children – Jewish Independent

Parenting in pandemic

The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) has recently published Parenting in a Pandemic: A Guide for the Perplexed. Part of Project L’Chaim, a new Vancouver-wide youth mental health initiative in memory of Steven Diamond, the 36-page booklet is filled with insights and practical tools from 14 mental health experts to help parents and educators support their teens through the current crisis.

New York-based Rabbi Zalman Abraham runs the marketing and strategic planning for JLI. “We are the largest Jewish adult education network in the world, operating in over 2,000 locations,” said Abraham, who has been working in this role for the past 11 years or so.

Prior to joining JLI, Abraham authored courses and books, was an editor at askmoses.com and served in various teaching capacities. He was born in Brooklyn, grew up in South Africa, and did his schooling in the United States and Israel.

“My father is very active in dealing with the opioid crisis in South Africa,” Abraham told the Independent in a phone interview. “He’s known as the ‘addicts rabbi.’ There were times when I was growing up where there were up to six or seven addicts living in our house, because there was no better alternative then…. My father was involved with hundreds and hundreds of addicts, and overseeing their rehabilitation. He ran a halfway house, so I have a little bit of a background in that area.”

Abraham’s study of Chassidic philosophy deals a lot with Torah hanefesh, which can be loosely translated as psychology. The rabbi explained that this “is how Judaism informs us about our emotional and mental state and character, which is very relevant to addressing some of the very real mental health challenges our society is experiencing today.”

JLI has been offering courses for about 20 years, said the rabbi. “Over the past 10 years or so, many of our courses have focused on continuing education for professionals. We started with the legal profession, with courses in ethics and comparative talmudic and civil American and Canadian law. These were accredited by various bar associations of states [and provinces] across North America, including … the Law Society of British Columbia – they accredit for official continuing education credits for lawyers and attorneys…. We then began offering continuing medical education for medical professionals. Over the past few years, our most successful courses have been for mental health professionals, accredited by the American Psychological Association for psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, social workers and the like.

“This is an area where Jewish wisdom informs the professional world and answers a real need. The challenge with mental illness, chemical imbalances aside, is often a result of a build-up of crisis, where a person has one crisis and another … their experiences compound, [they] have trouble envisioning a future, finding hope.… They have trouble with self-esteem, with feeling confident about life, and with finding meaning and purpose in life. These are all areas that Jewish wisdom addresses in a real way, giving people a framework within which they can find meaning and purpose.”

JLI’s international program is called My Life is Worth Living. In the Metro Vancouver area, they run the program called Project L’Chaim (“To Life”), a suicide prevention project sponsored by the Diamond Foundation in memory of Gordon and Leslie Diamond’s son Steven, whose Hebrew name was Chayim.

“We use the already existing infrastructure to educate those on the frontlines who are interfacing with teens and youth – training them to become more professionally equipped to be able to support the emotional needs of the teens in their care,” explained Abraham.

“From 2007-2017 in the U.S., there’s been a 56% rise in teen suicide. This is despite all the efforts and energies being invested in this area. This is an issue that’s getting worse and isn’t yet contained – this is in the general (not Jewish-specific) population.… There’s definitely a greater need for mental health support now than there ever was before.

“And, especially now, with COVID-19, all of this is being exacerbated. To put things into perspective, only about 10% of those who need mental health treatment get it. Even then, it’s with an average delay of 10 years between the onset of symptoms and the first treatment, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

“Stigma is a big enemy to mental health treatment. No one wants to be labeled with a mental health diagnosis and carry that around with them for life. That stigma gets in the way of people getting the help they need.”

JLI’s approach is not clinical, but is supported by a clinical advisory board that includes Thomas Joiner, author of Why People Die by Suicide and other books on understanding why people commit suicide; Jonathan Singer, president of the American Association of Suicidology; University of British Columbia suicide expert David Klonsky; director of suicide prevention for New York State Dr. Sigrid Pechenik; Madeline Gould from Columbia University; and Jill Friedman from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

“We provide professional training to those teen-interfacing adults; training that takes many forms,” said Abraham. “They learn to identify warning signs to the risk, to create a safety plan and to intervene when necessary. They learn what resources are available and what to do in various scenarios. They’re trained to be first responders. And they can isolate and help teens in the most critical situations.

“We also engage teens in group discussions, about underlying issues that are conversations for everyone – about self-esteem, hope, finding purpose and meaning in life, coping mechanisms to deal with challenges, and so on. These are conversations had outside of the mental health framework, so as to avoid stigma.”

In the Vancouver area, JLI has connected with many Jewish organizations and doctors’ offices.

“Our goal is to put it in the hands of every parent in the Greater Vancouver area,” said Abraham, who is a father himself. “It’s a compilation of 14 articles from leading youth mental health professionals, mostly from the Jewish world … to provide support to parents, so they can support their teens during these difficult times.

“The booklet gives insight to what’s going on for teens in the mental health realm and provides a lot of practical tools. The most frequently mentioned idea in the booklet is that famous line from the safety announcement on airplanes – putting on your oxygen mask first, and then helping others. People need self-care first.

“Youth, particularly teens, are social beings needing social interaction to thrive. Many don’t have this right now due to COVID-19 restrictions. Also, youth need clarity, something they can depend on … so parents need to know how to create an open channel of communication for teens to feel safe to discuss their feelings.

“The number one hope is that parents will become more aware of what their teens are going through…. Lastly and most importantly, is that they gain some tool/ideas to help them support their teens through this.”

Visit myjli.com/index.html?task=parenting for more information or to order the booklet.

“This is just the first step of many that will be coming out,” said Abraham. “We’ve already run multiple professional trainings and we hope to do many more. This is a beginning of a big, multi-year project.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Making yoga more accessible

For Miriam Leo-Gindin, founder of the Yoga Buggy, COVID-19 has meant more opportunities to bring her passion for yoga to Vancouver youth – free of charge.

