There is an important distinction between the two.
but boring…. he should summarize that and not speak in a monotone..
You define kids who just want to be normal and mainstream as “at risk”. What a joke.