Can't you control your wild boys so we can have some peace? 

We sisters and sisters-in-law were planning on a fun, bonding weekend with all our little princesses playing together. Why, oh, why couldn’t Liba control those wild boys of hers so that the rest of us could have some peace and quiet?

Nechy: A big family Shabbos really isn’t a place for hands-off parenting if your kids are so hard to control

Liba: If you’d try to include my kids instead of controlling them, they might be more cooperative

Nechy

Sitting in the car after a whirlwind of packing and organizing and last minute calls to Ma and my sisters, I could finally relax.

I turned up the music and the AC and leaned back, closing my eyes. “Ahhh. We did it.”

Shua chuckled. “Some of us still have two hours of driving to get through.”

“True point. Let’s see how long the girlies manage.”

I glanced back as I spoke. Our two little girls were happily ensconced in their seats, Riki sucking her thumb and gazing out of the window, and Leah drifting off for a nap, clutching her teddy bear. Perfect.

My phone rang. It was my younger sister Chevy.

“You on your way?”

“Yup. You?”

“Yes! We just pulled out. The race is on!”

“Um, you have a slightly shorter trip, just saying.”

Chevy laughed. “I know, I know. I’ll try save you a nice room, okay?”

“I think Ma has all the rooms figured out, but thanks, anyway.”

A message from my sister-in-law Michal pinged in when I hung up the phone. Tova can’t stop talking about Riki. She’s so excited for them to play together again.

I smiled. Michal’s Tova was exactly the same age as Riki; I was grateful that my kids had cousins they loved playing with.

Riki, too!! As long as they let their little sisters tag along 😉

The road flashed by, Shua switched the music to another playlist, and I distributed snacks. Then Ma called, asking if we could pick up some more frozen french fries for the barbecue supper that night, and my other sister-in-law Esty wanted to know if we’d brought any storybooks for the littles, or if she should bring a bunch to share.

“Sure,” I told Ma, simultaneously texting Esty to please bring. My girls love stories, and anything they don’t have at home is automatically super exciting. Maybe they’d actually agree to go to sleep if I had a bedtime story they considered worthwhile.

Then I closed the phone, closed my eyes, and just breathed in the anticipation. This was going to be fun.

W

e’ve done grand family Shabbos Nachamu get-togethers before, but those had been the country, crowding into rickety bungalows and trying to figure out accommodations that worked for everyone, at least some of the time.

This time, though, we were doing something different. My parents rented a huge house in Toms River, complete with enough bedrooms for everyone plus their kids, and of course, a pool. Amazingly, the stars aligned, everyone’s schedules matched up, and we were going to spend an extended weekend with the whole, entire family together — all eight of us siblings, five of us married with kids, and of course, my parents. Okay, it wasn’t exactly 100 percent smooth sailing, it took a bit of wrangling to make sure that both my brothers could take a couple days off work, and then we had some back-and-forth with the menu and preps, but we worked it out pretty easily.

This Shabbos was the only thing my mother could talk about for weeks. Maybe months. She’s a super hands-on grandmother and really big on family — growing up with just one brother meant that she never took our large, bustling, household for granted. Don’t fight with your siblings; they’re going to be your lifelong friends, she always told us.

And it was true. My siblings and I were close; and it wasn’t just us, the sisters-in-law were really a part of the family, too. After my oldest sister, Liba, I have two brothers, then it’s me and my sister Chevy — then two boys and the youngest, Atara, who’s still in high school and is pretty much the family princess.

The cutest part is that all of us have kids around the same age. Or at least Esty, Michal, and I do. Our oldests are five, four, and four years old respectively — and Chevy has a two-year-old and a baby. With all our kids ranging in age from zero to five, it was pretty much a kindergarten when we all got together, but it was fun.

The only outlier was Liba. She has two boys, both born long before any of the rest of us were even married, they must be what, eight and ten by now? I frowned; it was literally a whole different age group from our little gang, which was mostly made up of girls.

At least Liba’s kids had each other.

