Just for the record let me say that I am awed by our religious community. I should say communities, plural, but that would imply divisiveness and I am loath to put to paper any indication of that. Although we have our issues, I applaud our wonderful schools, menahalim and menahalos, principals and teachers who are dedicated, invested, and involved in their students' lives.
I met a menahel of a yeshiva who told me how he keeps his eyes out for students who don't come in those pre-Pesach days with breakfast.
“Their mothers are simply overwhelmed,” he told me. “It's the married children moving back from Eretz Yisroel, it's the preparations for Pesach in cooking and cleaning. And these little kids come hungry off the bus.”
“Guilty,” I laughed. “I was one of those mothers last year!”
He didn't think it was funny. “I make sure those children go down to the lunchroom and get food,” he said.
I have spoken to principals who not only arrange for therapy for students in distress, but pay for it as well. Other teachers arrange for private, free tutoring and I have met the most unbelievable teacher who washes her student's uniform so that the child has a freshly ironed and clean uniform shirt, free of stains indicating what she ate the day before.
So how can I not love our mechanchim and mechanchos?
It is because these people love their students so much, care so much, I would like to address an issue that is cropping up pretty frequently in high schools that I am hearing about from my teen clients. I have no doubt that any teacher who recognizes herself in this column will understand the problem and figure out a way to address it.
So here it is.
I would venture to say that there are quite a number of students in therapy. A handful in every class, or grade surely. Often very talented, popular, wonderful girls who no one would ever dream would ever go to therapy. Or would ever need therapy. But these brave girls battle anxiety, depression, difficult home situations, or life challenges. They reach out for help because they are successful and expect nothing less for themselves. They are often top students, well-groomed, pretty, social, and gifted. They sing, dance, play music, act, create, and write.
Of course there are other students in therapy too. Those who appear unhappy, are not doing well socially, experiencing ambivalence about Yiddishkeit, and come from unstable homes. But I am addressing the teachers of the seemingly well-adjusted, successful students who are in therapy—or who are seriously contemplating therapy for various reasons.
And here's the problem:
In the fiery enthusiasm of their lessons, teachers unwittingly make very hurtful and disturbing comments that send their students-in-therapy reeling.
“Girls!” they say, “All therapy is in the Torah! You don't need to go to therapy to understand how to live a good life! The Torah tells you exactly what to do! Keep the mitzvos and you won't have any anxiety or depression!”
Or, “Yelados Yekaros! If you just have enough Emunah, then everything will be good! Learn to trust Hashem and watch your life be wonderful!”
Or, “Kibud Av V'em is takeh a difficult mitzvah sometimes, but you need to work very hard to do it! No excuses! There's never a time to say NO to a parent! Chas v'shalom! If a parent tells you to do something, even if it is hard for you, then you must do it!”
Or, “The Torah tells us how long to grieve for a loved one. First the levayah, then seven days of shivah, then thirty days of the shloshim and then for a parent, a year of aveilus. After that, enough! It is time to move on!”
For most of us, including me in my pre-therapist days, these words were music to my ears. As an intellectual teenager, I was enthralled at the concept that all of secular learning is found first and foremost in the Torah, reveling in my religion that was so true and brilliant. I soaked in the words of my hashkafah teacher, drinking in their wisdom about emunah and how to achieve it, exhortations to be a better daughter, and the superior structure of the Torah that gave me a clear blueprint and map how to grieve and how to marry and how to live my life within the zmanim of yom tov and life's milestones.
Now, just for the record, I will say that I too was a wonderful teacher in a different lifetime. And I was guilty of a lot of dumb mistakes. I still feel guilty about an early year as teacher when one of my students had mono. And when she came back to school, because she looked fine to me and because I really had no idea what mono was, I acted totally inappropriately when my student did nothing for the rest of the year. Stuff like rolling my eyes and not believing her when she explained that she was too tired to do anything except come to school and sit there. I was clueless that simply showing up each day took great effort and she would have loved to be able to do homework and take tests and write notes; but simply could not.
And that is why I will never judge teachers who have made these comments. They simply do not understand and that is what this column is for: to give them tools to understand their students so that these comments should not cause the damage they do.
So here's the problem with those seemingly innocent comments:
Here's this special kid sitting in class who is undergoing tremendous challenges and her parents, her parents' rav, her own principal has recommended that she go to therapy because the problem is too big to handle herself. And she is a frum, ehrlich girl who wants to do the right thing. And then she hears her teacher saying that if she would just try harder to have emunah then she would not be feeling these panic attacks. Imagine how that destroys her fragile sense of self. Therapy becomes a proof of her failure to have sufficient emunah, instead of a tool to help her avodas Hashem.
The same is true for the other comments. The child in therapy who is dealing with an incredibly difficult home situation in which she is unable to practice kibud av v'em in a normal way, who is grieving, or who is suffering from anxiety or depression, is broken by such words that fault her. Even when she is receiving support from others who validate her struggles and reassure her that her emunah is strong, her grief is normal, and her kibud av v'em is an admirable work in progress.
Today, when so many students are in therapy, when so many of their family members may be in therapy, it is possible we have encountered a new dimension of how we must teach these very important concepts such as emunah by acknowledging the role of therapy in the lives of many children, and phrase our words differently in the classroom.
Thank you Principals and Teachers for listening. You cannot imagine how important you are to my clients, both past and present. We must work together.
NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BINAH MAGAZINES BI-WEEKLY COLUMN THERAPY: A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE
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