Jewish Life Digital Edition September 2015 | Page 113
GOT ISSUES? SERENNE CAN HELP EMAIL: [email protected]
Dear Fed Up
Your mom and you have lost the way in managing your
relationship in a healthy way and have entered into a
power struggle which could have a seriously negative
outcome. She is imposing a rigid style of parenting,
DEAR SERENNE
which you are finding unyielding and dictatorial. As
’m feeling so fed up and frustrated
you begin to explore your emerging adult identity and
at home. My mom is hectically frum
some independence, her will is being pitched against
and forces so much stuff on me. I’m
yours, ushering conflict and a combat zone, particularly
in the area of religious observance.
16 years old and she finds fault with
The clue to what I believe is going on lies in what you say about your mom
everything I do. She just says no to
having been allowed “to do whatever she wanted growing up”. It seems your
everything. It’s either that my skirt
gran may have had an indulgent, more permissive style of parenting, which
is too short, or my top is too low, or
lacked boundaries and left your mom feeling without a firm anchor. Perhaps,
I can’t go somewhere where there
in hindsight, your mom wishes she had felt more firmly grounded, with
are going to be boys. I feel like she’s
safer parameters in place as she went through her teenage years. Because
breathing down my neck. She gets
of this, she is probably unconsciously drawn to the structure that halacha
hysterical about what I am allowed
provides. But it’s her ‘packaging’ and ‘marketing’ strategies around religious
to read, eat, and she recently decided
practice that are really failing her. She is using control without negotiation
to get rid of our TV. I’m sick of her
and compromise to enforce what she believes is best for you. She is trying
dictating to me and feel like she’s
to protect you, but it is being seen by you as authoritarian and perhaps even
putting me off being religious with all
punitive. In the process, she is unwittingly recruiting religion as the enemy,
and runs the risk of turning you against the very thing she sees as offering
her obsessions. My gran allowed her
you a wholesome path to follow. I believe she has a ‘blind spot’ in recognising
to do whatever she wanted growing
this, and this knee-jerk way of handling you without two-way dialogue puts
up, so how come she’s like this with
you at risk of becoming more oppositional to what she represents and your
me? How do I get her to back off?
behaviour going underground.
Fed Up
This is not in the interests of open and transparent
relating, and does a lot to undermine the trust
between you. Your mom needs to give you the space
to construct your own unique relationship with
Hashem on your terms, within the wide framework of
halacha, and your religious expression needs to reflect
who you are, not just a one-size-fits-all prescriptive
cloning of her and every stringency imaginable. She
needs to honour that you are not just an extension or
satellite of hers, but a young Jewish woman trying to
consolidate her religious identity. She may need to
relook at how she is presenting religion to you and
the extreme approach she is taking, and find a way
to do so that is more appealing. You need to realise
that rebelling against religion is a bit like “throwing
out the baby with the bathwater”. You are resisting
what your mom stands for and her stringent
interpretation, which feels suffocating, not the religion itself or its baseline requirements. If the two of you are unsuccessful
in making these adjustments to your interactions, you may need a mediator in the form of a therapist, who could offer some
objectivity, and help you both to learn to pick your fights, see things more globally and from each other’s perspective, rather
than getting stuck on details, and hopefully, move towards a less turbulent path with better connection.
GOOD LUCK!
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I
Serenne Kaplan is a clinical psychologist in private practice. She has three children, two of whom are teenagers.
JEWISH LIFE ■ ISSUE 88 109