What exactly are you ladies so afraid of with your bochurs? Are you equally afraid for your girls to be home alone at 14 all day long? If not, tell me why, because the only thing that comes to mind is [filth].
So? So they will look at [filth]? Believe me, everyone looks. But not everyone gets addicted. And if you know it's wrong so you looked, you saw and that's that, you don't spend your life looking. There is a whole world of people, men and women, who have free access to the internet and believe it or not they do NOT spend their lives looking at [filth] on the internet. There are so many other things in life.
So let's call a spade a spade. You know by now that I am quite plain speaking.
Are you ladies trying to say that you are afraid that if you leave a boy of 14 alone for 8 hours a day his day will look like this:
What I did today by Shmerl-Beryl :
1) 7 AM - don't get up for minyan
2) 8 AM - don't get up for minyan
3) 9 AM - don't get up for minyan
4) 10 AM - get up go straight to the computer and watch [filth]
5) 11 AM - get up from the computer, get something to drink and realize you haven't put on tefilin, put them on for long enough to make the brocho, take them off and go back to the computer to watch more [filth]
6) 12 noon - get up from the computer go to your parents liquor cabinet and pour yourself a stiff drink and take it back to the computer and watch more [filth]
7) 1 PM - you drank so much you have to get up and go to the bathroom, so while you are there you also go into the shower and pleasure yourself for half an hour (now that's fantasy, what 14 year old boy will last half an hour?)
8) 2 PM - you realize that you are starving so you call a take away pizza place and order pizza using your mother's swiped credit card numger
9) 3 PM - pizza arrives and you eat it washed down with a bottle of your parents liquor while watching [filth]
10) 4 PM - you get a call from a friend saying that he bought "good stuff" that you can smoke together at his place as his parents are going out that evening.
11) 4:30 PM - you realize that your mother is coming home so you erase the memory of the sites you were on so no one can trace them, you add water to the liquor so no one can see how much is missing, you air out the bathroom and toss the pizza leftovers so no one will know and take out your gemoro which you haven't opened since school was over and your mother comes in at 5 with you sitting at the table going over a sugyia.
12) 5 PM - Mommy comes home, asks what you did as you answer "what a day...I got up a bit late for minyan but I ran and made it and was home by 8, had some breakfast and cleaned up the dishes, and then I learned a bit and then read a bit and then went down for a walk and cleaned up my room and them made some lunch and read some more and decided to learn in the afternoon and here I am now"
And she gives you a big hug and says "Shmeryl-Beryl you are some great boychic!"
13) 6 PM you help mommy set the table for dinner and she tells you what a wonderful son you are
14) 7 PM you help mommy clean up and then tell her that moishie called and asked if you would come over to learn with him after mincha-maariv for a while and you will be home by 11. Mommy says yes.
15) 7:30 PM you go out to mincha-maariv, then go to Moishie whose parents are about to leave.
16) 9 PM you and moishie take out the gemoros and sit and pretend to be learning and wish his parents goodbye. Then you count to 200. If they haven't come back you put away the gemoro, take out the stash of stuff, open the windows and light up.
17) 10 PM you and moishie are stoned out of your mind
18) 11 PM you stagger home, and tell your parents you are so zonked and want to get up on time for minyan and stagger into bed.
I just don't see looking for trouble. Lechatchila, I would not want a kid home alone for any length of time.
That said, one summer dd was too old for camp but too young for Youth Corp and she didn't have very much to do. We called it The Summer of Harry Potter as she did little else but read that book.
When I was 13, I got mono. There was no way my mother could take weeks off of work. I stayed home and watched soap operas LOL.
Each child is obviously different and will need different rules. But if your child is well behaved and trustworthy, why do you think they are going to screw up so badly?
I think its important to have open communication with your kids so they can tell you when things aren't going as planned with them. I did with my mother and I hope my kids do too.
FS, you know that isn't so funny, because I think there is a LOT of that going on with or without the Mommy home all the time. If she's home, it's going on elsewhere. If she's not home, then okay he can do it at home. But what you describe certainly would cross my mind if the house were empty of adults for too-long periods of time. Not the [filth] or the drinking or the credit-card theft, but the not getting up part.
