Health, you are being a very harsh judge on kids who do NOT have your strength and stamina. THEY also do not necessarily have a support system or know how to ask for or reach out for help. I do get that you don’t understand this and I can’t make you open your eyes to the pain of this. However, if you really DO want to understand it for my perspective or from the perspective of teens today, reach out to some of these kids and see how lost and how much pain they are in. Yes on the outside they look very tough…until you take the time to get to know them and actually converse with them, then you see the fear and pain in their eyes.
Health, you have your own bitter experiences and YOU understand YOUR situation inside and out, up and down, and in whichever many ways it twists and turns. On the other hand, those that work or have experience in THIS particular parsha understand the same types of ups and downs and twists and turns relative to it. If you’re just peering through the glass looking in you just can’t get it. No matter how much you think you understand it, no matter how much you think you know, no matter how much you know you would have done it differently, unless you are in their shoes within their variables you just can’t say that and certainly you can’t judge.
Let me ask you this. How much did you appreciate your ex’s friends and family judging you from what they “saw” or assumed or would have done in your situation? Please don’t answer that, just think about it.
On a happier note I would like to deliver a Nachas Gram, one of my girls, the one I consider my daughter who has been with me for 8 years has just had her first baby! A beautiful girl she named for her mom. I am a very proud and grateful Bubby! KEIN YIRBU!!!
Most of the kids that I mentored/coached are now married. One young man B”H is getting married in a few weeks to an amazing young woman. He claims that had I not gotten involved in his life, he would never have met her. I say had I never met him my life would not be so rich and full. In this particular case we almost lost him to a drug overdose. And now he is b”h getting married and ready to build his own bayis ne’eman.