What does “discipline your child, for there is hope” really warn parents about?

Rabbi Landau explains the verse “Discipline your child because there is hope” together with its warning, which he explains as “don’t carry your own life into him, because that’s what will destroy him.”

So the verse, he teaches, is telling parents “the deepest truth. The danger is not being too strict. The danger is you’re living your story inside his story until he forgets he even has one.”

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau asks why the verse speaks of “your soul” rather than simply forbidding too much punishment. His reading: do not take your own self, “your old dreams and the wounds you have carried,” and bring them into your child’s world. That is how a child’s spirit is crushed.

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

Surface claim

The verse warns parents not to carry their own life into their child.

Deepest human truth

A child has his own story. Living yours inside his can make him forget he has one.

More questions from this teaching

• What’s wrong with pushing my child to achieve what I never did?