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-> Parenting our children
Dolly Welsh
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 Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:04 pm
The story from Gemara - about the horse.
Excellent story. The assorted OTD parents referred to in this thread should carefully dress and eat frum in front of their visiting children, to parallel that wonderful story.
Because if it had been a little child, instead of a grown disciple, a man of that elevated kind would have kept it to himself, and the horse would have had a day off.
The story illustrates "I respect that you are not OTD. Just because I feel like doing that, doesn't mean that everybody has to, or will, feel like doing that."
I meant he didn't want to drag anybody with him. It meant he recognized his role as an authority figure, and the responsibilities that come with being looked up to.
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marina
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:08 pm
| Dolly Welsh wrote: | Fortunately for me I had it easy and went BT late in life. There were no underage children around to wonder why we can't eat pepperoni pizza anymore.
I think there is more to these stories than religious differences. It sounds like a lack of caring in general.
Yes, it is much better for the parent to grit her teeth than for small children to grit theirs. To the shoulders, the burden.
Too bad if the parents aren't happy.
If somebody has to be unhappy, it shouldn't be the children.
Ideally the parent can be happy too; perhaps that's do-able with patience and appreciating what you have.
Particularly if someone tells them it's not all beer and skittles outside religion, because it isn't. Pork tastes like chicken, shrimp taste like fish, movies are dull, and it's nice to have a complete day off from email and the phone. And endless amusement-dating, which is very different from marriage-dating, isn't ice cream.
But they don't know that. It all looks so funsy and easy.
We should hug the heroes who stay anyway, quietly, even when they no longer believe.
And yes, G-d loves them too. Maybe more than the others.
I know a man whose mother flitted about in leotards when he was a child, humiliating him in front of the neighbors. She could have kept that aspect of her artistic life to herself, when he and his siblings were young and getting teased.
But she had to express herself. She was a woman of Culture, you know. Modern dance. No housewife, she.
I also know a woman whose father had zillions, really zillions, of life compllications, that she only learned about later, when whe was in her thirties. She loves him for not making those tangles her problem, during her childhood. Now, that's a mentsch, that father.
It took self discipline, it hurt, it was a lot of work to preserve facades and secrets, and it was lonely. But he did it.
Sure that cost someething to her too, but not as much as what mental immodesty would have cost her. |
Of course people leave religious life for endless fun- for the great treife food and endless s-ex that all secular people enjoy 24/7. Why else would they want to leave? Especially a beautfiul community such as the one described in the Tablet article?
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greenfire
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:11 pm
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and btw ~ while I don't know what the solution to this problem is ... I certainly can vouch that unless it is resolved there will be more & more people running 'off the derech' & more & more people who are committing suicide because of damnation in their very own communities alongside alienation from their families ...
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sequoia
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:13 pm
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There isn't one "secular life" just as there isn't one "religious life." There is such variety on planet Earth...
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sarahd
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:23 pm
| marina wrote: | | Dolly Welsh wrote: | I wonder if you can imagine the misery of a child seeing a parent who, visibly and publicly, does not believe what he, the child believes?
The inner dissonance might be so bad that the child would indeed not want to see that parent.
With no poisoning of the mind coming from anybody.
The parent has, like in a horror movie, in the child's eyes, partly become a stranger, body-snatched. That's how it might look to the CHILD.
Adult mental and spiritual evolutions are not within the grasp of the child's head.
You need to be over age to deal with that. It's like driving and voting. For the grown. Making a child deal with that is like letting him drive your car.
Even in the miseries of divorce, the split parents aren't necessarily turning into brand new people, as they are here, in the view of the child. This is divorce on steroids.
Without kids, you can do what you want. I am talking about when there are kids. |
Yeah, I can imagine. 3/4 of my kids are MO and their dad is chabad. It's tragic. Their father does not believe what they believe, not about the state of Israel, not about the importance of a secular education, not about a lot of things,
And, of course, they all think my husband has been body-snatched, just like you write. They are so confused. I don't even know what to do. Advise me Doll, please share your wisdom. |
Please clarify. Were you all MO and then your husband went off the deep end and became Chabad, or were you all Chabad and then you went off the deep end and changed your kids' derech on them? Obviously they don't think their father has been body-snatched, because they know that he hasn't changed; they have.
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sequoia
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:25 pm
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Modern Orthodoxy is the deep end?
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MommyZ
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:29 pm
| sequoia wrote: | | Modern Orthodoxy is the deep end? |
I don't think she is saying Modern Orthodoxy is the deep end, I think she is saying that Marina and 3/4 of their kids changed, as opposed to Mr. Marina having changed. I don't know if that is accurate though.
