Bonfires, busses, and grocery store pickup: Raising independent kids, the Israeli way - opinion

Detailed summary

Independence doesn’t appear overnight at 18. It’s built, little by little, through the expectations we set and the opportunities we give our children to meet them.

The WhatsApp group for my son's snif (youth group) can best be described as digital chaos. Messages fly back and forth at a rate that makes it almost impossible to keep up. But one message has lingered with me, long after it was written.My son was in third grade – his first year in the youth group – and it was Lag Ba'Omer. A bonfire had been arranged, and the madrich (group leader) had sent all the details, except for the pick-up time. Naturally, as the night progressed, a parent asked what time we should pick up the children, and the madrich responded. 1 a.m.I stared at my phone, wide-eyed. One in the morning? He was eight years old! A third grader. Surely there had been a typo.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Jerusalem Post. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.