Leo-Gindin, 41, a former school teacher who has taught yoga in various capacities, including at Vancouver Talmud Torah, founded her Vancouver-based nonprofit organization in 2017. Until recently, she was offering free Zoom yoga classes to kids, but, thanks to sponsorship from the Canadian Red Cross, she’s been able to offer physically distanced classes at McSpadden and Woodland parks to local children and their families.

photo - Miriam Leo-Gindin — Miriam Leo-Gindin *(photo courtesy)*

“I’ve been doing yoga since I was 19 and it helped me get through some of my own health issues,” she told the Independent. “I founded Yoga Buggy to bring yoga to all kids and families, including those who are underserved, have financial difficulties or don’t have access for other reasons.”

The “buggy” part of Yoga Buggy refers to its mobile nature. Leo-Gindin’s classes are portable, so she is able to bring them to before- and after-school programs and to parks, so that families don’t have to travel far to participate. In addition to the Red Cross, her organization also has received funding from the B.C. Recreation and Parks Association.

Pre-pandemic, Leo-Gindin was doing around 25 classes per week all over the city, in Vancouver schools, YMCAs and neighbourhood homes, while also planning expansion into Burnaby, Richmond and Coquitlam. When COVID-19 began, she launched Community Zoom Yoga, offering two sessions a week for 12 weeks. The classes had a variety of themes, from community kindness to staying healthy, and were geared at children ages 5 through 12. There were also classes for preschoolers and teens.

“Yoga is really fun and kids enjoy it,” she reflected. “It brings out their creativity, helps build their attention span, makes them feel more confident, and can play a supportive role in dealing with anxiety, depression and behavioural issues.”

The website notes, “Yoga Buggy’s trauma-aware practitioners strive to offer as welcoming a space as possible. Choice in how to participate is always at the forefront of our classes and events. If there are any sensory, learning or additional supports that could be of benefit to any of the participants, please let us know so that we can offer as hospitable a space as possible. This information is kept private and confidential.”

Yoga Buggy has 15 active teachers and will continue its work through the fall. Leo-Gindin hopes to develop a yoga teacher training program and to start a YouTube channel to increase her reach even further with kids yoga classes. For more information, visit yogabuggy.com.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

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Note: This article has been updated to make clear that, while Miriam Leo-Gindin taught yoga at Vancouver Talmud Torah, she was not on staff at the school.

For Nanaimo-area kids

The first Camp Gan Israel in Nanaimo was last summer at the Shemtovs’ home, which doubles as the Chabad Nanaimo centre. (photos from Blumie Shemtov)

For the first time last summer, Blumie Shemtov offered a Jewish day camp for kids 5- to 10-years-old from her home in suburban Nanaimo, where she and her husband, Rabbi Bentzi Shemtov, operate Chabad Nanaimo and Central Vancouver Island. With no dedicated Jewish infrastructure in the city, families in the small and relatively disparate Jewish community are enthusiastic about the day camp.

A few years after Chabad Nanaimo started up, Blumie Shemtov met several families interested in having their young kids experience Jewish camp. She offered the five-day Camp Gan Israel in July 2019. Shemtov was struck by the sense of belonging that developed among the 10 children who attended, most of whom are the only Jews in their schools, she said.

“The idea was a week where children could be around other Jewish children and gain that sense of pride … and know that they are not the only ones” in the community who are Jewish, she told the Independent.

Jewish prayer, songs, culture and history were taught against a backdrop of recreational activities. Much of the day was spent in the Shemtovs’ backyard and large downstairs recreation room, but, to expand the activities, Shemtov and her counselors took campers on day trips to the beach, forested trails and even a trampoline gym.

She said, while some families attend holiday events throughout the year, the camp was the first immersive Jewish experience for many of the children.

“There’s something that’s holding everyone together,” she said. “The Jewish aspect that they don’t get regularly, I think, is an extra plus that makes people feel automatically closer together. Some people don’t feel the need [to be in Jewish community] until they have it.”

Research in recent years about the value of Jewish day camps has suggested they create long-term personal investment in Jewish community, much like overnight camp experiences, but have a lower barrier to entry financially and may have the ability to reach more children and families.

A 2018 report by Judith Samuels for the Foundation for Jewish Camp noted that day camps engage parents in the experience as well and allow “for a greater partnership between the camp and the camper’s parents surrounding the growth and skill-building that takes place at summer camp…. Unlike in overnight camp, day campers return home to their families each evening to share stories, songs and new learnings from their day.”

A companion report authored by Ramie Arian suggests why day camps might work so well in regions with no formal Jewish community space. It concludes, “Day camps can operate with much greater flexibility in the size and shape of their facility” than overnight camps.

Basha Bishop wanted her two daughters to attend the Nanaimo camp so that they would have more exposure to Jewish culture and history and “learn more about their heritage.” Both girls have grown up in Nanaimo and attend some events at Chabad throughout the year. While Bishop believes her daughters already had a strong sense of being Jewish, the camp was “important for them to have the exposure” to Judaism. At home, they talk about Jewish values and discuss Jewish-related topics, but, mainly, Bishop wants to teach her kids that “they have options available as their faith.”

“They’ve always adopted this idea of everything is kind of fluid – there’s no one way of doing anything,” she explained. “They can take what they need and feel like a part of community.” She said they will attend the camp again this summer.

Shemtov thinks the effort people made to have their kids attend is a testament to their dedication to community-building and Jewish learning.

“The beautiful thing I see here is, in other places, people send their kids to camp to get them out of the way, to give them something to do,” Shemtov said. “Over here, some parents are almost sacrificing their family time and vacations because they feel this camp is more important … and the experience [their kids] are going to gain is important.”

If more families come forward, Shemtov will consider extending the camp to two weeks this July. For more information, visit jewishnanaimo.com.

