MARCH 31 • 2022 | 43

F

rom time to time, couples come 
to see me before their wedding. 
Sometimes they ask me whether I 
have any advice to give them as to how to 
make their marriage strong. In reply, I give 
them a simple suggestion. 
It is almost magical in its 
effects. It will make their 
relationship strong, and in 
other unexpected ways it 
will transform their lives.
They have to commit 
themselves to the following 
ritual. Once a day, usually 
at the end of the day, they 
must each praise the other for something 
the other has done that day, no matter how 
small: an act, a word, a gesture that was 
kind or sensitive or generous or thought-
ful. The praise must be focused on that one 
act, not generalized. It must be genuine: it 
must come from the heart. And the other 
must learn to accept the praise.
That is all they have to do. It takes at 
most a minute or two. But it has to be 
done, not sometimes, but every day. I 
learned this in a most unexpected way.

I have written before about the late Lena 
Rustin: one of the most remarkable people 
I have ever met. She was a speech thera-
pist specializing in helping stammering 
children. She founded the Michael Palin 
Centre for Stammering in London, and she 
had a unique approach to her work. Most 
speech therapists focus on speaking and 
breathing techniques and on the individual 
child (those she worked with were on aver-
age around 5 years old). Lena did more. 
She focused on relationships and worked 
with parents, not just children.
Her view was that to cure a stammer, 
she had to do more than help the child 
to speak fluently. She had to change the 
entire family environment. Families tend 
to create an equilibrium. If a child stam-
mers, everyone in the family adjusts to it. 
Therefore, if the child is to lose his stam-
mer, all the relationships within the family 
will have to be renegotiated. Not only must 
the child change. So must everyone else.
But change at that basic level is hard. 
We tend to settle into patterns of behav-
ior until they become comfortable like a 
well-worn armchair. How do you create an 

atmosphere within a family that encourag-
es change and makes it unthreatening? The 
answer, Lena discovered, was praise. She 
told the families with which she was work-
ing that every day they must catch each 
member of the family doing something 
right, and say so, specifically, positively and 
sincerely. Every member of the family, but 
especially the parents, had to learn to give 
and receive praise.
Watching her at work I began to realize 
that she was creating, within each home, 
an atmosphere of mutual respect and 
continuous positive reinforcement. She 
believed that this would generate self-con-
fidence not just for the stammering child 
but for all members of the family. The 
result would be an environment in which 
people felt safe to change and to help oth-
ers do so likewise.
I filmed Lena’s work for a documentary 
I made for BBC television on the state of 
the family in Britain. I also interviewed 
some of the parents whose children she 
had worked with. When I asked them 
whether Lena had helped their child, not 
only did each of them say “Yes,
” but they 

The Power of Praise

continued on page 44

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

