Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman, LMHC

Giving your eye teeth means being prepared to give up something of great value.  Where did this expression come from?

As to how a person's canines came to represent something of great or prohibitive value, I found little to chew on. However, for a carnivorous animal to lose its eyeteeth would be a disaster. You could say, for non-human mammals at least, these meat-ripping teeth are a matter of life and death. So, applying this metaphorically to humans, to give them away is a very great sacrifice indeed.
(from: WORDS@RANDOM: The Mavens' Word of the Day)

What about showing someone your eye teeth without actually giving them away, how difficult is that?   For some parents, it’s very difficult.   It requires smiling sincerely at your child, smiling with your eyes and your teeth, and feeling thankful for his very presence in your life.   How can that be difficult?   Sometimes it’s difficult because of what he just did.  But sometimes it’s difficult because everything is.  For sometimes, depression makes everything too hard to take.  

Some parents think they hide it well.   They think that they grin and bear it and their child thinks they’re fine.   What he more often thinks is that they’re not fine, and somehow it’s his fault.   Many children suffer this way, even when they’re too young to feel responsible for their parent’s misery.

You are responsible for and capable of preventing your child from becoming similarly miserable.  A genetic disposition to depression is just that; a disposition, not a destiny.   Here is an excerpt from Daniel Goleman’s book Social Intelligence:

Depression, behavioral geneticists tell us, can be inherited.  Much research has tried to calculate the “heritability” of depression-the odds that such a child will herself become depressed at some point in her life. But as [researcher] Michael Meaney points out, children born with a parent prone to bouts of depression inherit not only that parent’s genes but also the depressed parent-who may well act in ways that foster that gene’s expression.

For instance, studies of clinically depressed mothers and their infants reveal that depressed mothers tend to look away from their babies more than others, become angry more often, are more intrusive when their babies need a recovery time-out, and are less warm. Their babies typically make the only protest they know-crying-or seem to give up, becoming apathetic or withdrawn…

A mother’s depression can become the transmission route by which all the personal and social ills bearing down on her affect her child.  A mother’s funk, for example, has negative hormonal effects on a child that show up as early as infancy: babies of depressed mothers have higher levels of stress hormones and lower levels of dopamine and serotonin, a chemical profile linked to depression. [page 168]

It isn’t only mothers whose depression can affect their child.

One study found an association between paternal depression and excessive infant crying.  Another study found that children aged 9 to 24 months with depressed fathers are more likely to show speech and language delays, whereas another study reported that children aged 2 years with depressed fathers tended to be less compliant with parental guidance.  Among children aged 4 to 6 years, paternal depression has been found to be associated with increases in problems with prosocial behaviors and peer problems.

[Paternal Depressive Symptoms and Child Behavioral or Emotional Problems in

the United States; Michael Weitzman, David G. Rosenthal and Ying-Hua Liu;

Pediatrics; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2010-3034 originally published online November 7, 2011]

The research makes it clear that having a depressed parent has consequences for children.   Parents who are depressed engage less with their children and are more harsh, negative and critical.

Could it be the other way around?  Could it be that excessive infant crying, speech and language delays, non-compliance with parental guidance, problems with prosocial behaviors, and peer problems, cause or exacerbate depression in parents?  Yes, it could be.   Correlation is often more clear than causation, and you can’t always tell how a downward spiral started.  The downward spiral can stop, no matter where it started or how far it has gone, when a parent overcomes two huge obstacles: Despair and shame.

Despair destroys hope.  Why seek help when you can’t imagine that anyone or anything could possibly be helpful?   Despair precludes hishtadlut.   Why invest time and money in treatment when you don’t believe that you’re worth the effort?

When a depressed parent finally decides that their child is worth their effort, and pushes through the despair to find a glimmer of hope, they face the second hurdle: shame.    Moshe told me he it took him many weeks to overcome it.

Last June, my wife told me that our children were starting to ask her what’s wrong with me.   I told her I wasn’t doing anything different, so why did they ask her what’s wrong?  I go to the same minyanim and shiurim, and we sing the same zemiros at the Shabbos table.   She said it wasn’t about what I was doing that had changed; it was about the look on my face.  She said our little one had asked why I never smiled anymore.   I had often said I’d give my eye teeth for my kids; now their eyes never saw my teeth.   I didn’t even realize it.   But once my wife told me that, you’d think I would have done something about it.   It took until now, until I read something on the parsha.   That really scared me, and pushed me to come and talk with you.

Talking was the help that Moshe needed.  B”H he is doing much better.

He read something on the parsha in September, Parshas Nitzavim:

“Behold I have placed before you today life and good; death and evil… choose life in order that you and your children shall live.” (Devorim 30:15-19)

Choose life?   Is there really an alternative?

The Bais Avraham, quoted in Mi’Mayanos ha’Netzach, explains:

There are two paths in avodas Hashem.  One is the path of love and simcha.  The other is the path of fear and terror, fear of punishment.   The first path is called “life and good.”   The second is called “death and unpleasantness.”

Hashem tells man: See before you, two ways to serve Me, both rooted in kedusha…

You can serve me in either of these ways, but I urge you to choose the first way, the way of “life.”   Why?   So that your children will follow you.

Moshe realized that although he was secure in his derech of avodas Hashem, even within his depression, his children were not.   That realization, that concern for his children, pushed him past his despair and overrode his shame.   He gave his eye teeth for his children, and they got back his smile.

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with specialties in marriage, relationships, and parenting.  He works with parents and educators, and conducts parenting seminars for shuls and organizations.  He can be reached at 718-344-6575.