WE

arrived in a flurry of suitcases and greetings and hugs and who’s here already. Ma showed everyone their rooms like she’d built the mansion herself.

It really was gorgeous, nothing like the bungalows we’d rented over the years, with their creaky doors, mold in the closets, and fighting over the room with the better AC.

I was just finishing unpacking our clothing when a wail rose from the direction of the stairs. It sounded like Riki.

I dropped the girls’ Shabbos dresses on the bed and hurried to the staircase. Zevi and Shalom, Liba’s boys, hurtled past me down the hallway, yelling something about choosing beds first. At the bottom of the staircase, Liba was holding a crying Riki, trying to comfort her.

“What happened, sweetie?”

Liba looked up. “Oh, hi, Nechy. Don’t worry, she’s fine. One of my boys bumped into her when she was coming down the stairs, and she slipped, but she was literally almost downstairs, she didn’t fall very far.”

Um, okay?

“She could have, though,” I blurted. Couldn’t her kids watch where they were going instead of barreling around making a racket?

“She’s fine,” Liba said. “The boys are literally bursting; it was a long drive. They’re, like, exploding with energy. They’ll calm down soon.”

I bit my lip. I hoped she was right.

S

habbos was beautiful. Really special.

It was like a family simchah, without any of the stress of actually making a simchah. Just sitting and relaxing together after candlelighting, schmoozing with Ma and the others, shepping nachas from the enjoyment of the kids getting to finally spend time with cousins they rarely saw….

And the meal. Ma had outdone herself, and Michal — who worked as a party planner — had taken charge of the decor and tablescape, so everything looked gorgeous. Everyone had contributed toward the food, the men sang, the kids played, and we women got to take turns serving, sitting, and keeping each other company.

It was a dream Shabbos — except for two clouds on the horizon.

Liba’s kids.

They were just… so noisy and unruly. Running all over, barely missing the delicate furniture. Helping themselves to food straight from the serving platters.

They disrupted the little kids’ games, running between them and snatching away balls and whatnot. It felt like they were always in the middle of some major game,  fight, or something (so much for the exploding with energy and calming down soon). And they seemed to think that kicking around a ball right near the Shabbos table was normal behavior.

At first, we all just waited for Liba and Dovid to say something — this was about their kids, after all. But aside from a couple of half-hearted attempts to get the boys to sit down, and telling them to try to keep the ball away from the table, they didn’t do much.

Eventually, Menachem — Esty’s husband, and my oldest brother — had enough. After the ball flew over his head and landed in a glass salad bowl — thankfully not smashing it, but getting close — he took the ball, threw it out into the garden, and told the boys firmly that there was no more ball playing on this floor of the house.

“There’s a garden, there’s a basement. Enough is enough! This is a Shabbos meal, not a playground,” he said.

Z

evi went along with the men to shul the next morning, which was kind of a respite, but Shalom was doubly bored without his brother, and apparently the only thing he could think of to relieve his boredom was to start up with his little cousins.

“Oysh, stop bothering him,” Esty said, exasperated, when Shalom snuck up behind three-year-old Yanky and shouted boo! Yanky, of course, burst into loud wails, and Esty was left soothing him for the next 20 minutes, while Liba called Shalom over and tried to distract him with a magazine.

Duh, even I knew my nephew well enough to know that that wasn’t going to work.

Shalom flipped through the magazine for exactly 30 seconds, and then he was off again, clambering up to the kitchen counter to grab a slice of Ma’s Bundt cake.

“Sit down, zeeskeit, I’ll give you a plate,” I could hear my mother say soothingly.

“Don’t need one!” Shalom retorted merrily, stuffing the cake in his mouth.

“Shalom, come here!” Liba called, but I doubted my nephew was even listening.

It was a relief when the men finally came home. Maybe having his brother around would help. And surely Dovid could take more of a stand, even if Liba seemed to be doing the hands-off parenting thing all the way.

But I should’ve known better.

The day meal was, if possible, even more difficult than Friday night’s — not because the boys were throwing stuff around near the table, but because they’d decided to hang out in the basement — which was where all the toys were, and all the little cousins were playing.