Shelley Stein-Wotten is a freelance journalist and comedy writer. She has won awards for her creative non-fiction and screenwriting and enjoys writing about the arts and environmental issues. She is based on Vancouver Island.

Treating children’s asthma

Dr. Allan Becker has devoted much of his life’s work to the study of asthma and how it affects children who have it. (photo from Allan Becker)

As Jewish community member Dr. Allan Becker was starting his career as a general practitioner, his daughter was diagnosed with asthma. As a result, he has devoted much of his life’s work to the study of the condition.

“My interest really started when my oldest daughter began having a wheezing episode at about two years of age,” Becker told the Independent. “It was pretty obvious that this was an infection – something we call bronchiolitis, which is fairly common in young children.”

Becker was working in Dauphin, Man., at the time of his daughter’s diagnosis, in the 1970s, and was beginning to see more and more kids with asthma coming into the emergency room.

“Since 1980, when I returned to academics, I’ve been trying to understand why the epidemic started – what the developmental origins of asthma and allergies are,” said Becker, who is now based in Winnipeg. “And, really, they’re the canary in the coal mine when you think about the increase in chronic diseases.

“Asthma is by far the most common chronic disease in children and it’s the earliest to start,” he said, “but we’re seeing parallel increases of other chronic diseases, like diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases, various forms of arthritis, and others.”

Over the course of a five-decade career, so far, Becker has seen chronic diseases become more prominent. And, while the reasons for this change remain elusive, it seems clear that it involves genes and the environment.

In the early 1990s, Becker and Vancouver-based Dr. Moira Chan-Yeung embarked on a study of ways to potentially prevent the development of asthma.

“Think about the environment in terms of things we breathe and eat … and things like pets in the home, like tobacco smoke exposure, like pollution, like bad nutrition, Western-style diets, etc.,” said Becker. “We started a multifaceted prevention of asthma program in 1994.”

While that study did not reap substantial results, it did eventually lead to a current study examining the environmental impact on expectant mothers in all areas, including the benefits of decreasing stress, which Becker feels may be the most important factor.

Information about the study, called Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD), can be found at childstudy.ca.

“CHILD started in 2008 and is an observation study, because we don’t believe we know enough to prevent the disease as yet,” said Becker. “We’re now seeing the children at 8 and 9 years of age, and we’re looking way more broadly at the environment. We’re looking at stress very specifically, both for parents and children.

“We’re looking much more in terms of diet, but also at the microbiota, the bacteria and other organisms that live in us, with us and on us, and which are likely extremely important – maybe critical – in helping to shape children’s immune responses in early life.”

According to Becker, there are more bacteria in our gut than there are cells in our body, and microbiota are now being considered as the cause of and potential cure for all sorts of illnesses.

One of the biggest hurdles is trying to determine if a young child who is wheezing has asthma and should be treated as such, or if the child has a respiratory infection that causes wheezing. Becker said part of the problem is how to more accurately define wheezing, which is described as a whistling noise coming from the chest.

“The key thing is that it’s not just the whistling noise in the chest,” said Becker. “It’s also that tugging in, particularly tugging in under the ribs, with the tummy pulling in when breathing. That’s a very good indication that those airways are narrowed and that the child has to work hard at moving air, particularly moving air both in and out. That’s what we teach our trainees to work on with the families they see.

“And, obviously, any time a child is distressed – if they’re looking distressed, particularly if there’s a change in colour of the lips – those are urgent issues. And, some children have such severe narrowing of the airways that you don’t hear wheezing, because they’re not moving enough air, but they will be struggling to breathe. You’ll see them pulling in their tummy and you’ll see their shoulders heaving,” he said. “And you’ll often see toddlers and older kids with their hands braced on their knees, hunched forward, trying to get air in. That type of tripoding is really a worrisome sign, as is a change in lip colour – that’s an emergency. Those children need to be brought to emergency quickly.”

If it gets to the point that the child is given inhalers, Becker pointed out that blue puffers are for particularly bad episodes, while orange or red puffers are for management.

For a bad episode, he said, two inhales from the blue puffer should be taken. “An inhalation and a bit of a pause, and then a second puff and inhalation … in many cases, that will be enough to help control things,” said Becker. “If it doesn’t help make things better, then, in five to10 minutes, it should be repeated. If the child is still distressed, that’s an indication they need to be brought to a hospital.”

The blue puffer should not be used for asthma management, he warned, as the body will develop resistance to it. So, if the controller medications are not providing enough control, he said parents should talk to the doctor who prescribed the puffer to determine a solution.

“If people are needing to use the blue puffer on an ongoing basis, even once or twice a week, week after week, that’s really telling you that you don’t have control of what’s going on and is very worrisome,” said Becker. “There should never be a death from asthma. But, sadly, every year there are some. And, these deaths are – rather surprisingly – not necessarily in kids with the most severe, persistent asthma; they’re in kids who are thought to have mild asthma. But, in fact, when you look at it, if you are using the blue puffer and need to get a new one every month or two, that’s a big red flag … needing to use the blue puffer in the middle of the night, that’s a big red flag. Nighttime symptoms are really a worry – those are kids who need to be seen and properly assessed and, in most cases, they need to be using controller medication.”

Becker is proud of having led the development of a national certification for asthma educators in Canada – Canada was the first country to provide this type of certification.

“We have a children’s allergy and asthma education centre in Winnipeg attached to our children’s hospital,” he said. “It’s one of the only real free-standing ones in North America. The website is asthma-education.com.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Teaching kids reading skills

With Hoot Reading, kids and teachers can see and hear each other via video chat. (screenshot)

Hoot Reading allows kids to get in their desired screen time, while also improving their reading skills. Jewish community member Carly Shuler, co-founder and chief executive director of the online tutoring company, came up with the educational concept while working on Sesame Street.

