Family First Inbox: Issue 953

“I’m not sure how long it’s been since you were in shidduchim, but boys (or their mothers) won’t even give an overweight girl a chance”
You Gave Me Hope [Inbox / Issue 952]
Dear Happily Mismatched,
Your letter about how you’re fuller and your husband is thinner, but he appreciated your looks as opposed to appreciating you despite your looks, really touched me as an overweight girl in shidduchim. So firstly, thank you. It gives me so much hope.
I’m not sure how long it’s been since you were in shidduchim, but boys (or their mothers) won’t even give an overweight girl a chance. There were times when we checked out a boy first and asked a shadchan to redt it and the first question the shadchan asked was: What is her size? When they heard I wasn’t thin, they refused to even suggest it because they knew the boy’s side would never give a yes.
I wish and daven that they would just give me a chance, but sadly they won’t. (I’ve had one date in the past two and a half years).
Thank you for raising the awareness that boys can be happy even if the girl doesn’t fit into the “societal beauty” standards. Maybe even one mother/boy out there will now give someone a chance!
Another Overweight Girl in Shidduchim
It Comes Afterward [Conversation Continues / Issue 952]
In response to Vichna Belsky’s letter, where she said love in marriage is an old Jewish concept, not a new one, I’d like to make a point. Everybody will agree that Jewish marriage has always been about growth and love. However, I think the “new concept” refers to the expectation that love needs to be established before marriage. That’s a non-Jewish concept and may lead to disappointment in the early stages of marriage for some. Ultimately, love in a Jewish marriage stems from living, giving, and growing together. Love in marriage isn’t a new concept. It’s the “marriage for love” which is.
Libby Lebrecht
Don’t Try to Fix Me [The Story of a Home / Issue 951]
It’s with great interest and heartwarming silent tears that I related to the great kindness of Beit Nechama. I never presented with any “off-the-derech issues” — miraculously — but I suffered in silence for too many years. I always wished there were people who would be kind enough to make me feel part of their life.
Many people have done kindnesses for me when I needed it and still do, since I stem from a super dysfunctional family with zero immediate family support and stepping on eggshells family relationships. But their kindness came with and continues to have a price tag, always making me feel less than. This is because they were always trying to “fix me.”
As Sara Vital, the director of Beit Nechama explained, “If we could just hold space, with no agenda to fix children or force them to change, that in itself will create space for healing to occur.” Thank you for bringing up this issue. No one wants to be fixed, but everyone wants to be “held” — given the space to grow.
Name Withheld
It Should Have Continued [Real Life / Issue 950]
Thank you for a wonderful magazine. My family and friends know that Mishpacha is an important part of my oneg Shabbos! I’m remiss for not writing letters to the editor just to say thank you for so many impactful articles.
I read the story “The Next Stage,” about a woman who turned to Ozempic to have an easier time in shidduchim, with pain in my heart. The protagonist described the painful scenarios so articulately and realistically, which I hope is a wakeup call for readers.
That being said, I thought the story needed to have continued on another couple of paragraphs or so, and then it would’ve been incredibly productive. Those few lines, “There’s still the hard work of accepting myself, of learning to live in the moment, of healing from the pain of the past. It’s not really over. It’s just the beginning,” while she continues taking Ozempic, wasn’t enough. It was a nod to the super-important message that self-image isn’t dependent on a number on the scale or others’ opinion of our bodies, but it wasn’t developed enough in comparison to the rest of the article detailing how horribly society treats fat people.
Please allow me to present how I wish the article had continued: “When I choose to take Ozempic (which may change in the future), I’m aware this is a choice I’m making for myself, as a tool for me to navigate something that has been challenging for me. The fact that other people had an issue with my weight and treated me disrespectfully was and is absolutely wrong of them. The fact that people treat me better now that I’m thin, as if I’m somehow now more deserving of respect, is absolutely wrong of them. I challenge the voices in my head that echo the messages I’ve received from a society that hates fatness: I always was worthy of respect and I always will be worthy of respect, no matter what I eat or how I exercise or the number on the scale or in the tags on my clothing. It’s so hard to be single, and I daven every day to find my bashert soon. Now I know that my size has nothing to do with that.”
Shira Greenfield, R.D.
Baltimore, MD
Riki Aced It [To Rock the Cradle / Issue 950]
I wanted to comment on a recent chapter of this serial about a family and their overly involved father. I love the serial and I’m very invested in the characters and their issues. I was so impressed by how Riki handled the confrontation with her father when they got her college acceptance letter. She spoke so maturely and conveyed her points so respectfully; she must have spoken to a mentor or maybe even a therapist to give such a measured response. I love seeing this in frum literature!
Leah Z.
Protect Your Child [Family Connections / Issue 949]
Reading a recent Connections column where before going on a vacation with the extended family, a mother asks for advice on how to deal with her three-year-old nephew bullying her two-year-old son on how to deal with a family vacation, my reactions ranged from dismay to utter disbelief.
