Links on tzniut, teenage maturity, nursing in public

Coming soon to this blog, bli neder: (Mis)adventures in International Travel.

In the meantime:

Have you ever felt untzniusdik when wearing a stunning Shabbat or Yom Tov outfit on the street? Wolfish Musings and Parsha Blog have the solution.

Follow-up (Hebrew) to the Modiin Azrieli Mall "nursing in public" fiasco. The management changed its policy and claims to be reeducating staff on the subject. I don't know why the article mentions that the mother making the complaint was religious. Hat tip: Nursing in the Negev.

Can you spot a nursing mother in this picture?

Lion of Zion refers to my post on the jailed teenagers, in the context of early marriage among Jews. He writes, "As an aside, I would like to know where all the Israeli/Jewish human rights advocates were while the (minor) settlerettes sat in jail." I believe that Yitzchak Kadman, Israel's best-known child advocate, did speak out on the subject at the time.

A clean city with lots of shoe stores

I remember my mother taking me from store to store trying to find a pair of shoes that fit. My own daughter is fairly easy to shop for, but we must have gone into fifteen stores over two days to find sandals for her rapidly enlarging feet. In most of the stores, she wouldn't consider even a single pair. And of the ones she tried, none were comfortable.

I had asked her several times to look for girls in school with shoes that she liked, and find out where they got them. But she did not respond to this reasonable suggestion(!). In the second-to-last store the salesperson convinced her to try on half a dozen pairs. He offered one of the pairs, which she hated, about ten times. And we left empty-footed (figuratively speaking). I was about to give up when she mumbled something about Teva Naot. Lo and behold, a store selling that brand miraculously appeared, and we thankfully purchased the pair pictured above. Of all of the shoes she considered, this was the only pair I liked. We won't say anything about the cost. Sephardi Lady, life is not simple with teenagers.

On the way home, we passed a line of cars waiting at a traffic light. We saw a passenger open the door of one of the cars and gently lay an empty soft drink can, upright, on the street. I stepped into the road and told him, with a smile, that the can belonged to him. He shrugged his shoulders. I picked it up, handed it to him, and told him to throw it away. He took it. (I considered shouting my town's slogan, X is a clean city, as I walked away, but I restrained myself.) My son later said that I'm lucky the man didn't stab me, and that he probably deposited his can at the next intersection. Maybe my son is wrong, and the man was worried about what I would do to him . . .

Teens, Sex and Eating Disorders: An Interview with the Therapy Doc

Never one to turn down free professional advice, I didn't hesitate when blogger Therapy Doc suggested an interview here on my blog. Coincidentally, while "visiting" my blog TD and her husband are in Israel visiting their son in yeshiva; see here (the end of the post) and here.

Feel free to leave questions for Therapy Doc in the comments. My own questions are in bold.
Click here to continue reading.

Learning to Lie

I've been too preoccupied to blog, so I invite you to read this excellent article from New York Magazine called Learning to Lie, summarizing recent research on lying. I found useful information for parenting both small children and teens.

Hat tip: Serandez

Update on the jailed teenagers

A while back I asked, "Where are the parents?" Well, they've turned up, protesting the treatment their children received in jail.

According to Arutz 7:

The girls were held in jail for several weeks and were released after the courts caved in to public pressure. Soon after, the story of abuse and humiliation the girls experienced while incarcerated came out, including their being denied sleep, and stripped and searched for drugs in the presence of a male officer.

Where are the parents?

Seven teenage girls have been arrested for settling an illegal outpost, and held in jail for over two weeks. Yitzhak Kadman, the director of the National Council for the Child, has called for their release. The girls, most of whom are only 14 years old, broke the law but did not commit a serious crime. The girls refuse to identify themselves or sign any statements because they don't recognize the authority of the court. Judges have upheld the prosecutor's decision to keep the girls in jail until they cooperate with the authorities.

The fact that they are still being held is an outrage and an embarrassment for the country. The girls should be released.

On the other side we have the parents, who could identify the girls and file a petition for their release. They have refused. In a Makor Rishon interview one mother said it would be like stabbing her daughter in the back. The parents have gotten together and agreed that the girls would be "hurt" and would get the feeling that the parents "don't agree with their decisions."

Parents should not let young teenage daughters fight the community's ideological battles with jail time. Let the parents sit in jail instead (although one mother says that she's proud of her daughter for her actions, as she could never sit in jail herself). They are not encouraging their children's autonomy by subjecting them to prison. The parents' job is to look at the big picture and get them out of jail, before there is any more psychological and (hopefully not any) physical damage. It's possible to explain, even to teenagers, that you support their cause but that you cannot let them pay such a price, and that until they are 18 they cannot make such life-altering decisions without their parents' consent.

In the religious community we discourage adult women from going into the army. How can we let 14-year-old girls sit in jail?

Either the parents are afraid of their teenagers' reaction, or they believe so deeply in their cause that they are willing to sacrifice their children's well-being to it.

My husband says I'm being too harsh on the parents, some of whom are still traumatized by the eviction from Gush Katif (the Jewish communities in Gaza). The article quotes a mother who said that the disengagement turned her daughter from a girl into a young woman who "needs to take responsibility because the adults failed." My husband says this demonstrates a sense of failure on the part of the parents, who are pinning their hopes on the next generation.

My husband is right; I'm being too harsh on the parents. Because they are getting implicit or explicit support from many others in the community, including rabbis and political leaders, who should be telling the parents to do what they have to do to get those girls out of jail.

Update