Oct 1st 2010, 00:00

   I am always glad for a new school year as well as the Jewish New Year. There is something comforting about the idea we can start afresh! We have hit the ground running with our new classroom that has allowed us to expand the two-year old class. We have been going full steam teaching the holidays this year due to the fact that all four of them are in September. All this holiday mayhem can be very confusing for the children, so we take one major theme from all the holidays and stay more focused instead of drowning the children with too much knowledge. This year we decided we would work on listening and obeying. This theme seems a no-brainer to most of you; yet I have seen differently. Throughout the last few years I have had  new early childhood teachers fresh out of school come and interview for a job. (Luckily we have such a wonderful staff that I don't need to hire them). And this theme of obeying makes them cringe. I find this attitude disturbing because I have seen the results of disregarding this archaic idea as some would say of expecting children to obey.

   If the world goes farther and farther from any kind of absolutes and more "it is okay if it is not hurting anyone," we will have chaos and on top of that some very angry and disrespectful children. This in turn produces very unhappy children. I have seen as you have, parents allowing their children to go crazy in stores, their friend’s homes, and in our religious institutions. We can rationalize or see others rationalize that it is okay if their child jumps all over the doctor’s office furniture - it is not your furniture; you didn't buy it. What about when a child starts screaming at the top of his lungs in a restaurant or a movie theater and nothing is done to leave or quiet the child and you end up being the bad guy if you say anything. Or a little bit closer to home as I see children jumping on the pews and running up and down the aisles at church or in the synagogue disturbing whoever is speaking or listening. Well, maybe that was too harsh - at least they came to services.

   Obedience is the key theme in the story of Jonah that we read on Yom Kippur. Jonah did not want to listen, much less obey, what God had in store for him. Here at ECLC we make an analogy to Jonah disobeying God and the child disobeying their parents, and then we go further and in part the idea of what honoring our parents really means as it pertains to the 10 Commandments.

   We live in a world where it is fun to trash our media personalities and make them look as foolish as possible. Then we become irritated when we make a mistake and our children laugh at us. We say it is okay to cut in line or not pay for something and not go back to make it right and expect our children to have complete honesty with us. Where does it all go wrong when they are teens and they are treating us with such contempt?

   I know that ECLC is a tiny fish in a great big pond, but still I believe that we can make a difference one child at a time, and that is why I love a New Year. Come let us work together to form these children's hearts and minds to grow up and make this world just a little more sane.