Life Cycle

Is it true that the Talmud says you can spank a child up to age 24? I vaguely recall having learned that. I am asking because we have an 18-year-old son who is heading off the derech. He has lots of problems. It’s a long story. This is a last resort, be we have tried seeking help from every resource in our community, all to no avail. The law of the state where we live permits spanking of a child up to age 21. If both civil and Talmud law permit spanking of a child his age, can we do so?

I am a man in my forties, twice divorced, with grown children, not presently employed, and not seeking employment at this time. I just moved in the other day with my mother, who is a recently widowed and retired lawyer and a healthy active senior citizen. I plan to live with her for a long time, possibly permanently, for economic reasons and to help her as she ages. Though she is retired, she likes to dress up nicely and put on makeup every day, even if she goes nowhere, because she feels it’s important for her dignity. A lot of her favorite everyday clothes require assistance from someone else to don and remove. When my stepfather was alive, he helped her. Now she wants me to do the same. I question the modesty of me as a man helping a woman in this way, particularly my mother, and the balance between modesty and honoring her.

I recently learned that according to Jewish law one is not supposed to call their parents by their first names. When I was growing up, my parents taught me to call them by their first names, and I am grown up and I still do. That’s what they wanted me to do. They have been accustomed to being called by their names their whole lives and they didn’t want me or my siblings to call them anything different. And I know they don’t want me to change this suddenly. I also called my grandparents by their first names when they were alive, as did my mother. This has been our family tradition as far as I know. And I was planning to teach my children when I had them to call me and my future wife by our first names. What is the scoop on this?

Is there any avera committed when bullying another child? The reason why I am asking is because our son has been bullied so much, we are withdrawing him at the end of the school year from the local Jewish day school he attends and homeschooling him next year. Bullying is rampant and the rebbeim and teachers have not done the job of controlling it. I am not sharing the name or location of the school or anyone involved because that would make this Lashon Hara. We are extremely dismayed. This is not the environment of Torah values we sent him to that school for. We fear physical and emotional injury to our son. And if he spends long enough there, we fear he will learn to behave that way himself.