Gotta tell you, all my kids were home alone all summer, every summer, from the time they were around 9. Occasionally I would take them to work and give them "busywork" and I would try to get off early when I could so that I could take them somewhere, but mostly they were home alone.
I would occasionally leave them housework to do. It never got done. Big deal. A microwave comes in very handy during such months. They would hang out with friends, watch tv, use the computer, listen to music, read books, play games, ride their bicycles, once in a blue moon go swimming with a friend.
When they got older they would disappear for a while. I would not worry. One went to some moshav somewhere with a friend and stayed there working and learning how to ride horses. Another went on a camping trip to the kinerret and came back telling me about the places she didn't go, where the dati leumi kids hang out and smoke pot. She won't even go near a cigarette so pot? Not worried. Then there was bnai akiva which had activities and the school always had some stuff going on by junior high school, and there was summer homework which they had to do and there was tv tv and more tv. That's when we got cable, G-d bless cable. Knowing English they had no trouble finding good stuff to watch on all channels, they were big on superbook and the flying house and dh had to give them a crash course on comparative religion to set things straight. The younger ones also learned not to tell "bible stories from TV" in school because it was often the wrong bible...but hey, it's a learning experience right?
I am such an uptight person but when it came to this kind of stuff I chilled. The only thing they knew was not to take a bus to various places if they didn't have to during the years that the buses were being blown up (the older kids time)...that scared me and although they weren't scared they didn't want mommy to cry. Sbarro was a bit of an eye opener for them as two of them were supposed to have gone there that day for lunch. Yeah well.
Unstructured time is a mechayeh! Let's hear it for unstructured time!!! Let's hear it for wasting the summer sleeping LATE (I had one who would get up at noon earliest, she still would if someone would let her) and watching TV quitely in the living room until all hours of the morning while the rest of us slept.
Let's hear it for spending three hours painting and repainting your nails. Let's hear it for spending a week trying to build a bookcase by yourself (before the days of ikea) and learning how NOT to hammer the nail into your palm (at 14 a boy can know already how to do it right, no?) Let's hear it for learning how to cook when mommy ISNT home and cleaning up afterwards because WHAT I DO NOT KNOW I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW is my slogan.
I trust my kids basically. They won't smoke, they won't do drugs, heck I have one who won't even drink cola because it's bad for his health he says. They are clean kids. There was never any censorship in this house over anything, if you could get hold of it you could read it. I never checked their computer logs it's their business. Hey I don't want them mixing into my seks life so I don't mix into theirs. Privacy is the name of the game. Their friends were pretty good kids too. From fifteen the boys were busy getting in shape for the army already, taking long runs, carrying each other on stretchers the crazy guys, and their idea of "adventure" is doing "shvil yisrael". So gotta tell you, if you raise them right and have a lot of siata dishmaya and a bit of mazel...sure I would leave a 14 year old kid alone....if I know he has money if he needs it, full time telephone access to me or his dad or both if he needs us at any time (G-d bless cellphones) and good normal friends. Or at least pretty normal.
We began by discussing camp as a luxury/non luxury. I want to reiterate that it's ALL different here in Israel. I am not sure why - is the suburb Monsey that much different than the suburb where I live? Here, the kids roam home on the range. A LOT of kids are out till all hours (I was one of those kids even in the city where I grew up) and the parents, at most, have a "parent patrol" at night, to make sure the kids aren't roaming too late. Today, my 12 yo son's mothers group emailed back and forth to decide what is a decent curfew hour for the boys. Most mothers felt that 23:30 was a fair hour (I like 10 pm better and have asked my son to be home by then) and really have no worries about their boys being out till then.
I am thrilled to see boys on their way to the "early" 7:45 minyan daily, and they aren't being prodded along by parents. BH they are getting up on time. Do they then go home and go back to bed? Could be, but who cares? I've written previously that Israelis looked at me in shock in those early years when we sent a kid to a 2 week Anglo camp program, and could not believe the money we spent. It's just not in their genes.
HOWEVER.....
