MARCH 31 • 2022 | 43

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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