Besides, he does seem happy. When she asks him how he’s doing, everything is always, “Geshmak, amazing, chasdei Hashem.” So, like everybody else, she’s lulled into thinking everything is geshmak, amazing, baruch Hashem.

Only every now and then at PTA, or when she’s speaking on the phone to his mentor, the rebbi he really listens to, she’ll say, “I really think he should be throwing a ball around or jogging or something physical. He’s so good at sports. It was like breathing to him before this turnaround.”

But like her son, his rebbi just smiles at her as if she is a little child who simply doesn’t get it. She knows the look. She recognizes the indulgent smile. “You’re the mother. What could you possibly know about a boy who’s serious about becoming a talmid chacham?” he seems to be saying.

What does she know, indeed?

But now he’s 19 and suddenly, he’s coming home from yeshivah more often than not. He’s staying out late at night, and not because he’s so wrapped up in a sugya that he forgets the time. Not even because he’s shooting a few baskets.

Nevertheless, whenever he comes home, she and her husband welcome him.

“It’s great to see you, Chaim! You want to borrow the car? Sure! I made your favorite deli for supper. Do you need money?”

She and her husband are generous with him always because he generally never asks for much. But now, she finds herself thinking twice. What if he wants to buy cigarettes with the money — or worse? She can’t support that.

So on yet another day that he’s home from yeshivah, as he’s pulling himself out of bed at noon, she says to him, “Chaim, it’s time to talk.”

“I’m burnt out,” he admits.

“I can believe it,” she answers.

“I don’t want to do anything but party. I want to just get away from it all, to chill in the sun even though it’s the middle of the zeman. I don’t know when I want to come back or if I want to come back.”

“Maybe you want to go to school? Learn a trade? Do you want to get a job?” she asks. “You don’t have to stay in learning full time if you feel it’s too much for you. You can still be an erliche Yid and work.”

But at this point, Chaim is done. All he wants is to chill, chill, chill.

Thus begins all the concerned conversations with his rebbeim. Where were they before, when she shared her reservations with them? Now we’re going to talk, now that he’s already burnt out? she finds herself screaming in her head. Why did no one see this coming?

“You’re the mother,” her inner voice whispers. “It’s your responsibility to make sure your children are thriving. You should’ve stood your ground and insisted that he take care of himself physically and emotionally.”

She laughs to herself then. Even she realizes the absurdity of that last statement. Try “insisting” your teenage child do anything. Especially Chaim. He’d always been strong minded and intense. And as a black-or-white thinking teenager, extreme. To him, either you were the next gadol hador or you were an ois varf. There was no in-between. You were either the top or a failure.

Nobody so far has been able to relieve him of that notion. So, naturally. he’d gone for gadol hador.

And now, after less than two years, he’s burnt out.

She finds herself wondering, when IS the right time to stand up and make a fuss? When does it make sense to respectfully say, “I hear you, Rabbi X and yes, Chaim’s hasmadah is admirable, but as his mother, who knows her son’s nature, I must insist you enforce downtime in his learning schedule. Otherwise, I can see his learning getting seriously derailed down the line.”

She has no answers. What could have been done, what should have been done? She doesn’t know. Maybe I am “just” the mother, she thinks, and really, what do I know about shteiging?

What Chaim’s mother may not appreciate is that she does possess a secret ingredient that no one else in the world has: maternal intuition.

That is her gift from G-d, hers alone, and she must learn to heed its voice.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 731)