I choose my teens over my religion!

Log in / Sign Up

List of Forums + New Post Recipe Box Usergroups Following My Posts Bookmarks

Private Messages Advanced Search Rules New User Guide FAQ Advertise Contact Us

Forum -> Parenting our children -> Teenagers and Older children

Previous 1 2 3 17 18 19 20 21 Next

View latest: 24h 48h 72h

sequoia

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 10:05 am

All right, all right! I'll set aside a special t-shirt and pair of pj pants JUST for shabbos.

chani8

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 10:14 am

No, FS, my DDS would not come to the shobbos table in just their sweat pants. They would wear a shobbos skirt on top of their sweat pants.

freidasima

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 11:44 am

Are you serious or kidding? At this point I'm not sure!

chani8

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 12:27 pm

freidasima wrote:

Are you serious or kidding? At this point I'm not sure!

I'm actually not kidding. But it is humorous, imo.

busybuthappy

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 12:58 pm

FS- I did not say that intermarriage can't happen in the frum community I just said that the statistics are much lower. in secular world it is over fifty percent, in the frum world I would be surprised if it's more then three percent, and even in the frum world it is generally happening to children from dysfunctional backgrounds or children who lost a parent, or children who suffer from other serious issues.

it usually does not happen to parents who love their children unconditionally, set normal boundareies and raise them with proper hashkafos. Not that it can't, but that it usually doesn't.

according to you-"First a kid goes OTD and then he/she intermarries."

exactly! that is what I said too. it's not like one day ur frum child tells you, by the way I met this nice guy, im going to marry him, and btw he's not jewish. there are warning signs first. when you start to get those warning signs, then it is time to discuss things like intermarrying.

as per you"children don't see it as the norm to jump off the roof"

do children see it as the norm to intermarry? I don't know about anyone else, but I sure didn't.

in answer to your question about children. I do have children, they are boys and they are not yet teenagers. but I am a girl and I was a teenager and I'm speaking from my own experience. If my mother would have bruought up the issue of intermarriage I would have thought she went off her mind.

regarding me being naive, I don't think so. I was brought up with a lot of TV and movies, and read a lot of books with a lot of shumtz in them when I was far to young. I knew alll the facts of life from the age of ten. I do not think girls should only be told about how you have babies right before they get married. I am actually horrified that people do that. I think that children should be told the facts straight forward from age 12 and up, as soon as they ask, and they should be told by 16 of they don't ask. but the fact is, chances are they will be having s-x, so that's why they should be told about it, chances are they will not be intermarrying so why bring it up? unless..... I repeat myself I agian, there is some reason to suspect that they would consider intermarrying.

also, you said-"So they ask and you explain", you are right if they ask, definitely explain, but I don't think any three year olds ask about intermarriage, and you said u started talking to them about it at three.

Btw, I am from america, maybe things are very different here, I don't know. Ftr, I don't know of anyone raised frum that intermarrried.

freidasima

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 1:03 pm

Busy if you don't know anyone who was raised frum and intermarried and you live in the good old USofA you are very sheltered or lucky.

It happens much more than you think. And if you wait for your kids to ask you about something before you talk about it, you may wait forever until it is too late. I write this as a professional, who had had to deal with young adults whose parents didn't talk to them about things and they learned about them from the street and I don't mean s e k x.

Maybe you don't know what I mean by "achmed ben sara" but any of the frum Israelis on this list who listen to Radio kol chai, the most popular Israeli frum radio station that there is, knows immediately what I am talking about....right Shal? (where are you...)

busybuthappy

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 3:48 pm

U r right, I dont know about achmed ben sara. And I am not saying it doesnt happen just that it is not s so prevalent. Maybe I am just lucky. (Do know too many otd kids unfortanetely, just none who intermarried) btw, what kinds of thingd did parents not tel their kids that ended up causing trouble, just curious?

Isramom8

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 11:16 pm

It's a very weak child who was raised frum but would fall into marrying an Arab. The NY high school I went to wasn't BY like Wolf in Bnei Brak (where FS says the girl in her story went). It was more modern than that. Our menahelet encouraged the girls to attend courses at the local public college, while we were seniors. I took a poetry class. I basically kept to myself, but I wasn't unfriendly to my classmates either.

I may have told a boy in my class that I liked his poem, but more likely he told me that he liked my poem, and I said I liked his too, or something. He was Arabic. He asked me out for coffee.

Do you think it entered my mind to chas veshalom marry him, or even to accept a coffee date? Of course not. I turned down the offer, politely. He was annoyed. But too bad.

I expect and estimate that all my kids are strong enough to say shalom to Arabs and not marry them.

freidasima

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 11:32 pm

Isramom I hope and pray for you that you are right.
But what we have learned, particularly in working with the Yad LeAchim volunteers (and they are such incredible people, I can't say it enough), is that girls from frum families, particularly Sefaradi ones, who are feeling very depressed in the sense of coming from large families, and often feel kind of lost in the sauce, not necesarily depressed children or problematic ones but those who are really looking for attention and just can't get it in really big families with tired mothers where these girls at ten are already taking care of six or seven younger siblings...well if the arab guys look Jewish, and speak perfect Hebrew, which many of them do, they just look like chilonim. It comes out that they are arab sometimes only after a while when the girl is starving at sixteen or so for someone who focuses on HER and only HER. And it can happen that from a frum or traditional home she ends up with him. I'm not saying that it happens every monday and thursday but it happens enough for it to be a "phenomenon".

