by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

March 12, 2009

It’s no wonder Wendy Mogel’s advice appeals to so many people: The California-based psychologist and author wants parents to make life easier for themselves and to have more faith in their kids. Who could object to that?

What’s more, she sees the economic downturn as a chance to correct course. “This could be the greatest opportunity,” she said.

Instead of being afraid to tell children you can’t afford the extras they have taken for granted — as she has seen parents do — “You can show them it doesn’t mean you don’t love them, and they won’t die if they don’t get what they want,” she said. “You can find something else to do with your children, things that have nothing to do with spending.”

You can decide for yourself if she’s right. Mogel will speak at Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains next Thursday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m. Her talk, Raising Self-Reliant, Optimistic Children in a Nervous World, will be hosted by the temple and is sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey’s Education Committee.

Be forewarned: If Mogel is half as empathetic in person as she is on the phone, you’re going to want to take her home to be your live-in guide and confidant. Interviewing her long-distance last week, she was funny, self-deprecating, and encouraging. It was clear why she had success as a therapist long before her “little Jewish parenting book” — The Blessing of a Skinned Knee — came out in 2001 and launched her second career, as a much-in-demand speaker.

What Mogel has seen in her practice is children constantly pressured to perform academically and in other ways, but given a free pass when it comes to behavior at home.

“They’re treated as if they are so precious, they end up feeling — not consciously — as if their parents’ moods, their marriages, their lives depend on them. It makes them bratty,” she said. “It’s like, ‘I’ll give you the grades, but then you have to give me what I want.’ They need just four magic words — ‘I have a test’ — to get out of doing any chores.”

This hasn’t just been theory for Mogel. She worried that she was making the same kind of mistakes with own two daughters. They are now 18 and 22, but she still wonders whether she and her husband, novelist and screenwriter Michael Tolkin, have done things right. That has provided the inspiration for her next book — still in the works — called The Blessing of a B Minus, about raising teenagers.

She said she tried not to do what she sees other parents do, “bubble-wrapping” their kids, shielding them to such an extent from perceived or imagined dangers that when they go away to college, they have none of the life experience needed to cope. “Those kids are back home within three or four months,” she said, adding, “I’m very big on life skills.”

Fifth Commandment

The Jewish element in her work grew as her girls grew. She was brought up in a home with little Jewish observance, though her grandfather was president of his Orthodox shul in Brighton Beach, NY. She majored in art at Middlebury College in Vermont, but became interested in child development working as a counselor at a summer camp for emotionally disturbed children. She met her husband there, and moved with him to Los Angeles, where she got her license as a clinical psychologist in 1985.

In the early 1990s, stressing over the problems of her young clients and over her own children, she began turning more and more to Jewish traditions and Jewish teaching. In 1992, she took a year off from her practice to study Judaism full-time. By the time she returned to providing therapy, she found her approach enriched by the ancient teachings.

The crux for her is faith, “the deepest part of religious belief,” that our children will turn out just fine. Parents who are obsessed with what might be wrong with their kids, she says, produce children fraught with anxiety.

And then there is the Fifth Commandment — to honor one’s parents. Just as the creative impulse in children is to be nurtured, she said, so too is their aspiration to do good, and to treat others with respect.

Getting kids to act better takes more effort; parents must teach them responsibility for their own moods, habits, and behavior. But, said Mogel, “it makes them so much nicer to live with.”

Mogel strikes a resonant chord with grandparents: She believes they had it right in many ways their offspring have ignored. What’s more, kids who see their parents stressed by their bratty, demanding ways might not want to be parents themselves, and then where would we be?

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