Note: This question and the following article was originally published in the Ask-the-Therapist column of Jewish Echo Magazine
Question:
My son is Bar Mitzvah age and doesn't seem to have interest in staying for all of davening or laining in shul. Often, he refuses to come to shul at all. He says he's tired or not feeling well, but then of course feels better after the Shabbos meal to play with his friends for two hours. Should I push him and hope he will get used to it, or rather be quiet about it and it will come by itself as he becomes older and more mature. Thank you for your advice.
A Bar Mitzvah Boy's father
Answer:
It is not clear from your letter if your son is already bar mitzvah or on the brink. If he is before bar-mitzvah, it would be wise to assess the situation and note if it is considered normal for the boys in your family, for the boys in your shul, for his cousins and friends, to be inconsistent about going to shul on Shabbos before bar-mitzvah and if this changes immediately after. If he is already bar mitzvah, that changes the situation as I am assuming he is expected to attend minyan, a value of your community.
If you would pose this question to me as an educator, I would help you find ways to motivate your son to the tasks required of him as a bar mitzvah, one of which is to attend shul with his father on Shabbos.
However, you are asking a therapist this question, and that is a wholly different thing. And I will explain to why.
A child is naturally motivated to succeed. From when a child is very young, he tries to do everything in his power to be independent and successful; to emulate the role models around him. Watch a six month old struggling to sit, a year old wanting to hold the spoon and feed himself. The two year old wants to dress himself, the three year old is begging to go to school, and the four year old is desperate to get homework.
There is a brilliant psychologist who once said that as the acorn has the potential to be an oak tree given the right conditions, each person gravitates naturally to become the oak tree latent within himself given the right conditions.
And that begs a question: What happens to those children that fail to become the oak tree? The child that once asked his father a thousand questions from when he left his house until he reached the corner, now refuses to raise his hand in class. The child that once begged for homework, is surly and defiant about doing it. The sunny, happy two year old that delighted his grandparents and perfect strangers on the street with his social skills, now can't get along with his peers? And the child that once loved going to shul with his father, who was up at the crack of dawn waiting to put on his Shabbos clothes to go, suddenly develops mysteriously ailments to prevent his attendance. What happened to stunt the growth of those acorns?
The answer is simply that something most definitely did interfere with the natural desire of children to succeed and it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the examples given above. However, we can address the the writer's original question.
But before that, there is one more thing to know. A person must experience success in three areas of his life to be content: work, play, and relationships. For a child, that would translate as his feelings of success in cheder, in his hobbies or other recreational outlets, and socially. So, it's crucial to ask if your child's refusal to go to shul is an isolated issue that bears no relevance on the rest of his life; or if he is struggling socially, academically, and feels that he has no talents or lacks outside interests. If this is the case, then the question of his refusing to go to shul really has its roots in a larger issue.
But let us assume, for the sake of this article, that your child experiences relative success in these three areas, and is generally a happy, compliant, and well-adjusted child.
It is then important to first evaluate why the child does not want to go to shul. Here are a variety of reasons a child can list off: It's boring. It takes too long. None of my friends go to shul either. I'm tired after a whole week at cheder and want to sleep late one day. I can't sit so long.
These are all reasons that can be validated and then addressed. Negotiations can be made to allow the child to come late, or leave early; to invite a friend to join him, or to allow him to leave the shul whenever he feels the need for a break; to bring along something to occupy himself when he begins to fidget. The father may even choose to attend a different shul that has a shorter minyan to accommodate his son's inability to commit to a long minyan.
A father can make more sweeping changes in his shul. He can buy Judaica books to line the shelves so boys can read when laining becomes too dull. He can arrange a junior minyan that takes quicker, involves the boys more, and serves kiddush with nosh and cake to entice attendance. There are many ways to uncover the boy's latent desire to do what he knows is considered right if the resistance is superficial and the relationship is strong. (I would not recommend using any form of bribery to convince him to go or to remain at shul, unless it is used only as an initial attempt to start him off and that will stop immediately after.)
A child that has a good relationship with his father truly wants to make his father proud of him. Chances are he is not happy about not going to shul, or unable to wholly participate; uncomfortable about pretending not to feel well, knowing that nobody really believes him and he is reduced to lying. If he is validated and then given some range of choice, he will most likely choose well.
Then there are some deeper issues. The child does not know how to daven. Either the actual words are too difficult for him to follow, or he does not understand the mechanics of the davenning; when to stand and when to sit; when to answer in the appropriate places. And he is too embarrassed at this point to admit it.
He may have some degree of hyperactivity, or merely have high levels of energy that simply cannot be easily contained for such an extended time. He may be a more immature child, with boundless energy that cannot be harnessed.
Or, there may be a boy, or group of boys, with whom he feels uncomfortable. This may be his own social issue, or the problem can be rooted in the lack of middos the other boys display; maybe because they attend a different yeshiva or a different camp than your son.
A father needs to be present for his son to teach him to daven, to validate his difficulties with other boys, to validate the positive aspects of his liveliness, and help him overcome these challenges. These interventions may be simple or require the assistance of a professional to resolve them satisfactorily.
But the issue may be even deeper.
The child is actually imitating his own role model: his father. He watches his father talking during davening, ignoring laining or walking out to make kiddush during laining, showing an lack of respect to the services. He sees no value in the whole shul and minyan thing when he watches each morning as his father hurriedly puts on tefillin at home, and runs off to work, clearly identifying his true values. He is not bound by adult social constraints like his father is; therefore, he sees no reason to abide by the hypocrisy and attend shul just because his father wants him there as status quo.
It is possible that the father is a sincere shul-goer, davening with concentration and respect. It may be possible that there is a ruptured relationship between father and child; that the child may be angry at his father and resist accepting a value his father holds dear as a way of expressing his anger.
The father needs to re-evaluate what he has been modeling to son in the hope he can change and effect change in his son's attitude towards shul-going.
Yes, a child who is almost bar-mitzvah should be attending shul as chinuch for his bar-mitzvah; a child who is already bar-mitzvah is expected to abide by the norms of his community and attend minyan each day. And a child naturally wants to be the man his father is, to be the man that being bar-mitzvah confers on him.
It is the father who needs to develop a relationship with his son, that going to shul is a natural extension of this; and if there are roadblocks to this achievement, then it is the father's role to examine why and help the child.
And if the child is doing what he needs to do, but not as perfectly as his father would like him to, then the father can continuously improve the relationship and model good behavior (in patience and acceptance as well!) to help his son improve his own behavior.
It's very easy to ask a question; any child can do that. But it takes a man to find the answer.
I wish you hatzlachah with your son, and much nachas as you not only make his bar-mitzvah, but also help him become a bar-mitzvah!
My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online