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It is difficult to find the proper balance when it comes to sheltering your children. The dangers of the world and media pose a threat to your childs spiritual growth. However many children from frum homes feel deprived because they were never granted certain outlets by thier parents. Unfortuenly many of these yiddishe children go off the derech as a result. Is it better to allow your children access to these outlets such as sports and clean movies at bubbies house?
How much to shelter your kids.
Shelter is an important human need. Usually understood as a place to escape from weather and animals. I would say a house or apartment with a roof and walls is basically sufficient.
popa beat me to it.
I was going to say about 30% of your income was prudent, but you may need to spend more if you have many kids.
“Unfortuenly many of these yiddishe children go off the derech as a result.”
Shtuyot vehavalim. The more sheltered, the less OTD. (of course too sheltered can cause other problems, but OTD is not one of them.)
A few years ago I saw a TV documentary about the Amish. When their children reach a certain age (I think it is 18) they are allowed to go “out into the world” for a one year period. It is called something like “Rumshpringen”. They use electricity, drink alcohol and smoke if they wish. Most of them (close to 100%) disavow this life and return to their communities. So the grass may seem greener but it usually isn’t.
“Rumshpringen”
The word you’re looking for is Rumspringa.
The Wolf
Shtuyot vehavalim. The more sheltered, the less OTD.
I’d LOVE to see your evidence to back this up.
The Wolf
Sorry, I have only anecdotal evidence, but I heard recently rebetzin Tz. Heller confirmed this. I tried a couple times to start a poll here, but only the RW posters responded with the numbers of their OTD classmates being 0-1% (yes, chassidish 0% or almost 0%, Yeshivish a little higher, confirming my theory), while LW posters started whining that the poll is totally unnecessary and divisive. So… Since so many of you LW make the claim that more sheltered equals more OTD, I’d LOVE to see your evidence to back this up.
IOW, Wolf, why did you ask only me to back up my claim? Why not the OP? Why the double standard? See why we can’t get along? It’s the same reason why Israel can’t get along with the world. As the saying goes, we’re the Jews’ Jews.
You must shelter yourself, too.
The main thing is to use brains. It depends on what the kid is up to. There is no reason that a person should feel deprived, if he is brought up normal. Your child can know that there is a world out there that people do as they wish, and we despise it. On the other hand we show them Varemkeit and Ta’am in Yiddishkeit. They aren’t supposed to be feeling sheltered. I didn’t grow up with access to movies or stadiums, but I did hear about their existence, and never thought that it pertained to me.
I’m aware of the sort of child rearing that gives way for feeling locked in and eventually breaking loose. That is when the children only hear that they aren’t allowed to do this or that.
On Shabbos in order to stop my child from doing a Melacha, I don’t shower them with notta-lattas; I remind/tell them “Shabbos!” emphatically. This is so that they know that they are refraining out of awe of “Shabbos.” When you listen to OTD Yidden rant about how they weren’t allowed to do anything, you can tell that the wrong message was imparted.
The point is that everything is supposed to be in a natural manner. When somebody’s child is r”l already not a typical Yeshiva boy, the parents must not ignore that, and act accordingly. Often times, it is at this stage where they mess up.
This is a classic question and the answers are not clear cut- which is why this topic crops up every so often. There are arguments for both sides of the coin. You have to pick the side that speaks to you.
Its a similar argument that people have when decided if they should vaccinate their kids or not. Some say inject that smidgen of a disease into my kid- chances are that its dead and then he will develop a resistance to it.
Others say there is no way I am willing to take the chance. There is a teensy small possibility that the vaccine will actually cause the disease. (BTW- this seems to happen often enough with the flu shot)
So should you give your children a small glimpse of the goyish world, so that they could see that it is hevel? Or is the risk too great to take?
IOW, Wolf, why did you ask only me to back up my claim? Why not the OP? Why the double standard?
You’re going to laugh, but the reason is because I did not read the OP, but I did read your post.
The Wolf
Minyan gal, we’re a little different than the Amish, not just in the fact that here we are communicating by puter but we have a different attitude toward integrating the physical world into our lives in a spiritual way.
Back to the original post: the question is, what do we include in acceptable outlets. There is so much out there – sports, music, woodwork, crafts, this is the tip of the iceberg. If I read one more time, smoking’s the only acceptable outlet and chill because most guys give it up when they hit shidduchim…well, you’ll all hear the scream.
I unfortunately know several boys and girls who went OTD and every one of them was from a Yeshivishe family. I am sure many people know MO families who have kids who went OTD. The bottom line is kids go OTD, and instead of playing the blame game, we need to identify and understand the reasons why this happened in each case. There is plenty of blame to go around.
My friend’s brother had a rebbie who smacked him. He might even have deserved it, but that was not the way to handle him. A girl I know was very frum and had a serious problem that she took to her yeshivah principal, who promptly called her a liar. She is now totally OTD and probably will not be back. One kid “frummed out” in E”Y (MO family), and he flipped in and flipped out, after putting his parents through a terrible nisayon. There are a gazillion reasons why people become frei. The one thing I see consistently, is they react to hypocrisy and judgmentalism in a very negative way. Also, if you want to hold onto a handful of grains of sand (or kids), relax your grip. The tighter you pull, the faster they run out on you.
Each unfortunate situation of someone going off the derech has a different cause. There is no common denominator. One went off the derech because the parents were too strict, and one went off because the parents were too lenient. One got pulled in by bad friends, and one was abised by his rebbi, and another became addicted to dangerous technology.
I admire the people that work with these children and try to bring them back, but I am not sure that there is a one size fits all approach that will work here, unfortunately
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