write or wrong

aries2756-thanks for the suggestions.

S1-You say you are not OTD, but on the border. What do you think would help you to NOT go OTD? And what do you think would help someone to come back if they already went OTD?

kapusta-I actually thought about that. But I’m not sure how many people over here are doing Twisted Parenting. I could ask Avi next time. Thanks for the suggestion, Good Shabbos to you too!

Speaker-nice vort, except why is chinuch equated with controling our children? Chinuch is also about teaching, guiding and loving our children. If a parent wasn’t dominated by ego, and there was no physical abuse (trauma), how do you explain a child who goes OTD? And is TP the right approach to take in those circumstances?

aries2756-you’re right, I probably should have thanked him for telling me. Next time he opens up, I will. The problem is that there’s so little interaction between us, and he hates if I ask him any questions, even very benign ones. He started this low pressure yeshiva, but any time I try to find out anything about it, he gets angry.

Speaker-before you leave(!), that’s one of my biggest questions. Isn’t the most common trauma, physical abuse/molestation? And if yes, then if that never happened to a child,it seems that anything else would have been less traumatic, making less of a need for TP?

Speaker-I do wish I could benefit from the groups in NY. If there was a way to come, I would. I even wondered if maybe there was a way to do it through Skype, but with the time difference, it may be too difficult.

From your experience in the groups, are there families whose child actually came back to the derech? So far, the manual mostly talks about improving the relationship between parent and child (which is also good). But hopefully, it doesn’t end there, and the kids actually return. I’m sorry for the suffering you must have gone through with your daughter, but Baruch Hashem she has a happy ending to her story! I would love to read the book if the mods would let you send me the link,

Mods???????

Syag Lchochma-you are right.

Speaker-I know, it’s a nightmare of a pill, and we’re all choking on it. Baruch Hashem that harmony was restored to your home! So where do you go from here? Do you just keep up with the same ‘twisted’ approach indefinitely? Or is there another level of dealing with things from this point on? (I’m only on page 285 of the manual).

Shopping63-thank you!

aries2756-If I say these things to him, but he still doesn’t call or tell me where he’s going, what do I say when he comes home the next day? It’s really all falling on deaf ears.

aries2756-so, for the next time he leaves the house, and I ask where he’s going or when he’s coming home, his answer is usually that he doesn’t know. What should my response be? He doesn’t have a conversation that lasts more than a few seconds, so there’s no time to get in all the sensible things you say. I can ask him to call me later when he knows, but it won’t happen.

He started the low pressure ‘yeshiva’ today with his chevra, ripped jeans and all. Let’s see what happens..

PBA-Both.

He finally came home at around 630 pm. I asked Avi how to handle it bc truthfully, we were really furious!. I didn’t exactly embrace him like Avi said, but I didn’t get angry. I was kind of neutral, like nothing major happened. I know it’s not good enough for TP, but it was the best I could do.

aries2756-I’m glad to see you are still following this thread. Please give your opinion. I just hung up on my son. It’s after 8am, and he hasn’t been home since yesterday afternoon! I called one of his friends’ cell phones to see where he is, and my son just called me back. I asked where he is, and all he said was that he’s at a friend’s house. He wouldn’t tell me where he is, or which friend. So I didn’t feel the need to continue the conversation, and I hung up on him. Right now, I have so much anger toward him. I don’t feel we can continue with Twisted Parenting bc it’s just making fools of us, not to mention that we need to spend endless amounts of money on him to buy him ‘gifts’ to make him happy. My second son keeps asking where he is, and when he sees his brother never slept home, he suddenly ends up not going to tefillah either. I am completely beside myself. My husband is blaming me that things are getting worse bc he feels that we weren’t strong enough, that our reaction was too accepting and now he’s just taking advantage. What on earth should I do???

Speaker-Avi didn’t mention the recordings to me. I will mention next time we speak. Thanks.

I can relate to some of Daniela’s questions, and have also wondered how anyone can guarrantee that this technique will work with my child. And what does that mean, ‘it will work’? You mean, it will bring him back to the derech? If it only means to restore our relationship, then I don’t believe I need TP to do that. I think the reason TP is so extreme is bc in situations where there was extreme trauma, then an extreme approach may be what’s needed to counter-balance it. The point about treating kids as ‘xerox copies’ has also bothered me. This approach doesn’t seem to be tailor made to each child, but rather an ‘across the board’ approach. Yet each child had a different experience and has a different make up. I’m assuming the answer would be that a kid going OTD, is a reaction to trauma and ‘trauma is trauma’, but I’m not sure I’d agree with that. Can anyone clarify?

Ravs Daughter-Thanks for your post. You are right, getting my husband to be on board is probably the biggest challenge. I think he can get past the fact that jeans are ‘only clothes’, but it’s still hard for him to believe that this isn’t just another one of my son’s manipulations to get what he wants from us. Truthfully, most of the kids Avi Fishoff worked with(that he describes in the manual) went through terrible emotional or physical/sexual abuse, or have terribly cold/distant relationships with their parents. I’m positive Twisted Parenting would help them. But up until about 3 months ago, we had a great relationship with our son, with affection and constant communication. Even though he did go through some teasing in school, and had a critical RY, it seems a far cry from the abusive situations Avi describes.

Do you know Mrs. Belsky’s first name? I would be interested to hear what she has to say.

mom12-don’t be sorry about adding your 2 cents..I look forward to it!! You are right about the jeans, and my son did already buy a pair of jeans…but he wants more. The t-shirt is a disaster, it wasn’t just a photo, it had provocative words as well (the truth is, he doesn’t read English well, and I do believe that he didn’t even know what it said). It’s great your son will wear white polos, my son won’t wear anything white. But we did go together to the store, where he picked out some colored shirts that he liked. I do want to give TP my best shot, but the problem is, it’s too extreme and immediate for my husband, who I think needs time to get used to it.

