We’ve been enjoying our summer with lots of guests and activities! For the past few weeks my oldest daughter was staying in the house behind us so on most days we had twice daily visits from her with our grandchildren. Then our second daughter came with her family for Shabbos, joining our 21 year old daughter and all the boys other than ds20 were home (he went back to yeshiva early to get settled in). It was so, so lovely to have Shabbos together with all of them.
From expansion to contraction – it happens abruptly. On Saturday night, our second daughter’s family left. Sunday morning I took our sixteen and fourteen year old sons to yeshiva in RBS; our 21 year old came along and I dropped her off at a bus stop to Jerusalem. I returned in the evening and learned that our oldest daughter and her family had returned to their home that day. So it’s just me, my husband and the three youngest boys at home now. Two of them will be starting school in a few hours; by the time you read this they’ll already be sitting in their classrooms.
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Last night I attended the introductory meeting for mothers for my five year old’s class. I was the first mother to arrive, and I had time to say only ‘Hello’ before the teacher exclaimed, “Let me guess whose mother you are!” (She met the students when she came in one day during camp.) I waited for a moment, and she guessed, “Rafael Werner!”
Right, I told her with a smile. (She accurately guessed all the other mothers who arrived afterwards as well.) “I could tell because he looks just like you.” Isn’t that nice? She’s not the first one to say he looks like me! But she’ll probably be surprised when she eventually learns that he’s not my biological child.
Afterward the general meeting she commented I had been quiet. I told her I didn’t come to talk, but to hear what she had to say. It’s an hour drive to the school, so it’s a commitment of several hours for me to attend. I make the effort not because I learn anything important for me, but because I want his teacher to know who Rafael’s mother is and to be aware that we’re actively involved in his education.
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It’s been a long summer but it seems to have gone by so quickly! We chose to keep ds10 and ds5 home for six of the eight week vacation; I enjoyed having them home and at the same time, feel ready for them to go back to school. Not with a sense of, ‘finally, I get time to myself!’ More like, they’ve been filled up by all this time and they’re ready to fully benefit from their time in school, and for the first time I’m sending them without any ambivalence.
As we did last year, the boys will leave school by 1 pm, returning around 2 pm. This is unusual since the school day is officially over at 2:30 and all the other children stay for the afternoon program, which ends at 5 pm (they would get home close to 6:30 pm). Some of you will remember that we started this arrangement the year before last, when ds10 began attending this school towards the end of the year. We were told this was the only time slot available for transportation for him. Then last year, I told them we would be willing to take that slot again, and at the end of the year filed a formal request for them to be allowed to leave school early.
So this year we’re doing the same early dismissal for them.
Don’t think they come home and I fill their day with lots of enriching activities. I don’t. I don’t ignore them all afternoon, but we made the above choice with the understanding that it’s draining to be in school, and we want them to have the downtime to relax. When I can do activities with them, I do, but I also appreciate that they know how to constructively occupy themselves together.
(The most important aspect of this choice is that it’s much harder to be emotionally connected to a child/parents you hardly see, and we like to be around our children and for them to be around us. )
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My fourteen year old is now attending the same yeshiva as his brother. He’s been homeschooled for most of his life (he attended gan/kindergarten for 18 months after moving to Israel eleven years ago), he’s a very likeable and enjoyable person to spend time with, and it wasn’t easy to think of him leaving for a dorm. I just tried not to think about it. Then a little thing – seeing a bowl of freshly gathered eggs from his coop and thinking he won’t be here to gather them anymore – got me all choked up before he left and it was hard to reel that sadness back in. Sometimes feelings come out unexpectedly sideways.
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A number of people have asked me why I chose to send a child to yeshiva, when he was excelling in every way when homeschooled. It was a hard decision, and I spent several months thinking about it before bringing it up to my son. When a child is so happy with their lives, when it’s so well-balanced (spiritually and materially) and filled with good things, it’s hard to change anything. Why mess with success?
