I'm shocked then. Really? I'm not talking older teens, I'm talking ketana age. Just let them be, and spiral off, or offer some intervention not by the parent?
Kitov, this is the most difficult tightrope to walk. Terrifying, in many ways.
Kids are influenced by friends. So yes, I want to know where he is, and what he's doing, and what his friends are doing.
Never mind when they get licenses, and I need to know that the driver isn't drunk or high.
But at the same time, you have to trust. When he says he's going for pizza with his friends, you can't ask for a receipt to make sure it was the kosher place, not the treyf one down the block. And you sure can't ask him to pee in a cup once a month.
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.
I have a feeling that when it comes to drugs EY really is different.
Remember that we are also a country that until ten or fifteen years ago when the Russian aliyah came, we didn't really have a drinking problem either. That culture just didn't exist.
Why? Because there were things that were considered normal here and so it wasn't an issue. Until a few years ago you could send a toddler to the supermarket and he could buy a bottle of wine or even lousy Israeli brandy. Because there was no drinking problem. Kids wanted wine? They got it every shabbos, the dati, charedi and mesorati kids which was a heck of a lot of kids. In those days Israeli young people didn't travel that much to the west to live there and learn from the non jews about the joys of your afternoon martini and all that stuff. So drinking only really became an issue when there began to be an entire drinking culture brought here by immigrants from the FSU.
Now...as most of the olim from Russia weren't religious, they really didn't affect the religious school systems and certainly not the charedi ones. Because the ones who became frum or charedi? They absorbed the DL or the charedi culture which once again didn't include liquor. To this day there really isn't a "drinking problem" among dati or charedi teens. Sure there are some who are OTD but we aren't talking about leaving bochurim who are already OTD with lots of OTD friends alone for hours. And at least in DL circles, if you are OTD you are kicked out of your yeshiva tichonit toute suite.
So far for drinking.
Now drugs. The kind of drugs that were always around at least in sefaradi/mizrahi circles were nargilahs. No big deal. They were part of a culture and when it was around all the time no one made a big deal out of it or called it "drugs". Not naivete, just a fact of life. The religious schools at least among DLs are strict on their anti smoking policy, so is Bnai Akiva pretty much and it's really not common to see reliigous DK girls of any age smoke. Neither cigarettes nor anything else. It's a cultural thing.
There are places that drugs exist, but only pot. Not hard drugs, not pills, no one spikes drinks with date rape drugs among the DL, etc. Certainly not teens.
You want adventure, the kids as tamiri said, take backpacks and disappear for a few days during the summer and walk shvil yisrael and things like that. Nice normal wholesome things. I have a son who is an educator, a husband who is in educational administration, a daughter a school psychologist and they were all students not long ago, and one who just finished school four years ago...and drugs really aren't common in middle class DL circles. Nothing like in the States. The good kids really never have anything to do with it. They get their kids trying to get themselves ready for sayeret matkal shaldag, 669 and that kind of stuff.
So it's not naivete, but rather still a bit of a different life here...
Goodness, are nargilahs more than regular nicotine cigarettes? I'm naive. Just last Shabbos I watched my kids play in the park while I took a walk around the park's perimeter and kept passing right in front of these two guys smoking their nargilahs. I was totally okay with it. What is wrong with me?
Barbara -
Those stories all have several things in common - one being, they don't seem to have anything to do with teens being left at home alone.
Look, we all know bad things happen. The question is what our hishtadlut needs to be to prevent those bad things. What's too little, what's just right, what's ineffective and what's going so far in the other direction as to be harmful.
IMHO, avoiding leaving teens at home alone on a regular basis is the third, and possibly the fourth as well.
So I'm not saying "go ahead and leave your 15-year-old at home, fifteen year olds are known for their maturity and for consistently acting intelligently and with foresight." I'm saying, "Yeah 15-year-olds can do some really dumb stuff, but being around the house whenever they are isn't going to change that. No attempt to bring them under your control is going to change that."
[quote="freidasima"]What exactly are you ladies so afraid of with your bochurs? Ar
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,
You forgot, somewhere in between, water down the liquor so parental units won't notice.
I guess it boils down to Israel versus the US AGAIN....
So what didn't we cover yet? Natural Parenting, I think. So since drugs are organically grown, are kids from NP working parents at a higher risk of trying drugs?
You didn't read it carefully Pink! Note, number 11, 4:30 PM included adding water to the liquor before mommy comes home!
