A,B,C's

Ilan becomes Bar Mitzvah at the end of March, 2014. We recently read the Torah portion he will be reading. It's called Tazria (not a double portion next year due to the leap year), and it is a difficult parsha - both in leining (reading) and in the complexity of its content.

Many commentaries focus on Lashon Hora - or evil speech - rather than the spiritual impurity that sends an individual apart from his or her community. A spiritual impurity that was often - and incorrectly - referred to as leprosy. Tzaraat, as this infliction is known, is a physical ill-showing due to the sin of speech.

Whatever my son chooses to speak about one year from now, I have decided that we will spend a good deal of time within the next year reading commentaries on this parsha and learning about speech and communication.

Tonight, we read one short commentary to kick our learning off. It is a commentary that shares lessons for parents to teach their children each week, and this lesson - of course - was lashon hora. We talked about how it is easier to be mean to people in your family than it is to be mean to your neighbor. We talked about how painful and damaging words can be.  And we decided that if we started to learn and to talk about speech, that it would help us to have fewer moments of negative speech in our home.

At that point, Aaron noticed a book that I had brought in with me.  It is Martin Seligman's The Optimistic Child. Both boys became excited by this (which surprised me) and wanted to know more. I said this was a book that I thought was related to Ilan's Torah portion and to good speech because if we were optimistic people - felt good about ourselves and had good tools for dealing with conflict and other bad things - then we would also be more prone to use good speech instead of bad speech, lashon hora, or evil tongue.

So, we delved into the book and learned about the ABC's.  A is adversity, the problem that triggers a belief.  B is the belief - the self talk - that occurs due to the problem or situation. C is the consequence of those beliefs - the way you feel because of how you talk to yourself about the problem.

We went through several situations (I kept saying 'last one' and they kept saying 'nooooo. can't we do more?').  For example, when your best friend doesn't pick you first to be on his team - you always pick him to be on your team. What is it that you say to yourself when this happens?  Do you say "My friend doesn't like me anymore"?  Do you think, "I'm such a loser - even my best friend is not picking me."?  Do you say, "That's ok that he didn't pick me first. It might be fun to be on different teams for once." or "I know my best friend was talking about making the new kid feel welcome. I'm glad he remembered to pick him to be on his team." The "C" - the feelings - will be different depending on the talk you give yourself.

Situation after situation, we learned that by altering the way we speak to ourselves, we also change the way we feel. 

My boys didn't want to stop, and they are eager to do more. My hope is that by the time we get close to Ilan's bar mitzvah next year, he will have a good idea of what he wants to speak about.  My greater hope is that everyone in our family will learn to communicate more kindly, bringing us even closer and making us even stronger.... and optimistic.