Otto Weininger, Child psychologist, TV host
Hyfler/Rosner
BYLINE: Steve Kravitz, Toronto Star
Otto Weininger helped parents, children connect Teacher, author, TV host,
school founder and 'rebel'
Child psychologist Otto Weininger often asked his eldest daughter, Lisa
Pepler, to edit his books and speeches. When his colon cancer made him too
sick to work, she decided she would start typing the drafts of his latest
work.
It was a book designed to help children deal with the death of a parent, a
subject Dr. Weininger knew well: his own mother had died when he was 8.
"We had no reason to believe he would not overcome this hideous roadblock,"
Pepler said of her father's illness.
But on July 14, surrounded by the people he loved, the respected analyst
died in his Toronto home at age 74.
Even with his passing, Dr. Weininger remained a teacher, dedicated to
bringing parents and children closer together.
Pepler said his unfinished book was helping her to accept her loss.
"I am lucky to have his words," she said. "I will never stop learning from
him."
For 50 years, Dr. Weininger studied the interactions between parents and
children. He taught at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and
the University of Toronto, maintained a clinical practice, founded Madison
Avenue School for rebellious teens, wrote 16 books and hundreds of articles,
hosted the YTV program Caring for Kids and won numerous awards as an
educator and therapist.
Barry Cook, a one-time student turned colleague and friend, described Dr.
Weininger as one of Canada's pre-eminent child psychologists.
"It's a great loss," he said.
"For so many people he wasn't just their mentor or their professor," said
youngest daughter Erica. "He had this effect on people who looked up to him
as being a dad."
Though he was always busy, he made time for his daughters. When Erica left
home for her first year of university, he wrote her a letter every day.
In 1954, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, studying the
physical effects of touching - or gentling as he called it - on infants.
Though the benefits of touching babies are today universally accepted, 50
years ago they were treated with skepticism.
In his final book, Dr. Weininger wrote that his dissertation committee made
him repeat his experiments on rats several times before they would accept
that gentled animals grew larger and that when his findings became well
known, The New Yorker quipped, "What do we do with bigger and heavier rats?"
Dr. Weininger was born in Montreal in 1929. After the death of his mother,
his father became increasingly distant - both emotionally and physically -
and left the boy and his two siblings to be raised by nannies.
He would spend the rest of his life trying to keep other kids from
experiencing the abandonment he experienced.
In 1948, as an undergraduate at McGill University, Dr. Weininger met Sylvia
Singer, a fine arts student and budding artist. They dated for the next
three years, until one night Weininger presented her with a piece of copper
jewelry.
There would be much more jewelry over 50 years of marriage.
Weininger loved his wife dearly and encouraged her to continue with her art.
Over the years, he became an avid collector of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.
In a 1998 Toronto Star article, Weininger admitted that though he had not
been a perfect father to his two children, he was trying to do better with
his two grandsons.
Pepler said that her father always had an empathic, intuitive sense of how
to talk to children.
"Kids gravitated toward him," she said. "He listened to them and kids would
be able to pick up on that."
He was man who knew how to play. When asked his age, he always said he was
171/2.
"There was a real rebel in him that said 'I am going to rock the boat
whether you're ready for it or not,'" said Pepler.
In his most recent work, he challenged the conventional wisdom of
"time-outs" for children.
He leaves his wife, daughters, grandsons McKenzie and Cody, sister Carol and
brother Norman.