Leaving your kids with strangers

Israel is a peculiar place and Israelis are a peculiar breed. Nothing new there, but the things living in Israel does to you, that is, well, surprisingly peculiar.

Everyone thinks of Israeli kids and thinks of how free they grow up. Eight and nine year olds walking home from school by themselves is the norm.  Our neighbor’s kid, who is just one grade above our son Nathan, rides the city bus back from school by herself. Our son has started to beg us to let him go to the park alone because some of his friends already do. He is 7 years old!!! No way he is going to the park alone! I am not that Israeli yet. But where do you draw the line? When do you start to let go of our western mentality when “everyone else is doing it”?

There is this restaurant close to our house. We really like it and we go there very often. The kind of often  that when we call for a delivery they recognize our voice, the kind of often that they hug our kids and pinch their cheeks. We feel like family when we eat there, but we never see them outside of the joint.  

Well, the other day I was strolling through the shopping plaza where the restaurant is and ran into the savta (grandma) owner of the restaurant and we spoke for a few minutes and then she offered that whenever my husband and I want to go away for the weekend, we can leave the kids with her for a couple of days. Now even for Israeli standards this is a little over the top friendly, but what stroke me as odd is that I actually thought about it for longer than any mother with a little sense of responsibility for her kids should have! In my defense, my parents and my husband’s parents live on the other side of the pond and an offer like that was tempting, but in Miami or in Colombia, an offer like that would have sent me running for the hills screaming “CRAZY KIDNAPPER” .

With this in my mind for the past few days, I’ve been thinking maybe we need to become more Israeli, after all, when in Rome… Maybe I will start by letting Nathan go to the park before I leave him overnight with the friendly neighborhood restaurant owner.