In 2018 we were privileged to host Chava Willig Levy, a”h, who passed away a few weeks ago, as a presenter at our summer faculty meeting. I had heard her at that year’s Mikvah Dinner and I knew we needed to bring her to Yavneh for some pre-school year inspiration. When I heard of her passing I felt sadness and felt the need to share her message.
Chava Willig Levy contracted polio at the age of 2, only four months after the polio vaccine was discovered, but not yet well-known and available. She was attached to an iron lung for months, but remained permanently paralyzed from the neck down. Levy not only lived but earned her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Yeshiva University in French literature and her master’s degree in counseling psychology from Columbia University. She was a writer, lecturer, and an advocate for people with disabilities. She married and had two children.
Chava’s autobiography is called Life Not With Standing and is quite inspirational.
The book tells of her numerous surgeries and hospitalizations as a child due to her polio, how she is confined to a wheelchair for life, and her struggles with getting married. Chava’s book was full of humor and wisdom. She wrote of a summer camp experience in a camp for “handicapped children.” She fell flat on her face in front of the whole lunchroom. Instead of rushing to pick her up, the director of the camp approached her and asked, “Tell me, how would you like to be helped up?” For the first time in her life, she was asked to take control and decide how she would get up. She cannot help falling, but she is the one who determines how she will rise again.
This is an important message for our children- as they will fall and they need to learn how to get up.
Chava’s story reminds me of what Rabbi Yitzy Haber shared with the 7th graders to launch the unit in Advisory “When Life Gives You Lemons- Coping With Adversity In Life.” In a humorous way, Yitzy speaks of his battle with cancer as a young boy, and how humor was his way of coping. He shares a story about how after his surgery to have his leg amputated he needed to learn how to walk with an amputated leg. Yitzy was so excited to finally walk. The physical therapist said to him, “Okay, I am going to teach you how to fall.” Yitzy was puzzled. “I came here to learn how to walk!” The therapist replied, “First you need to learn how to fall. You need to learn to fall the right way, in order to get up again.” The metaphor is powerful. All people fall. All people face hardship. It is how you get up that makes the difference.
Not only do our children need to learn how to get up, they also need to learn how to fall. With the right resilience skills they can fall without terrible results.
We will assist them and support them, but they cannot rely on us to do it for them and to bail them out. They are the only ones who can get themselves up again. We, as parents, need to teach them the skills to fall with grace and allow them the independence to do so.
Our children need to learn how to get up as well.
Shlomo HaMelech states in Mishlei 24:16,
“A righteous person falls seven times and gets up.” These failures apply to all areas of life, including spiritual growth. Rav Hutner said on these words, “The fool thinks the righteous person gets up despite his falls; the wise person understands that he can only ‘get up’ and grow because he falls. You have fallen numerous times, and you will fall again numerous times. That is not, G-d forbid, a negative prediction, but a fact of life. But there is a concept of ‘losing a battle yet winning the war’. You can fall to your evil inclination time and time again. But as long as you are resilient and dust yourself off and continue to fight, you have not been defeated, and you’ll ultimately prevail and win the war.”
In her book, The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee, Dr. Wendy Mogel stresses the importance of allowing our children to struggle and fail. If we overprotect them from feeling pain, they are also protected from growth. If they are insulated they are incapable of dealing with any adversity and become “teacups” that “chip like a teacup” when confronting difficulty.
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When Chava spoke to our faculty at the inservice day the topic of her presentation was “Five Magic Words,” She applies those magic words to parenting and as educators, we need to apply those words to our interactions with our students, parents, and colleagues. Those five magic words were “Thank you for telling me.” As she said, “My grandmother used to say, "Little children, little problems; big children, big problems." When my kids were preschoolers, I already saw that she was onto something. Worries about diaper rash paled in comparison to tensions that had emerged since my cherubic children acquired the gift of speech.
How I dreaded those back-and-forth battles of words and wills! Each one reminded me of an exhausting ping-pong match, a match I inevitably lost. Then one day, almost by accident, five little words slipped out of my mouth. Like magic, my potential ping-pong match evaporated before it began.”
Chava explained that we often attempt to distract, dismiss or dissolve what others are trying to tell us (especially our teens). These five magic words can improve relationships with our teens, spouses and even total strangers. They reinforce the teller to tell what is on their mind again in the future, as you compliment him/her for telling you this time. In fact, the week after Chava spoke Rabbi Knapp shared with the faculty that he had used those magic words a few times that week and they “worked wonders.”
Thank you for telling me. Who would have imagined the power of those words?!
Chava wrote an article called “The Bad News About Barney.” Barney the dinosaur is the topic of her article. While as parents of middle schoolers you may not have watched that show for some time, she maintains that the show is “dangerous.” Writes Chava: What's so dangerous about Barney? In a word, denial: the refusal to recognize the existence of unpleasant realities. For along with his steady diet of giggles and unconditional love, Barney offers our children a one-dimensional world where everyone must be happy and everything must be resolved right away.
"Using denial as a primary coping strategy," confirms Lisa Korman, M.D. a child psychiatrist in New York City, "means that, unlike PBS's luminaries such as Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood, Barney and Friends does not help children learn to tolerate sorrow, pain, frustration and failure.
She continues to give examples. When the character Kathy is upset because she has no siblings, Barney responds “You have parents and a grandmother. They love you very much. That’s a great family.” Or when another character says, “I am having a bad day,” he responds “Now that we are together your day will be better.” She quotes Jeanette Hainer, “"Children can't learn to walk without falling. If you always carried them to prevent the inevitable scrape, both their muscles and their social skills would be severely underdeveloped. Similarly, sugarcoating painful moments can diminish a child's ego strength." There we are again. The importance of falling.
And, that is where the five magic words come in. Chava gives an example of what Barney should do. When Kathy is afraid of going to the doctor, he should say, “Thank you for telling me.” And, then continue with “What scares you the most…”
Chava Willig Levy was a role model for us all. יהי זכרה ברוך.
Advisory Update:
Sixth Grade: Students focused on the the obligation to be upstanders
Seventh Grade: Students began their unit on Do Not Stand Idly By by focusing how they can stand up for Israel. They discussed the bias against Israel that often exists.
Eighth Grade; Students focused on the dangers of marijuana as part of their substance abuse unit.
