I choose my teens over my religion!

busybuthappy

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 4:54 pm

fs- that you saw cases, I am not surprised. Didn't you mention that you are therpaist that sees cases in this field?
of course, you see and hear a lot about these cases. that does not mean they are rampant and happening to many frum children brought up in normal homes.

let me give a few examples-

someone works in a shelter for battered women and says, the percentage of battered women is HUGE, I meet them everyday. She does not have adequate proof, she works with them of course she meets a lot of them.

or, take me for example. I work with special ed children. should I tell people- the chances that you will have a child with special needs is much larger then you think, I know because I work with so many of them. of course I work with so many of them. that's my job!

PinkFridge

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 5:04 pm

busybuthappy wrote:

The percentages may be smaller, but it's enough. And Isramom, re your crowded house: B"H but unfortunately kids can fall through the cracks and find validation elsewhere for many reasons, and the numbers are definitely far too high. I think that even if we don't find it within the realm of possibility for us (and never say never?) we still have to feel lots of pain that this is happening.

busybuthappy

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 6:07 pm

pink-

I feel lots of pain for them, and I am not judging anybody. at the start of my posts, my point was that since intermarrying is not something commonly found amonsgt frum children brought up in stable homes, it is unnecessary and excessive worryinng to start telling your children at age three that you will disown them if they intermarry. on the otherhand, if they are teenagers and starting to be rebellious, then it is the appropriate time to bring up this issue. that was my opinion and still is my opinion. if someone chooses to other wise, that is their right, I just don't think it is the wisest thing to do, and I hope it doesn't blow up in their face.

PinkFridge

Tue, Dec 25 2012, 9:52 am

busybuthappy wrote:

Point taken.
I think that stable frum children aren't unaware. If an opportunity comes up to talk about this tragedy (maybe seeing that Aish video with Rabbi Weinberg zt"l in the camps) one can talk about it and clearly give over one's feelings without having to bring up the specter of disowning. I'm not saying this is a necessary talk for everyone but it's not unhealthy.

freidasima

Tue, Dec 25 2012, 10:46 am

No busy, I work in government health policy and when I worked in full time therapy I personally worked primarily with adults who were what we call in slang "the down and out", primarily unemployed poor who were sent to our agency to help them get on their feet. But all sorts of cases passed through our bureaucracy and other therapist, social workers etc. we are a big outfit in general, and therefore we also got such cases of girls/women after being extricated who were trying to get on their feet.

So it's nothing like a psychologist or social worker who works at a shelter for battered women.

As for telling a three year old that you will cut her off if she marries out - why exaggerate so much? Don't you think that people have judgement? Obviously not if you write this. You tell a three year old "yidden only marry yidden" Period. why? Because for example they live in a country where they - if they aren't sheltered totally, and sometimes even if they are - are bombarded by the knowledge that there are not only yidden in the world. One certainly doesn't have to add a caveat at that age. But you know? I have a four year old grandson and he already asks questions that show he has a critical level of understanding and doesn't take things at face value. He knows reward and punishment quite well in fact. So definitely a child like that and certainly at five, is capable of asking "what happens to yidden who don't marry yidden"? if they know that the society around them consists of "yidden. non jews and arabs" as my grandson knows to say (nothing like the yerushalayim upbringing with lots of "cousins" around...)

Naturally one fits one's explanation for the child's age, but waiting until twelve or fifteen to talk about how one treats intermarriage? Around here they have been exposed to the concept of intermarriage LONG before that, whether in the media, or in society in general or even in history lessons.

I also don't believe in waiting to teach the facts of life, including how babies are made in general, until someone is a kallah, or fifteen. or twelve. As someone I know with a child in kindergarten heard the other day "mommy you are getting fat, did daddy put a baby in your belly again? when are they going to be born"? And that from a five year old! Welcome to today's world.

PinkFridge

Tue, Dec 25 2012, 4:49 pm

ahuva1 wrote:

So, FS, at what age do you begin teaching these stuff to children, how babies are born, not to get pregnant, drugs and what else? How do you teach reward and punishment without making g-d out to be this really bad guy?

I'm not Freidasima but let me throw this out: when a teacher teaches preschool kids (or parents their children) that after Odom and Chava sinned they had to leave Gan Eden, they're teaching consequences for the wrong behavior. This is how Hashem operates. If they have a strong grounding in this, from teaching Chumash to living with standards, consequences, and that punishment isn't arbitrary but to help learn and reinforce good behavior, they'll be able to meaningfully place the big stuff (why bad things happen to good people) in an established framework.