“While I was there, I was working on a research project aimed at understanding how to help kids learn through video chat,” Shuler explained. “Fast forward a couple of years and my co-founder, Maya Kotecha, and I decided the idea was too good to stay in the lab. So, we got the rights, formed Hoot Reading, and here we are.

“Something a lot of parents don’t know is that there is a deadline for reading,” she said. “We talk a lot about the fourth-grade reading slump, which is this phenomenon that happens in Grade 4, when children need to make the leap from learning how to read to reading to learn.”

The school system is based on the assumption that, by Grade 4, kids will be reading fluently. While some kids are indeed fluent readers by then, some 60% of students are reading below grade level as they start Grade 5. And, from then on, the ability to read is needed for every single topic, from math to science to social studies to music and to health, not to mention for activities outside of school.

“What happens is that those kids, come Grade 4, that we thought were average students, fall behind,” said Shuler. “They lose confidence and they disengage from school. And so, while we don’t believe at Hoot Reading that earlier is better, we do believe that there is a deadline for becoming a fluent reader – and that deadline is Grade 4.

“Hoot Reading, in particular, is good for all kids from kindergarten through to Grade 4 and, then, also any kids who are struggling after that point,” she said. “So, we have kids up to Grade 10 reading with us. They are in that 60 percentile of kids who are reading below grade level.”

The tutoring is done online with classroom teachers, one-on-one, in 20-minute lessons, two to three times a week. The app is basically Facetime meets Kindle, said Shuler. Kids and teachers can see and hear each other via video chat, and both the teachers and the students can point to things and see where the other is pointing.

“It allows for that dialogic reading, but it’s the interactive back and forth that is so important as a child progresses as a reader,” said Shuler. “Kids can do it from the comfort of their own home, from their family car, from their sibling’s piano lesson, or wherever they are. It can really happen anywhere at any time, so parents find it very convenient.”

Weighing in on screens, Shuler said, “At Hoot Reading, we don’t believe all screens are created equal. As parents, we should be paying more attention to what our kids are doing on screens, rather than just focusing on how much time they are spending on them. There are some really great things they can do.

“We believe screens can sometimes have a real benefit to our children’s learning, such as by allowing us to offer an affordable way to do one-on-one reading tutoring. So many kids can get access to it, whereas they couldn’t before. So, we encourage parents to think about it that way.”

Further to this, Shuler encourages parents to be reading mentors and role models, showing their kids that they, too, are using their screens to read.

“It’s really important that our children know that we are reading, so that they can see that it can be a really fun part of their media world,” she said. “Whether we are reading on a Kindle or reading a hard copy book, we want to show them and do it in front of them … and talk about the books and stories at the dinner table, because it’s really important that kids see reading can be fun.”

Shuler feels strongly that parents should help their kids choose apps and games that encourage reading. The ability to comprehend what you are reading and to be able to follow instructions is an important skill. While enjoying some games that do not involve reading is OK, she recommended finding games that do provide a different medium for kids to further their love of reading.

Just like any other skill, the more you practise, the better you get at it and Shuler maintains that kids should read aloud with a grown-up for at least 10 minutes a day, five days a week.

“In the same way that, when learning to play basketball, some kids might be a little better at it than others, but the best way to improve anything is through practise,” she said. “We have to practise and we have to practise out loud, with a grown-up there. Whether that grown-up is a parent, a Hoot Reading teacher, or someone else, kids need to be practising – and that’s not what’s happening in so many households. We’re so busy nowadays, between after-school activities and all the amazing things our kids get to do. But, reading cannot fall onto the backburner, because, if kids don’t practise, they’ll probably end up in that 60% by Grade 4.”

Shuler said kids need to have what they learn in school reinforced at home and, therefore, increasing public awareness is critical.

“A lot of parents don’t know – they just think about reading in terms of literacy or illiteracy so, once their child can read, they think, ‘Great! My child can read. We’ve got this!’ But, the truth is, again, reading is a skill, and you get better at it the more you read. That’s where most parents don’t know how important it is to continue the reading out loud, even if their child is reading.”

She added that “the key is in knowing how important it is and in making sure we prioritize reading practice in the same way we prioritize brushing our teeth.”

Finding books and other material that interest kids and make them excited about reading is paramount. “Just try to keep it a positive experience as much as possible,” said Shuler, “and do what you need to do as a parent to make that happen.”

Shuler and Kotecha recently launched a new initiative, called Hoot for All, sponsored by Spin Master, that will allow them to provide reading tutoring for kids at Boys and Girls Clubs across Canada at no cost to the kids’ families.

For more information, visit hootreading.com.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Tolerance via playing soccer

A participant in Playing Fair, Leading Peace in Jaffa. (photo from Peres Center)

“I did not know I could play with Jews or talk to them. Now I want to and I can,” wrote an Arab middle school student whose school was one of 10 – five Jewish, five Arab – to participate in Playing Fair, Leading Peace, created by the Jaffa-based Peres Center for Peace and Innovation to unite Jewish and Arab Israeli children through soccer.

In 2018-2019, Playing Fair, Leading Peace engaged 300 fifth- to seventh-graders in Arab and Jewish sectors of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Kalansua, Kfar Saba, Beersheva and Tel Sheva. In each participating school, one class is matched with one class from the corresponding nearby school. Kids and their teachers are guided by two specially trained university students (one Jewish, one Arab) in five tolerance education and prep sessions held at their own school, and in five joint soccer matches on one another’s turf.

In these games, Arabs don’t play against Jews; each team mixes children from the hosting and visiting schools. And there are no referees; the children are given the responsibility of determining rules and mediating disputes.

