Esther & Adiel’s Blog

Last month I went to a parenting expo at the JFK Marriot held by Priority-1. It was a really big event and brought in about 500 people to hear their choice of speakers throughout the evening. I had a very enjoyable time and wanted to share some notes from some of the speakers I heard that night.

Phillip Rosenthal – this speaker is a computer forensics investigator who now goes around helping parents protecting their kids from predators on the ‘net. The rest of his time is probably spent online pretending to be a 15 year old girl trying to lure predators and make arrests. From his speech I pulled only a few tips:
1) Keep your home computer in public spaces in the house. This creates a general awareness for the children that someone is watching over their actions. If they had privacy, they would do what they want.
2) Remind them to limit their public profile information. This means not putting addresses and phone numbers on their MySpace and FaceBook accounts.
3) Budget times for internet. The internet can be easily abused and its best to set limits so they can develop other skills and habits.
4) Filtering software is not enough. You need monitoring software to see what they’re doing.
He also mentioned a really good point about the changing behavior of people who use technology. Not only have we lost our patience, but we’ve become OCD about texting. The instant gratification of information coming to us as we request it – is a drug and addictive.

Rabbi Shaya Cohen – He is the head of Priority-1 and spoke about “Instilling a love of Torah and Mitzvos”. Here were some of his points:
1) Parents can’t take love for granted. They need to express love to their children repeatedly because children don’t really know that they are loved unconditionally.
2) “Happiness” is THE factor in which parents measure their child’s growth.
3) Mental health issues have skyrocketed because people aren’t happy. What are they looking for?
4) Happiness comes from feeling good about yourself.
5) Parents are the agents of their children’s happiness. We can make them happy by making them feel good about themselves.

Dr. Dovid Leiberman – (my favorite speaker of the evening)- I would write up what he wrote – but then stumbled upon this video: