This week, Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto delivered a sharp message about the responsibility parents have toward their children. He warned against a troubling trend seen in many families — sharing financial worries or existential fears with young children — which, according to him, breaks their spirit and causes long-term psychological harm.
“When a father shares his problems with his child, he breaks him for life,” said Rabbi Pinto. “A father who tells his child, ‘We can’t pay the bills, we have no money for food, we can’t afford Shabbat’ — that father is destroying the soul of his child. If you have a problem, keep it to yourself. Don’t involve the little ones.”
He added that even when fear is instilled in children unnecessarily or dishonestly, the emotional damage can be severe. “Parents who involve or scare their children — even if it’s just for show — raise emotionally ill children,” he cautioned. “The Talmud says it’s forbidden to tell a young child, ‘The dog will come and get you.’ That’s a lie — and it’s damaging. A person must be careful in educating their children. ‘Our toil’ — that means our children. Someone who harms their child’s soul — it’s a grave matter.”
Rabbi Pinto shared a personal testimony he recently received: “Someone told us last week that he never wants to have children. We asked why. One of the reasons, he said, was that when he was little, his father used to tell him, ‘You’re such a troublemaker — when you grow up, you’ll have kids just like you.’ That got into his head. Since then, he doesn’t want kids, doesn’t want to get married, doesn’t want a family.”
Rabbi Pinto concluded with a strong reminder of the power of parental speech: “Look at what a father can cause with just his words — what he can harm deep in the soul. Even very wealthy people live in constant fear: Will we have enough? Will we lose everything? But when they were children, their fathers always said things like: ‘What will be? We’ll run out.’ That’s how parents plant destruction and deep damage in the minds of their children.”
This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel