Question: The International Day for Protection of Children has been held since 1925 “in order to draw the attention of adults to the observance of children’s rights, education, protection from violence, and the right for life.”

What does it mean to you to protect children?

Answer: First of all, from parents. So that parents understand how to raise them. I also knew very little about it, although they tried to instill it all in me. I can feel how insufficient it is. How can you make a young couple who knows nothing and does not understand anything into people who know and understand everything when they have a child?

This is a big problem. This is where we really have to do something with ourselves. Otherwise, our society, our humanity, will remain as miserable as it looks now.

Parents need to know how to make a person out of this baby. First, you need to understand from the very first day what you want to give him, what he needs, and what he wants from you. This is a nonverbal connection—mental, spiritual, neural. The one that should be between the couple and the newborn.

And then you need to give parents the necessary education, the nurturing they need to bring them up correctly. Everything that is necessary for two people who have a baby in their arms.

Question: So it is actually a whole science to be a parent?

Answer: Of course! And we do not prepare people for this. Therefore, we cannot say that we see among our babies, children, teenagers, girls, and boys as they grow, the people we could potentially see.

It is all our fault. And then we start blaming them, scolding them, demanding from them, pushing them. This is not the way to do it. Then it is too late.

We also need to make relations in the family, at school, on the street, everywhere a little closer. A child should not feel that these are completely opposite different societies. It should all be homogeneous. Here it is necessary to change society as well.

Comment: This is already the “Day of a Unified Society” and not the “Day for Protection of Children.”

My Response: This is the protection of children. From society.

This is actually our job, because otherwise our education will lead us to disaster. Everything you see in adults is everything done at an age when they were maybe a few months old or a few years old at most.

International Day for Protection of Children is a good day if we agree to create an atmosphere for them, an environment, that supports them and correctly formats them, turns them into a person, a good person, a kind, caring, and helpful person, a person who wants to help and accepts help from others.

There should just be an even kind attitude toward everyone.

Question: And this is the merit of parents and society only?

Answer: Yes. And then we will be able to see how everything really changes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/27/21

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Comment: Vincent van Gogh said, “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

My Response: I would not follow Van Gogh’s advice. A person should feel what his soul is pulling him to and choose his path in accordance with this. And to choose this path soberly, that is, to check whether he has all possible prerequisites for this. And if not, there is no need to hit one’s head against the wall.

Question: What about our wisdom Kabbalah, where in principle, the inner voice often says: “What is wrong with you, look at these heights! How can you?! Is it really possible to reach them?!”

Answer: What does it matter? It does not matter here, everyone has to learn this wisdom, and through it, everyone has to correct their soul. Thus, there are no people here who can say: “I am free.”

I must correct myself, fulfill my destiny. Therefore, everyone has his place in it. Everyone is obliged. The correction of the soul is the purpose of our entire existence, of everyone, of absolutely everyone! So, no one can get away from it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/22/21

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We need a serious reform of our attitude toward children—not just a reform of the educational system of teaching itself or of upbringing, but in general, of our whole life in which children learn from us, take all kinds of examples from us with which they cannot agree and cannot implement on themselves.

Once upon a time, a boy would look at his father, a girl at her mother. If the father was a shoemaker or a tailor, no matter what, a child knew: “I will grow up and also be a shoemaker or a tailor.” Back then, children did not have internal demands.

Crafts have been passed down from generation to generation. Children lived with their parents. They did not yearn to be different. In those days, the whole way of life, all the examples that parents gave them: how to live, how to communicate, all this was normal, all this suited the children.

Today—no! Today, children look at us and feel in an empty world. They have nowhere to get examples from. They have to invent their own world. And we, fools, don’t understand why they are engaged in all sorts of fanaticism, use drugs, and everything else. It all happens because we are not ready to give them examples of living correctly.

We do not agree that they are different. This is our most basic point. We need to take into account that they are different, that they have different souls. And we must live for them, not for ourselves. By living for them, we will correct ourselves as well. So it is said: “Lo, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, that he may turn the heart of the fathers back through the children, and the heart of the children back through their fathers-lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction.” Meaning, children should teach us.

