S/o dd going off the derech

amother

Mon, Apr 17 2023, 8:50 pm

I read that thread and a question popped into my head.
Disclaimer: my children are little so I can’t imagine what it feels like and hashem should never test anyone but here is my thought.

Why is it devastating for a family when a child goes off the derech? I’m not talking about drugs or substance abuse because that will involve mental health. I’m talking about what happens when the kid that went off is a genuinely good person, has a career, has a family, leads a completely normal, stable and healthy life. Honestly I’m thinking, if every neshama has a journey, and our jobs are just to show our kids the right way, why is it so challenging for us to accept that ultimately the bechira is one’s choice and their choice has nothing to do with us?

zaq

Mon, Apr 17 2023, 11:05 pm

As a frum woman, you can't understand why it's devastating to have a child go OTD? We don't rear our kids to be JUST good people and upstanding citizens with families and careers. All decent parents regardless of background try to accomplish that. We have an additional goal, one that takes the most time and effort and that costs us the most, not only in financial terms but also in terms of all our other resources, including mental, emotional, and social: to bring up our children to be Torah-observant Jews, to be the next link in the chain of tradition that stretches back to the Avot and to see to it that the chain does not end with them. When a child goes OTD, it's a betrayal not only of the parents themselves but of all the generations that came before them. Furthermore, when a child goes OTD, odds are excellent that s/he will have non-Jewish children, and better still that s/he will have non-Jewish grandchildren. You can't understand why this is like a knife in the heart of an observant Jewish parent?

Of course, this is different from blaming oneself if a child does go OTD. We can't force our kids to follow any particular path; all we can do is teach them and hope the teaching sticks. If we did our best and our child used his freedom of choice to reject our teaching, we ought not to blame ourselves--but we will, anyway. We'll tell ourselves that if we had taught properly, our child would either have had no desire to go OTD or would have been able to resist the temptation. Guilt is a peculiar thing and not necessarily logical.

Last edited by zaq on Mon, Apr 17 2023, 11:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

honey36

Mon, Apr 17 2023, 11:08 pm

zaq wrote:

Excellent reply. You should copy and paste it to the other thread as well.

amother

Melon

Mon, Apr 17 2023, 11:20 pm

I responded in the other thread about my twenty one year old not being frum. When the news hit us all we could think of was of our grandparents that went through the Holocaust and stayed frum and rebuilt their family’s and it felt unimaginable that we then produced a child that went off.

I will add to what someone else said. That I do think my daughter is on her own spiritual journey. But my deepest hope is that it leads her back to Judaism. Meanwhile I’m focusing on the light that she is bringing to the world in her own unique way.

familyfirst

Mon, Apr 17 2023, 11:32 pm

Very very often a child who goes off
The derech has other issues as well. There are so many shades of Judaism within Halacha that a well adjusted child can choose from. Happy people don’t just throw away all of judaism.

It is also these issues that the parent is mourning.