When I first saw this video circulating on Facebook I REALLY LIKED IT and I agreed with its message.

I still do, but a series of emails sent to me by a friend, has given me pause to reconsider.

I have always believed that labels are misused and abused and that today’s generation of kids are growing up being poked and prodded, diagnosed and labeled and then put into a box – with disregard to the effectiveness of it all and the effect it has on their self-esteem.  

I have a friend whose 12-year-old son was just diagnosed with high functioning autism FOR THE FIRST TIME.  He has always attended regular school with a decent amount of success, has friends and gets awards in school for reading.  Mom is not in la-la land – she is quiet aware of his “issues” and knows that he falls somewhere on the spectrum, and gets him all the help he needs.

However, she admitted to me, that she doesn’t know how much she would have pushed him to succeed and be socially competent, if someone had given him the label of autism as a preschooler.

And yet - not properly diagnosing or “labeling” certain kids CAN BE dangerous to the child and the other people in his world.

I would like to share with you some excerpts from my friend’s emails:

“I generally agree with the sentiment of the video – especially the ADHD/ kid part.  However, as a parent whose child has been exposed to some pretty horrible treatment, I have to say that the world would be a much more dangerous place if we didn’t assign labels and then isolate/treat as needed based on the labels….For proper treatment to happen, a label has to be given and treatment stuck with.”

When does a kid begin deserving a label?  When he throws a fuzzball at someone?  When he throws a book (my friend’s son lost vision in an eye when a classmate threw a book)?  When he throws scissors – but misses, possibly even intentionally missing?   If we can’t label, we can’t isolate the dangerous from the non-dangerous.  We also lose the opportunity to reach kids who need to be reached in different ways than mainstream learners….

I want to add that I am also frustrated that in our efforts to be politically correct, we don’t allow the labels to go far enough. Some kids are simply violent, dangerous or abusive, but we’re hesitant to call a spade a spade. After all, perhaps with the right kind of help, they can become all the wonderful things that the video showed.   But at what price?

How many have to be victimized along the way to helping them?

Unfortunately, once a label is assigned, often kids with any kind of label are all lumped together in one classroom…  And kids, like my son (who is not at all violent or abusive) become the recipients of the abuse and bullying.

I’ve had very interesting parenting experiences, and I’m not done yet.”

T.S.

I  pay attention to the nuances in life and truly believe that life is all  about shades of gray. There is no right or wrong to this dilemma, and as far as I am concerned, the jury is still out.

But what do you think?

All the best,

Gayle

Social Skills Groups, February 2011

Read our Ask The Experts newsletter for more on this topic:

http://www.partnerswithparents.co.il/articlenav.php?id=139

There were two of us waiting in line to pay at Pomeranz Booksellers off of Ben Yehuda. I was waiting to pay for a gift I was buying for my father; she was looking for some dictionaries.

I learned that she had recently made aliyah from the States and was looking for a dictionary; she learned that I was 23 and have lived here for a while.

The minute the salesman handed her the dictionary, her face lit up. I had never seen anyone get so excited by a dictionary before. “It’s that good?” I asked her. “The best,” she responded “Everything you need is divided up by subject. My fellow ulpan-mates swear by it.”

Well, that exchange piqued my interest. Especially since Gayle had asked me to look into the dictionary in question.

“English Hebrew by Subject” is a Hebrew – English dictionary, with a twist – the dictionary is divided up by subject. So, if you wanted to know that Hebrew word for say, a “shirt”, you would open to the “Clothing” chapter. In each chapter, there are sub- categories, and the sub-categories are divided into sub-categories.

Too complicated? Not in the least. For instance, if you needed to know the word for a “nanny”, you would look in the “education” chapter (chapter two, by the way), and you would look in the sub-category “Nouns” and then the sub-category “People and Professionals”. The best thing is that the subjects are very practical.

In terms of content, this dictionary is the same as any other dictionary (no complaints about my Oxford Hebrew English Dictionary). However, it does make finding and translating words easier. Plus they give you the audio CD to further help your Hebrew. If you’re in the market for a new dictionary- check this one out! If not, your current one will probably suffice for your needs.