These are NOT girls who would go to college in many cases and in some really poor famiiles, even totally finish high school as they are expected to help support the family by 18 if they aren't married.

Busy, what kind of things could get a girl into trouble if she doesn't know about them? Sekx. Here's an example, not knowing that by playing around without penetration one can technically get pregnant. You might say - where in the world would a really frum girl end up with a guy so close that she could be like that? - you would be surprised what kids including kids who one thinks are so "goooood" do behind their parents' backs.

What other kind of things could be dangerous if not talked about? What to do if one finds oneself "in trouble", whatever the definition is. Too many teens in hysteria run away or even try to commit suicide in certain situations and I don't mean being pregnant, because they are desparate, don't know who to turn to or even if they can turn to anyone. So yes, one has to give kids examples of things that could happen and DO happen (being caught in theft, being caught doing something that would get them expelled from school, etc.) for them to know that if that happens (of course if one believes that, as I do) no matter what you have done, come to me (mommy). I won't necesarily be happy about it and we will work out where to go from there but come to me first. Don't run away, don't chas vesholom try to harm yourself (you don't have to say straight out "kill yourself" but kids aren't stupid and they live in a world of information or at least in the charedi world, of gossip (I am not saying this to malign the charedi world but in a world where kids are kept away from real news and information they are often privy at a very young age to a grapevine of stuff).

DrMom

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 11:33 pm

The whole shobbos robe concept is cultural, I suppose.

In principle, it's a fine idea: Something comfy and cozy that you can wear around the house but not look like a shlump. I'm all for comfortable clothing for women, who often must sacrifice comfort in the name of dressing appropriately.

However, to me they look like gaudy velour housecoats. Totally not my style.

DrMom

Sun, Dec 23 2012, 11:41 pm

Oh and I agree that intermarriage is an epidemic problem in the non-frum world, particularly in the galut. It's become so mainstream that rabbis and community leaders can't even advocate for in-marriage because it will offend the many intermarried members of their congregations and communities. Those who advocate for marrying Jews only are branded as intolerant.

I'd imagine that within the Orthodox community, a large percentage (not all) of the people who intermarry are so OTD that they don't want anything to do with Judaism (or their families) anymore. Perhaps people who had traumatic upbringings or abusive teachers, etc.

shalhevet

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 12:33 am

freidasima wrote:

What FS writes is what I have also heard. I wrote a few pages ago that someone frum making an apology of a protest at an intermarriage may make someone not frum more ready to go on a date with someone non-Jewish and someone answered that no one marries a non-Jew because their friend's frum cousin went to their intermarriage reception.

You people here are very naive. Maybe today many Jews are unfortunately so assimilated in the West that they don't even care about marrying a non-Jew, but a generation or two ago and it is still true for traditional, lite frum, or even somewhat connected Jews today - they would never marry a non-Jew in theory. But they meet someone on the bus, at a coffee shop, in the street, at a club etc. and they just start talking. And things just move on without them thinking. By the time they are in love and realize the boy/girl isn't Jewish, it is no longer a rational/ theoretical decision.

For sure this is true of those girls who marry Arabs, nebach. They only enjoyed the attention of someone chatting them up. They never would marry an Arab (if they even realized he was one). They just liked the gifts he gave them and the innocent fun they had together. Until it was too late.

freidasima

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 1:37 am

which is why I keep saying that the yad leachim people do such incredible work taking these women and their children out of arab villages or straight from the hospital after they give birth, hiding them from their arab family so that they don't get killed in the middle of the night, finding them homes, social workers, doctors etc.

saw50st8

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 2:55 am

I think Shabbos robes look like bathrobes. I have yet to see one (in person) that says "Oh I look pretty for shabbos) - and most people I know where them to bed also.

Maybe I'm just not superficial that way.

Anyway, about intermarriage - I can think of one girl my age that I know who has intermarried. I know a few OTD. The one who intermarried didn't specifically have the intention to find someone who wasn't Jewish, but found someone who is an atheist like her. So I guess their lack of belief helped solidify their relationship.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I really don't see it.

busybuthappy

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 4:43 am

Very true shalevet, but my conversation with fs was about bais yaakov girls from noral homes, not non-frum girls from dysfunctional homes. If it was so common amongst frum girls, I would no at least one, cuz I know hundreds of girls, but I dont.

freidasima

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 9:33 am

No your conversation with me was = at least on my part - about frum girls in general and not necessarily from dysfunctional homes but from very crowded ones or poor ones. Big difference. And just because you dont know about it, it doesn't mean that it's not happening. We see it all the time at work in the social services, unfortunately, and I'm talking about in EY. My colleagues abroad? They see it even more often than here as we have fewer non jews around...

amother

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 9:37 am

Fs I am in therapy but my point was it is disrespectful not to dress up.
It shows you don't really care. I am not talking fancy things but a little effort
everyone can make. When one is depressed they don't bother changing

DrMom

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 9:39 am

freidasima wrote:

How many cases do you get like this per year?

freidasima

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 12:42 pm

In the whole country or only here in Yerushalayim? I know of at least five cases just this year here in Yerushalayim! I can't tell you offhand in the whole country but can check it out at work tomorrow if you are interested.

DrMom

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 12:50 pm

freidasima wrote:

Yes, I'm curious.

Page 18 of 21

Previous 1 2 3 17 18 19 20 21 Next