Help your daughter find her footing after a year-long seminary high

My daughter came back from seminary a new person. I love that she has grown and is enthusiastic about her Yiddishkeit, but I also feel there’s an element of judgmentalism of us and the values we raised her with in her new persona. In addition, she’s really in the clouds, but has to live in the real world. How can I help her live in reality without quashing her beautiful idealism?

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or 25 years, in my capacity as menaheles and morah, I’ve been preparing seminary girls for their homecoming. I’ve tried to support their growth, encouraging them to make appropriate plans for the transition. I’ve emphasized that less said is more, that mothers love and want what’s best for their girls, but don’t want to feel rejected in the process.

Your home is the cocoon of your daughter’s development; it will always be her home. She’s missed everything about it, has counted down the days to her homecoming. This year, however, your daughter discovered her other home and heart: Jerusalem. Your daughter’s love of the Holy City is also real. There’s no competition! Let’s quiet the disquiet in our hearts that murmurs: “She wishes she were back in seminary; she’s not deliriously happy to be home.” (Good practice for when she enjoys Yom Tov at her in-laws’.) Let’s revel in this newfound attachment, celebrate, and share her “homesickness”: “It’s so hard to leave Jerusalem.”

Here’s another point: your daughter has no mother but you, and she never will. But if her eyes sparkle when she tells of a beloved mechaneches who touched, supported, or understood her, you’re blessed. It takes a whole team to raise children today, and if HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent messengers to partner with us and light up the way for our daughter, how fortunate are we.

Children are wired from birth to interpret their approval ratings in their parents’ eyes. She can read our face, our seismographic daughter, and she’ll read our disapproval and discomfort or our approval and pride. Even a mildly disparaging reaction on our part may force her retreat, and what a shame. She may really be worried that we’ll be the resistance.

In the Nurtured Heart approach to parenting, we super-energize experiences of success by naming and describing what we see and the way it demonstrates greatness. Let’s do it! “I noticed how patient and willing you were with Bubby tonight; I really see your maturity” or “I noticed how you took responsibility for the shopping. Oh, the places you will go!”

(Cautionary note: If you’re concerned about truly unhealthy patterns, seek appropriate guidance for yourself and your daughter.)

It’s really important for me to say this: Even a girl whose seminary experience was less than optimal, or who may have wasted or not maximized the opportunity, still gained in ways she may not count unless encouraged to review and reflect. She may need your help. Let’s have a dialogue without judgment, bringing just our open curiosity to understand her experience, so she can process the disappointment and identify the takeaways. Let’s create the forum. We may not be the one with whom she’ll choose to have these conversations, and that’s fine, but let’s open the door.

Because it’s been a year of little responsibility and much freedom for your daughter, she’s no longer in the habit of asking permission or declaring her whereabouts every time she leaves the house, nor considering your needs when making her plans. She doesn’t mean to be inconsiderate (though she may be). Coming back into family life effectively curbs her freedom. Let’s try to share our needs and expectations in a way that acknowledges her new status as an adult. (Girls, if you’re reading this, try to act like one!) We would do well to navigate this transition with a little humor!

Reaching maturity isn’t always a smooth process; sometimes it’s one step forward and two back. (We were no better!) Our daughters need us to make space for this work. We can’t be scorekeeping: “Yesterday you were a paragon of kibbud eim; today you’re simply an impossible adolescent! Yesterday you were up at the crack of dawn for vasikin; today you scraped by chatzos.”

She knows! She doesn’t need us to keep a scorecard. She feels badly enough without our help and without our “faces.” Let’s offer our unspoken motherly confidence that the transition to adulthood and to accomplishment winds through setbacks and mistakes. That consistent effort is the only measure of progress. That perfectionism is the assassin of greatness (how backward that sounds, but how true it is!) That we are, all of us, precious and desirable in our failures as in our triumphs, because we are banim ahuvim shel Makom, beloved children of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Our desire to be close to Him is the greatest measure of our worth.

— Mrs. Tamar Sokol

Mrs. Tamar Sokol, menaheles of Ateres Seminary for 25 years, has been nurtured in the unique derech hachinuch of her esteemed father, master mechanech, Rabbi Hillel Belsky. Mrs. Sokol is the founding menaheles of the new Neimas Bais Yaakov Seminary in Yerushalayim for 5784.

The more parents position themselves as “the voice of reality versus idealism,” the more they will push their daughter away from talking openly with them.

— Anonymous