I’m not against my son doing his own laundry. It’s just that now is a very sensitive time. I wouldn’t want to start teaching him things (which he could interpret as a kind of rejection-since I’ve been spoiling him all these years when he was learning late hours, doing everything for him). Believe me, somtimes I’m thinking he should not only do his laundry, but everyone else’s with all the free time that he has!! But the focus now is on restoring his connection to us, and feeling valued. Teaching responsibity can come once he’s healed…or via the army, which ever comes first:)

here to help-I already agree with the ideas behind TP, and am more worried about being able to follow through with what I believe will help my son, AND having my husband AGREE, than I am about getting side tracked in the CR. I do get chizuk here, and learn a lot from others’ stories, yet I am making TP the core approach for dealing with our son. The main problem now is putting into practice what we’ve been reading. While my husband agrees with everything “on paper”, putting it into action is more difficult. We are on page 228 of the manual, and speak with Avi every week. But my husband just won’t agree to buying him jeans (this is really a biggie), nor will he consider letting him wear them in the house (or in the neighborhood, for that matter). I’m just wondering, when you said that TP is the only thing that worked for you, what does that mean exactly? Did it just improve your relationship, or did they return to the derech?

aries2756-I agree that your suggestion would teach responsibility, but the bottom line is that I know very well he won’t get out of bed until early evening, so he will end up changing his own linen. My goal with him at this point is to give him the feeling that I care about him, and I don’t think I’ll be able to teach him anything (ie responsiblity, nor anything else) until he’s internalized this better.

Brooklineborn-you have to ask the mods. I am more than happy to email them the manual, however it’s a big file, and for some reason, it wouldn’t go through when I tried to email it to a friend. You could ask the mods for Avi Fishoff’s email address (they will email it to you directly) and ask him to send you the file.

Aries2756-I don’t think that good sense will reach him at this point, even by mentioning the association between tattood numbers and tattoos. He just doesn’t care. As far as yeshiva goes, he’s done nothing to follow through. He says he’s going with his friends to this open yeshiva that I mentioned, and asked us if we will pay for him to go there. Truthfully, I told him that if he were serious about learning, a profession, or anything, then that would be fine. But I wasn’t interested in paying for him to ‘have an apt’ with his friends somewhere, so that he can go out partying, and stay out all night, away from his parents. My husband is ready to call the ‘Revacha” in Israel, and let them take over. But after speaking these last couple of weeks with Avi Fishoff, I’m torn between being the ‘supportive, accepting, “you can do anything you want if it makes you happy” kind of mother, and doing something more proactive that will force (yes! I said the bad word ‘force’) him to be in some program.

If there are any “Twisted Parenting” alumni reading this, please tell me your opinion.

Syag Lchochma-I think you would benefit from some of the ideas of Twisted Parenting. Even if a person did not adopt their entire hashgafa, there are some very true and valuable points that they make. One of the things I am learning is how our words affect our children according to ‘their interpretation’, and not according to our meaning nor our intention (nor necessarily the truth of our words either!). That’s how we can end up either damaging our child chas v’shalom, or make worse any inner turmoil they are already going through. I think, like TP says, kids are ‘allergic to control’, and any conversations with our kids that might appear that we are trying to influence, affect or control our kids will be met with resistance, either externally or internally.

mom12-the yeshiva my son wants is so low pressure and open, that I’d rather have him home. But, I would prefer that he go to a more supervised yeshiva, rather than have him home. But after speaking to Avi Fishoff, the goal behind TP is to strengthen the relationship between him and us, so how can we do that if he’s living in yeshiva? Also, he wants to go with a few of the kids from the chevra, and we’re hoping to weaken that connection, not strengthen it. Unfortunately, he’s going to be the one to decide, bc we ‘can’t’ force our will on him. Truthfully, I don’t know what to daven for..

BRAINFREEZE-Thanks agaim for your concern, but I’ve already said everything I have to say on this subject.

Imma613-My husband and I have been speaking with someone, in fact, now we are speaking with Avi Fishoff who has his own unique approach to this whole thing. I actually read that book many years ago, and agree it is a good resource. Thanks for reminding me, I will have to get a copy of it and read it again! Thanks so much for your nice thoughts and prayers.

ZeesKite/mom12-Thanks to both of you too! It’s nice to know there are people who care and who are rooting me on. In this merit, we should ALL win!

zvei dinim-I’ve heard that too, I hope it’s true.

crisis of the week-it’s unlikely that he’s reading this bc although he speaks fluent English, he never really learned how to read English very well since we made aliyah.

thehoch-I agree with you 100%

Bostonborn-if the mods didn’t get a copy of the manual from here to help, I will email it to them, and you can get it from the mods.

Zeeskite- so what would be your advice regarding the following: How can I have any influence on my son at this point when he sleeps the whole day, and then wakes up angry and defiant, leaves the house and stays out all night. Comes home distant and disconnected in the morning, doesn’t want to talk, then goes to sleep for the whole day?

2scents/here to help-while I did find Avi to be extremely helpful and insightful, I cannot disregard the chizuk and support I get from all the posters. Unfortunately, bc of the time difference, it might be a bit challenging finding a time that’s convenient for both of us to speak on the phone with Avi. So, I hope you will pop in from time to time here to help, in case I might have a question or 2, and can’t reach Avi. Thanks again, and hatzlacha also to you!

here to help/Mods-thanks for giving me Avi Fishoff’s email address. We just got off the phone with him, and it was a tremendous help.