A Jewish, retired judge named Lee was an expert at showing unconditional love, even to strangers. He called himself the "hugging judge," and he created what he calls a "hugger kit," a package that contains thirty small red embroidered hearts with adhesive on the back of each one. He goes around to people offering them a little red heart and a hug. Through these simple acts he has become so well known that he is often invited to keynote conferences and conventions, where he shares his message of unconditional love.

At a conference in San Francisco, a local newsman tried to discredit Lee’s success. "This may work here," he said, "in the conference room, to people who selected themselves to be here, but it will never work in the real world. Try to give away some hugs on the streets of San Francisco."

A television anchorman threw him a great challenge. "Look, here comes a bus. San Francisco bus drivers are the toughest, meanest people around." Lee accepted the challenge. As the bus pulled up to the curb, he approached the bus driver saying, "Hi. I’m the ‘hugging judge.’ Yours has got to be one of the most stressful jobs in the whole world. I’m offering hugs to people today to lighten the load a little. Would you be interested in one?" The 6’2", 230-pound bus driver got up from his seat, stepped down and said, "Why not?" The judge hugged him, gave him a heart, and waved good-bye. The television crew was speechless. One day, Lee visited a home for the disabled. Together with several staff members, he went from ward to ward, and in the last ward, he found thirty-four of the worst cases he had seen in his life. The last person he saw was a severely disabled man named Leonard.

Leonard was wearing a big white bib, on which he was drooling profusely. Lee took a deep breath, leaned down and gave Leonard a hug. All of a sudden, Leonard began to squeal, "Eeeeehh, eeeeehh!"

The judge turned to the staff for some sort of explanation, only to find that every doctor, nurse and orderly was crying. "What’s going on?" he asked the head nurse.

"This is the first time in twenty-three years that we’ve seen Leonard smile."

The tremendous power of expressing and showing love cannot be underestimated.

Dr. Rothschild, the director of Maayanei Hayeshuah Hospital in Bnei Brak , is quoted as having said that even in the first days of a child’s life, there is a noticeable difference between those infants who have been hugged and touched by their mothers and those who have not.

There is however, a crucial point to be made. This love that we show our children must be a constant factor in the relationship, and cannot ever be dependent upon circumstances. A child must always be made to feel loved and accepted, regardless of his actions. Just as we cannot refuse to offer a child food to eat, even if we are not pleased with his actions, neither can we refrain from expressing our love for and acceptance of him, even if we are not pleased with his actions.

Of course we must discipline our children and even punish at times. Yet this need not mean that we are to withhold our love. On the contrary, at this time, our expressions of love and care are needed even more. Only then will the child accept our discipline, knowing that we have his best interests in mind (as opposed to letting out our anger and frustration).

This may be a difficult task indeed (especially if we have much to be frustrated about). Developing an attitude of "seeing things through the child’s eyes – not through my own eyes," can be a very valuable tool for providing us with perspective regarding our children. This means truly understanding the child, his needs, and the difficulties he may be experiencing.

A well-known author employed a novel method to bring this point home to an audience. In order to show how one person cannot influence another unless he is looking at the situation through the "eyes" of the other, he borrowed a pair of glasses from someone in his audience, and gave them to "Dan," another audience participant. Immediately when he put on the glasses, Dan recoiled, as the glasses’ prescription was quite strong.

The author attempted to influence Dan to accept the new situation and to be happy with it, but Dan was not in the least happy with the glasses. The more the author attempted to make him accept the glasses, the more uncomfortable Dan seemed to be with them.

Then the author tried to motivate Dan: "You can really do it if you only try. Try harder! It’s your attitude! If you would only think positive, everything would work out."

But Dan was no happier with the situation. The author then played the role of Dan’s parents: "You know how your mother and I have sacrificed for you. Don’t you realize how much we’ve done for you? And this is how you respond? I want you to be happy with these glasses!!"

None of the approaches helped. Dan was still unhappy. How could he be happy wearing someone else’s prescription glasses, when he had 20/20 vision? But someone would realize that only if he were seeing things through Dan’s eyes, or at least attempting to understand the situation according to Dan’s perception.

When our children do things of which we do not approve, or when they do not live up to our expectations, it is imperative that we first try to understand their perception of the situation. How do they view matters and why do they feel this way? Perhaps they are experiencing difficulties, not because of lack of cooperation or motivation on their part, but because they are unable to overcome certain challenges on their own, and they need our help. If we will ask our children – with love – about what happened from their point of view, and if we will carefully examine the situation with a true will to understand without accusing and without blaming, we may be surprised to find that our entire perception will change.

More important, this type of approach may help us to be able better to show our child our love and acceptance, which he deserves, consistently and unconditionally. Knowing that he has our constant support, our child can find the wellsprings of strength he needs in order overcome all obstacles, and he will bring us true nachat, be’ezrat Hashem.

With sincere wishes for your hatzlachah and siyata diShemaya,