Riki, Leah, and all the other little kids were in seventh heaven with the fairyland of a basement chock-full of toys — or they would have been, if not for the fact that their older, bigger, and very noisy cousins were intent on ruining the fun.

It seemed that every other minute, one of the ‘bigger’ little ones was running upstairs with reports that Zevi knocked Tzviki over and Shalom turned the dollhouse upside down and everything fell out!

Riki and some of the others were in tears, Yanky refused to go play downstairs if Shalom was around, and my sisters-in-law, both of whom had little babies, too, were getting more and more exasperated, juggling babies and crying toddlers.

Chevy and Atara went to sit downstairs for a while, and came up to switch places with me and Michal a little later, so they could have something to eat.

“Good luck,” Chevy muttered as she passed my seat. To Liba, sitting across from me, she said, “Maybe your boys could play somewhere else? The little kids are all down there, and it’s just not a great mix… and they don’t exactly listen to me, either.”

Esty, who was trying to juggle her baby and Yanky, and hadn’t yet touched her food, nodded in fervent agreement.

Liba made a helpless gesture with her hands. “Listen, I’ll ask them, but they’re kids, too. They want to play and kick a ball around, whatever, and you know what happened when they played upstairs yesterday.”

She didn’t make a move to go tell them anything, though.

Instead, when they next came up to grab some deli roll (couldn’t she tell them to sit at the table and eat like menschen, seriously?), Liba called them over. “Boys, can you try really hard not to bother the little kids? And maybe play in another part of the basement?”

“We’re not bothering them!” Zevi said, opening his eyes wide.

“Okay, that’s great! Want to sit with me a little?”

“Nah, it’s boring. Maybe soon.”

And the boys were off again.

Sure enough, not ten minutes later, three of the little ones trailed in, half in tears.

Why couldn’t Liba see that her methods were totally ineffective?

I

was exhausted by the time the meal was over, and Chevy and my sisters-in-law looked the same.

“Should we take turns with the naps, so there’s always someone watching the kids downstairs?” I suggested.

“Sounds good,” Michal agreed instantly.

“I can take the first shift with you if you want,” Esty offered.

“I’m going to try and get both my kids to nap now. If they do, I’ll sleep while they sleep,” Chevy told us.

“Good luck with that.”

I watched out of the corner of my eye as Chevy headed off with her two-year-old and baby, and Liba followed her. Was she going to nap, too? What about joining the rotation, watching her boys? Was Dovid going to stick around in case they caused trouble? The boys weren’t exactly the obedient type; they didn’t seem to take their aunts that seriously. What if they started up with the toddlers again?

Esty and I settled ourselves on the basement couch, where we could supervise the kids at close range. Everyone was fine. Riki, Leah, Tova, Tzviki, Leah’le, Yanky, all of them. There were tons of toys and everyone seemed to be getting along.

Except for Zevi and Shalom.

Fighting with each other. Fighting with the little kids over who gets the ball, the space, some stupid game that I was sure they would never have looked at twice if the younger kids hadn’t wanted it.

When Shalom grabbed a pack of cards from Leah’le’s hand, ripping the package in two, I’d had it.

“Stop it! This isn’t ours, these are not our toys, you’ve damaged someone’s property,” I snapped at him. “Give me the cards right now.”

“It’s not your toys either,” he muttered, and then threw them on the floor, where they scattered at my feet.

Esty bent down to help me clean up. The boys ran off, laughing.

“This is not okay,” she hissed at me. “Where are Liba and Dovid? How can they leave us to supervise these wild kids who don’t listen to anyone?”

“I would just ignore them, but they’re scaring the little kids. No one’s enjoying themselves anymore.” I looked around — the fun, light atmosphere had disintegrated. A few of the kids were crying. They wanted the cards, they wanted to play without being disturbed, they were scared….

“Okay, time for Shabbos party,” Esty decided.

We herded everyone upstairs, set out bowls, and divided up packages of chips and Bissli, sour sticks and marshmallows.

