Know Your Children with Rav Shlomo Katz

In this final class of the year on the sefer Know Your Children, Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David explore what it truly means to make Hashem the center of your home. It doesn't mean walking around holding Tehillim all day. It means integrating a deep, spiritual purpose into the daily grind of parenting, from giving baths to feeding your kids dinner. Rav Shlomo discusses the critical b...

What are we really hoping for when we say we want our children to be religious? In this week's episode, Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David explore one of the deepest questions in Jewish parenting. Is the goal simply that our children keep Torah and mitzvot, or is there something even more fundamental that must come first? Drawing from the teachings of Rav Itamar Schwartz, Chassidut, Par...

What changes when we stop seeing parenting as behavior management… and start seeing it as caring for a נשמה? In this deeply moving episode of Know Your Children, Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David explore the uniquely Jewish foundation of parenting — not merely raising functional children, but honoring the divine soul hidden within them. Through stories from Reb Shlomo Carlebach, reflec...

Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David explore the Gemara’s teaching that “Anochi” means: “Ana Nafshi Kesavis Yehavis” — “I gave over My soul.” From there, he opens a deeply practical conversation about what our children are actually receiving from us every day. Are we only giving them food, clothing, routines, and structure… or are we giving them our hearts within those things too? Through...

What happens when a child goes to shul… but never develops a taste for tefillah? In this deeply honest episode of Know Your Children, Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David explore the tension every parent feels between obligation and connection. Is “good chinuch” just getting children to sit quietly in shul — or helping them discover something that genuinely touches their soul? Through the...

Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David continue exploring one of the most misunderstood יסודות in parenting: the difference between acknowledgment and enabling. Building on the concept of chush ha’ta’am —a child’s inner sense of preference and desire—Rav Shlomo explains why a child’s feelings must be recognized as real, even when their actions can’t be accepted. Just as we would never deny...

There’s a question every home faces almost every day. “What’s for dinner?” It sounds simple. Maybe even trivial. But in this shiur, Rav SHlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David uncover how that question is actually a gateway into one of the deepest יסודות of parenting. What happens when a child says, “I don’t like this”? Do we push? Do we ignore? Do we accommodate? Rav Shlomo opens up a completel...

Parenting can feel like you’re expected to know how to do something you’ve never done before — and then do it differently for each child. In this week’s Know Your Children , Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David go deeper into a core yesod: investing in a child’s emotional development isn’t a “nice extra” — it’s essential. We talk about the pressure parents feel, the fear of “getting it wr...

This week’s shiur comes with a warning: parenting is triggering because it not only exposes our children’s inner world, it exposes ours . Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David continue the conversation about the three garments of the soul — thought, speech, and action — and apply it to a core parenting question: How do we build our child’s world of emotions in a healthy, Torah-aligned way?...

When parenting gets loud—mischief, nerves, anger—what actually brings you back to yourself? Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David continue the conversation about love, but take it somewhere very practical: love as the daily mindset that quiets anger and restores perspective in the moment . We explore why “hashkacha” tricks to suppress frustration often fail, and why the most effective prep...

Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David move from “Do they feel our love?” to something even more subtle, and often more powerful: do they live inside our loving thoughts ? Building on the classic Chassidic framework of the three “garments” of the soul, machshava (thought), dibbur (speech), and ma’aseh (action), we explore three ways love is revealed, and why most homes naturally excel at ac...

What if your child knows you love them… but rarely hears it? In this week’s Know Your Children , Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David draw a sharp line between ahavah nisteret (love that exists but stays hidden) and ahavah gluyah (love that’s felt because it’s expressed). Most of parenting is “industrial”—laundry, food, homework, logistics—and yes, it often comes from love. But when love...

Do our kids know we love them… but still not always feel it? Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David take on one of the most sensitive (and real) parenting questions: a parent can be full of love — and a child can still experience “You don’t love me.” How does that happen? Building off last week’s foundation (that a parent’s love can’t be “perfect” in the way we wish it could be), we explore...

In parenting, we want to believe our love is perfect — automatic, limitless, and always putting our child first. But real life has a way of testing that fantasy. Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David unpack a surprisingly relieving truth: a parent can genuinely love their child… and still have moments where their own needs collide with the child’s needs . Sometimes it’s obvious (work, exha...

In this new perek of Da Es Yeladecha , Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David go straight at a question that sounds “too obvious” to even ask: why do parents need to love their children? And then they flip it. Because love isn’t just a feeling; it’s the soul’s nourishment. From there, they go even deeper: love isn’t only what keeps a child emotionally alive. I t’s the “pipeline” that makes...

Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David explore one of the most basic and most misunderstood foundations of parenting: love. Not love as a feeling we assume is obvious, and not love as a concept we think we’ve already mastered. But love as mazón la’nefesh , nourishment for a child’s soul. Drawing from Da Et Yeladecha , Rav Shlomo reframes love as an essential need, no different from food, cl...

In this week’s Know Your Children , we take a courageous, very triggering step inward: Can I look at my child not only as “my kid,” but as a neshamah —a soul that may even be higher than mine? Building on our work about friendship and authority, Rav Shlomo Katz opens the inner story: our children are not our property, not our projects, and not our therapy. On the level of guf (body), we are the pa...

This week we face the question every home is asking: how do we hold yedidut (friendship) and mashma’ut (discipline) together—without losing either? Rav Shlomo Katz and the women of Shirat David learn that Chazal’s path isn’t “buddy” parenting, and it isn’t cold control. It’s a 50/50 coin: authority on one side, friendship on the other—flipped together by love. The Chafetz Chaim’s home modeled chav...

In this week’s shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz invites us to re-examine the core of chinuch: can a parent be both m oreh (teacher) and chaver (friend) without blurring roles? We return to last week’s kesher nafshi (soul-bond) and learn why natural love alone isn’t the funnel—mutuality is. Around ages 12–13, many children feel, “You love me, but you don’t understand me.” The work now is to move from “I care...

In this week’s shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz asks the heart-level question: Do I Want to Know My Child’s World? We deepen last week’s kesher nafshi —a two-way soul-bond—by facing a common gap: many parents are pouring from their world into children living in a different one. Without curiosity and reciprocity, the funnel leaks; with it, chinuch can finally land. Together we learn: - Why a mutual bond ( ke...

In this week’s shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz continues our journey in Know Your Children toward a deeper parent–child bond— נפשו קשורה בנפשו / kesher nafshi —a two-way soul connection modeled by Yaakov and Binyamin. We review the “personalized funnel” of chinuch for each child and revisit the two loves that start every home— ahavah tiv’it (rooted in existence) and ahavah mutenet (shaped by traits)—then a...

In this week’s shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz explores the foundation of Natural vs. Conditional Loving . Every parent begins with an unconditional, unexplainable love— ahavah tiv’it —simply because our child exists. As children grow and reveal talents, quirks, and challenges, a second layer— ahavah mutenet —forms, often shaping how we respond and how they feel loved. The work is to bridge these two, so t...

In this week’s shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz takes last week’s funnel and makes it practical. It’s not enough to have powerful Torah and holy intentions—if the צינור, the pipeline between parent and child, has leaks, what we’re trying to pour in never really arrives. Together we learn: The bridge before the message: why “content of chinuch” is stage two, and stage one is building a genuine bridge of trus...

In this opening shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz begins our journey through Da Et Yeladecha with the image of a funnel . Parents often try to “pour” everything they know and feel straight into their children. But without the right structure, much of it spills out. Together we explore: Why chinuch begins with building an infrastructure —a bridge of emet (truth) —between parent and child. How age gaps create...