How to help your teens grow as they prepare to leave home.
By Joanne Doades for MyJewishLearning.com
In the Book of Genesis, we encounter many stories of individuals who leave their parents’ homes under difficult circumstances. For today’s Jewish teens, the struggle for leave-taking begins long before the actual physical event. This is an emotional and often conflict-filled process of separation generally beginning around the time of bar/bat mitzvah, peaking between the ages of 15 to 19, and usually subsiding by the early to mid-twenties.
Peace in the Home
How well Jewish parents handle this natural but challenging process can have a significant impact on shalom bayit, peace in the home, and set the stage for relationships with the soon-to-be-adult children for many years to come. Since the teenage years are such a time of change, experimentation, and identity redefinition, it can be hard for parents to sort out which issues require their attention and which can be ignored. And given the fact that many teens enact the separation process around matters of Jewish observance, it is not surprising that parents of Jewish teens may find themselves asking the question: “What happened to the child I thought I had raised?!”
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