Is giving my child everything at once the best way to love him?

Rabbi Landau explains that mussar, as the Torah describes it in “Ka’asher yeyaser ish es b’no, Hashem Elokecha meyasrecha,” is not punishment. It is love: giving and giving, but in a way that your child always has to come back to you for more.

Think of sending your child to yeshiva or to college and handing him everything he needs, an unlimited credit card. Do you think he is going to check in? And if he doesn’t check in, he is “disconnected from his root,” and then there is no light.

That is why, he teaches, giving in a way that keeps a child coming back and connected to his source is the deepest giving of all.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Mussar is not punishment; it is giving in a way that keeps the child coming back.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

A child given everything at once has no reason to check in, and he becomes disconnected from his root.

Deepest human truth

Connection is the real gift. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes of a father who gives week by week: “He is giving the connection itself.”