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Is the child running the show or is the parent being a parent?
You would force your young child into a restroom with a perfect stranger, kicking and screaming?
What’s the alternative? Him wetting his pants and the floor?
What’s the alternative? Him wetting his pants and the floor?
Take him into the women’s room with you.
The Wolf
Take him into the women’s room with you.
If I took him into the women’s room, I’d probably get arrested.
We need to educate the masses to reach out to someone who has noone. If you see someone in Shul who’s lonely, talk to them.
You will save a life. If not a lost child’s, then that lost 36 year old soul, whom noone took a little time of their day to say hello to.
It’s downright chancy to let a stranger take your child into a bathroom (frum or not, ten years old and below). we all know the stories of frum people molesting children, however rare. Never leave a child unattended outside a bathroom. Bring them to security and have them watched there. Ask for a family bathroom, if possible. If a slightly older child needs to go in to an opposite gender bathroom, send a younger sibling with them, together with a frum stranger. Offenses are less likely to occur with two siblings together.
If I took him into the women’s room, I’d probably get arrested.
I assumed you were talking about a woman. After all, if the question were about a male parent and a male child, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all, correct?
The Wolf
The implicit trust that exists in the frum community is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s nice to visit a neighborhood for the first time, as I did one Shabbos, and be invited into a random Jew’s home while walking home from davening on the basis that I “looked hot and uncomfortable” and could probably use kiddush and some quick refreshment. On the other hand, this same trust opens the doors to all sorts of very non-frum scams that only work on the basis of disbelief that a fellow Jew could scheme to take your money.
Unfortunately, recent exposure of various cases of frum child molestation, abuse and of course– most recently–murder have opened our eyes to the fact that the Jewish People have sickened and bloated in their Galus, focusing sharply, almost insanely, on superficial nonsense instead of on the root of problems.
Perhaps, if we all focus on repairing ourselves, not others, we can arrive at a time when we can completely trust each other again.
Perhaps, if we all focus on repairing ourselves, not others, we can arrive at a time when we can completely trust each other again.
If you don’t believe that we should also focus on repairing others, why are you posting this in a public forum?
Because I believe in an open exchange of opinions. Obviously, my word is not law. Why, do you only post here to tell people what they’re doing wrong, or also to voice your view on things?
I find the distinction between trying to repair others, and voicing one’s opinion that others are wrong, to be fuzzy at best.
To answer your question, both, because when I express an opinion that what someone else does is wrong, I am, in effect, rebuking them, whether I like it or not.
I don’t find the distinction to be fuzzy at all. It’s very easy to express your opinions about things without rebuking another. Simply keep the message about you and ONLY you. People may infer from it as they please.
For instance, if someone here were to state that they see nothing wrong about attending baseball games and you were to disagree, there are two ways to indicate your difference of opinion.
1. “I dunno…I tend to steer clear of baseball games because I’m just not fond of the whole atmosphere. I know a lot of people go, but I guess everybody has their likes and dislikes.”
or
2. “OY! SHMIRAS EINAYIM! NEBACH! Don’t you know that Rabbi Zelig Ferdshmecker once gouged out his own eyes rather than LOOK at a store where they were selling baseball EQUIPMENT!!!!?? OY LANU!!!”
All I’m saying is that it is really quite possible to express one’s opinions without denouncing other people’s differing opinions. It’s the difference between expressing YOU ARE WRONG and HERE’S MY TAKE ON THINGS.
Shev143: “We need to educate the masses to reach out to someone who has noone. If you see someone in Shul who’s lonely, talk to them.
You will save a life. If not a lost child’s, then that lost 36 year old soul, whom noone took a little time of their day to say hello to.”
Actually I’ve heard of people being mekarev him and inviting him for shabbos meals… why do you think no one tried to be nice to him? I’ve heard from more than one that people did try to reach out to him (and are freaking out right now with the latest turn of events!)
Blintz182,
The distinction you just made is between methods of rebuke. I agree that the fist is both nicer, and generally more effective.
But if wasn’t meant to better the next person (which is a mitzvah of hocheach tochiach), then it would be kept to oneself.
If I take my granddaughters to the rest room with me, and they are finished and it is my turn they stand in front of MY door with their feet where I can see them. If it is a single bathroom they stay outside the door talking to me the entire time so that I hear them. They are not allowed to walk away from the door and they all have to either sing a song or talk to me through the door. If I am in the restroom with the girls and my grandson is outside, he has to keep talking so I hear him the entire time and know that he is there. If he is in the restroom alone I am outside the door. I don’t care if every man walking out thinks I am nuts, I am yelling in from the outside “E, are you ok? and he has to answer me”.
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