Just how important do Arabs consider their children’s lives to be?

Before I relate the following true, hair-raising incident, allow me to ask a different question. Just how much value do Arabs place on life altogether?

Perhaps you are familiar with the Arab custom to take random rifle shots at their weddings. My friend, who lives in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Yerushalayim, is intimately familiar with this custom. One day his 12-year-old daughter was sitting on the back porch reading a book when she decided to enter the house for a moment. Upon returning to the porch, she noticed a hole in the plastic chair on which she had been sitting. Looking under the chair she found a bullet shell.

She called her father to see what had happened, and they realized immediately that there had been a wedding in the Arab village nearby, and since their mood was so festive, they shot several rounds with their guns. Only Hashem’s chesed spared the girl from a dire fate when she left the porch just in time.

Obviously then, Arabs do not consider human life to be of great importance. Perhaps you will think, however, that this attitude of theirs applies only to Jewish lives. The following true story, which was told by the soldier who was there at the time, may change your impression.

An Arab living in northern Israel had been serving the Israeli cause, helping the Israeli army from his unique position. One day a soldier brought him a message from the Israeli intelligence services warning him that other Arabs had found out his secret, and in an act of vengeance, his Arab friends had booby-trapped his truck.

As the soldier watched, the Arab turned to his son and told him to go and start up the truck. The soldier was aghast. Even if this fellow didn’t believe him, how could he risk his son’s life by gambling on even the slightest chance that the soldier’s words were true? Noticing the soldier’s perplexed expression, he explained himself. "A child is replaceable; but If I start the truck and it blows up, who will be there to make money for my family? And with that explanation he stood back and watched as his son started the truck and was blown up in front of his very eyes.

As Jews, we know that our children are priceless. And it is only by safeguarding them that we can perpetuate Klal Yisrael, the holiest nation on earth. It is imperative, therefore, that we place the chinuch of our children at the very top of our list of priorities.

To perpetuate the Jewish people, however, making chinuch a top priority is not enough. We must at the same time make educating our children in such a way that they will perpetuate the Jewish people, a top priority. Many of our children are, tragically, being lost to negative influences. They are becoming broken links in the unbroken chain from Har Sinai down to us. It is therefore incumbent upon us to examine carefully our methods of chinuch, and to make sure that we are reacting to our children not only in a way that is convenient for us, but rather in a way that is best for the child, in a way that reflects the tremendous value that we place on our children as perpetuators of our holy tradition. And as two top psychologists in the field of children in crisis said, this attitude is at the heart of prevention.

Many people have come to believe that criticism is chinuch; this is a widespread misconception. At best, criticism – administered carefully and only on rare occasions – has its place, but it bears no relation to chinuch.

Chinuch can be defined as a system of placing your children on the correct path, so that eventually they will choose to follow it of their own free will. Rav Shlomo Wolbe shlita, a recognized mussar personality of our generation, describes the process of chinuch as "holding a match to a candle, until the candle’s flame burns on its own." Thus, our goal is to bring our children to the point at which they themselves want to do all that we know is right.

Having clarified our goal, we can examine which approach will be more effective to help us reach that goal.

One father we know of wanted his young son to excel at the sport of bowling. After the pins at the end of the bowling lane had been set up automatically, this father placed several additional pins in the gutters, so that the child’s ball could not miss hitting bowling pins, and the father could point out to him his "success." This father "taught" his son that he could succeed. When the child grew up, he bowled professionally. Following one extraordinarily successful tour, an interviewer asked him to reveal the key to his outstanding success. "I had a very unusual father," was his enthusiastic response.

We can see from this real-life example what powerful effects encouragement can have. Encouragement focuses on abilities; criticism, on the other hand, points to faults. When we focus on a child’s faults, invariably we lower his self-confidence. In fact, criticism that is administered often and with a concerted effort can effectively destroy a child’s self-confidence altogether, Heaven forbid.

Criticism may be useful when meted out in very small doses, very seldom and only in a carefully thought-out, constructive way. But more often than not criticism is a painful, destructive force. It is certainly not the main tool for building a child.

Encouragement is that tool! It is crucial that we find things the child does right, and praise him for those things – even if what he has done is less than "perfect." The more "right things" you can point out to your child, the more he will improve.

Admittedly, this is not an easy thing to do, but it need not be difficult if you start in a small way:

Twice a day, catch your child doing something right and praise him for it.

With sincere wishes for your success and siyata diShemaya