Helping Children Cope in Difficult Times Through Faith, Hope, and Emotional Strength

The Chassidic concept of “lights and vessels” can help us better understand our relationship with our children.

The light represents a certain essence — such as wisdom, love, kindness, and compassion, which is then clothed within a vessel, meaning the particular way in which that essence can take form in the practical world.

This idea can help us understand and explain many different phenomena in reality, and it can guide us in the delicate and deeply important work of raising our children.

For example, an extremely powerful light that passes through a small vessel incapable of containing it may be experienced as blinding, and in some cases it can even break the vessel. In other words, intense light can actually be experienced as darkness when the vessel is not built to contain it.

In a certain sense, much of the parenting journey is about accompanying our children through this delicate process of “expanding their vessels” — their process of growth and maturation, which enables them to understand more, contain more, and do more in every area of life.

And yet, it seems that the period we are living through is accelerating all processes, including the growth of our children.

Reality is at times deeply unsettling and painful, and at other times profoundly uplifting, while day after day more and more events continue to unfold. It seems that the pace of events has greatly accelerated; we are “racing” toward redemption, thank God.

When Protection Is No Longer Enough

In such a reality, it seems that the strategy of trying to shield our children from exposure to information is becoming less and less possible.

The intensity of events is so great that they will most likely hear about many of the things taking place — if not in our homes, then certainly in their immediate or broader surroundings.

What can we do? We talk.

In Hebrew, the word “conversation” (mesiach) shares the same letters as “Mashiach.”

In practical terms, this means actively seeking out the quieter opportunities and calmer moments in which we can sit with our children more peacefully and speak with them about what is happening.

We can help them understand reality through the foundations of Jewish faith: that “no evil comes down from Above,” that “there is none besides Him,” and that we are in the midst of the very birth process for which we have long waited and hoped — including the painful labor contractions, which are undeniably difficult.

Telling the Story Through Strength and Hope

Most importantly, we can choose to tell the story in an empowering way.

We can choose to notice the expressions of self-sacrifice and heroism, the miracles and wonders, the beauty and strength of this people that is being revealed at this time.

At the same time, we do not ignore the losses and the more painful dimensions of concealment within reality — but it becomes easier to view them through these lenses.

A broader, elevated perspective on the processes unfolding and on the path we are walking together toward redemption can give our children the understanding that moves them — and us along with them, because this always happens together — from a state of narrow consciousness to one of expanded consciousness, making it easier for them to cope with an unsettling reality.

This is also an opportunity to remind ourselves that our children are truly the generation of redemption. They are the ones destined not only to welcome Mashiach, God willing, but also to establish and live the new life of complete redemption in our land, in practical reality.

The difference, within a changing reality, between anxiety and strength begins first and foremost with knowledge and with the way we choose to explain to ourselves what is happening. In the therapeutic world, this is also known as the narrative approach.

Instead of receiving fragmented pieces of distressing information, children can hear those very same facts through a story told in the light of courage, hope, and redemption.