 In June 2009 my teenage son collapsed and was in and out of 4 different hospitals and in a wheelchair for 6 weeks.  By December 2009 he was walking with a cane and I was serving as his chauffeur and medical advocate nearly every day of the week. 

And by the time we were ready to light the Chanukah candles, I was laid up in bed with a broken leg, worrying about my son and about how we were going to pay the bills at PwP.  

I had already recognized the possibility that PwP would have to close its door at the end of the school year. But lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep with a cast, and feeling bad about myself, my son and PwP; I was truly considering closing on December 31 and wondering why I should wait. I had spent nearly 6 years building up Partners with Parents and was coming to terms with the fact that while we were really helping a lot of kids and parents - financially it wasn’t working.

Now here’s the clincher…

On a cold day in January,  a casual acquaintance from my neighborhood walked into my home and handed me a VERY LARGE CHECK for PwP. Just like that, out of the blue… like manna fell from the sky. 

I swear, if I hadn’t already been sitting in a wheelchair (because of my broken leg) I would have fallen down. She had NO IDEA what she had done.

She had become the executor of a relative’s estate and was giving donations to organizations working in the field of education in Israel.  She said that she had been following us, our work and knew that she could trust PwP to use it wisely. One of her stipulations was that a percentage of the money be used towards programming for neighborhood children from the Ethiopian community.

How did she come up with that stipulation?

That’s another story… That year PwP was running an after-school English reading program for Ethiopian children  in my neighborhood due to the generousity of (my friend, fellow yogi and alternative medicine healer) Pamela Swickley. Pam and her parents, Rabbi and Mrs. Schwebel, decided to fund a program in the memory of her younger sister Lana Schwebel, who had been  a professor of English literature at Stern College, Yeshiva University and Yale University and died tragically in a car accident in the Far East on July 7th, 2007.

You see.. mitzvah goreret mitzvah, loosely translated as ”one good deed brings the next good deed”.  You can never know how a decision you make will effect someone else in the future. (And I believe that the person who did the first act of kindness, gets some of the credit of future actions that came as a result of what he or she did. How cool is that?) 

If you are still reading, then you might be asking yourself, “Why is Gayle telling me all of this?”

First of all,  simply because I feel good about what we are doing. I feel privileged for what we have been enabled to do because of the generosity of a very quiet, private but thoughtful and caring person, whose generousity was influenced by the good deed of someone else.

And on a more personal note… From one moment to the next my strong teenage son ended up in a wheelchair.  And from one moment to the next I was given a gift which has enabled PwP to help so many people.  Over the last year and a half I have come to truly believe that we don’t have any control over our lives.   Acceptance of that has calmed me down quite a bit. 

G-D has a plan, which we are not privy to.  We should just trust that if we are satisfied with the decisions we make and the steps we take, the goodness of the plan will eventually be revealed.

Gayle Shimoff

PS - My leg is healed and my son is doing great, on his feet and  is in a pre-army program this year!

PPS – Her generosity enabled PwP to do many “behind the scenes” things as well as directly helping kids, parents and the community at large. 

Over the last ten months PwP has …

• Established a remedial reading program in Hebrew for boys from the Ethiopian community in Orot Banim. You really don’t understand what that means. We are talking about  fifth and sixth grade boys who will be graduating grade school very soon and CAN NOT properly read picture books by themselves.
• Established a remedial reading program in English for fifth and sixth grade girls from the Ethiopian community in Orot Banot.  Remember these children are learning English as a THIRD language, when they are barely getting by with Hebrew and Amharic because of cultural and social stresses.
• Provided scholarships for a number of the children and teens in our afterschool social skills program. This is program is vitally important! These kids have trouble navigating their social world, just like a child with dyslexia has difficulty learning to read.
• Published our new free ”Ask the Experts” e-newsletters. Parents get to read very specific advice about practical day-to-day issues they face with their LD or AD/HD kids. (My sister was just telling me how she is helping her 10-year-old learn his times tables with the technique I described in our last issue.)
• Expanded our community outreach work. Whether it is explaining the special education system to NBN staff,  presenting at an AACI evening for parents,  enhancing our website with loads of free information OR having more time for phone and email advice to parents – our PwP staff is there for parents of kids with LD and ADHD in Israel.