Now I have a question for the ladies abroad and especially in America as I know the Jewish school system there better than in European or other countries. When you are talking about a drug problem in frum schools, how prevalent is it? Are "good" teens actually experimenting with drugs or is it usually the problem kid in the first place, the one in class from a problem home or who has always been not in sync with the rest of the kids? Why do I ask? Because I went to high school in America in the early 1970s. During flower power culture, people being stoned out of their minds...but everyone knew that in the "normal" frum schools, not the rich ones where there were really a lot of secular Jewish kids whose parents just wanted to send them to a good private school and get a top secular education, the only kids who would even dream of touching something having to do with drugs, or pot, were the total misfit bad girls, I don't know about the boys, I went to a girls' school. The mainstream girls wouldn't be caught dead near those girls in the first place and certainly not near drugs. We were frum. Really frum. Even if we wore shorter skirts than BY and didn't wear tights all summer and had TVs at home and went to the movies, there was a type of behavior that was just beyond the pale and drugs were part of it. Just not our culture.
Now you could say that's the 1970s but I have sisters in law with kids that just finished high school in this new century, and they tell me the same thing. This time about boys. And their sons who are already past high school age by now, and are pretty open about their high school antics, say the same things. Sure there were kids who were taking stuff in high school, but they were considered beyond the pale by most of the other kids and didn't influence them in anything...you just kept faaaar away from such kids because the drugs were only one manifestation of their totally not-normative behavior. Most of the kids in the DL schools, so speak my nephews, were intestested in two things - going to EY to a good yeshiva for a year or two and studying something in which they would make a good living. Drugs, even when they were fifteen, were just not on their agenda.
Which means that it wasn't that different than in my time. The dividing line between kids who would even dream of taking pills, smoking pot or anything like that in the yeshivas and girls schools = at least in the DL world, I can't say about charedi yeshivas, tell me about it today, and the vast vast vast majority of mainstream frum kids was as wide as the missisipi river at its widest. Gigantic in other words. No interchange between the groups.
Watching this thread I wrote an email an hour ago to my youngest nephew in America asking him when he was in high school and home alone (both parents working) all day long what was the worst thing he ever did - he's pretty cool with me so I expected a pretty honest answer, remember I'm a psychologist, his father is a psychiatrist, we've heard it all....
Do you know what his answer was?
Telling daddy that I was getting up for minyan when I didn't.
oy vey.
No drugs, no drink. But part of that is also having a very open household. What in the world can you "hide" from your parents when they aren't going to bat an eye at a mixed tiyul, mixed swimming, even mixed dancing (they went to a mixed very very modern yeshiva...), there is no censorship in terms of books and computer, you have your own computer actually and you never have to take money from their drawer because you have their credit card to use as you need...
And this one ended up two years in shtark DL yeshiva here and wants to study to be a rabbi and a lawyer. No mixed anything for him these days, his own choice.
I have a feeling that when it comes to drugs EY really is different.
That interesting. I have a secular relative that said that the drugs in EY were great. The raves (parties in the negev filled with drugs) were better in EY than in the US. Also she loved that EY men were only interested in relations, which is what she wanted and they didn't mind that she had multiple partners. And she said EY men were great in bed. So EY being different yes. I guess so
In public school, unfortunately, a good kid may experiment or even fall victim to cigs. He may experiment with alcohol. Marijuana? It takes a certain "kind". Worse? definitely a problem kid. A bad PS will have much more problems much more often.
In Jewish school, and Catholic too, the stricter the school, the less common it all will be. Still, in some charedi schools even, a boy will smoke while hidden (or they may turn a blind eye to a bigger boy). Or he will abuse kiddush wine at yeshiva.
Quote:
What in the world can you "hide" from your parents when they aren't going to bat an eye at a mixed tiyul, mixed swimming, even mixed dancing (they went to a mixed very very modern yeshiva...), there is no censorship in terms of books and computer, you have your own computer actually and you never have to take money from their drawer because you have their credit card to use as you need...
I think it is a double edged thing. They can do like that, or look "further" for limits.
Pickle, I'm talking frum kids, not secular. I doubt that your relative was going to a frum drug party and sleeping around with frum men in EY.
Drugs became common here after the First lebanese war. Lebanon was at the time the opium capital of the world practically in terms of transit. Everyone who was everyone in the drug world was getting their stuff out of asia through lebanon. And so as soon as we captured southern lebanon drugs came into EY. People including soldiers filled their trunks of their cars on miluim with all sorts of stuff that they got in lebanon, primarily electrical equipment (any old timers here remember those days) to sell them cheaper than what was being sold in EY as it was so cheap in Lebanon. Normal things like TVs, VCRs electric shavers etc.
But along with them, some of the underworld here which was basically involved in running illegal casinos, got invoved with drugs.
If anyone watches TV here and has been following that terrific series "haborer" they have had a bunch of episodes which mention just this when Baruch Asulin doesn't want his organization to go into drugs.
