The school year does not begin now – it ends now. Summer vacation is the most meaningful and most effective learning time, during which children learn how real life looks – how their parents speak, work, drive, behave at the park or hotel, and how the whole world, outside of school, runs.
Obviously, the vacation period is too long and therefore our level of irritability, to which they have been exposed, grows too big as well. Nonetheless, one moment before we “deposit” our children again in the hands of teachers (and a big thank you to you, teachers!), we must remember that the most meaningful relationship in life is probably this one – that of fathers and mothers with their children.
Even with all the news stories about “the best teacher I had” or “the teacher who changed my life,” there is no doubt that the teachers who influence us the most are our parents. We can even say that from the way our parents buy school books, wrap them, and handle them, the children learn no less than from the books themselves.
You can break almost any relationship – friendships can end, marriages can end in divorce, a contract can be breached – but a parent-child relationship is impossible to break under any circumstance. Even if over the years we do not agree, we quarrel and say fierce words, parents and children can never nullify that which connects them to each other.
It is such a strong, powerful and basic relationship that the Torah uses it as a metaphor for the relationship between us and G-d: “You are sons to G-d your Lord.” In this context, too, even if a rift was formed in our relationship with our Father – even if we strayed away, lost our way, forgot what our destination is – we are always His sons.