“They need to communicate to solve issues during the game by themselves. This is a smart component of the program,” said Tamar Hay-Sagiv, director of the education for peace and innovation department at the Peres Center.

photo - Children in the Arab village of Kalansua with a poster stating, “We need diversity” and “We are all equal” in Hebrew and Arabic — Children in the Arab village of Kalansua with a poster stating, “We need diversity” and “We are all equal” in Hebrew and Arabic. *(photo from Peres Center)*

But it’s not an easy component, because one side speaks Hebrew and the other speaks Arabic. “We tackle the language issue by teaching through sports. They learn the language of ‘the other’ while they play,” said Hay-Sagiv.

Nor is it a simple matter to convince parents to allow cross-visits.

“There are fears and stereotypes to overcome,” acknowledged Hay-Sagiv. “We had one child in the south whose family was afraid for him to travel to a Bedouin school. It was a trust-building process between his parents and the head of the school, who gave us full support and made the family comfortable in allowing the visit. It’s always a challenge for Jewish schools to agree to travel to Arab communities, but the hospitality they receive is unbelievable.”

One child wrote on the evaluation form after the first visit: “Even after they prepared us, I was still afraid of them, but when I met them, they looked like us, only with different clothing.”

As for stereotypes, it’s not only about the Arab-Jewish divide but also about gender. “We’ve had girls thinking they are not allowed to play soccer,” said Hay-Sagiv. “We have to overcome that, too. We try to create a safe space for everyone that is fun and interactive.”

For the last 18 years, the Peres Center has used sports, specifically soccer, as a tool to break down barriers between youth, Hay-Sagiv told Israel21c.

The centre’s flagship project, Twinned Peace Sports Schools (TPSS), involves leadership training and mixed teams led by professional coaches. Britain’s Prince William kicked around a ball with the TPSS team in Jaffa during his visit to Israel last summer.

photo - Playing Fair, Leading Peace soccer match at a Jerusalem school — Playing Fair, Leading Peace soccer match at a Jerusalem school. *(photo from Peres Center)*

TPSS, started in 2002, is the first and longest-running initiative of its kind in the region. Hay-Sagiv said it “significantly influences Arab and Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian girls and boys to become agents of positive change in their community and around the world.”

The Peres Center sought a way to scale up this successful, but limited, peace-building-through-sports program in a more accessible and less expensive format that would also involve nonathletic children.

“Based on our experience, we thought it would be interesting to get into Jewish and Arab schools during school hours and engage full classrooms. This way, we can reach all the boys and girls, as well as their teachers,” said Hay-Sagiv. When the other children in the host school observe the mixed teams playing soccer together, “it’s unbelievable to see the reactions to this unusual sight. That also has an impact.”

Playing Fair, Leading Peace is supported by the Israel Football Association, which oversees Israel’s national football (soccer) team comprised of Jewish and Arab Israelis, and captained by Circassian-Israeli Muslim Bibras Natkho. The program also works with the National Union of Israeli Students (representing all Israeli universities) and the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation.

“Hopefully, next [school] year, we will double the number of participating schools,” said Hay-Sagiv.

She explained that fifth- to seventh-graders were chosen for the program “because we see this as a crucial age for exposing them to this type of experience. Verbally, they are well developed and they’re going into a tough age. You have enough time to work with them during school hours, and it’s still possible at this age to work with boys and girls together.”

Based on questionnaires distributed before and after the activity, Hay-Sagiv and her staff can see that the program effects changes in attitude.

“I want to feel with them exactly the way I feel with my friends,” wrote one child.

“I hope that we will become one family that does joint activities in togetherness and tolerance,” wrote another.

Hay-Sagiv isn’t surprised by this impact, having seen the inroads made over the years by Twinned Peace Sports Schools.

“We’re traveling to Poland to organize a sports tournament in Warsaw with Israelis, Poles, Germans, Hungarians and Russians to mark 80 years since World War II, hopefully in September,” she said. “We are thinking of bringing a mixed Jewish and Arab team from Israel.”

For more information, visit peres-center.org/en/the-organization/projects/sports/playing-fair.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Korczak course at UBC

A postcard showing Janusz Korczak in the courtyard of the orphanage on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw, Poland, in the early 1930s.

An unprecedented interdisciplinary event will take place this summer at the University of British Columbia, focusing on the legacy of Janusz Korczak, a pioneer in the area of children’s rights and welfare.

Korczak is perhaps remembered most for his final act of heroism: his refusal to accept an offer of a reprieve, choosing instead to walk with the 200 or so orphaned children of his school as they were sent to their deaths at Treblinka. But it is his legacy as an educator, physician and writer that will be the focus of the 2019 Korczak Summer Institute. The two-week intensive program, called Advocacy in Action: The Legacy of Janusz Korczak, is open to graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines. It takes place July 2-11.

“To the best of my knowledge, there’s never been a university-based course on the work of Janucz Korczak, not in his native Poland, not in Israel, certainly not in North America,” said Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goelman, professor emeritus in UBC’s department of educational and counseling psychology, and special education. The program was developed across disciplines, reflecting Korczak’s range of academic and philosophical work.

“He was a pediatrician by training, so we reached out to the department of pediatrics to get their help and a number of faculty members are going to do Korczak-related activities,” said Goelman. “He was an educator, so the faculty of education were happy to co-sponsor the course with the Januscz Korczak Association [of Canada]. But it would also be open to people studying social work or any sort of child-focused activity. A lot of people at UBC support the whole cause of child activism and child welfare from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

Korczak’s philosophy inspired and informed the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Children. Importantly, his work was not limited to academics or writing, but was devoted to applying his values of child empowerment directly to the real world.

“Children are not the people of tomorrow but people today,” Korczak wrote. “They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals.”

“In the orphanage that he ran in Warsaw, they had a children’s parliament, where children elected their leaders to make the rules and enforce the rules,” said Goelman. “There was a children’s court, where children could complain about their treatment either by the staff or by other students. There was a children’s newspaper that they published. He very much empowered children and he thought it was important to draw on this and give them opportunities to develop their own leadership. I think those are all very important contemporary messages for educators, social workers, pediatricians … and it’s kind of timeless. It’s really relevant to where we are today in terms of child activism, child welfare and child advocacy.”