When a woman becomes a mother, the child as if requires her to grow up so that a completely different attitude to life would appear in her. It is the same here. We must understand that by having children, we have to be more responsible. And they should dictate to us what we should be like.

First of all, we must study the next stage in which our children should live. They ask for it, but we do not understand it. We are in such a generation, in such “scissors,” in such a transitional process, that we stand as if between two epochs.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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We all know that education is a big problem. I see how children are brought up in schools. Therefore, children’s depression will not go away! We just need to answer the children’s request.

Depression is a consequence of their inner request. Moreover, this is a huge social problem because it manifests itself in more than one child. We observe this in absolutely all children from different countries of the world.

There is such a thing as depression in animals, especially in pets that live near their owners. I am sure that both wild animals and plants have it.

That is, depression is a feeling of lack of the force of life, which is beginning to be felt in our world. It depends on the person because he must rise to another level so that through him the spiritual upper force, the force of life, passes into our world. And then the problem with the environment, with our health, with social relations, with everything, will disappear.

We lack vitality. We see that everything is exhausted, aging, disappearing, and losing its value, meaning.

We try our best to inspire ourselves with all sorts of fashions, aspirations, to keep each other playing with the help of technology. But if you look at the truth, we need a completely different level of existence, some other level, an understanding of what we are for, where we are going. This is the challenge all of humanity is facing, especially now.

And children in this case should play a very important useful role. After all, we will not get rid of them, this is our problem, and this is our pain. We can deal with ourselves somehow, and when a child feels bad, there’s nothing you can do about it.

So when I look at my children and especially my grandchildren, I start to feel these requests. They exist literally in the baby. It shows that even at such a young age, he is internally missing something in his life. It’s hard to explain. I just see it with my inner vision, from the depth of the nature that I have discovered for myself, but it exists. We’re not getting away from this.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Question: You say that names are given randomly according to a certain trend or for other reasons. How should we give a child a name correctly so that it will reflect the Creator’s attributes in him?

Answer: I wouldn’t do that. First of all, give him a simple ordinary name that is popular among people and not a name that will hurt or humiliate him in any way, a name that he will not be ridiculed for at school or at the playground.

Second, don’t think that if you give a child or any other person a specific name you will change his fate by that.

It is said, “He who changes his place, changes his fate.” But the term “place” refers to levels of the spiritual ladder. So of course you change your fate.

It is the same regarding a name: the higher we ascend on the spiritual ladder, the higher our names are. But calling a person one name or another does not mean anything. Stop believing in those amulets.

Question: Does a person who begins to climb the spiritual ladder acquire a name automatically?

Answer: He receives a name according to the spiritual level he is on. This is the reason that he can be called by one name at one time and by another name another time. The Torah also tells us about it when it seemingly tells us about people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s daughter Batya, etc. Yet, these are not people but parts of a single soul!

A person who attains the spiritual world goes through these states. At one time he is like Pharaoh, another time he is like Abraham, and another time he is like King David, etc. So go through these states as quickly as possible. This is the main thing.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/24/19

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Question: Modern psychology assures that the phrase “Don’t cry, my child, here is a candy for you” is a terrible mistake parents make. Psychologists say that you need to help your child get through the sadness.

What do you think about that?

Answer: First, I believe that parents should not answer their child: “Get over it and get used to it.” This is not a parenting approach—on one hand. On the other hand, since it is necessary to explain why someone is in such a state, even a child, it is necessary to teach parents how to answer correctly.

Question: So you don’t support giving candy?

Answer: No. It is not good to avoid and remove yourself from the need to go through these states with the child. While he is still a child, it is necessary to teach him how to get over it correctly. Together with the parents. And then he will be able to do it himself.

Question: That is, the child got hit, he is crying, you should not buy him a candy so that he stops crying. We need a conversation with him. What can you say to a child who got hit?

Answer: Explain to the child that he needs to be more careful, why he was hit, what happened.

Question: So you seem to be talking to him like equals?

