Thank goodness we have guidance to subvert our use of common sense. I mean, really? Some gedarim are mandatory; some are appropriate in context. This one seems to border the ridiculous. Consider the environment – open, with other family members around; consider the people involved; bnei and bnos Torah, with all the benefit of their upbringing and education, so painstakingly created by the previous generation of gedolim, so expensively paid for by parents;
Have all their years of learning by example and in schools been for naught? Is this what we say – we immerse you in Torah, we teach you day and night, but we don’t trust you or the years of education we have provided for you to have a civil conversation with your cousin?
This is naarishkeit! It is the footnote to the creation of a generation of robots who can not make the simplest, most obvious proper choices for themselves not because they are incapable, but because the power structure of our families and communities demands that they not make choices as HKBH created them to do.
Yiddishkeit is NOT about the creation of a two tier society – decisors and sheep. The whole point of talmud torah from a young age is to create thinking Jews! So let them decide to have a conversation with a cousin, or not, and let them use everything they have been taught to recognize when and if it may become inappropriate.