In any case, that's what made drugs much more widespread than they ever were, here in EY. Sure, there are drugs among the secular, but that's not what this thread is about as we are all frum women and I really don't know any frum families in EY who send their kids to a secular school unless you are talking about a real genius specialty school like that special high school for science and art/music that the genius kids go to. There is no drug problem there as they are all nerds and too busy doing 25 things at once...
Otherwise plain frum kids go to religious schools, some more religious some less, but religious frameworks...
Barbara -
Those stories all have several things in common - one being, they don't seem to have anything to do with teens being left at home alone.
Look, we all know bad things happen. The question is what our hishtadlut needs to be to prevent those bad things. What's too little, what's just right, what's ineffective and what's going so far in the other direction as to be harmful.
IMHO, avoiding leaving teens at home alone on a regular basis is the third, and possibly the fourth as well.
So I'm not saying "go ahead and leave your 15-year-old at home, fifteen year olds are known for their maturity and for consistently acting intelligently and with foresight." I'm saying, "Yeah 15-year-olds can do some really dumb stuff, but being around the house whenever they are isn't going to change that. No attempt to bring them under your control is going to change that."
I wasn't responding to not leaving teens at home, I was responding to the suggestion that teens don't need, or won't benefit from, parental supervision and guidance.
I do know of olim families, shomer mitsvot or even a bit more, sending to "the local school" (which rabbanim are saying not to do, but they are so happy to have it free and still full of Jews, I think - also often their kids come from public schools but not always).
A family who made alia from my OOT community sends to a school where kodesh is optional (the kids go, at least the boys I'm sure). Dad covers his head, mom covers it at shul and wears skirts, not always sleeves. Boys wear a kippa now in Israel. That kind of family. I would imagine many classmates aren't shomer mitsvos.
I wasn't responding to not leaving teens at home, I was responding to the suggestion that teens don't need, or won't benefit from, parental supervision and guidance.
Ruchel I am trying to understand.
Are you saying that a shomer kashrus and shomer shabbos family is sending their children to a secular school here in EY? Because those schools often host social events which are mechalel shabbos most of the time...
And what do you mean by a school where "kodesh" is "optional" here in EY? There is no such school that I know of in either the religious or the secular system.
There is Tali, the conservative schools but frum families don't ever send there, only masorti (Conservative, which is usually shomer kashrus to whatever degree but not shomer shabbos in the orthodox sense). If you are talking about Conservative and Liberal that isn't Orthodox or "frum" as we would call it here, and this discussion is about "frum" kids and I was referring only to "frum" kids (DL, MO or charedi) in EY...
You didn't read it carefully Pink! Note, number 11, 4:30 PM included adding water to the liquor before mommy comes home!
Now I have a question for the ladies abroad and especially in America as I know the Jewish school system there better than in European or other countries. When you are talking about a drug problem in frum schools, how prevalent is it? Are "good" teens actually experimenting with drugs or is it usually the problem kid in the first place, the one in class from a problem home or who has always been not in sync with the rest of the kids? Why do I ask? Because I went to high school in America in the early 1970s. During flower power culture, people being stoned out of their minds...but everyone knew that in the "normal" frum schools, not the rich ones where there were really a lot of secular Jewish kids whose parents just wanted to send them to a good private school and get a top secular education, the only kids who would even dream of touching something having to do with drugs, or pot, were the total misfit bad girls, I don't know about the boys, I went to a girls' school. The mainstream girls wouldn't be caught dead near those girls in the first place and certainly not near drugs. We were frum. Really frum. Even if we wore shorter skirts than BY and didn't wear tights all summer and had TVs at home and went to the movies, there was a type of behavior that was just beyond the pale and drugs were part of it. Just not our culture.
Now you could say that's the 1970s but I have sisters in law with kids that just finished high school in this new century, and they tell me the same thing. This time about boys. And their sons who are already past high school age by now, and are pretty open about their high school antics, say the same things. Sure there were kids who were taking stuff in high school, but they were considered beyond the pale by most of the other kids and didn't influence them in anything...you just kept faaaar away from such kids because the drugs were only one manifestation of their totally not-normative behavior. Most of the kids in the DL schools, so speak my nephews, were intestested in two things - going to EY to a good yeshiva for a year or two and studying something in which they would make a good living. Drugs, even when they were fifteen, were just not on their agenda.
Which means that it wasn't that different than in my time. The dividing line between kids who would even dream of taking pills, smoking pot or anything like that in the yeshivas and girls schools = at least in the DL world, I can't say about charedi yeshivas, tell me about it today, and the vast vast vast majority of mainstream frum kids was as wide as the missisipi river at its widest. Gigantic in other words. No interchange between the groups.
Watching this thread I wrote an email an hour ago to my youngest nephew in America asking him when he was in high school and home alone (both parents working) all day long what was the worst thing he ever did - he's pretty cool with me so I expected a pretty honest answer, remember I'm a psychologist, his father is a psychiatrist, we've heard it all....