I also spent 16 years raising children in the United States. Not in the Chassidic community, granted, and not inner city, but the U.S. nonetheless. Nowhere did I encounter the thought that camp is anything less than a luxury. People moaned and groaned paying for it, or moaned and groaned when they couldn't afford it and sent the kids to city camps or stayed at home.
After reading all these posts, plus some private discussions, I'd like to modify:
For people who live in the city, in an apartment, in a place where it's not safe for the kid to hang out outside, where there is no option of "mommy camp", I believe camp is just a fact of life and not a luxury. I guess if you have 1-2 pitzkalach you can manage in the apartment, but when they get older and need to roam, it's not realistic for every mother to be able to entertain all summer. This is what happens when you choose to live in the city in an apartment for whatever reason.
I think that if you belong to a kehilla who supports sending deserving children to camp, and is willing to pay for it, you are fortunate.
I think that if you are not getting money to send your kids to camp and need to send them, you are up the creek without a paddle.
Why are you so mistrusting? Unless you have a stupid teen they are going to realize you are spying on them.
This is about J. J was a handsome young man. Smart. Popular. Nice kid. Sure, he drank some. Most teens do. But J also took prescription drugs. The kind that he didn't have a prescription for. One night, he was at his friend's house. Another boy warned J not to take any drugs that night, because he was so drunk, but apparently J didn't listen. His friends found him, limp and cold, the next morning. BH one of the boys knew CPR. They rushed him to the hospital. His parents were told to take J off life support, he'd never make it. But he did. Still, he'll never be the same. His speech, his motor skills, are affected. And cognitively, well, no one knows if J will ever be able to work. Or marry. Or live on his own.
This is about N. N was a beautiful girl. She loved dancing. And she loved her parents and her little sisters and brothers (she had 3). But at a party, she tried cocaine. And she loved that too. For a while. Then N hated it. She tried to get off. Her parents and siblings helped. She went to rehab. Then went to rehab again. But the draw of cocaine was too strong. N died of an overdose in a flophouse. She was 21. Her parents went to her funeral instead of her college graduation.
This is about Takeimi Rao. She was 14. Celebrating her middle school graduation. She loved music and theatre. And she died of alcohol poisoning. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/sto.....43859
Good kids do stupid things. That doesn't mean that we can't give them freedom, or that we have to be on them 24/7. But our teens still need our love and guidance and yes, our rules.
So...wait, what's so bad if they don't get up? That they won't daven on time? Hashem will forgive them. It should be their worst aveiroh.
Nah, it's just that it really messes up their schedule. I believe in free time, but not sleeping in all day, if it can be helped. I've had a sleep-inner and nothing could change him till the army. The others are easier. And I also want to add: for an ADD child, of which I have one, schedule is of utmost important, including during the summer and that means wake-up and going to sleep time have to stay consistant. Badook!
Were your kids that good because it was in the previous century? I wonder.
My kids are the same, in this century.... what is "good", anyway?
I promise: my kids are hanging laundry and taking it down (I start the load and fold). They have been helping with food prep, particularly for Shabbat. They help straighten up during the week and clean their floor on Friday for Shabbat. They help me shlep groceries. The 12 yo is in charge of picking up the 6 yo from kaytana daily. In THIS century.
In many homes there are kids who load back-packs and take to the road for a few days, sleeping wherever they feel like it. Kids can take a bus to town, to the beach - whatever! Mine are homebodies so I really have a bit less to worry about, but when I was a kid: I worked a lot babysitting, had money and I was OUT most of the time! No one worried. Sadly, things are more expensive these days and kids seem to work less but there are still lots of options for teens to keep themselves quite busy, in THIS century!
I agree that maybe it's differet here in EY. But I have friends who live in various places in the world and in most of them at 14 a child could be left alone for most of the day.
Barbara, maybe the drug problem among religious kids here in EY is much less but once when I was talking to my kids about it and said something about no drugs, my kids looked at me in shock and said, "ma of course we had drugs in high school, just no one talked about it".
So I asked what they meant. Here was their explanation.
1) There was a girl who went to the "bombamela" (a folk happening at the beach during vacation) and actually smoked a nargila
2) There was one boy in middle school who they said tried once to sniff glue but he threw up in the bathroom so no one else ever tried.
