wendy mogel, psychologist, hollywood, calif.
Written on June 4, 2010
wendy mogel is a psychologist who focuses on issues of parenting and families. ten years ago she wrote a book called “the blessing of a skinned knee”, which dealt with raising kids to be responsible, self-reliant, aware of the world and capable. the book is framed with teachings from jewish law, the talmud and the torah. wendy believes that talmudic ideas can inform modern parenting in a way that could help parents navigate tricky issues like discipline, responsibility and the dangers of coddling.
i am not a parent (though i am an uncle), and most days i feel quite far away from being a parent. still, it’s fairly easy to see the ways in which parenting has changed even in the course of my lifetime. when we used to ride bikes as kids nobody ever wore a helmet. my brother and i, as children, seemed to have far more unscheduled free time than i see kids having nowadays. that isn’t to say we weren’t busy, or weren’t occupied in important things, it’s just that they were our important things. there was less pressure to achieve, or to do everything you could think of all at once. the funny thing was, though, that even with less pressure placed upon us to achieve we didn’t seem to achieve less. sometimes when you leave kids to their own devices they come up with some pretty amazing things – and also take responsibility and accountability for them. i’d say my generation has done fairly well, all things considered. especially those of us who didn’t turn out to be photographers.
wendy mogel advocates letting your children be what they are, and encouraging them for it. seems like sound advice. i would only caution (based on limited, anecdotal experience as a non-parent) that i do sometimes see parents pushing their children towards doing what they’re good at, even if they’re not too interested in those things. children will stumble through things, they will fall down, they will hurt themselves, they will make mistakes, they will develop regrets. they will. there’s not much a parent can do to prevent that, and often i’d imagine a disservice is being done when such attempts at prevention are made. then again, adults do the same things. is it too cliche to say that our character is often defined by our failures? yeah, somewhat cliche. still. . .