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sarahd
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:31 pm
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Yes, thank you. That's what I was saying. I believe that my assessment is correct; if not, I take back what I wrote.
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MommyZ
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:34 pm
| sarahd wrote: | | Yes, thank you. That's what I was saying. I believe that my assessment is correct; if not, I take back what I wrote. |
Your welcome.
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greenfire
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:35 pm
it doesn't matter - people morph ... nobody stays the same ... we grow / we learn / we change & we should still be accepted for who we are
Last edited by greenfire on Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:36 pm; edited 1 time in total
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sequoia
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:36 pm
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But neither does the child who is Chabad believe his mother and siblings have been kidnapped by body-snatchers. What marina is saying, if I understand her correctly, is that there's room for different beliefs, worldviews, and practices within a family.
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BlueRose52
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:43 pm
| Dolly Welsh wrote: | The story from Gemara - about the horse.
Excellent story. The assorted OTD parents referred to in this thread should carefully dress and eat frum in front of their visiting children, to parallel that wonderful story. |
As was mentioned already a million times, the writer HAD BEEN DOING THAT and they still didn't find it acceptable.
But why are we surprised? To these people, there is only one acceptable way to live, and any feelings that might be positively engendered in the children towards a person or a practice that doesn't match that lifestyle EXACTLY is unacceptable. This is a society that is unapologetically intolerant of any deviance from their strict standards. Forget about debating whether that's right or wrong, can't we just accept that this fact, whether right or wrong, is indeed the reality?
Let's be honest here - what they're afraid of isn't just a secular parent influencing frum children towards irreligiosity. They're just as afraid of a not-as-strictly-frum parent influencing the children to be ever so slightly more tolerant towards ideas and practices that are not acceptable to their strict standards. Like wearing a smaller kipa. Or eating OU hechsher.
That's why all these accusations about the ex-frum parent feeding them non-kosher or exposing them to atheistic ideas is a red herring. Even when the parent is accommodating enough to keep things religious, unless the level of frumkeit is exactly up to the standards of the stricter community, it will never be good enough for them.
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marina
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 3:56 pm
| sarahd wrote: | | marina wrote: | | Dolly Welsh wrote: | I wonder if you can imagine the misery of a child seeing a parent who, visibly and publicly, does not believe what he, the child believes?
The inner dissonance might be so bad that the child would indeed not want to see that parent.
With no poisoning of the mind coming from anybody.
The parent has, like in a horror movie, in the child's eyes, partly become a stranger, body-snatched. That's how it might look to the CHILD.
Adult mental and spiritual evolutions are not within the grasp of the child's head.
You need to be over age to deal with that. It's like driving and voting. For the grown. Making a child deal with that is like letting him drive your car.
Even in the miseries of divorce, the split parents aren't necessarily turning into brand new people, as they are here, in the view of the child. This is divorce on steroids.
Without kids, you can do what you want. I am talking about when there are kids. |
Yeah, I can imagine. 3/4 of my kids are MO and their dad is chabad. It's tragic. Their father does not believe what they believe, not about the state of Israel, not about the importance of a secular education, not about a lot of things,
And, of course, they all think my husband has been body-snatched, just like you write. They are so confused. I don't even know what to do. Advise me Doll, please share your wisdom. |
Please clarify. Were you all MO and then your husband went off the deep end and became Chabad, or were you all Chabad and then you went off the deep end and changed your kids' derech on them? Obviously they don't think their father has been body-snatched, because they know that he hasn't changed; they have. |
Uh, neither. I was chabad until maybe my oldest was five and my two little ones were unborn. Then I became not chabad, more MO. So my kids grew up with both MO and chabad. My son is chabad, my girls are MO.
Nothing to do with Dolly's post where she goes off on the trauma (!!!) of a child whose parent doesn't believe the same thing she does.
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marina
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 4:01 pm
| sarahd wrote: | | marina wrote: | | Dolly Welsh wrote: | I wonder if you can imagine the misery of a child seeing a parent who, visibly and publicly, does not believe what he, the child believes?
The inner dissonance might be so bad that the child would indeed not want to see that parent.
With no poisoning of the mind coming from anybody.
The parent has, like in a horror movie, in the child's eyes, partly become a stranger, body-snatched. That's how it might look to the CHILD.
Adult mental and spiritual evolutions are not within the grasp of the child's head.