The institute is designed to help participants transform their working environment to model democratic principles pioneered by Korczak in his writings, pedagogy and governance of the orphanages under his care. It will also encourage participants to adopt strategies to translate the respect for children’s rights into professional practices, including communication with parents and the larger community, and to learn how to help children in developing and sustaining their cultural identity, particularly among those who may struggle with multiple identities.

The course will be taught by Prof. Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady, an internationally recognized expert on the life and legacy of Korczak and adjunct professor at Seattle Pacific University. She will be joined by a team of international and national invited speakers: teacher trainer and UNICEF consultant Jonathan Levy (Paris, France); founders and leaders in the field of social pediatrics Dr. Gilles Julien and Hélène Trudel (Montreal); researcher and practitioner of Korczak’s legacy Wojtek Lasota (Warsaw, Poland); several UBC professors of nursing and psychology; U.S.-Canadian writer Tilar Mazzeo (Victoria); and a Holocaust survivor and poet, Vancouverite Lillian Boraks-Nemetz.

Promoting Korczak’s pedagogical ideas, as well as their effect on children’s education, is part of the mandate of the Janucz Korczak Association of Canada, which was founded in 2002. The president, Jerry Nussbaum, lives in Vancouver, as do fellow board members Goelman and Boraks-Nemetz.

“His work is very much alive,” said Goelman of Korczak.

The deadline to register for the UBC course is May 28: pdce.educ.ubc.ca/child-advocacy.

A case for mothering

“Oh, I know that I owe what I am today to that dear little lady so old and grey / To that wonderful Yiddishe momme of mine.” (from the song “My Yiddishe Momme,” by Sophie Tucker, 1920s)

It was not until the early part of the 20th century that a day was created to honour and officially acknowledge the importance of mothers. Founded by American Anna Jarvis and first observed on May 10 in 1908, Mother’s Day will be celebrated this year on May 12.

But times change, and what may have applied in Jarvis’s time doesn’t go far enough in our present society. A distinction should be made between the mother and the act of mothering: one is a noun, the other a verb. Historically and biologically driven, the role of mothering has been primarily fulfilled by the biological mother. However, in the 21st century, this role is now often carried out by a variety of others, such as fathers, grandparents, adoptive parents, foster parents, step-parents or paid caregivers.

The explosion of neuroscience research over the past few decades has provided a meteoric rise in neurobiological literature with findings that support their predecessors’ observations and predictions in child development. Selma Fraiberg (1977) was farsighted when she wrote that mothering “is the nurturing of the human potential of every baby to love, to trust and to bind to human partnerships in a lifetime of love.” The evidence from various sources converges in the consensus that the human capacity to love is formed in infancy and this bond should not only be considered a gift of love to the baby, but a right – “a birthright for every child.”

Unfortunately, the recognition and awareness of the crucial role of mothering in a child’s healthy development and, consequently, to future generations, is gradually being eroded. It is often seen as a secondary role in the scheme of our busy lives. It was 42 years ago when Fraiberg wrote that we are seeing a devaluation of parental nurturing and commitment to babies and young children, which may affect the quality and stability of the child’s human attachments in ways that cannot yet be predicted. She warned that the deprivation of a mother or mother substitute will diminish a child’s capacity for life.

Fraiberg’s cautionary notice is eerily apparent in the growing numbers of young children and troubled youth as reflected in mental health issues and criminal behaviours. For example, Canadian Bullying Statistics (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2012) indicated that 47% of Canadian parents have had a child who has been a victim of bullying; Canada has the ninth-highest rate of bullying in the 13-year-old category in a survey of 35 countries; and at least one in three adolescents have reported being bullied.

The basic needs of children have not changed, but our priorities seem to have been rearranged, as advertisers increasingly shape our wants into needs. We did not invent childhood. We are only discovering what has likely existed since the beginning of time. Louis Cozolino, PhD, (2014) notes there is “a causal link between interpersonal experiences and biological growth.” These links are of particular interest in their impact on early caretaking relationships, when the neural infrastructure of the social brain is forming.

As Lloyd deMause notes in The History of Childhood, “That because psychic structure must always be passed from generation to generation through the narrow funnel of childhood, a society’s child-rearing practices are not just one item in a list of cultural traits. They are the very condition for the transmission and development of all other cultural elements, and place definite limits on what can be achieved in all other spheres of history.”

A world of mothers and mother substitutes has taken on the loving and arduous tasks of mothering, with all the pleasures and perils of parenting. To those who are fortunate to still have mothers in their lives – be thankful and let her know how much she is cherished. For those who don’t, treasure the memories that have become even more precious. And for those who are themselves mothers, you have undertaken the most difficult but important task of life with all its joys and sorrows. You have taken on the most valuable contribution to society and its future as well. So, to mothers and to those who mother, we honour you today and every day.

Libby Simon, MSW, worked in child welfare services prior to joining the Child Guidance Clinic in Winnipeg as a school social worker and parent educator for 20 years. Also a freelance writer, her writing has appeared in Canada, the United States, and internationally, in such outlets as Canadian Living, CBC, Winnipeg Free Press, PsychCentral and Cardus, a Canadian research and educational public policy think tank.

Safe, healthy and respectful

Campers at Pennsylvania’s Camp Havaya. (photo from Camp Havaya)

In Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers), Ben Zoma says, “Who is honourable? One who honours others.” The Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Shmira Initiative “aims to make camps safe, healthy and respectful model communities. Shmira, in Hebrew and in the vernacular of Jewish summer camp, means guard duty, embodying the social and individual responsibility every community member has to ensure a safe environment.”

For some camps, the initiative provides practical training that has been needed for some time. But, at Camp Havaya in Pennsylvania, camp director Sheira Director-Nowack told the Independent that they have been operating on the initiative’s principles for many years.

