7 Responses to “Dealing With the Loneliness of an Older BT Mother.”

1. alpidarkomama
   May 25th, 2010 @ 1:52 am

   I’m in the same situation, except I got an even later start. I’m almost 42 with kids that are 7, 5, 4, and 2. Many of my friends are the parents of my children’s friends, and, yes, they’re all a good 15 years younger than I. I say, kick up the heels and have a good time with those younger friends! I love soaking up that energy. :) I also have friends closer to my own age, but our daily lives don’t have nearly as much in common. So even if we enjoy spending time together it just doesn’t happen that often. I don’t really see any “difficulties.” Just enjoy the relationships that develop!

2. tesyaa
   May 26th, 2010 @ 9:48 am

   This is a fact of life in any setting, frum or not, that we are not always on the same page as our chronological peers. Personally, I usually get along better with people who are older than me, and yes, their kids are often older than mine. Does the wife feel that the young ladies don’t want to include her, or does she feel than they are less mature than her? It’s true that there can be a disconnect.

3. Michoel
   May 26th, 2010 @ 12:36 pm

   Dovid,
   As you probably realize, a lonely wife is a very big issue for a husband. Very often the closest friends of baalei t’shuvah are the friends they made in their yeshiva / seminary. The experience of changing together while losing a lot of one’s previous relationships can create deep bonds. But those friends now live in Eretz Yisrael, Passaic, Baltimore, Monsey etc etc and given our very busy lives with a few kids, it makes it nearly impossible to keep up. So men have friends / acquaintances that they see (at least briefly) on the way in an out of shul. Women need to be able to relate to the other mothers that they see regularly around the neighborhood. I don’t think that there is really anything a husband can do for a wife in this area. But you can (on the sly) contact your wife’s seminary friends and explain the them that your wife is lonely and you would appreciate it if they could make a point of giving a quick call twice a month to say hello. Also, make sure to have regular dates with your wife because the attention of a husband can go a long way to compensate for a lack of female friends.

   Hatzlacha Raba

4. Steve Brizel
   May 26th, 2010 @ 10:33 pm

   I think that it is important for husbands and wives, especially BTs, to meet and make friends as their kids become part of the Orthodox world, and go thru school, Shabbos, YT, simchas and Tzaros together. That is how we made a lot of our friends,

5. Judy Resnick
   May 27th, 2010 @ 2:46 pm

   I found as an Orthodox Jewish BT mother that my own personal age was not as important a factor in making friends as was my children’s ages. If your oldest child is fifteen and in high school, then your wife probably has gotten to know other mothers of teenagers, moms of the other kids in the same class and same high school. Those moms have to be at least thirty-two years old, and most are probably older than that. Don’t forget that there are also mothers whose youngest child, not oldest child, is fifteen years old. I was 35 when my oldest child was 15, but 48 when my youngest child was 15. While children do segregate according to age (which is natural and desirable, you would realistically worry about a 15-year-old wanting to spend time with either a 4-year-old or a 29-year-old), adults past thirty rarely worry about these age distinctions.

   When my own children were in the age bracket of 3 to 16, similar to your own family, I made friends with other moms and never asked those women’s ages, it just came naturally to make friends with other Orthodox Jewish mothers facing similar challenges from their kids. There are plenty of opportunities for women to make friends.

   In shul on Purim night, before the Megillah reading starts: “Your daughter’s Purim costume is adorable. Did she make that crown herself?”

   At the PTA meeting, waiting for the teacher to finish with another parent: “My child struggled with math. I found that using flash cards helped. What’s your suggestion?”

   During a Kiddush in shul following Shabbos morning davening: “I like adding marrow bones and soaked soy beans to cholent, they give so much flavor. What’s your secret ingredient?”

   Shabbos afternoon at the local park or playground: “My Genendel is going this summer to XYZ Day Camp. Last year she went to ABC Day Camp but didn’t like it because none of her friends were there. What are your summer plans?”

   You can imagine that there are plenty of variations on the above. Frum moms have enough common ground with each other cutting across age and BT/FFB status.

6. Ellen
   May 28th, 2010 @ 11:28 am

   I’m finding myself with the reverse problem. I was on the same wave length with my peers when my kids were growing up, and being a BT had nothing to do with it. Now my kids have grown up and moved on, and I moved to a new community that was more tolerant of my dog, but less “tolerant” (welcoming) of a woman with no young kids. Actually, welcoming is the wrong word, but without school age kids there seems less to “bond” over. And being a BT still has little to do with it.

   Let me reexamine that. Being a BT and being “different” actually has made it possible for me to be friends with people I might not have been friends with before, e.g. the divorced woman in her 40′s whose kids are in foster care, a woman I met in another setting somewhat outside of the run-of-the-mill FFB pale, a woman almost 40!!! years younger than me, also a BT, whom I met by the nearby bay while I was walking my dog and she was davening, and subsequently met her in-laws, fascinating BT Breslovers (as are she and her husband), and my neighbor across the street, a regular FFB woman 15 years my junior with a 19 yr. old daughter and 3 more daughters 8 and under from her second marriage…

   I’m not going to say I don’t often feel lonely for my old friends and peers from the old neighborhood with whom I shared my everyday child-rearing life. This is a whole new scene and not easy for me. But like for your wife, I also need to work on keeping an open mind to friends different than what was I used to, and that can open up life amd new horizons for us (not that we BTS haven’t had our share of new “horizons”).

7. LC
   July 19th, 2010 @ 10:46 am

   I just wanted to add that not all BTs get married and/or have children later in life, and not all FFBs get married young and/or are able to have children young.

   So it isn’t a BT problem, it’s a “person who didn’t do the most typical thing” situation.

   I like a lot of the above answers for practical ways to deal. My daughter’s classmates’ parents’ ages range widely – there are youngests and oldests in the class, parents who married young and those who didn’t. At least one already a grandma, and one with a new baby.

   And outside of the school setting, I have friends where the family crosses its own generation gap – 2 youngest children are younger than niece/nephew(s).

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