Answer: No, he should feel that an adult is talking to him. And yet, he should feel that he is being educated. A child should understand that the adult wants to explain to him how to treat any, especially unpleasant circumstances in his life correctly. Even animals teach their offspring: they help, explain, and play with them.

Question: And if a child is assembling a kit and he fails, a parent comes, does he have to assemble the kit for him?

Answer: You have to be a teacher. The teacher is the one who hints at the correct options, explains the wrong ones, mistakes, and so on. That is, it is “debriefing.”

Comment: Psychologists say that if a child is sad, there is no need to rush and get him out of this by any means. It is necessary for him to feel what sadness is.

My Response: Not sadness for the sake of sadness, but for him to just know how to get out of it, and that these states have the right to be with us just like fun and joy.

Question: What should the correct attitude of a parent toward a child who is growing up be?

Answer: To become his friend and to do things with him.

Comment: Is it possible to become a child’s friend at any age? Can I be a friend to my three-year-old son?

My Response: It is already too late with a three-year-old one. Starting at about one year of age, a child already understands that you are playing with him and how you are playing, as equals or not.

Question: That is, you need to become a child’s friend?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/15/21

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Question: Should our children already exist at a new, spiritual stage?

Answer: In principle, yes. But we lost our generation, we didn’t make it in time.

Question: What does “lost our generation” mean? You said that a person in this generation has not yet had internal requests.

Answer: There were such requests, but we ignored them. We felt that we should suppress them or implement them in some other way. We created all kinds of toys for ourselves: television, fashion, public opinion, all kinds of computer things. This, of course, can’t take us to the next level.

Question: So man developed all the means in order to adapt them to life in this world?

Answer: Not only. After all, the spiritual world is also in our world. The person just didn’t want to change. He did not want to understand that he had to change, not the technology around him.

And now, having changed all the technology, we are finally beginning to realize that it has brought us nothing, that the huge global crisis in all areas is pressing on us, and that health problems, ecology and everything that threatens us, all require primary reforms.

Obviously, it should not take place in the outside world. I think we have already realized that we cannot cope with this in any way. This reform must be within us.

People don’t want to turn inward yet. But I hope that our activities to disseminate Kabbalah will still affect them and they will change. We cannot even imagine how the slightest movement toward our change, in cohesion and harmony with nature, will change absolutely the whole world, our children, us, and will give inner harmony in everything.

Comment: You sound so confident about it.

My Response: I just know this system that works in both worlds. This is not mysticism, but a clear control system. Therefore, I speak as a person who has been practicing Kabbalah for 35 years.

I see that many people come every day and will come to this, and in the end we will change our existence.

Kabbalah is given to change this world, not to fly away somewhere in your imagination. And then we will see our children happy and joyful, and not with Ritalin, depression, and drugs.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Comment: In the last 15 to 20 years childhood depression has become very common. Doctors do not know what to do about it. They cannot find the reason. There can be some reasonable explanations for adult depression.

My Response: It is not just that. We can restrain adult depression. You can force a person to be lower, more limited. But we need to develop our children.

A person who is depressed is given sedatives, tranquilizers, even some drugs just to “put him to sleep.” How can we do this to children? By doing this, we detach them from their natural growth. The manifestation of depression in children is opposite to the tendency that they must develop, overcome, and grow. We encounter a phenomenon here that we cannot conquer.

Question: The fact is that patients are five to six years old children. Why is a six-year-old child depressed and finds that nothing pleases him?

Answer: The question of the meaning of life! Many great Kabbalists wrote about this and in particular Rav Kook and Baal HaSulam.

As long as I can remember, as a child, I had this question. Not explicitly, but it was: “Why? What for? What is all this about?” This question did not allow me to live, did not allow me to rejoice. It was necessary to find an excuse to have fun: to go on a spree, to get carried away with something in order to escape this question. And it was all during childhood.

But let us assume that the soul has no age. Then it will be easier for us. Let’s not look at the young generation as being children.

A soul is a soul. We received it from our past incarnation in which we lived to our old age. And today, in our brand-new young body lives an old soul that has lived on this earth for many generations and has been through a lot.

