Guarding my health, Guarding your health

April 2012


My teenaged daughter, may G-d continue to bless her, is not interested in consuming large amounts of alcohol, smoking, or other forms of chemical abuse.   She is in fact bucking the tide, with a small but tight group of other like-minded kids who simply enjoy each other's company and are interested in improving themselves academically and physically.  The photos on Facebook of some high school classmates, clearly inebriated, holding that signature red solo cup containing a mysterious alcoholic beverage, are disappointing, to say the least, to my daughter and to me.  When classmates show up to school drunk, or boasting of vomiting several times after consuming alcohol, it is not a proud moment for anybody in our community.

The question that every parent has is how to prevent our own child from even wanting to engage in this kind of risky behavior.  The question that every educator has is how to prevent our students from making poor choices.  Our high school has a Students Against Destructive Decisions (S.A.D.D.) club to help organize alternative activities that are fun and clean.  Efforts are made to warn against the dangers of drunk driving.  Whom can we blame?  Can we blame it on the media?  Can we blame it on the pressure to succeed? Why is drinking alcohol so pervasive amongst high schoolers?

I don't know whom to blame.  But drinking is so pervasive in American society that I feel it is incumbent upon early childhood educators to inculcate a love of learning, a love of self-improvement, and a love of taking good care of our bodies and a love of taking good care of each other.  In the Jewish tradition, the middah, or Jewish Value, is called Shmirat ha Guf, or protecting the body.  Practicing Shmirat ha Guf can start when the children are young.  For older children who understand what a rental property is, we can use the analogy of the apartment.  That is, we treat our bodies in the same way we would treat an apartment - we don't own it, it ultimately will return to God.  So we don't trash our bodies, we don't poke holes in it, we don't draw on the walls.  Hillel taught that it is a mitzvah to bathe.  Maimonides taught that we must not overeat and we must exercise.  Rabbi Elliot Dorff wrote,

"American law would permit me to eat a half-gallon of ice cream every night of the week.  I might be stupid to do so because I will look and feel terrible and endanger my life, but that is my choice.  In Jewish law, though, I do not have that right because I have a legal duty to take care of my body since it belongs to God."

In preschool we encourage the kids to eat healthily and get good exercise. We encourage them to wear appropriate clothing outdoors, and to drink water.  But even so, kids get sick.  This is the phenomenon that thwarts all of our good intentions.  Kids get sick, sometimes really, really sick.  Many parents know the route to the emergency room, because the line between healthy and unhealthy for a young child is very thin. When people fall ill, this is when it takes a community to promote healing.  This is when we teach kids that even a simple Get Well Soon card will also promote healing. We send Get Well Soon cards to kids and temple staff who have been out for extended periods of time.  I happen to know that Get Well Soon cards work, because when I was a senior in college, I had the misfortune of getting hit by a car.  I had surgery and was in a cast for a few months - my recovery took a full year.  In my moments of solitude during my healing, I gazed at my collection of Get Well Soon cards.  This experience gave me the strength to face my greatest parenting challenge yet - facing my adult daughter who was suddenly suffering from the debilitating affects of an undiagnosable condition that was similar to rheumatoid arthritis.

It was last August, when while on vacation in California we heard on my husband's cell phone my daughter's quivering voice.  "When I write it hurts. When I brush my teeth, it hurts. Now my knees are swollen." When a high functioning adult child who has been on the Dean's List throughout her collegiate career suddenly needs help brushing teeth, you know it's bad.  What followed was dozens of visits to doctors and physical therapists, and many hours spent bathing my adult daughter, flossing and brushing her teeth, doing her laundry, carrying her bags, driving her, cooking for her, helping her with her homework - and relying on the help of friends and roommates to tie her shoes, make her breakfast, and pour her beverages.  We bought tuition insurance for the first time, not really knowing what we could reasonably expect from our adult daughter who was clearly suffering.  We got help from the college's Office for Disabilities.  Professors made accommodations.  Improvement was slow.  But there was improvement.  We were cautiously optimistic when she resumed her Tap dance club in December.  In January we had turned a corner when our daughter felt strong enough to drive again. This Spring, with the help of God, she graduates from college.

In Rabbi Elliot Dorff's Matters of Life and Death:  A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics (1998), he writes,

"Because God owns our bodies, we are required to help other people escape sickness, injury and death....we have a universal duty to heal others because we are all under the divine imperative to help God preserve and protect what is God's." (p. 26). 

As a parent, we want to do everything we can to protect both our children's health and the health of loved ones around us.  In good times we can be successful in practicing Shmirat ha guf individually, and even in teaching the benefits of healthy choices. But life has a way of handing us curve balls, and that is when practicing Shmirat ha guf becomes a communal effort. 

This past weekend my adult daughter performed in her last tap performance at college, in a dance that she choreographed.  Prior to the dance, her fellow tapper introduced the dance with a dedication:

"Alyssa dedicates this dance to her family, friends and boyfriend.  She thanks them for their love and support, especially this past year."

Tears welled up in my eyes, as I struggled to keep my composure.  I wanted to be able to see this dance clearly.  I felt as though I had witnessed a multitude of miracles over the past several months in order for this day to happen, between my daughter's hard work and determination, her excellent healthcare providers, the help of her friends, my husband, and my younger daughter.  And this was all possible only with God's healing. The dance was a triumph over adversity and a celebration of communal effort. It was stunning and rejuvenating. After she graduates she will return home, and continue to work towards a career in the field of medicine, so that she can fulfill her own duty to protect the health of others.


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