5/29/15
Round Hole Parents; Square Peg Kids
For nearly twenty years now, we have been advising frum parents to maintain close relationships with their children who are no longer observant and/or those who are charting a course in life that is very different than those of their parents. (See our Essay in Mishpacha Magazine Should We Keep Our At-Risk Child At Home? for more on this.)
As we all know, it is a long and winding road from theory to practice and on Thursday evening, June 11th, we at Project YES will be conducting an invitation-only meeting/workshop with families who would like to explore improve their relationships with a child/sibling who is no longer observant or who is charting a different path in life.
If you are interested in attending a meeting/workshop of this nature and live in the metro New York area, kindly drop us an email at projectyesworkshop@gmail.com. Someone from our office will get back to you and all correspondence will be treated in the strictest confidence. We will not publicize the location of the meeting/workshop in order to allow for privacy and confidentiality.
In addition to my presentation, there will be parents who have successfully raised “square peg” children through adolescence and into adulthood while maintaining close, personal relationships with them.
The matter of Adults at Risk is one that has been on the radar of Project YES for many years now. The first of the 40+ essays we ran in Mishpacha Magazine The Chinuch Challenges of Our Generation alluded to it, and it was addressed in subsequent columns we published in Mishpacha and The Jewish Press over the past few years: Exit Interviews, All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go, Running Out Of Time (see the many links there). We also wrote Risk Factors for At-Risk Teens to inform parents of the leading risk factors for kids/adults abandoning religion from our vantage point.
We hope this initiative will help more children and adults lead happy and productive lives. Please pass this on to anyone who might benefit from this.
Yakov Horowitz
Director, Center for Jewish Family Life/Project YES
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