I knew that my son could continue in the path he’s on, and would do well. But as I told him, we’re put in this world to grow, not to stay comfortable. I want him to expand as a ben Torah, specifically in reaching higher levels of Torah learning and in connecting with a variety of Torah role models, and that meant sending him somewhere where he could access more opportunities. As much as I strongly value having my children living at home, building relationships with them daily….his spiritual development is even more important to me at this stage of his life.
We talked about this a lot. He was concerned that the long day of learning would be difficult and stressful; his hesitation was if he was unhappy, then that wouldn’t constitute growth. I suggested he look at being at yeshiva as a different kind of happiness; rather than as giving up everything that makes him happy now, he could focus on the gains he was making. I told him that what he has here now will be waiting for him if he chooses to come back to it, but the opportunity to go to yeshiva at this stage of life will pass.
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So what will I do with myself now that I’m officially homeschooling just my thirteen year old? I don’t know yet. I do know that I want to be very conscious of spending time with him. The dynamics change every time a child leaves home, and this time the dynamics are shifting in a big way. We’ve never had just one child being homeschooled before. There have always been siblings to do things with.
Last year, when ds5 began school, I had time in the morning for myself, something I hadn’t had for many years. But I still had two teen boys in and out of the house all day. My bedroom is like Grand Central. I go in there to take a nap, and within a short time everyone follows me. It’s uncanny how that happens. 🙂 During vacation I can easily have five or six of my sons sitting around there at one time.
Each time one of our children has moved out, it positively shifts my relationship with the next child in line as they become the oldest in the house and have more time one on one with me. I know how fast time passes, how quickly our children grow up, and I don’t want to get so busy with other activities that I let this time with ds13 slip away.
What that means practically speaking is that I’m considering scheduling our morning time to ensure that we don’t miss each other, so that our schedules coordinate. This has been a challenge for me and ds13 until recently, as he was a night owl and I get up early. By the time he would get home from shul and daily learning, I’d be ready for my midday rest; he’d be ready to talk late at night when I could hardly keep my eyes open. After his bar mitzva three months ago, he began going to sleep earlier in order to be at shul by 6 am. That has meant that our schedules are much more naturally aligned than they were in the past.
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For those of you beginning a new school year, whether at home or at school, I wish you a wonderful start!
Avivah
I had a preview of a bit of your post, as I had heard that your 14 yo son had started Yeshiva : ) I realized it must have been a very difficult decision to make. May Hashem help everyone to succeed with their new beginnings and new experiences!
I have also enjoyed the time with my kids over the break but find it an enormous relief to have time to myself, which I have not had for a very long time – I am trying not to feel guilty about this feeling.
I got a good laugh out of your description of trying to take a nap and everyone following you into your room – sounds very familiar and is certainly a very big test of our patience at times!
It’s easy for me to say, don’t feel guilty about having some time for yourself, but I’ll say it anyway. You work hard as a mother and when you get this time, it’s so critical to renew yourself.
Sometimes it was a bit annoying when I was trying to rest that people would be overly casual about that (and when I had just fallen into a deep sleep to be suddenly woken up was definitely a test of my patience!), but mostly I appreciated that they want to be around me. Vacation is a short period of time – childhood is a short period of time, for that matter – and I know that it will feel like just a few minutes have passed before no one will be hanging around, wanting to shooze.
“…got me all choked up before he left and it was hard to reel that sadness back in. Sometimes feelings come out unexpectedly sideways.”
