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Should parents reciprocate when they visit their children?
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amother
Honeydew


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 7:17 pm
amother [ OP ] wrote:
Over the years when we had our children in Israel for seminary or Yeshiva for the year we took many boys and girls to our hotel for meals over Sukkos. The boys and girls drove my kids nuts for meals. Even if we had them for a meal or two it seemed like it was not enough.
These yeshiva boys or seminary girls walked in empty handed. 99.9% of the parents never called or text thank you. Even neighbors won't walk over to say thank you for having their child over Yom Tov.
It was not cheap hosting their children. But I noticed when they go visit their child in yeshiva or seminary my child is not even being treated to a slice of pizza. Should these parents be recipricating all these boys or girls that took care of them over Yom Tov or is ok for them to make believe that no one went out of their way for their child and not invite them for a shabbos meal or out to eat during the week when they are there.


Could you please fix the misspelling of reciprocate in the thread title? It makes me nervous every time I see it.
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amother
Lilac


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 7:28 pm
amother [ Wine ] wrote:
If your child is ready to be away from home, then said child should be ready to problem solve with maturity and independence.


Pressuring acquaintances and strangers for meals is hardly problem solving with maturity and independence.

No one mentioned the burden on the Isreali hosts. Doesn't any of these kids feel bad to put people on the spot who are obviously not well off?
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amother
Wine


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 7:36 pm
amother [ Lilac ] wrote:
Pressuring acquaintances and strangers for meals is hardly problem solving with maturity and independence.

No one mentioned the burden on the Isreali hosts. Doesn't any of these kids feel bad to put people on the spot who are obviously not well off?


Exactly.
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amother
Goldenrod


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 7:47 pm
amother [ Lilac ] wrote:
You're confusing us. I get that they don't want to spend Shabbos alone in the dorm. I am not sure why the dorm necessarily needs to be dark. Long before I would impose on someone, I would stay in the dorm even in the dark. My kids stay in the dorm instead of asking acquaintances to host them. They weren't brought up to not think of others.

Here's the thing, though. Officially the dorm was closed on those shabbosos. That is why the girls had to sneak back in. They were not allowed to be there. But it was that or sleeping on a park bench. And I'm not joking.
And if you can't feel empathy for a young girl (and yes, in the frum world a sheltered 18 year old girl is young) who is stuck in a situation like that, than that is disappointing.
To the poster who said don't they feel bad imposing on strange Israeli families, or course they do. But that is the seminary's way of getting out of having to provide for them. If anyone is being greedy and entitled here, it's the seminaries. Just what are the girls supposed to do? I think some seminaries have stepped up a bit in recent years. But it is still not enough.
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amother
Blue


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 8:21 pm
We spent succos in Israel. We are very lucky that dd goes to an amazing sem. Whenever we met dd she came with friends, or found girls dd knew around town, we treated them to pizza/drinks. We did go out to nicer places (meat) for dinner, we treated the friend that we met outside as well. (It happened multiple times). Every single girl thanked us appropriately. They hugged me when I gave them leftovers

Dd told us that other parents take a group of girls out to eat at their hotel/for burgers/restaurant. This wasnt in our budget. We werent going to invite, but we decided to treat anyone we meat.

I recently sent a gift basket of muffins and cookies to her dorm to share. You dont have to buy a plane ticket.
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amother
Lilac


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 8:34 pm
amother [ Goldenrod ] wrote:
Here's the thing, though. Officially the dorm was closed on those shabbosos. That is why the girls had to sneak back in. They were not allowed to be there. But it was that or sleeping on a park bench. And I'm not joking.
And if you can't feel empathy for a young girl (and yes, in the frum world a sheltered 18 year old girl is young) who is stuck in a situation like that, than that is disappointing.
To the poster who said don't they feel bad imposing on strange Israeli families, or course they do. But that is the seminary's way of getting out of having to provide for them. If anyone is being greedy and entitled here, it's the seminaries. Just what are the girls supposed to do? I think some seminaries have stepped up a bit in recent years. But it is still not enough.


Besides the seminaries, their parents are at fault for allowing their kids to be in this situation. But the responsibility to feed and host these kids is not other parents or Israelis.

In my experience, my kids' friends all were able to stay in the dorms on Shabbos. They didn't want to. Pressuring people for better accommodations is horrendous behavior. They should be ashamed of themselves.
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amother
Smokey


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 8:49 pm
I went to seminary 20 years ago, so perhaps things have changed a bit. I don't miss the scramble to find somewhere to go almost every Shabbos. I was lucky enough that even though I didn't have much family living in Israel my parents had quite a few friends who had made aliyah and had kept in touch and were happy to have me and my siblings over the years. Almost everyone I went to for Shabbos invited me to bring along a friend, which I almost always took them up on. Some of those friends didn't have anywhere else to go and some reciprocated by inviting me along when they went to their connections for Shabbos. We always brought a gift of some sort and helped as much as we could while we were there.

