One for the Moms - 2 Questions Re: Older kids and the High Holidays

my Dovi davening at David HaMelech's kever :)

When I asked women to send in questions re: juggling motherhood and the High Holidays, I received 2 questions related to parenting older kids and the unique challenges that that poses.

1. Teens helping out at the expense of their own davening?!

Question: What about teens? Girls run the kids groups during shul. It’s a great help to the parents in the community. But how/when can they take care of their own need to daven? I don’t want to model to just fit it in as an afterthought; it's as important as providing childcare.

This is a great question. So I don't *know* but I can tell you what I think:

The difficult part of education is that there are very few hard and fast rules that are "one size fits all." I think here, it very much depends on the girl. Just as there are girls who derive no personal satisfaction from intellectual pursuits (yes, there are such girls and they too are normal and wonderful), there are girls for spirituality holds little-to-no fascination. As our Sages would put it, there are different types of souls, mined out of different caves.

This however doesn't let us, as parents and educators, off the hook. We cannot just say "ok, she's born that way so that means she is doomed to be that way." Every woman needs to develop her own connection with G-d and especially through davening. OT1H it's important for every girl to be pushed a little outside of her comfort zone in order to grow, but OTOH it is also important to be in tune with the girl and not try to make her something she is not.

So I think this factor is an indicator on what role the child care or davening plays in a girl's world. For example: given that my daughter is cerebral and spiritual (ah, karma), I never asked her to watch the kids so I could daven. She would offer, but I kept pushing her to go to shul, saying "now is YOUR time! Take advantage of every minute! I had my time when I was your age and I used it fully. I have no regrets."

What it comes down to is: I think it depends if the teens are doing it resentfully or not. If yes – then this is a big problem. But if they are happy to do it, and they feel personal satisfaction serving Hashem that way, then what is wrong with that? If you have a child who is contemplative and would enjoy participating in the services, then by all means that must be encouraged. 

And btw, the biggest way that we send our kids the message powerfully, that their tefila is important to us is – if we are willing to sacrifice to enable them to daven. If your daughter knows you would LOVE to be in shul, but you are watching the little ones so she can daven – think what kind of message that sends her about how much you think her tefila is worth?!

2. When your son is too old to be in the ladies section with you, but not old enough to take himself to the men's section.

Question: What should moms do when they have sons who are too young to be sent to the men's section with only older brothers for supervision but too old to be running around outside making noise... Or moms of boys who don't relate to shul but who are old enough to be expected to do *some* davening but will have to do it on their own without supervision.

You don't have to be a single mom to have this issue. This is a general question of how responsible are we for our kids religious obligations once they reach adolescence aka halachic adulthood. Just because a boy reaches bar mitzvah, that doesn't mean he automatically relates to minyan and davening. (And I'm going to throw out a dangerous, sticky point here: his attitude also depends on what he witnessed growing up in terms of his father's attitude to minyan. This is a bitter pill many women – married and divorced – have to swallow.)

As parents (this holds true for dads as well) we now enter a tricky phase of parenthood where we can no longer tell them what to do and can only encourage them. Of course there are all kinds of means of encouragement – motivational rewards, consequence motivations, etc. When I consulted with one educator, he said nothing but positive encouragement works with this generation.

Kids not going to/being "into" shul, is often due to one of two reasons:

1. Being tired/having trouble getting out of bed (teens need a lot of sleep) or

2. Not really getting the point of going to shul and/or prayer.

I won't go into #1because that's tricky. But re: #2 - sometimes being able to discuss and explain concepts in davening can help. (NOT PREACHING!!) Again, it depends on how naturally spiritual or intellectual a kid is. Basically we need to encourage and let go and let G-d.

And one important thing: We need to train ourselves to ignore nasty comments from obnoxious, self-righteous people in our community who feel they have the right to judge us and our children. I have had a well-respected rav and educator tell my husband that the right thing for one of my boys was to be playing basketball with friends, and not to force him to sit in shul. That kid's chasidishkeit is incomparable now b"H but raising him I got flack from everybody with 2 working vocal chords. And y'know what? I thank G-d that He gave me the courage to ignore them because if I listened to them instead to my instinct as a mom, I shudder to think where that child would be today…

Next installment: For real – Yom Kipur's halachic questions.