Have you ever been awakened in the middle of the night by a small human being whispering directly into your ear, “DAD.”  I did, over 40 years ago, and I’ll never forget it!

Have you ever seen and heard food hurtling across a fifteen foot room from the mouth of a sick child?

Have you ever felt absolutely helpless to help another person who is intensely upset and you have no idea why?

Have you ever seen fantastic creatures and artwork within the clouds above?

No?  Then here’s something you need to know when you are expecting your first child.

You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination.  Next stop, the Parenting Zone!

As parents, you will discover and react, or preferably, respond, to sights and sounds you’ve never imagined possible.  If you pay attention, you will share a wondrous land of imagination with your children.  It is important to be a responsive or reactive parent.

It is also important, sometimes, to be a proactive parent, to help your child to develop midos tovos and social skills.

How important?  Learning midos tovos and social skills are essential to success in making friends.

How important is it to make friends?

According to Chazal and l’havdil, according to existential thought as articulated in the first episode of the Twilight Zone, it is a matter of life or death.

What happened when Choni Ha’mi-ga-ail discovered he had no remaining friends?

When Choni Ha’mi-ga-ail awakened after seventy years of sleep, he was not accorded the honor that was due him.  He became distraught, davened to Hashem to free him from this [psychological] pain, and he died [Cholash da’atei, ba’ai rahmei, u’mis].  Rava said: This is the meaning of the common expression “Oh chavrusa oh mitosah.” (Taanis 23a)

There are two possible meanings to this folk saying.

It could mean, “If you have no friends, you’d be better off dead.”

Or it could mean, “Either you have friends or you are dead.”

The Ben Ish Chai understands the expression the second way.

The pasuk says, “v’tzadik yesod olam,” a righteous person is the foundation of the world. (Mishlei 10:25)… But this is only when the tzadik is concerned with this world and has not removed his thought from it….But if, because of his intense holiness and separation, he removes his thoughts from this lower world… he will not bring bounty [shefa] into this lower world.  Even though he is still living in this world, it is as if he is not here [nistalaik]… This explains the statement in the Zohar haKodosh: The colleagues of Rabban Shimon bar Yochai said to him, “Woe unto the generation now that you [Mar] have left this world.”  They weren’t referring to his death, given that he was right there, alive.  Rather, they meant that he had removed his concern from this world [histalkos ha’taiva v’haratzon she’tiyeh lo b’machshavto]. (Arvei Nachal, citied by Ben Yehoyada on Taanis 23a, d.h. sham, sh’ainei zaz m’kaan)

The Twilight Zone put it this way:

“You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates. We can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort. We can pump oxygen in and waste material out. But there's one thing we can't simulate that's a very basic need. Man's hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that's one thing we haven't licked yet.”  (The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 1, Oct. 2, 1959)

Sadly, many have bought into the illusion that today we have licked that. They think we have created a way to simulate companionship.  It’s called social media.

Social Media is an oxymoron.  Without a smile, a wink (emoticons don’t count!), meeting someone’s eyes with a look of “yes, I get that,” what kind of companionship is it?  Perhaps a medium that provides visual and auditory exchange can come very close.

Parenthetically, there are two facial expressions of “I get that.”  One is an expression of “Kind Compassion” and the other is an expression of “Empathic Compassion.”  See the article below for composite images of these two discernibly different faces. (Based on: Falconer, C. J., Lobmaier, J. S., Christoforou, M., Kamboj, S. K., King, J. A., Gilbert, P., & Brewin, C. R. (2019). Compassionate faces: Evidence for distinctive facial expressions associated with specific prosocial motivations. PloS one, 14(1), e0210283. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0210283)

How you do teach a child how to satisfy this need for companionship?

The opportunity to satisfy this need centers around opportunities to play with others.

[T]he very nature of play is rapidly changing. Whereas previous generations were allowed to play after school and form close social bonds, many children today are raised by parents who restrict outdoor play.

What parents can do: Give your kids more free time to have in-person interactions with others of their own age. This will help them find the connections they might otherwise look for online or through social media. (From: cnbc.com/2020/02/05/

stanford-psychologist-3-things-kids-need-but-parents-fail-to-provide.html)

Father best friend if connected.

Your child’s first companion is you.  If you display interest, concern, support, trust, tolerance, playfulness, and all of the other dimensions of the companionship you want your child to be able to cultivate and sustain, she will know what to look for in a companion.

If you don’t, how will she know who is a safe and appropriate companion and who is not?  How will she know that she has a basic human need for companionship and it doesn’t always come naturally?  How will she know there is a remedy for the painful experience of loneliness so prevalent in our times?

I once asked a 17 year old girl, in the presence of her parents and siblings, if she ever feels lonely.  She began to cry.  No words were necessary.  She assumed that her parents and siblings were too busy with their own lives to take out time for her so she hid her loneliness from them.  No one knew.  Everyone cared once they found out.

Don’t assume your child is never behind the barrier of loneliness and does not know to whom to turn.

Most of us, children included, sometimes treasure solitude.

All of us, much of the time, are sustained by companionship.  Teach your children how to achieve it.

Rabbi Ackerman is the author of Confident Parents, Competent Children, in Four Seconds at a Time

Available at bookstores and on Amazon.

He can be reached at 718-344-6575