Parents Gone Crazy; Entitlement Gone Wild

The New York Jewish Week published a letter to the editor decrying unsupervised vacations of Jewish High schoolers which includes public drunkenness, sexual behavior and other breaches in tzniut, drugs, and more. Based on the comments from the authors of this article on different blogs it appears that the scene is not just one of teens acting stupidly, but one of teens engaging in highly destructive behavior that is probably beyond the wildest imaginations of most of us (it is certainly beyond my imagination).

Orthomom worries she won't be able to strike the right balance, Ezzie is scared too, Harry Maryles believes this is a failing of Modern Orthodox, and Jewboy asks the obvious: where are the parents?

While I normally agree with Rabbi Maryles, in this instance I take issue with his conclusions. In my opinion, this is not a matter of one Orthodoxy vs. another Orthodoxy. In fact, I'm not sure that this has much to do with Orthodoxy. While one manifestation might be most prominent amongst Orthodox Jews of the more modern stripe, another manifestation might be more prominent amongst Orthodox Jews of a darker stripe. We are not protected from self-destructive behavior because we have Jewish blood.

And quite frankly I don't care to sort out one stripe from another when there is an underlying disease that has a common thread So what is that disease? I'm sure I will get flamed, but I believe we are finally witnessing the lethal combination of under/uninvolved parenting, parental irresponsibility, and entitlement. And it isn't a pretty sight.

Too many of our children are demonstrating to us that they have voids in their lives that are so deep and so painful. They are experiences estrangement from those they should be connected to. They are lonely and empty inside and they are trying to fill their void with "love" or "potions." The increase in self-destructive behavior can be witnessed in nearly every sizable community. I've seen it. I'm sure you have too. I don't want to believe it is there. But it is.

In my opinion this report is a sign that all of us in the Orthodox Community (the so-called MO-Lite, MO, Yeshivish, Chareidi, Chassidish, Chabad, etc) need to get back to the drawing table as parents and as a community and make an honest assessment, a real cheshbon hanefesh. We need to start from the ground up and evaluate where and why we are failing. Even if we are still "better," there is no need to be smug when we are witness to such self-destructive behavior (especially mass self-destructive behavior, as the authors of the Jewish Week article were witness to). And when we are witness to this type of behavior, does it really matter if we are better?

Many of us loosing our connection to our children. Some of us never established strong connections to begin with because we erroneously believe that all we need to do as parents is meet the physical needs of our children. Too many of us believe that parenting (make that taking care of kids) is "menial" work that involves no more than feeding a kid and changing diapers for the younger, and carpooling and providing funds for the older. I've seen this attitude expressed by the very Modern and by the quite Yeshivish and by everyone else in between.

Many of us lack confidence in our jobs as parents. We are afraid of our own kids. We are afraid of setting limits, giving guidance, and being the authority figures that we are. In short, we can't say no and our kids need us to say no. Afraid of parenting ourselves, we figure that we will write a check and put the ball in someone else's court. Yet we cannot be replaced by hired help. And who is to say that those contracted to raise our children are any more confident in setting reasonable limits and being authority figures?

And if we are afraid of our own kids, we even more terrified by our neighbors. We don't want to do anything different. We don't want to educate our children differently, we don't want to dress differently, we don't want to marry our children off in a different fashion, we don't want to vacation differently.

Speaking of vacations, maybe we need to re-evaluate how we vacation (!). Vacation can and should be an opportunity to re-connect with our children. By getting away from it all, we can force ourselves to reconnect. But, judging by the advertisements in nearly every Jewish publication, a vacation appears to be an opportunity to surround ourselves with other people, not "get away from it all," and many of these vacation packages come complete with the opportunity to send our children away from us. While we enjoy whatever it is that the vacation offers, we can send our children to day camps to be taken care of by someone else.

And lastly, I have never heard of sending away high schoolers on vacation sans parents. My parents never allowed me to attend a function without first speaking to the supervising parents directly. Let's just say that I was never invited to any inappropriate parties because my parents where known to be a constant presence. Are we known to be a presence in our children's lives or do we feel the need to be "cool parents?" The fact that there are masses of children on winter break without parents present is just downright shocking. It is entitlement gone wild; pure lunacy.

Independent Frum Thinker, one of my new favorite bloggers, states "Any perceived criticism of any aspect of the Frum community that may appear on this blog, should not be viewed as such in any way whatsoever. It is simply a plea and call for our community’s self- improvement and self-betterment." This post is harsh, but please don't view it as a criticism as much as a plea for an honest cheshbon hanefesh. Your comments?

Apologies for such a miserable post during Adar.