Rabbi Baruch Fruchter
Raising teenagers: the particular challenges of the transition years
Dedicated to the elevation of the soul of Ahuva bat Daniel
Their surroundings shape everything
Let us repeat that, for a teenager, approval and recognition from peers come first. Therefore, if we want a child to develop in a particular direction, we must never lose oversight of their choice of company. When choosing a school or yeshiva, or various extracurricular activities, it is always worth making an extra effort to find out what families the other children come from, what happens not only at school but also in the homes of your child's friends, how far the teachers can be trusted to instill true values in the children, and so on.
Suppose you have settled on a school after receiving the best recommendations and your child has been admitted. Can you now relax and leave the rest to the teachers and friends? That would be a huge mistake: the struggle is only beginning! It is important to remember that no community can be homogeneous. A school is divided into year groups, year groups into classes, and within each class there are several small groups of four or five children, formed according to interests. It is these “interest groups” that directly influence the child and determine their values at that point and their range of interests. Groups of top students, fashion enthusiasts, cyclists, groups based on country of origin — the list is endless.
What matters most to us is the influence such a group will have on the child: will it be positive or negative, contribute to harmonious development, or, on the contrary, lead the child away from our ideals?
On the one hand, there is nothing new in what we have said: this situation has always existed in every school or extracurricular group. However, the religious education system has a particular feature that emphasizes how important it is to choose the right place for a child to study from the outset. Our community characteristically views a person as a whole. This means being straightforward about right and wrong and avoiding double standards. If there is a student who has a negative influence on the others, few children will generally be friends with that student.
The educational institution tries to influence that child: to help them improve or, in extremely rare cases when their negative influence on others becomes critical, to expel them. It is important to note that the proportion of such children in our schools and yeshivas is extremely low. As for the state education system, one need only examine the statistics to understand how many teenagers in it are affected by various kinds of behavioral problems. These statistics would shock any parent. It is logical to assume that, with so many behavioral problems, troubled teenagers cannot simply be rejected, since they make up a substantial group among the students as a whole. Even when there is no doubt about their harmful influence, they feel like fully accepted members of the community and see no need to improve their behavior in any way. Nor does the nonreligious education system itself strive to do so or show any interest in improving the situation.