For sometime we had an interested woman attending out Book Study as we were going through the ‘Revelation Grand Climax!’ She had two little children, one of them kept crying so the other child started as well. The child was scared of the pictures in the book! But the reactions of the brothers were not very understanding towards the little child, it was seen as disturbance. This made the mother feel very uncomfortable and embarrassed.
So the following week the mother gave her son children’s picture books to look at and distract him from the Revelation! book. As a result the Witness children also wanted their children’s books and comics to look at during the meeting and again this caused a lot of distraction and discomfort to other parents.
After the BS meeting this problem was discussed. One JW parent voiced that their children have nightmares because of the WT pictures and others agreed. One non-parent JW suggested to tape over the Rev! book pictures to solve the problem. Another parent mentioned that the teacher noticed their child drawing lots of monster pictures at school which the parent was embarrassed about and blamed the WT literature (off course not to the teacher).
The decision was made by the BS conductor (my father) that other than WT literature is not acceptable at Jehovah’s place of worship. So it was ok to have children look at books like the ‘Greatest Man’ or ‘My Book of Bible Stories’. My father also put this on the agenda for the body to approve. As he told me, a few elders thought only the material in discussion should be brought to the meeting, but they were outnumbered.
In my congregation mother with active children didn’t get much support, at times a (former missionary, today a CO) elder would counsel or complain directly from the platform to mothers with crying children and ask them (actually send them) downstairs.
I wonder what he would say about this picture?
Freetosee