Reply To: Going off the Derech

2scents-I never thought you were mocking me, I appreciate your comments. Give more!

OhTeeDee-I guess depending upon your hashkafa, seeing secular movies may be okay. But when you grow up without the secular influence, then it makes it harder to fit in to the secular world. By spending hours on the computer watching these movies, it is helping to prepare him for living that kind of life. He is ‘educating’ himself to be secular, and that’s why I don’t want my kids to see them. I can already see the changes, the language, expressions, the hashkafa. But you are right, there are worse things outside that are readily available. It’s just that movies stay with you forever, just like songs. Once it’s in your head, you can never get it out. It’s like when Adam and Chava tasted the forbidden fruit, the consequences were irreversible. I was hoping my son would not put himself into this situation, as now his nisayonos will be more difficult to pass. But I hope as he matures, he will come back to his religion.

MDG-If Rabbi Kelleman is correct, and I assume that he is, then perhaps the positive emotions between my son and my husband should also surface, as there were many. Tefillah was the negative emotion that probably stayed wih my son. But there were happy times too. My husband was advised to do small things for my son, without too much dialogue at this point. Give small items my son enjoys, or pick up some things for him on the way home, in order to show his love in a non-threatening way. I’m hoping it will help to restore the trust, like you said. Thanks for your input.

interjection-I agree with you completely.

daniela-he hasn’t done those things yet, but they are in the planning…with an earring! He’s said that he plans to get jeans, change his style of clothes, his hair cut etc. He is just trying to finish the year in yeshiva, and I am dreading that time. Every day he reminds me that he is not going next year to yeshiva, what he will do instead, I don’t know yet and neither does he. Even now as he tries to ‘finish the year’, he goes late, and doesn’t care about doing well on any of his tests. I’m trying to get him to make some kind of plan, learn a trade if not Torah, go to college. He knows that I won’t accept sleeping all day ’til evening, and then staying out all night with the chevra. But he may just challenge me and do exactly that to see if I will throw him out of the house. G-d help me.