Bonfires, busses, and grocery store pickup: Raising independent kids, the Israeli way - opinion

The WhatsApp group for my son's snif (youth group) can best be described as digital chaos. Messages fly back and forth at a rate that makes it almost impossible to keep up. But one message has lingered with me, long after it was written.My son was in third grade – his first year in the youth group – and it was Lag Ba'Omer. A bonfire had been arranged, and the madrich (group leader) had sent all the details, except for the pick-up time. Naturally, as the night progressed, a parent asked what time we should pick up the children, and the madrich responded. 1 a.m.I stared at my phone, wide-eyed. One in the morning? He was eight years old! A third grader. Surely there had been a typo. Perhaps he meant 11 p.m. Perhaps midnight, at a stretch. But one in the morning?Let's add to the mix that this was a 15-year-old youth group leader who was confidently organizing a bonfire for a group of eight-year-olds, with a pickup time that would have been ambitious for a New Year's Eve party. And apparently, it was all perfectly reasonable.Welcome to parenting in Israel.THERE ARE MOMENTS when I look at my children and wonder when, exactly, they became so Israeli.