Reply To: Going off the Derech

aries2756-when you said, “If we tug at the rope they only tug harder. If we slacken the rope they can wander off a bit and get scared enough to come home.”, you’re referring to specifically religious things, right? So, for example, I shouldn’t force Shabbos on him. But I should be able to expect my son to come home at night, or call if he’s going to be late, bc these are not religious issues, right?

But if I dare to enforce any of these expectations, it appears as though I don’t ‘accept’ him, and then we get the brunt of his anger since we are not allowed to ‘tell him what to do with his life’. So in the end, the suffering is magnified to issues beyond religion, and we are embarrassed not so much by his smoking on Shabbos and hippie-like appearance, but by his self centeredness, his apathy, his disrespect, as well as his apparent ‘control’ over his parents…