Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family Read Online Free PDF Page A

needed ways to discharge enormous amounts of emotional and physical energy. Controlled mayhem did the trick and also wore us out so we would fall asleep quickly after we got into our beds.
    Our dad also believed in giving us generous amounts of affection. In this he was very different from the typical American father of the era. In the 1950s and 1960s, many parents were generally standoffish with their male children, and acted as if they were raising a generation of would-be soldiers. I remember some of my friends’ parents who would shake their children’s hands at bedtime. Our dad hugged us and kissed us so much that some friends and relatives complained that he was going to turn us into sissies or homosexuals. But my dad didn’t care. Let them raise their kids in a reserved and reticent way. He grew up in Israel and his boys were going to be hugged and kissed by their father, and know they were loved.
    In time, medical science would discover that both affection and exercise raise the levels of certain hormones—the ones that make us feel relaxed, content, and secure—and aid the development of a healthy mind and body. The positive effects have been seen in studies following babies well into adulthood. For my pediatrician father, this proof was not necessary. He understood, innately, that children—most especially boys—need to express themselves through movement, touch, and even aggression. Like my mother, he valued the individuality of even the smallest child.
    In his practice and outside it, my father approached children with the same interest and respect he might bring to meeting any adult, and he was truly delighted by the experience. With a little boy he might ask, “How do you know you are a boy?” and listen very seriously as, in one case, a four-year-old explained, “I know I’m a boy because I wear a kippah at temple.” My father would answer, “Good thinking,”because he wanted to establish a bond of respect and trust. He knew that a child who trusted him might one day say a few words that would be the key to a diagnosis. Better to be the doctor a kid would confide in, than the one that she fears.
    Sincere conversations also gave my father the chance to observe a child’s movements and thought processes and learn about his personality. Anyone who has spent time with newborns knows that while they all go through the same developmental stages, they come into this world as individuals with widely varied temperaments. Brave babies seek out novelty and show a remarkable ability to adapt to new sights, sounds, and people. Others are wary, and easily overstimulated. Most occupy a spot between the poles, meeting the world with their own peculiar need for both security and new experiences. Similar variations can be seen in a host of traits including levels of anxiety, attachment, fear, and even boredom. Parents can sense the differences in children and know that these differences require them to be flexible caregivers. There’s nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, in trying to bend every child to match a one-size-fits-all notion of what it means to be a boy or girl of a specific age. Better to set a few parameters and then go with the flow. Call it jazz parenting.
    Analytical, logical, and objective, I asked a great many questions about how things worked and found comfort in the answers. For example, when I learned that one of my father’s young patients—a kid like me—was diagnosed with leukemia I asked endless questions about how the disease developed and how it might be treated. I was very worried about this boy, but also needed to know that it wasn’t infectious and I could not just “catch it” and suddenly fall deathly ill myself. I was reassured as my father and mother answered every one of my questions in a way that helped me accept that leukemia was a rare condition and could not be transmitted from person to person like strep throat.
    My way of considering things was accompanied by a