Yesterday, on Yom Kippur, your 16-year-old was not on trial. Neither was your 20-year-old or your 25-year-old. You were.
I know that sounds backwards, so let me start with something you probably won't want to admit. Going into this Yom Kippur, you had a vision. Your teenager would stand beside you all day. At Ne'ilah, as the gates closed, you'd look over and maybe catch a tear in his eye. If you're honest, you even rehearsed that moment in your head.
Here's what actually happened. At nine in the morning, he asked you what time the fast ends. He asked again. And again. He came to Kol Nidre, and you saw him there. But somewhere around Mussaf, he disappeared, and you spent the rest of the day with a machzor in your hands and a stone in your stomach, davening for him instead of for yourself.
The parents who call me the day after Yom Kippur almost always say the same thing: "I don't know what's going to be with this kid."
So let me tell you what's going to be with your kid.
Every year we read the verse from Yeshayahu: "Im yihyu chata'eichem kashanim, kasheleg yalbinu." If your sins are red like scarlet, they will turn white as snow.
In the Beit HaMikdash, they saw this happen before their eyes. On Yom Kippur, a crimson thread was tied up as the goat for Azazel was sent into the wilderness. When the goat went over the cliff, the thread turned white, and the entire nation knew they had been forgiven. The Gemara tells us that forty years before the Temple was destroyed, the thread stopped turning white. Everyone in the Mikdash stood watching that string, waiting for the red to change.
And that is exactly what you've been doing. You've been watching your son like he's that string. You were waiting for Yom Kippur to be the moment he turned from red to white, the moment he did teshuva right alongside you.
But the Gemara reads that word, kashanim, another way. Not only "like scarlet," but "like years." Change takes years. And in the Gemara, Yitzchak Avinu pleads for the Jewish people by arguing that the years before twenty are not held against a person in the Heavenly court. Hashem gives this kid until twenty.
Science is only now catching up to what our Sages understood. At this age, a teenager's body isn't changing a little. It's in upheaval. In one study I love, Harvard researchers placed children, teenagers and adults in a brain scanner and told them a peer was watching them through a camera. There was no camera. But the teenagers sweated more than both the children and the adults, just from the idea of being watched. Self-consciousness peaks around seventeen, the age when what peers think matters more than almost anything.
Now put that kid in shul on Yom Kippur, surrounded by six hundred men. He's convinced every one of them is watching him, and every time he walks out, he's sure they all noticed.
Another study had teenagers play a driving game. Alone, they drove carefully. With two friends in the room, they took twice as many risks. Adults with friends in the room didn't change at all. Something about being surrounded by peers doubles a teenager's appetite for risk.
Your son isn't weak. Your son is at war inside his own body. And when you turn Yom Kippur into a lecture, you're just adding another front.
The goal isn't for him to have a great Yom Kippur at sixteen. The goal is for him to have a great Yom Kippur at thirty-five, standing in shul with his own machzor and his own kids beside him, because he wants to be there. That's the real trial, and it's yours. I've seen it again and again: parents who treat sixteen as the whole trial end up losing the child at thirty-five. You don't win your kid by winning this Yom Kippur.
Sukkot is just days away. Here is what I'm asking you to do.
First, let this Yom Kippur go. Don't replay it in your head, and don't ask him how it was for him. He was there, and that's enough.
Second, be light. This is Zman Simchateinu, the season of our joy. Hand him a drill and ask if he can help put up the sukkah. Buy him something that will make him happy.
Third, be honest with him. Tell him plainly: "You came to Kol Nidre. I saw you, and it meant something to me." Then stop. Don't add a "but," because whatever comes after "but" erases everything you said before it.
Fourth, before you correct him, say to yourself what Yitzchak said: "This child under twenty is not on trial. I am." Then ask yourself whether what's bothering you is really about him, or about your own fears.
Fifth, if you snap at him, apologize. Yes, you to him. Yom Kippur may be over, but there's still time for teshuva.
The red string turns white at his age. Hashem gives this child until twenty. Surely you can give him until Sukkot.
Parents facing a situation they feel they have no one to talk to about can reach out to me.