3) Two boys in high school (11th grade) smoked and one even tried to smoke pot once.
Wow...that's drugs? We had worse at Central Manhattan in the early 70s...
I agree that maybe it's differet here in EY. But I have friends who live in various places in the world and in most of them at 14 a child could be left alone for most of the day.
Barbara, maybe the drug problem among religious kids here in EY is much less but once when I was talking to my kids about it and said something about no drugs, my kids looked at me in shock and said, "ma of course we had drugs in high school, just no one talked about it".
So I asked what they meant. Here was their explanation.
1) There was a girl who went to the "bombamela" (a folk happening at the beach during vacation) and actually smoked a nargila
2) There was one boy in middle school who they said tried once to sniff glue but he threw up in the bathroom so no one else ever tried.
3) Two boys in high school (11th grade) smoked and one even tried to smoke pot once.
Wow...that's drugs? We had worse at Central Manhattan in the early 70s...
Maybe your kids are naive. Or clueless. Or maybe they were lying to you. Maybe Israel really is that different. But I can assure you that there is no high school in NYC, from the worst public school to the most exclusive private school, from the most progressive secular to the most conservative Charedi, that does not have drugs. Zero. None. You want to know where teens can buy pot in my neighborhood behind the supermarket, at the park, or at the convenience store down the hill? Come visit and I'll give you a tour. And *I* am the clueless parent. Others can tell you who at the high school is selling.
I know people who hide their heads in the sand. *Not MY kid. Not OUR schools.* And I know that some of their kids smoke pot. KNOW. Not guessing.
FS, is it really bad if I show your schedule to my 20 year old son?
Kitov, teens hide a lot of stuff. My kids who are now adults told me about some things they did - not terribly bad, but we wouldn't approve - that they did right under our noses. Like a mixed-gender boat trip on Pesach.
I agree that maybe it's differet here in EY. But I have friends who live in various places in the world and in most of them at 14 a child could be left alone for most of the day.
Barbara, maybe the drug problem among religious kids here in EY is much less but once when I was talking to my kids about it and said something about no drugs, my kids looked at me in shock and said, "ma of course we had drugs in high school, just no one talked about it".
So I asked what they meant. Here was their explanation.
1) There was a girl who went to the "bombamela" (a folk happening at the beach during vacation) and actually smoked a nargila
2) There was one boy in middle school who they said tried once to sniff glue but he threw up in the bathroom so no one else ever tried.
3) Two boys in high school (11th grade) smoked and one even tried to smoke pot once.
Wow...that's drugs? We had worse at Central Manhattan in the early 70s...
Maybe your kids are naive. Or clueless. Or maybe they were lying to you. Maybe Israel really is that different. But I can assure you that there is no high school in NYC, from the worst public school to the most exclusive private school, from the most progressive secular to the most conservative Charedi, that does not have drugs. Zero. None. You want to know where teens can buy pot in my neighborhood behind the supermarket, at the park, or at the convenience store down the hill? Come visit and I'll give you a tour. And *I* am the clueless parent. Others can tell you who at the high school is selling.
I know people who hide their heads in the sand. *Not MY kid. Not OUR schools.* And I know that some of their kids smoke pot. KNOW. Not guessing.
Welcome to my world.
When I was in high school (1996-2000), drugs were just starting to become big in the frum world. Or rather, openly big maybe? Anyway, I was the one who clued my mother in that drugs were easily available.
But she was able to trust me because:
1) I came to her with the information
2) She knew my friends and their families
Its a lot easier to trust your kids with an open relationship and who they are hanging out with. Can a friend fool the parents? Sure. But assuming your kids are also hanging out at home, you get to know the friends and what they are saying and doing and looking like. It helps.
FS, is it really bad if I show your schedule to my 20 year old son?
Kitov, teens hide a lot of stuff. My kids who are now adults told me about some things they did - not terribly bad, but we wouldn't approve - that they did right under our noses. Like a mixed-gender boat trip on Pesach.
I think you have to assume your kids are going to push boundaries. You just have to hope you raised them right so they understand where to really draw the line.