But what effect do all these technological developments have on today’s kids?  I would like to know what risks my kids are facing.. Wouldn’t you!?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?emc=eta1

My own teens love to drink excel and cola and don’t really understand what the problem is. It’s time we start talking to our kids about the dangers of these inexpensive drinks… I know I worry.

http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=196234

When Gayle told me that Partners with Parents had two new programs for Ethiopian children, I knew that I had to write a post about learning difficulties that Ethiopian children have in school.  Though I’ve lived in close proximity to a vibrant Ethiopian community since making aliyah to Beit Shemesh in 1998, I didn’t know much about them or their culture.

So I turned instead to a good friend of mine, Abby, who has been involved in and worked with the Ethiopian community for the last few years. Abby was eager to help and teach me a thing or two about the real educational gaps Ethiopian children struggle with versus their Israeli counterparts. Many of the things she shared with me I had never heard before.

The cultural differences between the Ethiopian children and Israeli children are one of the main reasons for their struggle in the classroom. The ‘culture shock’ we Anglos experience when moving to Israel is NOTHING compared to the ‘culture shock’ Ethiopians experience — especially in the classroom.

Because when all is said and done, Israel is a Western country and the educational values and system is somewhat reminiscent of those we left behind.

Not so for children from Ethiopian families!

To introduce me to the educational aspect of Ethiopian culture, Abby gave me some examples.

• If you, as a teacher, were to ask an Israeli child a question in class, you would expect and receive a straightforward answer. However, if you were to ask an Ethiopian child that same question, the answer you would get would probably be indirect. That’s because in Ethiopia it is a sign of respect to answer indirectly.



• Another example is their attitude towards authority. They won’t look someone of authority in the eye – whereas Israeli born children would probably stare you down.
• Furthermore, she explained, Ethiopian children are very bright, but many times the teacher will use terms they are unfamiliar with, so they don’t have much chance of understanding what is being taught.

Adding to their problems of assimilation in the classroom, are the problems that come from home.  Many times the hardships of aliyah lead to the breakup of the traditional family structure.

Parents also have a hard time making an income and learning the language, leaving the children to act as “pseudo-parents”- going to the bank or social security offices with their parents in order to translate and help them out. 

All this, in addition to the stress they have to succeed at school, helps me understand why these children have so many problems in school. Many of them fall behind in school or “develop” learning disabilities which are left untreated, simply because their parents aren’t aware they exist.

Nowadays there are many non-profit organizations that focus on educational programming for Ethiopian children, including after-school programs and scholarship funds. The main goal of these organizations is to close the gap between them and Israeli society.

Hopefully, by narrowing the gap, these children will be able to integrate fully into Israeli society!

Beth Zalcman is a recent graduate of Bar Ilan University and social media coordinator for PwP.
This article was written with the help of Abby Finkelstein.  Abby is a recent graduate of Bar Ilan University with a degree in social work.  She has spent a lot of time working with the Ethiopian community and hopes to continue doing so. 

Now, doesn't he look a little like Father Christmas?

Last Thursday evening I had the privilege to go to asayfat horim (parent – teacher conference) at Yeshivat Ahavat Chaim where my son Hillel is now in 11th grade. 

Now mind you, he is 16 years old, so I’ve been to quite a lot of them in my day.  So why was this a privilege? 

Because nearly a week later I am still smiling inside and feeling the love and positive energy from his school.

Because for the third year in a row I had the pleasure and the honor to listen to Rav Yissacher Vaserluf tell us how wonderful our sons are. 

And for the third year in a row, my son is happy and learning in school! 

I often say, that a school is as good as its principal. You can have good teachers, but if you don’t have a good principal, then no one is creating a vision for the school, inspiring the teachers and loving the students.

My hat goes off to you Rav Yissaachar!

Eight years ago when you took over the school, you envisioned what the school needed to become.

Over the years you have inspired the teachers to create a highly professional school. And year after year, you continue to love the students and always find something good in each one of them.

If only I didn’t have to go to the end of the earth and turn left in order to get there!