The answer opens with a statement about the sister-in-law’s “philosophy of parenting.” Sorry. Allowing one’s child — even a three-year-old — to repeatedly physically harm another child isn’t a “philosophy of parenting.” It’s laziness, if not downright negligence (and sadly, from what I have seen, increasingly common.) A parent is responsible to prevent their child from causing harm. Full stop.
Nevertheless, the mother of the hurt child is advised not to intervene — or even ask her sister-in-law to intervene — at the risk that she will be “annoyed, offended, or put off.” Since when is that a reason not to protect one’s child? What happens down the line to a child who repeatedly sees that his mother goes to great lengths to avoid the discomfort of a confrontation rather than actively protecting him? Does he even bother speaking up if there’s a problem later in life?
The best a browbeaten mother can do, according to the column, is engage in some namby-pamby “CLeaR” methodology, which the author at least concedes isn’t realistic.
But then, the clincher. Because the CLeaR method isn’t sustainable, and because we don’t want to, Heaven forfend, offend the offending sister-in-law, the two-year-old’s entire family should miss the entire vacation — for several years, no less! Would this not “offend” the grandparents or at least deny them the joy of having all their offspring together? (Not to mention, how will they avoid speaking lashon hara to explain their opting out?) Does this not also punish the other children who will miss enjoying time with their grandparents and cousins? All this is for some reason overshadowed by the scary thought of “putting off” the other mother. This is nothing less than enablement.
I’m a mother of many children, baruch Hashem, now aged 28 down to 11. They all knew from an early age both that they’d better never hurt another child and that I will not allow another child to hurt them.
It only happened a very few times that a child of mine was bullied by someone, but when it did happen, I put an end to it quickly. How did I accomplish this? Simple. I used my own “Clear” method. Yes, even with a three-year-old. Here’s how it’s done. Get right up close to the offending child. Bend down until you’re at eye level and look him straight in the eye. Then, in a clear, firm voice, say, “Don’t you EVER hurt my child again. Do you understand?” Hold eye contact for another several seconds. In most cases, problem solved.
Will the child and his mother be upset? Offended? Angry? Very possibly. But I fail to see why that should prevent me from proactively protecting my child.
I.K.
Far Rockaway, NY
Sarah Chana Radcliffe responds:
You make some excellent points! And some not great ones, too.
Let’s start with the latter. You claim that the letter writer doesn’t care to protect her child. However, her entire letter is asking about how to protect her child and the entire answer is about how to protect her child. This mother hasn’t suggested that she wants to protect the sister-in-law instead of protecting her child. She's saying that the visit to the summer home is unpleasant because she has to spend all her time protecting her child and she doesn't want to do that anymore.
Unfortunately, the sister-in-law doesn’t share in the task because of her stated parenting philosophy (“don’t get involved”) and this means that the job of protection falls 100 percent on the letter writer. The writer can’t “make” the sister-in-law supervise her own son, so she’s wondering if she can just skip the family vacation until the kids grow up a bit.
You seem to suggest that the toddler’s mom could — if she made a big enough fuss and was willing to “offend the offending mother” — effect a change of heart. From her description of the sister-in-law, I didn’t assume that she could do that. But let’s say that if she was willing to risk harming her relationship with her sister-in-law, maybe she could effect a change. The letter writer would then have two options to choose from: 1) Risk creating a permanent rift with her sister-in-law in order to protect her son (I’m sure you’re aware that these things happen) or 2) Disappear for a while in order to protect him and in doing so, disappoint grandparents, kids, and cousins for a few years.
These are both bad choices. This is a place where a rav can weigh in on whether being rodef shalom overrides disappointing grandparents, etc., or whether the latter is a form of kibbud av v’eim that overrides rodef shalom. I don’t know; I just know that families can be mortally wounded from seemingly small insults and as a family counselor, my instinct was rather to have the disappointment and not the permanent conflict.
You make this decision sound like weakness. I personally think it would take enormous strength to sacrifice the family vacation for the sake of shalom.
And now to your excellent points: The lack of confrontation does, I agree, enable the poor parenting and poor sister-in-lawing of the sister-in-law. However, knowing when one can be an effective “teacher” and when one can’t is discussed in the Gemara where it states (in Yevamos 65b) that just as it’s a mitzvah to say something that will be heard it’s a mitzvah to NOT say something that won’t be heard. The letter writer has tried to approach her sister-in-law and has learned that the sister-in-law isn’t interested.
Finally, your own strategy of getting down in a child’s face and telling him not to stop his aggression is a tool I love — when used on a child who belongs to an adult I’ll never see again. I agree with you that this is the simplest and most effective strategy for this kind of antisocial behavior. However, I don’t feel it can safely be used in this family (for the reasons I mentioned in the article).
(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 953)
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