Staying in seminary on an off Shabbos wasn't really an option. There were no meals provided and we didn't have the facilities to cook for Shabbos. The only time people stayed in was if they were lucky enough to get invited to meals of teachers who lived nearby, but that was rare. I only stayed in once when I was feeling really sick and couldn't impose on my one close relative for TLC because she was pregnant and I didn't want to expose her to my germs. It was a miserable Shabbos, and not just because I was sick.

Technically the seminary had a program where you could sign up in pairs to be hosted by various families but in practice it didn't always work out. Really seminaries should always be open for Shabbos with a married couple who is either hired or volunteers to run the meals so that would always be an option for students who don't have people to host them.

In my day it was rare for parents to come visit. Those who did usually did allow their children to invite a couple of friends out for dinner but there were no expectations and it wasn't to fancy restaurants either. If we were lucky enough not to be on a really strict budgets we would sometimes go out as a group to celebrate birthdays or the end of midterms or whatever, but again not to anywhere fancy.

Yom Tov is a whole separate ball of wax. It's much harder to find somewhere to go, especially for the second day of Y"T than it is to find somewhere to go for Shabbos. That's why kids scramble to get themselves invited to meals at hotels or with families coming in from chutz la'aretz, because the Israelis they might normally go to aren't celebrating second day.

Basically, the whole system stinks. If you're paying for your child to go to seminary/yeshiva for the year then that should include all Shabbos and Y"T meals as well. You can't really blame the kids for making the most out of a difficult situation, as long as they're polite and helpful along the way.
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amother
Goldenrod


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 8:53 pm
Well, your experience is not my experience, lilac. Or many of the people I know. Or maybe it is just that your daughter has never been stuck in this way so you really wouldn't be aware of it.
Personally, I think people should stop sending their daughters to these seminaries. Then you'd see how they would rush to change and accommodate the American girls and parents.
I don't know why people are so brainwashed into thinking they must send their daughters there.
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amother
Slateblue


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 9:04 pm
amother [ Silver ] wrote:
This is one of the things I hate about the "gap" year. Kids are placed in a position where they need to "find" meals for themselves, and often act in a very immature and demanding manner. The bottom line is that you cannot really blame them. Where to find meals for Shabbos and Y"T creates a lot of stress and kids get the idea that it is owing to them because what else can they expected to do? A lot of local families who want to do hachnasas orchim, really don't have the funds to do so. And a lot of this hosting are for students who are only in Israel to have a good time or fomo. It would be different if they were attending a baal teshuvah seminary, for example.


Agree 100%. What with the cost of sem and yeshiva, the kids should have shabbos meals provided and not have to schnorr from people
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amother
Wine


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 9:06 pm
amother [ Goldenrod ] wrote:
Well, your experience is not my experience, lilac. Or many of the people I know. Or maybe it is just that your daughter has never been stuck in this way so you really wouldn't be aware of it.
Personally, I think people should stop sending their daughters to these seminaries. Then you'd see how they would rush to change and accommodate the American girls and parents.
I don't know why people are so brainwashed into thinking they must send their daughters there.


Applause Applause Applause Applause
Absolutely right
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amother
Lilac


 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 9:11 pm
amother [ Goldenrod ] wrote:
Well, your experience is not my experience, lilac. Or many of the people I know. Or maybe it is just that your daughter has never been stuck in this way so you really wouldn't be aware of it.
Personally, I think people should stop sending their daughters to these seminaries. Then you'd see how they would rush to change and accommodate the American girls and parents.
I don't know why people are so brainwashed into thinking they must send their daughters there.


Not providing meals on Shabbosim isn't something new. As I said, I made sure my kids don't attend schools that don't allow the kids to stay in the dorms, so my kids and their classmates were never stuck, yet their classmates and friends from home pressure my kids. I also get pressor pressure from parents of kids to host their kids.
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zaq




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Jan 07 2020, 11:43 pm
amother [ Honeydew ] wrote:
Could you please fix the misspelling of reciprocate in the thread title? It makes me nervous every time I see it.


Thank you, honeydew! It was driving me batty, too.


Last edited by zaq on Wed, Jan 08 2020, 12:16 am; edited 1 time in total
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amother
Royalblue


 

Post Wed, Jan 08 2020, 12:15 am
Thank G-d I didn’t go to seminary. How can it be anything but degrading to be forced into beggardom for at least one or more Shabbosim out of every four and on every YT? So much the worse when you have to find accommodations for two days of YT when the rest of the country celebrates one.

Some people have no problem inviting themselves. The archaic etiquette I learned, which I still agree with, was that you never put people on the spot. I would have felt lower than dirt to be asking even though I was being forced to do so. If no one invited me, I probably would have thought to sneak back into the dorm and have peanut butter sandwiches and tuna from a can rather than ask to be invited anywhere.

At least once. I’d probably be totally creeped out to be alone in an empty dorm, even with a friend or two. Creeped out enough to swallow my objections and go through the humiliation of begging? Probably.

My parents would have been furious if they had sent me to sem and found out that this was going on. They would have been fine with my being required to mop floors or peel potatoes by the barrel, but be forced into
institutionalized beggardom? No way, she’s not going. My family was poor but there were some things we Did. Not. Do. and beg was one of them.
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