What To Choose as Your One Genie Wish













This is what your parents should have chosen for you, and what you should for your son or daughter. . .

Confidence.

Occasionally, when I am in the middle of badgering my son, trying to change, inform, control, mold, teach him - I stop and ask what I am actually teaching him. Yes, I can defend every little thing I say as being important for him to learn, but. . .

What am I really teaching him?

What should I be teaching him? Well, I want him to grow into a confident person, a disciplined-on-his-own, compassionate, considerate (rather than bullying), thankful, happy, intuitive person who accomplishes great things.

If I stop and ask regarding any of these - am I teaching him these? Much of the traditional molding of a child is teaching him exactly the opposite, (you find it in both the classroom or home).

So, if I find a bottle washed up on the beach with a genie trapped inside, I would use my wish to give my son confidence.

And I can, just by putting less effort into molding him and letting him make his mistakes, work through his own challenges. Watch my son do his project exactly wrong and say nothing, or let him rebel a bit and say nothing.

There was an interview of a Japanese comedian we watched one summer in Tokyo. He was asked how he became such a success. The comedian said that when he was young, he was a very poor student. But if he would come home with a test with no answers right, his mother would exclaim, "Wow, anyone can get a 5 or 10, you got a perfect 0%. That's something." If he got one question right, she would say, "That's great, you got a 5%, let's put it on the refrigerator." No matter how poorly he did, his mother would praise his results.

The comedian says his mother gave him so much confidence that now when he gets up in front of a huge audience of people or performs on TV, he knows he will be funny and people will laugh.

I want that for my son. Don't you want that too? For yourself, your child?

There is a wonderful Jewish saying, "If you tell you child to study, he will grow up to be a person who tells his child to study. If he sees you studying, he will grow up loving to study."

We teach other lessons than what we think we teach.

(And by the way, in case some Genie is reading this essay, I hope I would get another wish or two for selfish, little me.)