“Sour sticks! Give me!” Zevi hollered, snatching a handful from the package.

“Me too, me too!” Shalom jumped up and down.

“Boys, don’t you think one each is enough? There’s other food too….” Esty trailed off. The boys were off again, this time to the fridge, where they jostled each other looking for the Coke. Zevi poured heaping glassfuls for each of them, the brown liquid sloshing over and dripping down the white cabinet fronts, onto the floor.

I looked at Esty. “I can’t handle this.”

Chevy came in just then, holding baby Rina. “No luck nap coordinating; oh, well,” she said with a sigh. Then she noticed the boys, the Coke, the mess. “Where’s Liba?”

“Um, napping, I think?”

Esty, Chevy and I looked at each other. None of us said anything, but we were all thinking the same thing.

We were all up, we didn’t go to nap Shabbos afternoon, because we had kids to watch.

So did Liba. Her boys were causing trouble, causing damage, wreaking havoc wherever they went.

Why, over this entire Shabbos, was she not taking any responsibility and trying to rein them in? How could she just leave them to it and go to sleep?

If I could tell Liba one thing, it would be: Your children are wreaking havoc on our once-a-year family get-together. Can’t you push yourself to do something to rein in their behavior, instead of just shrugging it off and going to nap?

Liba

When Ma called to confirm the family Shabbos, I was excited, but also… a little uneasy.

I love my family. We’ve always been so close and connected. Growing up, I had my brothers and eventually my sisters Nechy and Chevy. We were always the family doing stuff together, having a blast.

And then I got married. My brothers were in yeshivah. Nechy and Chevy were still in school. Life just… changed. I was the married one, then the boys came along and I was even busier. My sisters were the doting aunts, and then they were the doting aunts from faraway seminary, and then they were the busy aunts juggling college and work and shidduchim….

I was so excited for my kids to have cousins. As my younger siblings got married and began their own families, I dreamed of family get-togethers with the kids playing together, sharing the babysitting with my siblings, watching the closeness filter down to the next generation.

It didn’t really work out like that.

My boys are several years older than Menachem and Esty’s oldest. Most of my siblings had girls first, cute little princesses who weren’t interested in my sons’ rough-and-tumble games. And with the cousins all being age five and under, my kids have kind of lost interest in the whole getting-together-with-family thing.

Which is why they weren’t particularly enthusiastic when I told them about the family Shabbos. They love their Bubby and Zeidy, but they don’t love the whole extended family thing; it just doesn’t seem to cater to them at all. It’s the adults and the little kids, and two elementary-school-aged boys trying to fit in… somewhere.

“After we spend Shabbos with the family, we’re going to the country, okay?”

That mollified them. Zevi and Shalom love the country; they live for the freedom — running free, the great outdoors, making friends and playing ball.

Hopefully, Shabbos would be okay. Hopefully, we’d all get to enjoy ourselves. And afterwards, we’d take the boys on a vacation that would suit them a little more.

“It’s just a Shabbos. It’ll be fine,” Dovid said, when I shared my concerns the night before we were scheduled to leave.

I gave him a tired smile. “Amen.”

B

ut it wasn’t fine. In fact, it went wrong from pretty much the first minute.

The drive was long, the air conditioning in the car wasn’t working particularly well, and the boys were exploding with energy by the time we arrived. We’d considered stopping the car at a local park or something, let them let off their energy, but it was getting close to suppertime, and all in all, getting some real food to eat was a better idea than spending a half hour running around the park.

So we came, greeted Ma, schlepped in suitcases, and the next thing I know, Zevi and Shalom are racing each other up the staircase to our rooms.

Which would have been fine, except that Nechy’s little Riki was carefully making her way down the stairs at the very same time.

So, totally normal. Totally expected. My boys aren’t used to little kids, they probably didn’t even see her. And Riki lost her balance, and slipped down the last three stairs, and I was right there to catch her, but which four-year-old relishes tripping down the stairs and being picked up by an aunt she hasn’t seen in several months?

She burst out crying, and Nechy came flying out of her room.