freidasima

Wed, Dec 26 2012, 5:24 am

Thanks Pink for starting it off exactly along the lines of what I meant.
Ahuva, each topic is different and of course it depends on the child in question and their personal level of understanding.
How babies are born? That is different than how they are conceived. My kids knew basic biology by the time they could talk and know the names of body parts. By four they knew that babies grow in the mothers uterus and come out of her vajay jay ( changed because of the filter, the kids knew the real words). If they adked at four how they got there in the first place I would give an age appropriate answer like mommy gives a part called an egg that has half the building blocks for the body, daddy gives another part called the sperm which is like the seed that has the other half of the building blocks fot the body, ang Hashem gives the neshomo.
Where is the uterus mommy? In the mommys body inside.
Then why did Surie or Moishie in gan say the baby is in the mommys stomach ? Because Suries mommy didnt tell her about the uterus yet and didnt want to mix her up so she said stomach as Surie already knew about the stomach and as the uterus is near the stomach she kinda fudged it.
Mommy why do grownups fudge it? Because they think at four or five you dont need to know the real stuff.
Why mommy, we arent stupid!
Yes mamaleh you know that and I know that but grownups sometimes forget that.
Poor grownups mommy, alwys forgetting. Yes mamaleh and it gets worse as we get older.
Will you forget thing too mommy when you are are all grown uo? I Am a grownup mammaleh!
No I mean a real grownup like Bubbie, she forgets things all the time!
Dont worry mamaleh, when I will be like Bubbie you will be old enough to remind me of everything I forget!

freidasima

Wed, Dec 26 2012, 5:44 am

How not to get pregnant, when I teach them the facts of life in detail. In my kids day girls were taught at nine or ten, today with girls getting a period at nine sometimes then by eight, boys somewhat later, by eleven, latest twelve.
I explain then in general about the basis and mechanism behind how birth control works, how it isnt foolproof and the concept that technically one can get pregnant from each act, no matter what is used, I explain about sanctity of doing it only within marriage although there are those who dont wait and we hold that to be wrong and against what frum and moral yidden do. I give them age appropriate books the old fashioned kind that just explain the biology with childlike diagrams, no real pictures, and I warn them without too many dtails not only about predators but about social pressures in some places and lightly mention STDs. More time for that by twelve for the girls on the way to middle school and or the boys after bar mitzva.
Dh primarily deals with the boys as they get older, mommy only when they are pretty young...

Drugs from a very young age. Very young as in our house we were very aware through work about dangers of substances even for little glue sniffers of seven...every explanation was age appropriate obviously.

Reward and punishment starts at age zilch. How not to make hashem the bad guy? Some of us stll work on that you know! But it comes from tanach stories from age three and onward. G-d is everything, he is good and sometimes to us it appears not thatheisbad, but definitely cruel, Holocaust anyone? Therefore we teach what we are all taught that there are thing we will never understand and in the long and the short of it, at the end of the day it all boils down to belief and the hope that by choosing belief we chose correctly. As they get older they ask kore, we initiate more, but that is the basis at all ages, at four, at forty and at ninety four...

busybuthappy

Wed, Dec 26 2012, 8:52 pm

FS-

"As for telling a three year old that you will cut her off if she marries out - why exaggerate so much? Don't you think that people have judgement?"

The reason I used this example is because I believe that you said in an earlier post that you begin teaching this to your children at age 3. I was just repeating your words.

As to telling children the facts of life before 12. that is not age appropriate. My three year old and five year old sons know that a baby grows in a mommies belly, and that Hashem puts it there, and the doctor takes it out. that is all they need to know at this point. when my son told me that cats swallow eggs and the baby grows inside and then the cat lays the eggs, I corrected him and told him that hashem puts babies in the cats belly just like humans, and that only reptiles, birds, and fish lay eggs. he accepted the explanationwithout asking for further detail. when my little one asked me of mommys have a pee-pee, I told him no and explained that boys and girls are different. I didn't feel the need to explain all the exact names and differences. they won't be negatively effected if they find that out when they are older.

from reading your posts I cannot help but think that you and I grew up very differently. my parents never spoke to me about drugs, getting pregnant, birthcontrol or any of these topics. had they felt the need they would have, but there was no need, and we all grew up just fine.

freidasima

Thu, Dec 27 2012, 5:54 am

busy maybe you grew up charedi or in a totally frum environment with totally frum relatives and with your reading material and television material and movies censored by your parents or rabbonim or whatever. Maybe you never had access until your late teens to information, maybe your library books were picked for you, maybe you just weren't curious.

I definitely grew up in a very open environment in spite of the fact that my upbringing, albeit in america, was European. I read encyclopedias and biology books before I was ten, we had magazines around the house, no one ever told me what I could or could not read or watch etc.

When I was growing up in America of the 1960s drugs were an issue. In the early 70s in manhattan one could walk to school as I did and see people stoned on the streets. Kids were being offered stuff by dealers in the public schools down the block from our yeshiva and we were told straight out what to keep away from and why.

When it came to using biological terms I never understood and still don't understand what is wrong with the word "p$nis" while it is ok to say back. Both are covered where I come from. So? Big deal. It's just another body part. Same goes for uterus versus stomach. You teach what everything is for, what exactly is the problem? Sounds to me like the parents have the problem, not the children to whom, when it's just taught like another word, it IS another word.

Parents, you want to turn your issues and problems in using terms into your kids' problems? Geh gezint. My parents never had a problem, my grandparents never had a problem and I dont have a problem nor do my kids to use the correct terms. In fact my four year old grandson like to correct me when I tell him inslang to "go pish"..."Bobbeh, it's URINATE"...

Good kid. Chip of the old block.

And as for body parts, when one has both girl and boy babies at home the older kids help bathe the younger ones and can see for themselves that Moshie has something that Dina doesn't. So you explain. Do you really think that explaining things to a four or five or six or seven year old "sekxualizes them" at an early age? Gevalt.