You need to be over age to deal with that. It's like driving and voting. For the grown. Making a child deal with that is like letting him drive your car.
Even in the miseries of divorce, the split parents aren't necessarily turning into brand new people, as they are here, in the view of the child. This is divorce on steroids.
Without kids, you can do what you want. I am talking about when there are kids. |
Yeah, I can imagine. 3/4 of my kids are MO and their dad is chabad. It's tragic. Their father does not believe what they believe, not about the state of Israel, not about the importance of a secular education, not about a lot of things,
And, of course, they all think my husband has been body-snatched, just like you write. They are so confused. I don't even know what to do. Advise me Doll, please share your wisdom. |
Please clarify. Were you all MO and then your husband went off the deep end and became Chabad, or were you all Chabad and then you went off the deep end and changed your kids' derech on them? Obviously they don't think their father has been body-snatched, because they know that he hasn't changed; they have. |
But for a story that mirrors your scenario better, my parents were not religious, my mom became chabad, but my dad stayed not religious. Eventually they split up. We didn't think my mother was body-snatched. Well, not anymore than any other teenager thinks their parents were bodysnatched.
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Dolly Welsh
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 4:22 pm
Maybe they should assign a person to keep in touch with the OTD person, to argue, to counsel, to comfort, to be a sponsor on the way back if that is ever wanted. To smooth continuity, so the ties don't have to be cut so utterly. A go-between and a source of help. Let us call him or her a Searcher.
You have a point that people who go OTD from haredim shouldn't be written off totally, and thrown away.
But the OTD person would have to go along. He/she would in turn have to agree not to make war on the community where their children still live. Making war means showing up in jeans, eating at treif restaurants when you know your wife reads the credit card bills, and in general being confrontational and unholier-than-thou.
It is not nice to parade about how wonderful one is, in one's fabulous enlightenment, and play "unholier than thou". I'm so cool, I have found the light, you're so benighted, blah blah.
Perhaps there is nothing available for older leavers, who need to be helped with the transition, to minimize their children's suffering. Someone to offer sympathy but also realism.
The supports for leavers that exist seem to only be aimed at young unmarrieds. So maybe something else is needed, as the title of this thread asks for.
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Barbara
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 4:35 pm
| Dolly Welsh wrote: | Maybe they should assign a person to keep in touch with the OTD person, to argue, to counsel, to comfort, to be a sponsor on the way back if that is ever wanted. To smooth continuity, so the ties don't have to be cut so utterly. A go-between and a source of help. Let us call him or her a Searcher.
You have a point that people who go OTD from haredim shouldn't be written off totally, and thrown away.
But the OTD person would have to go along. He/she would in turn have to agree not to make war on the community where their children still live. Making war means showing up in jeans, eating at treif restaurants when you know your wife reads the credit card bills, and in general being confrontational and unholier-than-thou.
It is not nice to parade about how wonderful one is, in one's fabulous enlightenment, and play "unholier than thou". I'm so cool, I have found the light, you're so benighted, blah blah.
Perhaps there is nothing available for older leavers, who need to be helped with the transition, to minimize their children's suffering. Someone to offer sympathy but also realism.
The supports for leavers that exist seem to only be aimed at young unmarrieds. So maybe something else is needed, as the title of this thread asks for. |
Can you please cite the HALACHIC authority for the proposition that jeans are assur. HALACHIC. Right up there with not eating pork. Because otherwise, stopping a kid from seeing Daddy because Daddy wore a pair of jeans is insane.
And what possible difference does it make where a divorced man eats when his ex-wife and kids aren't around?
You think that you should have the right to control people. You don't, and you shouldn't.
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amother
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 4:41 pm
You Barbara think it is insane and that it doesn't make a difference.
You don't either get to control anybody.
People may have valid opinion beside your own.
Not everyone goes by just strict halacha - hope that is not news to you.
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Maya
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 4:43 pm
| Dolly Welsh wrote: | | It is not nice to parade about how wonderful one is, in one's fabulous enlightenment, and play "unholier than thou". I'm so cool, I have found the light, you're so benighted, blah blah. |
I have seen you do this countless times here on this website, in regards to the life you lived before becoming a BT. Is it okay to do it to one side, but not to the other?
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BlueRose52
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Wed, Oct 02 2013, 4:44 pm
| amother wrote: | | Not everyone goes by just strict halacha - hope that is not news to you. |
That's exactly the problem! You can't claim "I have a right to demand that my child maintain my religious standards" if your religious standards are not based in any authentic religious authority!
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