ELDERS AND PARANOIA (page 3)

looking_glass

I am sure they are very proud of lunch lady mommy. can you imagine that one. how horrible for her girls. well that will just cause them to grow up being embarrassed by her and themselves.

Es

Its amazing what some parents will do.

es

misspeaches

LOL! My mum was the lunch lady at my school too!

mavie

Well, my parents threw away an Atari game called "Combat" circa 1984. The game involved two pixelated tanks shooting square cannonballs at each other.

They were fairly strict parents, but in a good way. I could have ended up far worse. Overall, they did the best they could and I love em for it.

candidlynuts

my parents were great..

we got a " talkin to" before we were allowed to group "date".. (going out with a group of kids, once we were "marriageable age"..

talk went like this : " we were teenagers once and we know no matter what restrictions we put on you or how close we watch you, if you want to have sex you will find a way.. just know that there are consequences and YOU will be the one dealing with those consequences.."

so we had some freedom.. and they were interested in our lives, we always had family meals every night and talked a lot...

out of all of us kids.. 75% of us were virgins when we married. none had unmarried pregnacies and only one of the boys got in trouble for drinking . (trouble, in that mom would go in his room on sunday mornings banging pot lids and singing loudly to wake him up to go to the hall ..he quit coming home drunk after one summer of that kind of punishment lol)

my dad was never an elder, although a very respected brother in the hall, our uncles were elders and their kids were watched like hawks and they were into drugs, sex and anything else that was a no no.

elders kids were baaaaaaad!!! lol

Es

sounds like you had great parents if only they were all like that

es

candidlynuts

thanks i do have great parents..

it was a different era back then, the elders didnt butt into family matters.

now, before i quit going , elders had something to say about what my kids wore, my daughters fingernail polish color, hair styles.. etc

drove me nutso!

blondie

I encountered more elders who believed their kids could do no wrong despite the hard evidence to the contrary.

I'm willing to bet the paranoid ones would have made paranoid non-JW parents too. I met some of those.

Blondie

Confession

My father was an elder from the time the arrangement was instituted, and I can't say he was at all paranoid. He was always considered a rather odd man, and he was (and is still) genuinely devoted to the organization. But, as in any group, you're certainly going to find your share of obsessive Guardians.

I remember when consulting with a very respected, older elder when I was serving. We were involved in a Judicial Committee, and he was veeery suspicious of the brother in question. Things he said were (to me) nuts. This brother under consideration was about 50 years old and lived with his mother and sister--but also kept another apartment. The elder would say...

"Did you know he keeps his own apartment?" Then he'd smile and nod his head mysteriously.

When I indicated that a man 50 years old might be entitled to his own place--and that many of us had been to this apartment several times--he squinted hard and said...

"He could be doing anything there! He could be getting mail there he doesn't want his mother and sister to see!"

I just gulped and shrugged. Even though I was fully indoctrinated, I now remember how different I was from the majority of elders. I could not justify this bizarre scrutiny of another's life as being anything Jehovah wanted of us.

greendawn

That paranoia is another way that the borg interferes with and undermines the family, through the harassment of young family members that need love and understanding instead, to grow up normal.

That's how society used to be long ago but they gave up all this puritanical thinking back in the 1960's.

ELDERS AND PARANOIA

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