“What happened? Sweetie, are you okay?” Her voice was a little high-pitched and anxious. Guess that’s what happens when you have two little girls and you’re not used to boy action.

“Hi, Nechy. Don’t worry, she’s fine,” I reassured my sister, explaining what had happened.

Nechy looked aghast. “She could have fallen from halfway up the stairs!”

“She’s fine, though,” I said again. “And don’t worry, the boys are just full of energy from the drive. They’ll calm down soon.”

Besides, I wanted to say, they’re boys. They like to run. They’re not trying to hurt anyone. This is just what having cousins of different ages is all about. Isn’t it?

A

pparently not, according to my siblings.

I guess they just didn’t get it, but I wished they would try to understand a little. Their kids were young, they all had each other. It was a different stage.

On Friday night, when my sisters and sisters-in-law chilled on the couches with magazines, their kids playing together in the basement, I had two overstimulated, very bored boys to contend with.

“Maaaaa, there’s nothing to doooo,” Zevi whined.

“I’m bored. I’m hungry.” Shalom kicked at the corner of the armchair.

“Aren’t there some board games downstairs?” I asked.

“There are. They have great toys and stuff,” Chevy said, looking up from her magazine.

“Okay, great! Why don’t you go down and choose one?”

“Play with us,” Zevi said.

I stifled a sigh. It had been a long day, trying to pitch in for Shabbos while keeping the boys entertained. My sisters and sisters-in-law had little babies, their hands were full, and I’d spent most of the day in the kitchen with Ma, putting things in order and finishing up all the fresh food.

I could have done with a half hour to sit and relax, but my kids needed me.

“Sure, bring the game upstairs,” I said.

We played round after round of Perpetual Commotion until the men came home from shul. Whew, time for the meal.

Dovid and I seated the boys in between us, but once Kiddush and a nibble of challah were done, they disappeared the way that most of the kids had gone — down to the basement. I considered following, checking what they were up to, but they were back a few minutes later — with a ball.

Oh, great. This house was really not set up for ten-year-old boys and balls. I wished that we could’ve done a bungalow Shabbos again — at least in the creaky old places, I didn’t have to worry about my kids damaging anything.

At least Zevi and Shalom were entertaining each other, and staying nearby so I could keep an eye on them even while I (finally) had a chance to eat something and catch up with my sisters.

Or at least, I tried to. It wasn’t easy. It felt like every other minute someone was commenting on something Zevi or Shalom was doing. “Hey, that ball is going pretty near the Shabbos table, can you tell the boys to be careful?”

“Whoops — that’s crystal, put it down!”

“Zevi, there’s a serving spoon, okay? You don’t need to take with your hands.”

“Liba, can you ask your boys to stop with the ball? These salad bowls are delicate.”

Seriously, this is a family Shabbos, with children around — why did they even put out crystal and glass serving dishes?

I wanted to ask them if they would put out crystal glassware on the basement floor, with the toddlers around. Just like they wouldn’t dream of doing that, they could hardly expect boys aged eight and ten not to run around.

“Maybe we should use disposables tomorrow,” I offered, but no one seemed to be listening.

S

habbos at home wasn’t like this.

The house was child-friendly, or rather, active-school-aged-boy friendly. Zevi and Shalom could kick a ball around the living room if they wanted; we didn’t have delicate spindly lamps or potted plants at every turn. But at home, they actually wanted to sit at the table. We centered the Shabbos meal around them, and it worked. Here, between the adult conversations dominating the table, and the little kids taking over the basement downstairs, there was only so much we could do to try involve them in the meal.

Dovid took Zevi with him to shul Shabbos morning, with the goal of giving me a little respite, but Shalom on his own was maybe worse — he didn’t even have his brother for company. By the time we got to Kiddush, I was exhausted.

“One jelly bean, one meringue, and then cake,” I heard Nechy telling her little girls.

Ha. As if that would work with—

“Ooooh! Give me!” Shalom yelled, snatching a handful of jelly beans. The bowl tipped over, of course, and a multicolored array of jelly beans cascaded over the table and floor.

