There’s a well-known idea that floats around a lot of the popular chochmas hagoyim or self-improvement books: if you want a habit to stick, don’t force it; make it attractive. One of the more famous examples is a father who turned his home into such a chess wonderland from the day his daughters were born that all three of them grew up to become chess champions, not because he made them play, but because he made them want to.
We know the other story too. The father who dragged his son to shul, stood over him during davening, made frumkeit feel like something to survive rather than something to want. We know how that one usually ends, and some of us are that son.
So we tell ourselves the fix is to back off. Don’t push. Let the kid find his own way. But that’s not quite it either, and the chess story is actually proof of why. The father in that story didn’t back off. He was relentless. He just pointed all that intensity at making chess seem like the most amazing thing in the world.
He made it irresistible, rather than mandatory. And we can do that too.
Let’s start with davening, since it’s the most obvious place. A kid doesn’t learn to love davening from a father who tells him it’s important. He learns it from a father who’s visibly into it. When he sees Totty not rushing through Pesukei D’Zimra, or smiling at a line in Hallel, or stopping to think, most likely he won’t need a lecture on the value of tefillah. He’s already watched it happen in front of him a hundred times, and now, if the math holds true, he’ll want it.
And the same with learning. One father treats the daf as an obligation to discharge before bed, and another one comes to the dinner table, saying, “You have to hear this s’vara we were trying to figure out today,” because he genuinely can’t wait to share it. The second one’s Torah study is irresistible to him, and so it will be to the future talmidei chachomim around the table.
What if we’re just not that into it ourselves, right now or in general? Some say “fake it ‘till you make it.” I won’t knock that, but maybe there’s a better idea. Show them how you try to be m’chazek yourself. If you’re sincerely trying to grow (and if you’re reading the Nekuda Tova, you probably are), that can also be a draw. You’re showing something real about yourself to your children, where you’re truly holding, and where you want to be. You’re being emes-dik, and that’s also irresistible.
That’s the real chess wonderland. Not a house full of pieces, but a father his kids can see is still playing the game.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 96.
