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How can a frum parent best regulate which other children’s homes their children are permitted to visit or be friends with?
Visit the friends home and get to know the parents and their kids prior to letting your kids go there. Same thing parents have probably been doing for thousands of years.
Have the kids come over so that you know who they are. Express your opinion of them, good and bad. If you need to criticize, don’t be cruel when speaking about them. Be respectful even when criticizing. Otherwise you look like a hypocritical jerk, and you are teaching your children bad manners and possibly Lashon Hara.
Make sure that you have a good trust between yourself and kids. That way, when you make your opinion known to them – explicitly or not – they will trust and listen to you. Such trust takes years to build and starts in the toddler years.
Joseph, by children’s homes do you mean children who go to an orthodox school, but their parents have different hashgachic views than yours?
Or kids who go to public school and the like?
Joseph, I do not think this is a practical question. But rather, by asking this, it is an emotionally cathartic way of expressing your disapproval of others. By excluding your children from having friendships with such people (and yourself by proxy) you are validating your own beliefs by essentially saying “your kids are not good enough to play with my kids”.
Why not just say “I hate your opinions and consider them so toxic I won’t even let me kids play with your kids.” Instead of asking it as a question?
Or…..
Is it a subtle threat? Saying your children will be emotionally blackmailed and be left bereft of friends and suffer social ostracism by the charedi community because of your evil beliefs?
Either way, I don’t think its a practical question.
I guess we aren’t friends.
I can so see it.
You sitting there brewing by your computer saying “I hate so many of the people here how can I express my rage, oh I know, Ill imply that because of your evil beliefs your children will be ex-communicated! I’ll ask it as a question!”
Not saying others on the other side don’t do similar. Just want to call a spade a spade.
Joseph, FYI many Orthodox parents send their kids to public school because of they are too poor to pay tuition and too rich for subsidies.
Make sure they alwayd play at your house when you’re around to moniter them/
So don’t let your child have friends because none of them will pass your smell test because you view yourself as superfrumman and us mere mortals will never match up we all have flaws that are unforgivable so we will taint your child.
Of course parents should be careful with whom their child hangs with but if you send your child to a school for its hashkafos presumably the other children from that school should be fine, you cant put your children in a bubble.
So don’t let your child have friends because none of them will pass your smell test because you view yourself as superfrumman and us mere mortals will never match up we all have flaws that are unforgivable so we will taint your child.
Of course parents should be careful with whom their child hangs with but if you send your child to a school for its hashkafos presumably the other children from that school should be fine, you cant put your children in a bubble.
The Goq:
???? ??? ?’ ???? ?’: “??? ???? ?????? ??? ??? ?????? ???? ????… ??? ????? ????: ??? ???. ??? ???? ????: ??? ???”
Why the insults?
newbee:
I can so see it.
You sitting there brewing by your computer saying “I hate so many of the people here how can I express my rage, oh I know, Ill imply that because of your evil beliefs your children will be ex-communicated! I’ll ask it as a question!”
Not saying others on the other side don’t do similar. Just want to call a spade a spade.
Oh come on. Joseph was just pushing his belief in sheltering one’s kids and one’s self from any and all possible negative influences. You can feel free to disagree with him; but kindly stop trying to paint every post you disagree with as some sort of twisted, hateful plot.
Why the insults? so when Joseph starts threads like this implying other yidden are not frum enough that is not an insult?
Why does Joseph’s post “imply other yidden are not frum enough” any more than the Mishnah in Avos?
An onov would judge the child and the parents by their middos and by the home they keep, and hope to find kind, gentle, honest and trustworthy people for their kids to interact with.
Any parent has the right and responsibility to choose who their children interact with, at least at young ages. It’s the criteria you use that will illustrate YOUR character, the assumptions you make about others that will reveal your gaivah or anivus, the decisions you make that will impact your kids capacity to practice ahavas chinom.
Choose wisely. It’s not just your life and prejudices you are playing with. It’ll affect your children’s capacity to learn how to judge for themselves, which they will eventually need to do.
If you shelter your kids too much, they will never form real friendships or learn how to deal with people who are different.
Joseph, what about people who send their kids to Orthodox schools who are dishonest in business, say lashon hara (I even know someone who imitates the accents of gedolei Tora and another who tells insulting jokes about various communities because they thinks it is funny), use bad language, etc.? The Gra says (Even Sheleima 2) that if someone has naturally bad middot learning Tora will actually make him worse. This is why Tora is compared to water. It makes everything grow. As for children who go to public school, would you differentiate between playing in your home and in theirs as perhaps the other kids will be influenced? What would you tell someone who has close non-frum relatives?
MW13, the mishna in Avot refers to an individual and his individual status. It does not make blanket assumptions.
It’s not that “they aren’t frum enough for me” it’s that they are on a different spiritual level. And there’s going to be people also on a higher spiritual level than me and not just lower.
As long as we aren’t egotistical saying “you aren’t good enough” but rather saying “I’m trying to grow, I’m not perfect, and here are some of the ways we are growing and some of thw things we do not do or speak of in our house”
I do not think I will lock my kids away from TV, internet, and other such ideas. That is a disaster in the making for if not exposed at all when a child is an adult and IS exposed he/she will not have the tools to deal with any of these new ideas out there.
There are A LOT of issues with the school system. They are doing a lot of things wrong (and doing a lot right, but still…) and it shows when I see people getting thrown out because they weren’t wearing tights but the kid who explicitly told classmates that she watched an inappropriate movie with her mother, (with the details of the movie – a movie no kid should ever hear of from a friend) is still in school-we have a problem.
You can’t regulate them against every little thing you disagree with the parents with. It’s not practical. As long as the parents are shomer shabbos, kosher, basically frum etc what else can you do?
You can’t exactly interrogate each parent to see how militantly feminist tv has made them and the like. Unless they wear it on their sleeves.
You can’t exactly interrogate each parent to see if they subtly treat each child worse or better or if they would save your kids life behind others based on the misha in horayos.
Can you?
newbee-of course. You cant protect your kids from everything. But some things are important and people focus on them to make sure their kids aren’t exposed to specific big things.
Thats why I asked Joseph my initial question, because it sounds like he wants to literally choose kid by kid who is allowed to be a friend and interview every parent prior to the first playdate.
Sounds good Joseph. BTW, whats your address and phone number? So I know where to go and how to reach you.
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