Do you know what his answer was?
Telling daddy that I was getting up for minyan when I didn't.
oy vey.
No drugs, no drink. But part of that is also having a very open household. What in the world can you "hide" from your parents when they aren't going to bat an eye at a mixed tiyul, mixed swimming, even mixed dancing (they went to a mixed very very modern yeshiva...), there is no censorship in terms of books and computer, you have your own computer actually and you never have to take money from their drawer because you have their credit card to use as you need...
And this one ended up two years in shtark DL yeshiva here and wants to study to be a rabbi and a lawyer. No mixed anything for him these days, his own choice.
Go know.
And he was left alone at home at 14....
My husband was at MTA when you were in high school, maybe a little before. He tells me drugs were rampant there, although he didn't take them himself. His school friends, many of whom he is still close with, tell me the same. So maybe you just didn't notice.
And maybe your nephew didn't participate. Or maybe he's lying to you. But I can only think of ONE MO school in the NY area where I haven't heard of drinking and pot - filled parties. And that school just adopted a rehab policy, in response to a perceived need in the student population.
Its probably less of a problem in the right wing, but from everything I hear and read, its there.
Are these kids the bad kids? I don't want to ID them in public. Let's just say kids of teachers. School administrators. Rabbis. Prominent leaders of the Jewish community. Really and truly nice kids. Just nice kids who experimented.
I do not know if there are social events and if they would attend, as being from a "no social event at school" culture.
Kodesh is one or two hours after school. Optional. Or maybe it is a supplement, and during the day there is only Jewish history, Hebrew, etc, but not religion?
They wouldn't send to a "religious but non Orthodox" school. We French have a very strong cultural resistance to it even when non shomer mitsvot
I can only think of ONE MO school in the NY area where I haven't heard of drinking and pot - filled parties.
Why do parents pay? especially MO (= very high) tuition? better send to a charedi school and supplement whatever you want to supplement... influences are SO important, even more than curriculum.
Barbara I was at Central Manhattan and believe me we didn't have a drug problem. My husband went to MTA a while before me and I asked him, he said that from what he knew there were a few kids who smoked pot a few times, no "pot parties" on any regular basis, and nothing was rampant...so rashumon.
As for what I know about NY schools the drug issue exists in the more modern schools but much much much less in the right wing ones. My nephew was at a very modern school but he says that there was a clear division between the frum kids, who never dreamed of going near the stuff, they didn't smoke either (nicotine) and looked forward to drinking themselves silly on Simchas Torah and Purim but nothing more than that, and the others, who, as he has said to me more than once, were basically rich american kids from somewhat traditional homes whose parents wanted them to get a pre Ivy-league education (you can guess where he went to HS by that...). The "minyan boys" and frum girls, who were more like those going to the normal right wing schools but went there because of location, they lived nearby either west side or east side, never went near the stuff, there was really a line of demarcation, so he claims. He also wouldn't have any reason to lie, could be he doesn't know the whole story, being one of the "minyan boys" but it makes sense as I know his crowd of kids and they are truly wholesome...and quite frum.
Ruchel it isn't so simple in america. To send to charedi school you have to take out your TV, cover your hair a certain way, dress a certain way, daven in certain places and follow a dress code for the child, both inside and outside of school, that is not the way of life of the family and their surroundings and family.
On top of that you have the ideological content. Many charedi schools are anti zionist while MOs by definition are usually not anti zionist. That's one of the characteristics of MO at least in the united states. You can be right wing zionist or left wing zionist or middle of the road zionist...but you dont negate the existence of the State of Israel and call it a sin and call Yom Ha'atzmaut another tisha be'av.
And many charedi schools teach that the Mo philosophy is a sin as well and all MOs are actually sinners.
The divide is so great it would be like telling you to send your child to a convent because the education there is so wonderful as is the discipline.
As for the education, many charedi schools only teach the minimum of secular subjects and not enough to be able to go on to college in any sense. The school day is extremely long, six days a week and there isn't time to supplement secular, besides if the school found out that you were supplementing secular there is a good chance in some schools that they would throw the kid out.
As for the school you are describing in EY, I've never heard of such a school. They don't teach "religion" in schools in EY as you call it. Religious schools teach tanach, mishna and talmud, and many many many hours of it, also dinim. sometimes Jewish philosohpy. Secular schools teach the tiniest minimum of tanach but that's it. All schools teach jewish history, hebrew language and literature, including secular schools, it's part of the curriculum. That's like saying a school in France teaches french language, french history and french literature. What exactly should they teach...chinese and chinese history and literature?
Sounds really weird to me.
Also here in EY in general when the school has an after school event it is often mandatory. It's a different culture.
.