“We have people who go by ‘he,’ by ‘she’ and by ‘they,’ as rabbis, teachers, students, educators, campers and staff,” said Director-Nowack of the camp, which is part of the Reconstructionist movement. “So, for us, the sexual harassment piece is something we’ve always discussed, have always had a policy for. I used to work at a camp that did not have that defined as clearly and they had some real challenges. We don’t have some of those challenges here, because it’s very up front and very clear – how you treat all people, not just insofar as gender, but in all areas of inclusion.”

At Camp Havaya, respect is constantly discussed.

“The name of our camp mascot is Howie Bee,” said Director-Nowack. “We talk about ‘how we be,’ using that as a fairly common statement to talk about how we should treat each other with respect, kindness … better than you’d want to treat yourself, you’d want to treat the other person … and, not just as a Jewish phenomena, but as a human phenomena.”

While Director-Nowack acknowledged that, every so often, they run into power conflicts in a relationship, they try to ensure it never gets near the point of harassment.

At Camp Havaya, she said, flirtation is discouraged. For example, there are strict rules as to what clothing is acceptable. Everyone must wear shirts at all times and clothing should be loose fitting. They also have no boys against girls competitions. Instead, all sports are open to everyone and, while everyone swims together, there are rules about appropriate swimwear.

Language and attitude is another area that is closely monitored at the camp. “We don’t use the word ‘broad’ or ‘chick,’ we don’t use a lot of derogatory terms,” said Director-Nowack. “We don’t make jokes at other people’s expense.

“We want everyone to treat each other how they would treat their own family or themselves…. There’s not a constant need for romance or underlying things that go into that modern love thought and, because of that, we don’t see certain behaviours that other places might see.”

The concepts of the #MeToo movement are discussed at camp, as are other relevant topics, like Black Lives Matter and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Our constituency is made up of people who are interested in these things … also, things like respect for people with special needs, inclusivity, race, culture and minorities,” said Director-Nowack. “We don’t talk about these things because they’re hot topics. We were talking about them before they were considered cool to talk about.

“We also give the credit to younger people, because it is them who are changing the verbiage, changing ideas. They are bringing them to us and we are bringing them to camp, because, if camp is a microcosm of society, then we want to be part of that.”

If and when the topic of sex comes up, Director-Nowack said she teaches her staff to turn the conversation back to the camper and ask why he or she is wondering about it.

Camp Havaya has a no-sex policy. If inappropriate behaviour is observed, Director-Nowack said, ‘We don’t punish people for behaviour, but I may or may not ask them if camp is the appropriate place for it. I don’t feel like there’s any place at camp where you could be sexual appropriately, and that’s what we talk about.

“We don’t hook up in the middle of the woods – that’s just not what we do. And, we really don’t have a lot of that. I don’t think I’d kick someone out of camp just because they kissed someone. But, I’d say something like, ‘I just walked passed you kissing … not what I want to see, not OK, not cool.’ If it got further than that, it would depend on the kid, the parent, the discussion and the situation. We’re dealing with human beings and we have an environment that’s not constant.”

Still, staff members do talk with campers about consent, in an effort to ensure all of them are comfortable in their own space at all times.

“Our goal is to create young leaders in the Jewish community who are thoughtful and intelligent, and who are, therefore, going to go out and lead a Jewish life and know themselves,” said Director-Nowack. “We love that some people find their love and their relationships at camp. But, I also love that people find their independence at camp … or that they want to lead a more productive Jewish life without a partner…. We want our kids and staff to leave camp as people who are going to make decisions guided by some basic values.”

For more information on the Shmira Initiative, visit jewishcamp.org/shmirainitiative.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Love starts with the self

Most of us are familiar with the concepts of “inherent worth” and “unconditional love.” But many fewer of us actually live by these precepts. Anne Andrew would like to help change that fact. She does this in her work, as well as in her new book, What They Don’t Teach in Prenatal Class: The Key to Raising Trouble-Free Kids and Teens, the launch of which takes place April 11, 2 p.m., at the Isaac Waldman Library at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

In the introduction, Andrew shares, “My experience as a worried parent of a once-troubled teenager (now a well-functioning adult) and my wish to help other parents avoid the sleepless nights, debilitating fear, helplessness and despair, led me to write this book. Our family’s ordeal lasted more than six years and, during that time, we learned strategies that not only helped us survive but actually allowed us to thrive…. At the same time, I was working as a school principal and became aware of the mental health crisis that was starting to take hold in younger and younger students.” As examples, she notes that 77% of children report having been bullied at school and 80% of 10-year-old girls wish they were thinner.

Andrew was a school principal at Temple Sholom for 20 years. “It’s likely,” she writes, “that one or more of your children will face some kind of difficulty, whether it’s an eating disorder, bullying, drug addiction, depression or other mental health issue, and it is almost impossible to predict whose child that might be. You can’t always see it coming – we certainly didn’t!”

Based on what she was learning from her family’s therapist, Andrew “concluded that there is an absolute and fundamental concept that underpins healthy human life.” That concept – inherent worth – is the subject of the first section of What They Don’t Teach in Prenatal Class. Part 2 focuses on unconditional love, explaining “why it is so difficult for us to accept and own our inherent worth, then explain[ing] how this can be done and become part of your ‘way of being.’” The third part of the book discusses parenting priorities, “kindness versus grades,” and “teaches how to parent out of love – not fear.”

While targeted to parents, What They Don’t Teach in Prenatal Class is a valuable guide for anyone who has negative opinions about themselves, which, to hazard a guess, is the vast majority of us.

“Part of the reason that I named my book the way I did is that it would be ideal if parents did some of the self-work ahead of having children,” Andrew told the Independent. “That way, they’d be better prepared to face the challenges of parenting and they would have a deeper understanding of how their children pick up negative beliefs right from the beginning. They’d have a bit more time and space to think clearly about the bigger picture in terms of purpose and priorities before the baby arrives. Imagine if prenatal classes included a few sessions on this topic!”

