I’ve been selling talleisim and tzitzis full time for seven or eight years. Our tzitzis are worn by thousands of Jews around the world — from Portland and Seattle to Chicago, New York and Toronto. From Los Angeles to Denver, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami. From Rome and Madrid to London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Stockholm. You get the idea.

So imagine how I felt when little Ephraim, my three-year-old son, didn’t want to wear tzitzit.

What if your 3-year-old doesn’t want to wear tzitzit?

Effy is my sixth son, so I don’t flip out over every little behavior pattern that doesn’t quite meet my expectations. Parents whose son makes a fuss when they put tzitzis on him in the morning could let their imagine get carried away, and start thinking the lad’s pure neshama is a bit off-camber.

Maybe I shouldn’t have taken him to that White Sox game? Maybe I let him spend too much time watching cartoons?

But before you start delving into your son’s soul, remind yourself that three-year-old’s are resistant to a whole lot of good, wholesome things their parents present to them. At one point or another Effy has made a fuss, for no known reason, over sock, shoes, pants, shirts, etc.

We are commanded to emulate Hashem’s ways (see Mishnah Torah, Hil. De’os 1, 11). Hashem is very patient with us, so I’m trying to be exceedingly patient with Effy. For a few months now, it’s been on and off. Some days he has no objections, but other days he kvetches that the tallis katan pokes his skin (don’t ask me how), that it has a stain or that the tzitzis are too long. So there were days when he might have been the only one in gan without tzitzis. So be it.

Tzitzis options for boys

Of course we presented various options: undershirt tzitzit, traditional cotton tzitzit, traditional cotton tzitzit with a picture of an Aleph-Bet train, etc.

There was a period of a few weeks when not wearing tzitzis seemed to be the center of his game of being a big troublemaker when it came time to get dressed and head off to gan. I often took the tzitzis with me and when we got to gan we would step into the boys’ room and put the tzitzis on him. Suddenly he made no fuss whatsoever. Why the change of heart? Was it because as he drew near to the kindergarten he started picturing all the boys with tzitzis — except him? Or because he had left the home sphere and entered the school sphere, where rules are not made to be broken?

I tried to get into his head space, but eventually decided it really doesn’t matter whether I know all his thoughts on the topic, and in any case trying would be futile. To enhance his appreciation for the mitzvah, I think I’ll have him take part in the tying. For a boy not yet bar mitzvah to insert the strings into his own tallis katan may be a bit of a halachic question, but I can definitely have him lay out the regular strings and the long shamash strings on the table, and have him thread the giant needle I use to insert the strings in the holes. Or even just count with me as I wind around the shamash string and explain to him a bit about the number of strings, how to tie a knot, etc.