The fact is that you evaluate a child by its small body, but you should look at its soul. It is already old, wise, and understands that all this is pointless. It has already lived for so long that you cannot confuse it. What will you do with it?

So through depression it gives you its external emptiness and lack of fulfillment. So what if it manifests itself in a small child? And if it was in its thirties, in its forties, is it different?

Depression does not come from life. Absolutely not! We see that there is a lot of depression and suicides among people who have everything in life.

Comment: Usually they say about such people: “They get mad from fat” [unsatisfied from prosperity.]

Answer: No, not from fat. A person simply needs to know what he lives for. And when he has everything and his daily bread is not in question, he really does not see what to live for.

As long as you are forced to take care of your body, you have no opportunity to free yourself for other matters. And as soon as you provide it with everything you need, the question of the meaning of life immediately arises.

This question also appears in children. Why not? I don’t see much difference. The fact that it occurs in children suggests that, after many reincarnations in this world, our souls have come to a state where they actually need the answer to: “Why do we exist?”

Question: You want to say that we incorrectly approach a person from the very beginning by focusing on him as the biological body?

Answer: Of course! After all, this is not a person at all but his animal body. An animal! And how does it differ from other animals?

But its inner part, our “I,” has nothing to do with this body. It goes through many different improvements, dipping into the body, coming out of it, accompanying it. As a result, these metamorphoses lead it to such a development, when—that’s it! We already live in a generation in which we must necessarily answer the question: “What for?”
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Comment: Now in our generation, simultaneously with emptiness, there is an aspiration for something that a person is not yet aware of. Then, as Baal HaSulam said, it turns out that all this is a game, as in the parable with the slave.

My Response: Of course, this is a great game of nature or the Creator. Nature and the Creator are one and the same.

As a result, we will all laugh at what happened, the way we laughed at ourselves when we were little children, grew up, got confused, played, fell, disassembled, and re-assembled something not knowing what and how. But thanks to such a farce, during many years of development we become adults. We never know what we are doing.

Look at a small child. Does he know anything? But he makes some attempts all the time. In principle, our development is very incomprehensible. It should be incomprehensible. That is what is interesting!

How can I understand in advance my next state if it is more developed than the present one?! In a day or in a minute or in a year I must be better, taller, stronger than today; that is, I must be more developed.

How can I understand it now?! With my mind, I cannot! How then can I achieve it? It is through this messy, diffuse movement.

To us, it seems disorderly, because we do not realize with our brains that there is a magnificent order, a higher harmony, a harmony of a higher level, but I still do not understand it. It appears to me as utter nonsense. We look at the children: “This is creepy! Look what they do!”

I recently watched my grandson. For half an hour, he walked and collected pinecones under the trees, and then scattered them, then collected them again and scattered them again.

Well, collect it once and that is it! No. His nature drives him all the time, pushes him to such interesting actions.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #13

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Question: Based on what do you think that is necessary to change schools and the approach to education?

Answer: I proceed from Kabbalah. My basis is Kabbalah. I see the ongoing process and its next stage also, I understand their purpose. Therefore, if we do something with violence, then everything will turn out bad for us. We have no right to do this to our children!

I personally left regular school and attended evening school for the last few years. Also, at university for the last two years I attended evening classes, not the daytime.

So, I was free. I could not bear that pressure! I never put pressure on my children.

My eldest daughter, who attended a religious school, said in the eighth grade that she wanted to be a geneticist. I agreed for her to go to a regular school. She graduated from it, received a diploma, and entered university. She is now in charge of the genetics laboratory at the Tel HaShomer hospital in Israel.

My second daughter graduated from school with a design bias. I remember the beautiful medieval dresses she sewed for her exam. Then, literally in the last year of school, she became interested in Kabbalah. Without my intervention. She entered Tel Aviv University’s Department of Philosophy and Kabbalah.

That is, I let the children develop as they wished. You cannot put pressure on children! It is said: “Raise the youth along his path.”(Prov 22:6). Each has his own soul. How can I push?!

Question: But did this come to you after you began to study Kabbalah?

Answer: If I had not studied Kabbalah, none of this would have happened, of course.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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