Rebbetzin Leah Gans
All the more so in our home. Empathy and a kind word shape the atmosphere here.
A child comes home from cheder or school tense and upset. He is hungry and tired, has no patience, and shouts at everyone. One of my daughters knows how to handle situations like this. She takes him into another room, speaks to him quietly, calms him down, and asks how things are going for him—and suddenly he seems like a different child. He stops picking on everyone and finding fault with the food he is given, and his behavior changes completely. But if everyone responds to his shouting by shouting back (“Why are you yelling at us? What don't you like? Why are you so tense?”), he certainly will not calm down and will most likely become even more resentful.
Spending a few quiet minutes alone with him, talking and asking how things are going for him, will work like lubricating oil in a machine.
There is a preschool teacher in our neighborhood who always says, at every parents' meeting and every end-of-year performance: “All of this is thanks to our wonderful aide. How she watches over the children and cares for them! How she cleans the preschool! Thanks to her, it is so pleasant to be here.” Of course, the aide does wash the children's faces, help them when they have “accidents,” and wash the floors—but hers is not, essentially, the main role in the preschool. Yet those few sentences the teacher includes in her honor raise the aide's standing in the eyes of all the mothers present, and in her own eyes as well. Of course, besides performing chesed, the teacher also benefits here because the aide will carry out her duties and help her more gladly.
My daughter was a substitute preschool teacher in Jerusalem's Old City.
At the end of the year, there was a performance, and one of the mothers stood up and spoke briefly—literally for two minutes—about what a good teacher my daughter had been during those few months: the children were happy with her, they “didn't even notice” that their teacher had changed, and they grew to love her. Perhaps those very words helped my daughter get a preschool of her own the following year (that is, a permanent teaching position), because the head of the entire preschool network was at the performance and heard the kind words about my daughter.
This is one area where modesty only does harm. Do not hold back out of modesty when you should express thanks or say something warm.
This is misplaced modesty. It is especially true in the relationship between husband and wife. A husband has only one wife, and a wife only one husband—who else can support them as they can support each other? Especially since, when we are angry, we often do not hesitate to say things to our loved ones that we would never say to strangers. We do not hesitate to speak words that pierce another person like arrows. But when it is time to offer praise, we feel uncomfortable?
Now we have another compelling reason to express thanks and offer praise in our own homes: doing so fulfills the mitzvah of gemilut chasadim through speech.
to be continued
Prepared by Mrs. Zissi Skarzhinskaya