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The community has had countless discussions on dealing with at-risk children. How should we help or deal with at-risk adults?
Is anyone ever beyond risk?
At risk how?
I think people feel more responsible for children and their potential to grow in Yiddishkeit. Their parents, teachers, and community may feel more invested in them than the regular adult who has a mind of his or her own.
at-risk adults we feel are old enough to take care of themselves & we feel its not our business to interfere & get into his/her life issues & if s/he is interested in becoming a baal teshuva they can decide on their own. hopefully they have a job & live a responsible life & so are they also mature to make their own decisions
versus reform or conservative jews that were raised that way, they need kiruv to be brought back to frumkeit…
Joseph – There used to be a time when Kiruv meant providing answers. I hear that today what people are looking for is someone who care, notices them, and respects them. Based on that I hear that the approach of kiruv today has changed.
The answer to your question seems to require knowing what these adults are lacking. Kids-at-risk are usually the results of bad (sometimes traumatic) experiences that they had growing up in our frum society. I’m told the best approach to bring them back is acceptance and a lot of love. The question is whether these adults are struggling with the same issues or if they are struggling from not being able to ask hard questions that trouble them. If the latter then we need to start programs that deal with difficult questions on life and Yiddishkeit. The truth is that these programs are already out there. It could be that they need more support and advertisement.
Furthermore, it seems to me that we should all be taking tochacha from what’s happening around us and look inwardly to determine what we ourselves are lacking. The greater and more refine we become the more hashpa we will naturally have on others. I think we are lacking role models today.
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I’m curious as to what exactly you mean when you refer to at-risk-adults? Also, do you know a lot of people like this? And are these at-risk-kids who got older? I’m not sure, but I think that nowadays, people continue to refer to kids-at-risk as kids-at-risk until they are around 30 or so, unless they really turn around.
I used to work with kids-at-risk to some extent, and I think that some of these kids may now be raising a second generation of kids-at-risk.
When you say “at-risk,” do you mean at risk of leaving “the derech” (whichever derech you may mean) or at risk of dangerous behaviors? I think that the conflation of the two problems is a huge issue, as it can mean that people think of leaving a Torah (or even just a specific hashkafic) path in the same way as engaging in behaviors which can risk their lives. (Before anyone starts about how risk to the soul is as dangerous as a risk to the body- if a person dies, or even is injured or damaged enough physically, there’s no going back. There is no equivalency between someone leaving “the derech” and going to college and getting a productive job and someone leaving “the derech” and living on the street taking drugs. I’ve heard it way too often and it’s awful to suggest such a thing.)
If you’re talking about being “at hashkafic risk,” I think the best you can do is provide good and wholesome education in childhood and keep on providing adult education for those interested. After that, in the cases of both meshama and guf, adults are adults and are ultimately responsible for their own decisions, and when it comes to maintaining physical health and well-being should always be supported to make sure that they remain safe (to the best of one’s ability, without being stifling).
One thing that I never understood is the people who make a huge effort to make baal teshuva yeshivos and schools for kids at risk to be welcoming, inclusive, enjoyable and full of opportunities in both academic and social ways and nobody makes the same effort to those who can more automatically slide through the system. If we turned all schools into “baal teshuva schools” or “at risk schools,” we could have the refuah before the makkah. The current system seems the epitome of reactionary behavior.
A lot of kids-at-risk are actually the children of baalei teshuva, and one reason for the pheonomenon is the fact that not enough support is given to bt’s after they become Frum. Obviously, there are many factors, but that is one of them. In any case, the baalei teshuva seminaries are aware of the problem and have started to work on it.
Your point is a valid and good one, and I did not mean that as a contradiction to anything you wrote.
I do disagree with your last sentence though. I think the school system is a very good one, and that they have put a lot of effort into these areas in the past generation. The school system today has changed a lot since I was a kid in precisely these ways.
Of course, there is always room for improvement, but it has to be remembered that it next to impossible to create a school system that will be the perfect system for each and every child, and that the administrators, principals and educators are putting tremendous effort to do what they can.
They can not be blamed for every problem. They may not even be able to solve the problem. And they work tremendously hard for the klal with little reimbursement and should be shown appreciation and not blame. (I’m not saying that you were trying to blame anyone. I don’t think that is how you meant your words – I just want to point out that one should not use this as an excuse for blame.)
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