Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

What three letter word causes more pain, disappointment, and resentment than perhaps any other in the English language? But. How painful is it when a young man’s parents hear the word but from a shadchan: ...

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

What do these two phrases have in common? Original copy. Open secret. Each of these phrases is an oxymoron, a combination of words that have completely opposite meanings. If something is a copy, it can’t also be the original. If some piece of information is openly known, it isn’t a secret. ...

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

What is so hard about sharing? Nothing, if sharing means having something, deciding to let someone else have it for awhile, and then getting it back intact. For young children, sometimes for teenagers, and sometimes for adults, that’s not the way sharing works, and then it’s hard. ...

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman

If you count and check off every day and bring me your completed sefirah chart you’ll get a piece of cheesecake on Shavuos! That is a chart that works. Rafi and Yael wanted to figure out why the charts they made for their daughter Leila didn’t. ...

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

When I grow up I want to be a fireman. (Tommy, an eight year old inner city child) That was the newspaper’s “Quote of the Day” and it didn’t make any sense to me. What was so significant about this child’s statement? I probably read it three more times until I realized I had been reading it incorrectly. He hadn’t said, “When I grow up I want to be a fireman.” He had said, “If I grow up I want to be a fireman.” ...

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

Chaim and Shaindy had a very specific request. They wanted to know how to increase their son’s attention span. They were quite perplexed. They told me that their four-year-old son Mendy has never watched television or played an electronic game. They assumed that since their child had never been exposed to those fast paced, highly stimulating activities, he would be able to stay focused when his mother read to him. They couldn’t understand why his mind would wander after his mother had read only four paragraphs of a story he seemed, at first, to enjoy. ...