This is me right now. I’ve been unschooling all my kids since birth (finding your blog back in 2009 really helped me with this path, thank you!), and my oldest son (15 years old) just went away to a yeshiva across the country a week ago. I have been an emotional wreck. I’m glad you mentioned this here in your post about your ds14 because then I went to your previous posts about your boys going to Yeshivas and it was very validating (I’m sure I read them before but now they are more relevant to what I’m experiencing). We sent him to a new Chabad yeshiva that advertised itself as a yeshiva for kids who have a hard time sitting for so many hours a day learning and offers shorter learning increments, physical activity, and a trade learning experience. I thought this would be a good fit for him because even though he strongly desires to learn, I was concerned it would be challenging for him to go from a more free-style upbringing to a rigorous learning and living schedule. Also, he is a kinesthetic learner, and he needs time to process the things he learned in the classroom while he is doing physical activity in order to digest it all ( I see that with him when he does his athletics and it’s very grounding for him). After his first day taking classes, he told us he seems to be the only 1 out of 16 students who actually wants to learn; the other boys were chatting and disrupting the class (the yeshiva started off small, only accepting 25 students and they only have 16 students at the moment). Which is now why I believe he was accepted after homeschooling all these years. After reading your old posts I realize he may not have been accepted to any of the other “mainstream” Chabad yeshivas in the country. After a week there my son told us he didn’t see any fruit or have a meal with any chicken or meat for dinner. He said the food is horrible, but then he said, I’m not here for the food, I’m here to learn (which is very mature of him to say- but it will catch up to him when he’s not getting a certain amount of nourishment his body needs to thrive) . I didn’t expect it to be my standards of nourishing cooking, but I thought most yeshivas and seminaries had gotten better at the quality of foods they offered their students over the years. I know how you cook and care about feeding your family nourishing meals- how do you “handle” (for lack of better word, handle seems a bit dramatic), your kids’ diets while they are away in their schools? This is all very new to me and a lot to process. He comes home in a month for the yomim tovim and if things don’t improve with this yeshiva I’d love for him to just stay home until we find a better option (he says it’s very disorganized and he’s wasting a lot of time– I did warn him about this and to just be patient).
Thank you for blogging all these years. I don’t comment often but I truly appreciate your honesty and vulnerability to share so many aspects of your family’s life with so many readers.
Thank you for sharing that, Estee. I’m sending a big hug in your direction!
I can identify so much with why you chose this for him, and would have looked for something similar for my son if not for my experience with what the peer group would look like. I’ve seen that rarely does a school live up to its advertising. Programs like the one you described typically attract weaker and less motivated students, unfortunately. I ended up sending my son (15 today!) to a yeshiva that externally wouldn’t seem like a place I would send to – very mainstream, high expectations, rigorous learning schedule – but I liked the rosh yeshiva and felt he had an understanding of what boys are like, and has a more balanced and less pressured approach than is usually found in ‘good’ yeshivas.
I’d like to suggest that it’s not a given by any means that your son wouldn’t be accepted by any mainstream yeshivas. I’ll share some of our yeshiva history that I haven’t written about. Both of my boys (15 and 16) are currently at a mainstream yeshiva with a very good reputation (from there boys go on to the top yeshiva gedolas in the country), not for kids struggling in any way. The rosh yeshiva told me when accepting this son directly from homeschooling, that he’s an A+ bochur in every way, and he was sure with his motivation that his weaker learning skills (this son was a very late reader) would catch up quickly. BH, it’s only been a week and he’s catching up faster than anyone would have expected, including him!
However, it’s possible that he wouldn’t have considered him if his older brother wasn’t already there. My sixteen year old transferred there in the middle of last year and there was initially some hesitation when I called to discuss him going to this yeshiva since he was in a yeshiva tichoni (yeshiva high school vs yeshiva ketana). The rosh yeshiva told me bluntly that rarely does someone transfer midyear in tenth grade unless there’s a problem, which wasn’t our situation, and he couldn’t imagine that my son would religiously be a fit for the yeshiva. From early on in ninth grade, I strongly felt that the original high school we chose was a mismatch for my son (peers that were for the most part religiously weaker than he was), but my son kept looking at the positive and insisting he didn’t want to quit.
Finally I had enough and told him I would help him find somewhere else; my son was so relieved and appreciative. Once the rosh yeshiva met my son, there was no hesitation at all about accepting him, and soon after he began there, one of the rebbeim told the rosh yeshiva only half jokingly that they should start to recruit from the yeshiva high schools since my son was so impressive. So ds16 set the stage very well for his next brother to be looked at favorably.
About the food – funnily enough, I was planning to write something about this! Hopefully I’ll share something in the next day or two.
