On Dec. 15, two Sundays ago, our 23-year-old son Zev, with autism and special needs, moved out of our home and into the just-opened and first Bayit-Ohel group home in Teaneck. (Full news article to come in next week’s edition) It was an emotional day for our family as we moved our sweet-natured son, who—despite being a young adult and possessed with an incredible memory for people, faces, and events, a special love for Jewish music and Yiddishkeit—is also not able to care for himself independently and whose intellectual age is still that of a young child.
For the past few months, we have been telling Zev and preparing him, and ourselves, as best we knew how. We visited his new home as often as we could in the weeks prior to get Zev familiar with his soon-to-be new room and house. We told him over and over that he would soon be moving into his own home, just like his married older sister and younger brother in yeshiva who have already moved out. We set up (OK, mainly my wife) his room with pictures and decorations that would make him feel at home. Every time we passed by the new house, we talked positively and upbeatly about Zev moving into the “Bayit home.” to provide positive reinforcement. We hoped he, and we, were ready for the big day.
Zev seemed to take it all in stride. When we passed by the house these last few weeks, he would say to me “Bayit house? Moving soon?” and of course we said yes. But we never really got any sense of whether he was excited or nervous or happy or anything like that, because that is who our son is. We’ve never really known what he is thinking or feeling or experiencing as he lacks the ability to tell us. He cannot express his emotions. But he definitely knew what was coming and although he will never tell us whether he thinks it was good or bad or if he is truly happy or feeling terribly sad, we want to believe that he feels similarly that this is for the best and that he is happy to be in his new home. It’s a mixed blessing for us that we will never fully know what he is feeling. At times, it can be terribly frustrating, but at other times, like now, it can be a net positive.
It’s definitely been harder for my wife than for me over these past few weeks. In part, it’s because she is Zev’s mother and admittedly on my end has had a stronger care-giving role over the past two-plus decades. I miss our son’s presence in our house tremendously but I do think that she feels Zev’s absence in our house more keenly than I do. While she and I have been caring for Zev for decades, she has been the one who is on top of Zev’s every daily need, his health, his clothing, his special schedule, and pretty much every other aspect of his life. It is she who often had to stay home if we had multiple events at night but couldn’t find a babysitter or arrange for one of our children to stay home.
And it is she who is the one asking me the tough questions that I struggle to answer readily such as: Will the staff at the new home love him as much as we do? Will they truly take care of him like we do? These questions are hard to answer and in a sense, they are unanswerable, as no one will ever care for or love our son like us, his parents.
I do feel that it’s been slightly easier for me to adjust to our now-emptier house because I, along with my co-founders at The Bayit Association, Adam Chill and Rebbetzin Bassie Taubes, have been working pretty hard over the last four years to get to this moment and open this first home. With every advance we made with the fundraising, the construction and government approvals, that day came closer, and with every delay, opening day seemed further away. But the overriding end goal was the same—to open our first home and have the young adults move in, including our son.
So in a sense, I have been waiting for, planning for, working daily for and anticipating this day for years now. With every milestone we hit, the countdown to opening came closer to reality. As we progressed and overcame every obstacle, the years turned to months, then to weeks and then finally, to opening day. With all of the time and effort involved in reaching this moment, I was perhaps more “ready” for the big opening day. And that is why these last few weeks may have been a bit easier for me than for my wife, who was not as involved as I in every minute step along the way. I could be wrong on this, of course.
Since the first day, the Ohel staff and managers have been pretty amazing and have answered every call, text, request and question we have had. Zev appears happy to us; he is being cared for, and he enjoys the company of the staff and his new housemates. In just the last few days alone, Zev has been out to a bowling birthday party, a trip to American Dream, and to Brooklyn for a huge Chanukah party. His social calendar seems to be busier than ours, if you can believe it, and we are happy about that.
Zev has always liked being around people and peers his age and on a certain level, his new home may even be more exciting for him than our family’s house with his siblings now moving up and out. Has everything been perfect these first two weeks? Of course not. But we weren’t expecting perfection. Even in our own home, we aren’t always sure of what the right or perfect thing to do when it comes to our son, and I believe virtually all parents with children like ours feel similarly.
We will never know for sure if we are doing the right thing or not when it comes to dealing with our son’s issues and abilities. But I do believe we are doing the right thing now for ourselves and for our son Zev. With time and experience, we hope it will prove to be the right move. We, and my fellow parents at the new Bayit-Ohel home, are certainly counting on it.
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Last but not least, I want to wish Lee Niren of Ohel a heartfelt refuah sheleimah and a strong and speedy recovery from the stroke he suffered only a short week before the home’s opening. Lee has been a close partner of ours in so many aspects of the home’s development and we look forward to him visiting the home he helped us turn into a reality in the weeks and months ahead.