My mother, bless her, just patted his shoulder and bent down to start picking up the pieces, but my sisters were a little more vocal.

“Shalom! Oy! Careful!”

“We need to leave some for everyone, okay?”

Shalom was in jelly bean heaven. I doubted that he even heard them.

We were in trouble.

The men trooped in before I could get rid of the incriminating evidence. And besides, Shalom was over at his brother’s side in a flash, crowing, “I had twenty million jelly beans!” and waggling his red-stained fingers in Zevi’s face.

“Hey, no fair, I want jelly beans.”

I caught sight of Zevi’s pants pockets, bulging suspiciously. “Bar mitzvah,” Dovid said, shrugging apologetically. “He said he would share the taffies with Shalom.”

Great, just great.

Maybe it would keep them out of mischief for a few minutes, at least.

SO

yes, the boys were wild during lunch. I knew they would be. They were still bored, still feeling lonely in the crowd, and now they were hyped up on sugary treats as well.

We got through the meal, and I was drained. Nap time.

“What are you doing with the afternoon?” I asked Dovid.

He waved a hand. “I figured I’d learn a little, sit out on the patio. You can go nap, I’ll be around.”

I nodded. If Dovid would be around learning, I could definitely go for a rest undisturbed. Perfect.

I was a little sad, to be honest, watching my sisters and sisters-in-law figuring out babysitting rotations for their kids. They all seemed so… together, all at the same stage, all in sync with each other. Somehow, they’ve all coalesced over the years, a gang with their same-age kids and same-stage lives, and I… I don’t know, somehow I’m out in the cold.

T

wo hours later, I felt ready to face the music again.

But when I heard the noise coming from the kitchen, I almost turned right back around again.

Was that Zevi or Shalom? Shouting? My sister Chevy, sounding uptight and very un-Chevy-ish? What was going on?

I took a deep breath and entered the fray.

“Maaa!” Zevi bounded over. “We had sour sticks! Tons! And Coke! Two cups!”

“Whatever isn’t on the floor, yes,” Chevy said. Her tone was acerbic.

I looked at her. Didn’t she realize he was just being a regular ten-year-old boy? Why the accusatory tone?

Just keep quiet. It’s not worth it. Don’t say anything. Don’t ruin the atmosphere, I coached myself.

But my sisters didn’t seem to be thinking that way.

“Liba, it’s good you’re up. Your boys… they need some supervision.” Nechy looked over at me, her face tight and upset.

“Supervision?”

Esty joined us. “Yes. Please. They’re bothering the little kids, they’re getting in the way, spilling stuff, and they don’t even listen to any of us. Isn’t there anything you can do to, like, control them a little?”

Control them?

“Um, they’re kids. Like yours.”

“Our kids aren’t ransacking the fridge and pulling each other’s toys away,” Nechy snapped back.

Boy, oh boy.

I couldn’t believe this was really happening.

My sisters and sisters-in-law, attacking me over my children — who they just couldn’t see as regular boys of that age, who needed their needs taken care of also.

What kind of family Shabbos was this, if we couldn’t give everyone a good time?

“Listen,” I said, not bothering to hide the frustration this time. “My kids are part of this family, too. Can we please think about their feelings over here? They don’t have company their own age, they’re bored — and honestly, if anyone would give them some positive attention, things would be so much easier.”

“It’s hard to give positive attention when they’re driving the little kids crazy all the time,” Chevy said.

“I know! But they’re only acting like that because everyone’s shoving them away like pesky flies. Your kids have each other; they have no one here. Talk to them, play with them, don’t keep giving out the snacks that make them crazy — if everyone helped out, they would be so much happier.” I took a deep breath. “They’re not bad kids; they’re normal kids. And if everyone treated them like that, we wouldn’t be having any trouble at all.”

If I could tell Nechy one thing, it would be: My children are part of the family, too. Instead of complaining, why can’t you try to help me cater this Shabbos to their needs, so that they can also enjoy themselves? 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1024)