How to Talk So Children Will Listen

The title of this week’s essay, “How to Talk So Children Will Listen,” borrows from the well-known parenting book by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Here, however, the lesson comes not from modern parenting literature, but from this week’s Torah portion.

The Torah presents some of the laws of the priesthood and introduces the first priests: “These are the descendants of Aaron and Moses on the day G-d spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai” (Numbers 3:1).

This is puzzling because Moses’ children were not priests; they were Levites. Only Aaron’s children were priests. Why, then, does the Torah describe Aaron’s children as descendants of both Aaron and Moses? Rashi (ad loc.) explains that one who teaches the Torah to a child is considered as though he fathered the child. Since Moses taught his nephews the Torah, it is considered as if he had a hand in fathering them.

At first glance, this is puzzling. How can teaching earn someone parental standing?

Rashi’s next comment offers a deeper insight. He notes that the verse specifies “the day that G-d spoke to Moses at Sinai.” Aaron’s children were not born on that day, but Rashi explains that they became Moses’ children on that day because this was when Moses began teaching them “what he learned from G-d.”

On the surface, Rashi is simply explaining the context. But there is a deeper message here: Moses taught only after he himself had learned. Real teaching can only occur after the teacher has learned.

Forging Character
At first glance, this seems obvious. Of course, a teacher must know the material before teaching it. But Torah education is not merely the transfer of information. Its goal is to shape character and integrity.

Much of modern education focuses on information: learn medicine, and you become a doctor; learn law, and you become a lawyer. Knowledge matters, but education is about more than transmitting content. True education shapes the kind of person a child becomes.

This is why some of the most influential educators are not always found in the classroom. Coaches, mentors, and guidance counselors often leave lasting impressions because they teach resilience, loyalty, honesty, integrity, discipline, and responsibility. Not just information and practical skills.

Living Lessons
Character cannot be taught only through words. Children pay far more attention to what we do than to what we say. They notice inconsistencies quickly, and they watch carefully to see how adults respond to their own shortcomings.

When teachers or parents fail to live up to the standards they preach, students lose respect for them. But when they acknowledge mistakes honestly and strive to improve with humility and integrity, they earn their children’s trust. Children don’t respond to instruction. They respond to authenticity.

Teaching is 90% modeling and 10% verbalizing. Many teachers don’t understand this because they see their job as transmitting information. They feel that if they covered the material in the curriculum book, they completed their task.

Indeed, this works when teaching information. A math teacher can explain geometry accurately regardless of personal conduct because geometry is objective knowledge. Ethics and character are different. They cannot be separated from the person teaching them.

An ethics teacher was once confronted after students caught him cheating. He replied, “Down the hall, my colleague teaches geometry, does he have to become a triangle?”

The remark misses the essential difference. Geometry communicates information; ethics communicates values. Values can only be taught convincingly when they are lived.

A Lifelong Responsibility
This is why education begins long before formal teaching. By the time we become parents or enter the classroom, we must already be the example we are about to set. This work begins months, if not years, before teaching begins. If we want children to take our words seriously, we must strive to live by them.[1]

This is the deeper meaning of Rashi’s comment that Moses taught his nephews what he had learned from G-d. Moses could not transmit Torah until he had first absorbed and internalized it himself.[2]

When G-d gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, He was not simply conveying information. The Talmud teaches that the word “Anochi” in the Ten Commandments implies that G-d invested Himself in the Torah (Shabbos 105a). Moses first internalized G-d in the Torah, and only then could he pass it on to others.

Devotion
There is another lesson here: Moses began teaching immediately after receiving the Torah. He did not retreat to reflect on the moment privately or to bask in others’ admiration. He turned directly to teaching his brother, his nephews, and the Jewish people.

Effective teachers are deeply invested in their students. Students sense when they matter to a teacher, and they respond to that commitment. A teacher willing to give time, attention, and care communicates that the student is important. Indeed, the Talmud (Baba Basra 8b) points to Rabbi Shmuel bar Shilas as a model teacher because he never left his students’ side.

My Parent My Teacher
This is why the Torah equates teaching with parenting. Those who view teaching as little more than the transmission of information are never considered to have parented their students. They may enrich their students’ minds, but they do not shape their character. Those who embrace the Torah’s model of teaching, imparting not only knowledge but also moral integrity and personal example, create, mold, and shape a new child.

A parent gives a child physical life; a teacher helps shape the child’s inner life—their emotional balance and spiritual wellbeing. As the Talmud teaches, parents bring a child into this world, while Torah teachers guide the child toward the world to come (Bava Metzia 33a).

Teachers who teach as Moses taught are considered to have given birth to their students in a spiritual sense. Fortunate is the student who finds such a teacher.

For a child, this is a matter of fortune; for adults, it is a matter of choice, for learning does not end with graduation; it is a lifelong endeavor. Indeed, our sages teach, “Appoint for yourself a teacher” (Ethics of our Fathers 1:6). Seek out a teacher who will challenge, guide, and elevate you, and do not stop searching until you find the right one.

With the right teacher, there is no limit to how much we can grow and how far we can go.

[1] See Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirch, Leviticus 12:4.

[2] This essay is based on a teaching cited in Talelei Oros Bamidbar 1, p. 31 attributed to Nachal Eliyahu.