One of the tools Andrew presents in her book is the Choose Again Six-Step Process, which was developed by Diederik Wolsak, founder and program director of Choose Again Attitudinal Healing Centre and author of Choose Again: Six Steps to Freedom. Wolsak wrote the foreword of What They Don’t Teach in Prenatal Class. In it, he notes that Andrew – who is a Choose Again facilitator – “has written a manual which draws directly from her own heroic and victorious battle with depression and her transformation of some crippling core beliefs. But, more to the point, it tells the story of two people, parents, coming to terms with what they needed to heal to become real parents. Real parents teach by demonstration. Real parents are transparent and not afraid of what they’ll encounter when they begin their own journey to removing all barriers to love.”

By healing a negative belief about ourselves, we can change our behaviour. “By following our familiar feelings, we can retrieve early childhood memories in which we can discover the genesis of our beliefs and we can begin to transform them,” writes Andrew. “You have to be in the feeling for it to work – it is a process that has to be felt, not an intellectual exercise.” In brief, when you’re upset, for example, acknowledge that you’re upset; take responsibility for the feeling – it is not your child’s fault, but rather “a negative belief that you made up in early childhood has been triggered”; focus on the feeling and identify it; remember the feeling and try to determine when you first ever felt it; once you have that memory, contemplate how you judged yourself in that moment and how you thought others judged you; and, lastly, try “to fix your mistaken belief by a process of forgiveness that replaces your mistaken belief with the truth of you – that you are inherently worthy, whole and complete.”

If loving ourselves isn’t hard enough, parenting out of love, and not fear, is as much or more of a challenge. Not blaming your children for your anger, not punishing them for acting out, etc., would seem to require infinite patience and constant self-awareness.

“If people read my book and are feeling overwhelmed, then I would say do one thing, and that is to have a gratitude practice,” said Andrew. “I have a section in the book on exactly how to do that and I know that it’ll make a huge difference. Begin with one thing and then perhaps add another.

“Awareness is half the battle, so simply being aware that young children are developing negative beliefs about themselves will be helpful in the ways you respond to your child’s behaviour. I’ve presented the concept of inherent worth as the antidote to all of these beliefs, so I have actually simplified parenting into one challenge – how to get across to our children that they are inherently worthy beings. They don’t have to establish their own worth by getting good grades or winning competitions. I’ve suggested several techniques, so parents just need to adopt the ones that will work for their family.

“Many of the things that I suggest are simple, such as remembering to smile at your children more often – put a smiley face sticker on your phone, on the fridge or on the bathroom mirror to remind you. Mindfulness can be practised at the dinner table or getting ready for bed by helping children focus on their senses in the here and now.

“Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint,” she continued, “and it is OK to take awhile to get into the stride, stumble and get back up. Parents tend to judge themselves rather harshly (we all do!) and that’s not helpful. Be gentle with yourself and know that it is impossible to make a mistake – we make healing opportunities for ourselves and our children!”

Andrew invites “parents to use the day-to-day parenting upsets as portals to self-healing so that parenting becomes a journey into self-awareness. This in turn benefits the kids enormously. When parents heal their own negative beliefs, they won’t worry about being judged by others, they won’t be drawn into competitiveness and will not need to over-program their children, so that makes life and parenting less stressful and more fun for the whole family.”

Andrew is a parenting coach, and she presents workshops in the United States, Canada and Europe. She said parents take what they can from her recommendations.

“Parents who have taken my workshops, on which my book is based, report that they have more patience, greater understanding of their children’s behaviour and their own, and the ability to communicate more effectively with their children as well,” she said. “I have been told that the methods are transformational and that was certainly my experience. One parent (Roanna Glickman) told me that she dived headfirst into self-healing using the Choose Again Six-Step Process and she has transformed her life and her kids are thriving as a result. She said, ‘It may seem like more work initially but, when you take away the power struggle, it’s way less work in the long run.’”

Andrew shared feedback from another parent, Pam Roy, who said, “Parenting isn’t about trying to do it right but about learning along the way, being authentic with your kids when we don’t get it right; making yourself better helps you be more present and aware with and for your kids.” While acknowledging that self-work is time-consuming and difficult, Roy said it is crucial and, if Andrew’s suggestions “feel overwhelming or time-consuming, that should trigger that there’s work to be done. Change aversion is there but, when these fears come up, it’s the more reason they should be looked at.”

One of the more surprising pieces of advice, perhaps, is to be careful with praise. “How many of us do what we do to win approval from our bosses, peers, spouse, other family members and even our children?” writes Andrew. “When that approval is not forthcoming we beat ourselves up wondering what we did wrong or reminding ourselves that once again we failed.”

As to how to reduce our dependency on external validations of our worth, Andrew told the Independent, “Firstly, I suggest you gradually phase out praise – it tends to be a habit so takes awhile to correct. Notice when you automatically use praise and then follow it up with a question that indicates your sincere interest in whatever it is that was praised. Praise-dependency tends to undermine the concept of inherent worth – it encourages kids to look outside themselves for their worth.

“As far as knowing how to handle praise and criticism, knowing one’s inherent worth is the way to handle praise and criticism. Neither praise nor criticism has an impact on one’s inherent worth, though it may have an impact on self-esteem. Criticism says more about the person doing the criticizing than it does about the one being criticized. Children can be taught to just say ‘thank you’ to anyone who offers them criticism (or praise for that matter). The criticism can be taken for what it is – a neutral fact to be examined or ignored – not an emotionally charged thing.”

If you can’t make the April 11 launch, What They Don’t Teach in Prenatal Class is available on Amazon, and Andrew is currently putting her workshops online so that parents can access them more easily. She said they should be available in May or June at anneandrew.com.