But the big question is this: How do we raise healthy, wholesome children? What can we do to assure that our children will grow up in the best possible way -- confident, kind, focused on the greater good -- living up to our highest standards? This is particularly challenging in our turbulent times, faced with so many options and distractions.

In this first of a three-part new course, How to Raise Happy Children, Rabbi Jacobson addresses the root of it all: what is the true nature of a child. After all, we cannot produce healthy and happy children if we don't first define the very psyche and soul of a child. Once we appreciate what makes a child tick, the unique personality of a child and his/her needs (in contrast to those of an adult), we then can identify what we must do to nourish, nurture and invigorate the child to thrive, flourish and blossom into a healthy adult. Like a flower seed that requires water and fertile soil, providing the nutrients for the plant to grow, a child needs psycho/spiritual and emotional nutrients to ensure its growth and actualization of its great potential.