Picture a rebbe pushing a young student to memorize faster, to recite more fluently, to perform just a little better in front of the class. He tells himself, sincerely, that he’s doing this because he cares about the boy’s growth. Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, citing this scene, points to something uncomfortable hiding underneath that sincerity: there is here a self-deception on the part of the parent or the teacher.
Kelemen’s teaching is blunt. Parents and teachers fool themselves when they think they’re worried about the chinuch of the child, when what’s actually driving them is a completely selfish motivation. And the result of that selfish motivation is devastating in a quiet way: we stop seeing the child for who the child really is. Instead, we see in our child or our student an object that belongs to us — something that reflects on us, that we get credit for, that makes us look good as a parent or a teacher.
This isn’t about a single dramatic failure. It’s about the small, constant pull every parent feels: the urge to push a little harder on the test score, the instrument recital, the sports trophy, not because the child needs it, but because the parent needs it. Kelemen points out that this is a special challenge for teachers specifically, because a teacher gets kudos, gets positive attention, when their students perform well publicly — which makes it even easier to convince yourself the motivation is pure.
How do you catch yourself doing this? Kelemen’s framing suggests a sharp, honest question to ask in the moment you feel the urge to push: “If no one else would ever know about this achievement — no classmates, no grandparents, no social media, nobody — would I still want my child to have this experience, for their own sake?” If the honest answer is no, or you hesitate, you’ve likely found a spot where your child has become, even briefly, an object that belongs to you rather than a person you’re raising.
A second practical check: notice your own emotional reaction to your child’s failure versus your child’s embarrassment. If you feel more sting from your child failing in front of other people than from the failure itself, that’s a signal the issue is about your own image, not their growth. A parent working on this should practice reacting the same way to a mistake made in private as one made in public — same tone, same patience, same focus on what the child can learn.
This isn’t a call to stop caring about your child’s achievements. It’s a call to notice whose need is actually being served. Rabbi Kelemen’s point, following Rav Wolbe, is that the moment you catch yourself treating a child like something that belongs to you, you’ve already drifted from chinuch into something else entirely — and the drift is so natural, so well-intentioned, that it rarely announces itself. It takes an honest, uncomfortable look inward to see it.
If you’d like more of Rabbi Kelemen’s teachings on raising children with honesty and humility, join the inner circle at lawrencekelemen.com.
This blog was co-written with Artificial Intelligence.