Thank you Avivah for this reply! We spoke to our son today. There was a sadness and frustration in his voice that wasn’t there during previous conversations (he has been there for two weeks and we hardly get to talk to him because they won’t let him have his phone when they said they would give it to him because they were so disorganized and ran out of time to let the students use their phones to call home.) He waited over an hour today to use a phone (the yeshiva bought flip phones for them to use but even then he’s not getting to use it). He told the rosh yeshiva he was waiting a long time for a phone to use because he needs to figure out his shabbos plans with us (this weekend is an off shabbos and originally they said the boys could stay in their dorms if they want to, and now they’re retracting that agreement). All the other students are going home (they all live on the east coast and are just a bus ride away… ), and he needed us to help him figure out where to stay for shabbos in the community. He told the Rosh Yeshiva after waiting a long time, “if you’re not going to work with me, then maybe this isn’t the right yeshiva for me.” I’m so proud of him for speaking up. He is the only student there that wants to learn and it has been hard to concentrate listening to the teachers in class with all the noise from the other boys. I fear if things don’t drastically improve and the rosh yeshiva doesn’t realize he has a diamond right in front of him, eager and motivated to learn, then we’re going to bring him home and go back to the drawing board. He didn’t want to go to the Chabad yeshiva in la because he knows the kids who would be in his class from camp. Immature, snobby and rude. He didn’t want to go to NY because the city life would be too overwhelming for him. There are more Chabad yeshivas of course. I just don’t know if any of these places will have classes that aren’t full of disruptive kids. I feel like we let him down; he so badly wanted to learn in yeshiva and have the whole yeshiva experience. He doesn’t like being treated like a little kid (he actually said animal). Anyway I’m just really sad for him right now and just feel incredibly deceived by the yeshiva. So far what they have communicated what the yeshiva would be like and what it actually is is two very different things.
Estee, if they’re too busy to appreciate a gem in the midst of their chaos, that’s really not a good sign. If my son was feeling dismissed, unappreciated, not listened to, and treated like an animal – I would literally pull him out this minute. Beginnings are always challenging but I don’t see things making a comeback from such a come-from-behind position.
Hopefully you’ll find another yeshiva, but honestly teen boys education is…well, it’s not the most civilized environment. I had a thirty minute conversation with my son last night, who is at a good yeshiva, who commented that it seems the kids in his class all seem to think they’re still in elementary school. Typical schooling environments aren’t emotionally maturing frameworks. Look at the better yeshivos, where you’ll generally find better behaved kids.
When we made aliyah, my fourteen year old daughter was my right hand woman getting everything ready, and was really looking forward to the school experience. She went into tenth grade when we moved to Israel, and was perceived as a threat to the ‘queen’ of the class, who forbid anyone from interacting with her. With the language, culture differences, and this extremely isolating school environment, it was a tough, tough year. The administration was thrilled to have such an amazing girl in this troubled class and felt she was a good influence on the class; I had to fight the administration in a big way to get her moved up to the grade above her for the following year. I can really identify with your deep disappointment of seeing a good kid who is looking forward to an experience and gets something else entirely instead; I was so deeply pained and saddened at what my daughter expected and what she got instead. I am so sorry for you both that this is what has happened.
I’ve talked here about experiencing contrast. Sometimes life gives us just what we want, and sometimes we get contrast, which is an opportunity to clarify what we want and then actively move towards that. I wouldn’t look at this as something to endure and hope to get better, but something to move away from and to make space for what you really want. Start to talk to him about what he really wants, what he’s learned from this about what’s important to him. It took my sixteen year old a year and a half to get to the point he was ready to make the move to the yeshiva he’s currently in, and he’s consistently told me since he began there how happy he is that he made the move. It’s a much, much more suitable environment for him than where he was.
We do the best we can to assess information and situations, and sometimes we make mistakes. That’s not something to beat yourself up about. Maybe it’s not even really a mistake, even though it feels like that. It’s part of Hashem’s plan for both of you.
Thank you so so so much Avivah for this response. I beyond appreciate it. Your words will help us navigate the next step for our son