Simply Jewish Parenting
Practical Jewish parenting tips for raising resilient, grateful, value-driven children in today’s world.
Welcome to Simply Jewish Parenting — practical guidance for raising confident, resilient, values-driven Jewish kids. Hosted by Adina Soclof, Parent Educator, Speech Pathologist, and founder of ParentingSimply.com, this channel helps parents build calm homes, strong character, gratitude, emotional intelligence, and Jewish connection.
Expect short, research-based episodes on real parenting challenges: tantrums, entitlement, sibling conflict, screen time, teens pulling away, and holiday overwhelm. Learn how Jewish wisdom, rituals, Shabbat, blessings, Modeh Ani, and traditions can make parenting easier, not harder.
Adina has taught thousands of parents and professionals and is the author of Parenting Simply: Preparing Kids for Life. Join a community that understands your struggles and equips you with language, tools, and compassion.
Subscribe for Jewish parenting tips, behavior insights, family communication skills, and encouragement—because parenting is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone.
Simply Jewish Parenting
Learning To Love Shabbos Amid Chaos And Change
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I share how our early Shabbos with kids felt chaotic and how shifting to progress over perfection brought calm and joy. Four simple goals guide a kinder home: trust yourself, involve your kids, celebrate wins, and protect a small ritual for mom.
• understanding the learning curve and dropping perfection
• moving from chaos to 60–70 percent better
• four goals for calmer Shabbos and resilient kids
• planning with children and solution-focused language
• daily question of what went right today
• honoring the role of mothers and the home
• a two to five minute mom-first ritual each week
• weekly action step to reinforce new habits
Tell yourself you're a good mother and then do something special for yourself, this Shabbos
Why Shabbos Feels Hard
From Chaos To Progress
Four Goals For This Series
Celebrate What You Do Right
Fill Mom’s Cup Weekly
This Week’s Action Step
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Simply Jewish Parenting. I'm your host, Adina Sackliff, and I'm so happy to be talking about Shabbos this week. I love Shabbos much, and if I could share any ideas on how to increase your love for Shabbos, on how to make Shabbos better for you, on how to help you feel more similar on Shabbos, I will be thrilled. I worked so hard to get to a place where I learned to love Shabbos with kids. Our first few years of Shabbos were crazy, yelling, disorganized. One Shabbos, my husband and I looked at each other and said, This has got to stop. We need to figure out a way to do this better. And it took a long time, but we improved to about 60 to 70 percent. I mean, with kids, you can't have that 100%. You can't have perfection. Looking back, I know that all those crazy Shabboses, it's a part of the learning curve. If you have young children, you're in that learning curve. If you have a large family and you're having babies every year, Kanaura, you are still in that learning curve because if reality is changing all the time, the younger the child, the more phases they're going through. And you're gonna have a lot more curveball. Now I have four goals for this series that we're doing. Number one, I want you to look at what you're doing right. I want you to think I am a good mother. I'm assuming that mostly there are mothers on here on this class listening to this podcast. I want you to think I am a good mother before you make any decision. Number two, the answer to all your problems are within you and your children and your spouse. You can listen to all the advice in the world, but the best advice comes from within you and within your family. We want to learn to plan with our family, involve children in our problem solving. Number three, this is a life skill we need to give to kids. We can teach them, I can figure out solutions to problems. My family is a family that focuses on solutions. I am capable and can handle life's little or big problems. And this is really important because emotionally healthy people, one of the key ingredients is this knowledge that I can handle life. I'm capable and I can deal with problems that come my way. Number four, I want you to feel the pain. Accept that you are in the learning curve and it will get better. We are making Thanksgiving basically every week. It's tough. Parenting is tough, it's challenging, and we're all going through this. And I want you to pat yourself on the back. Let's go back to number one. What are you already doing right? The magic is already there. Chazal did all the hard work for you. We have 39 malachos, we know what we're supposed to eat, what our minhagim are, and we need to really look at what did I do right today. Rav Nur Orlik, in the name of Rav Walby, says that in order to do a proper Kheshbana Nefesh introspection, you need to ask yourself, what did I do right today? And we need to know that mothers are so important. Society has tried to lessen the importance of mothers. And one of the reasons for this podcast is to bring back the importance of mothers and the home. We need to appreciate ourselves in all that we do. Number two, every Shabbat, you should do something for yourself. If mom is not happy, then no one is happy. And you want to make sure that you find something that you love to do, not what your friend loves to do. If it's just sitting with your magazine and having a cup of tea. And it only has to be for two to five minutes. What do you think my action step is going to be for this week? Pretty simple. I want you to tell yourself you're a good mother and then do something special for yourself, this Chavez. Next week, we're going to talk about more simple and practical strategies to make Chavez better and more peaceful. Thank you for joining me on Simply Jewish Parenting. You are doing great work creating a home of warmth, respect, and emotional safety and raising the next generation of Kal Yusserell.
