What does it mean to parent selflessly?

Rabbi Landau teaches that the real paradigm in parenting is selflessness. When you decide for your child, you don’t exist in the equation. The question is not “What do I need from my child?” but “What does my child need from me?”

Some parents need a feeling of validation, respect, or a reflection of themselves from their children. But the real job, he says, is to look at a soul and ask, “What will help you become who you are meant to be?”

That does not mean giving in. “Don’t confuse love with surrender. The child is not the center, the mission is.” A child needs authority, boundaries and direction, “because guidance is also love.” Selflessness means giving even what they don’t want, when it’s exactly what they need.

“If your child is here to fill you, you’re not parenting. You’re outsourcing your emptiness.”

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

Surface claim

Real parenting asks what the child needs from you, not what you need from the child.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Some parents look to their children for validation, respect or a reflection of themselves.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that there are two approaches to raising children, taking and giving, and that love which depends on what the loved one gives back “really loves only himself.”

Deepest human truth

Guidance, boundaries and direction are love. A child is a soul entrusted to you, to help become who he is meant to be.

More questions from this teaching

• Are boundaries a form of love for children?