Some of my children like to know every possibility as it arrives, even if it’s a 10% chance it will happen, they want to know and they want to know right away. Not knowing at the beginning makes them feel like they’re missing out, and they don’t have enough time to process, and they feel left out – less in control because it feels like things are just happening to them and they don’t get any lead in time.
Other children of mine do not want to know until something has a 90% of happening. Knowing before then makes them feel unstable and unsure and worried. Changing plans or even just hearing so many ideas and options is stressful.
I know all of this about my children now. I had a bit of an idea of this beforehand, but our life right now is far more extreme in terms of “what will 2027 look like”, and they are making their preferences more known! It’s hard to balance though, because if you tell the ideas to one kid, or maybe all the kids except one, then it’s either going to get accidentally leaked, OR if it stays hidden until a decision is made you run the risk of them feeling left out that they didn’t know what was happening when everyone else already had time to adjust and make their preferences known.
In nearly 15 years of parenting I have rarely had to make decisions for my children that affect them this greatly. Actually, that’s not entirely true – I did make a decision that caused them convert to an entirely different religion and greatly impacts their day to day life. BUT they were all quite little when we did that.
Making decisions that affect your TEENAGER in a major way is totally different, and honestly, extremely perilous and terrifying (probably for both of us).
All these thoughts are around the fact that we are leaning toward NOT making Aliyah next year, and instead hanging out in rural Queensland for a year to save (hopefully) an entire yearly wage and set us up for more success in Israel.
But even that isn’t so simple – WHERE we go, and how far away that is from… well, everything changes weekly.
I don’t have the answers on what’s the best way to approach these big life changes. That’s at least SOMETHING I’ve learnt in the last 15 years of parenting – Talia, you don’t really know anything about anything. Just do your best, and pray Hashem will work out the rest.