Comments You Will Not Hear at the 4-8-07 WT Study (Obedient Children)

by blondie 28 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  purplesofa

  Although my mother was not a JW, she beat the fire out of me as a kid. and even as I got older..a teen. She caused my sister to be taken to the ER and get stitches in her chin, from one of her rampages.......and socked me in the eye so that white of my eye turned red and I had to lie to every one about how it happened. The bruises were not seen by all, but I knew they were there and felt them. Electircal cords, wrought iron wall ornaments.....etc etc etc. Threatened with a gun put to my head for stealing money to buy ice cream and lying about it.

  There is a difference between expecting obediance from a child than trying to control them.

  My thoughts when reading this is ......why compare any child to Jesus. Its not hardly a fair comparison.

  And obediance to a parent goes right out the window if a minor child wants to study with JW's.

  As a teenager I ran away from home five times, I was in counselling and my counsellor told me, under the circumstances running away was the healthiest thing I could do. but, I was not being obediant to my mother.

  I find these articles difficult for children to listen to or read when they are mistreated .....this can sound twisted and keep putting the blame on the child's behaviour.

  Thanks for posting this Blondie. I was not aware of the WT's articles that was so pro spanking. I realize I am more sensitive than most about it. I can't stand to see a child spanked and hit while out shopping. I don't like that parents think they have the right to bop a kid upside the head.

  purps
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  anewme

  I was always the child who could be corrected with a stern word. I only remember one formal spanking from my nonjw father.
  
  My heart goes out to all the children who must live in fear of an abusive parent.
  
  I liked the Billy Bob Thorten movie where the sweet simple man kills and then beheads the abusive boyfriend of a nice neighbor lady.
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  daniel-p

  I guess I don't understand why people think spanking amounts to abuse. If you don't know the difference, then yeah, I guess it's a good idea not do administer it. When i was a child, it didn't take me too long to start behaving after a couple well-timed and explained episodes of physical discipline (spanking). Do I think i was abused by that? Not at all. However, the discipline was never administered in public - perhaps that's the difference.
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  purplesofa

  I guess I don't understand why people think spanking amounts to abuse.

  There are too many people out there that do not know the difference, that is the problem.

  purps
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  Euphemism

  Like a lot of the JW's more unsavory practices, they've gotten too smart to say much about spanking in print anymore. The result (at least as of the time I left in 2003) is a divergence between the more conservative and liberal Witnesses, and more conservative and liberal congregations and areas. There was a big difference when I moved from a New York congregation with fairly liberal Bethelites, born-ins, and a large Hispanic population, to a Russian-language congregation composed of hard-core Bethelite/pioneers and zealous new converts.

  Still, spanking is definitely kept alive by the oral tradition; I remember the elder who commented that "When new people come to the meetings, sometimes we need to teach them how to discipline their children; when I was a kid, I don't think there was ever a time when my bottom wasn't red." The old-time Witnesses know very well what the Watchtower is talking about when it says "more serious reproof."

  But I'd say that the pressure to use corporal punishment is a lot less than it was in the 70's or 80's. It's a lot more common than it used to be to see parents let their children romp around the second school, or draw in coloring-books. I think the acceptable age range for corporal punishment has also gotten narrower; you hear less of babies being spanked, or teenagers beaten.

  Obviously, though, there's still plenty of grist in the Witnesses' authoritarian mindset for abusive parents--from the verbal abusers all the way to people like the Slacks--to latch on to.
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  Robert222

  How come JWs never see that beating god into children does not work? Are they back in the 16th or 17th century? Adults can hardly sit for two hours and listen to boring speakers, how can children be expected to sit there and listen to these things? I can just imagine all the truly dumb parents sitting there tomorrow thinking this is a great article. I also agree with Gill's comments. The bigger picture is obey the society or else. Do not question the GB as we cannot possibly understand their great meanings of the bible since we are all children in the congregation. And it means our life to blindly obey the parent organization. I was beaten by my JW parents, and my father was an elder. I no longer speak to them, they were, and are, awful people.
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  Euphemism

  daniel-p wrote:I guess I don't understand why people think spanking amounts to abuse.

  Well, 'abuse' is a subjective term. Up until a few decades ago, almost every parent used corporal punishment at least sometimes. Can we say that they were all 'abusive'? Maybe. A lot of social mores have changed in the last 50 years; a person who held views that were perfectly mainstream--or even 'liberal' and 'enlightened'--at that time might be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, an abusive parent, etc by contemporary standards.

  As recently as a 100-150 years ago, it was standard practice in schools to spank children who got a bad grade. In an 18th-century British novel (I believe it was Tom Jones), one of the characters is a kindly vicar who opposes corporal punishment. He says that he never beats his children, "except as their schoolteacher"; corporal punishment was considered a necessary component of schooling. Nowadays, that would be considered not only abusive, but also bad for the educational process.

  I think that the word 'abuse'--and the existence of child safety agencies who remove children from abusive homes--gets people arguing about definitions, as if the question were all or nothing. At one end of the spectrum, there's perfect parenting--the parent who never loses their temper, who can always find ways to redirect their child's attention away from boredom or misbehavior--i.e. a fairy tale. At the other end, there's people like the Slacks.

  Somewhere in the middle, there are the things that every parent does when they're tired and stressed-out, and wishes that they'd handled better.

  And somewhere else in the middle, is spanking. You can argue that spanking is wrong, without saying that spankers are unfit parents, or denying that in most cases they mean the best for their children. The word 'abuse' muddies those waters.
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  daniel-p

  This is a perfect example of how the WT does not know where to stop meddling in others' affairs. So many issues they meddle in, and subsequently cause more problems of interpretation, could be solved by the simple axiom: Mind Your Own Business.
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  restrangled

  I'm sorry Blondie but I could not get through your entire synopsis. I just remember as a young girl, myself and my brother having our heads banged together in front of a furnace, the side of my face slapped so hard at an assembly that I couldn't hear from that side for 2 days, and our hind ends beat constantly for something having to do with the KH.

  My best friend, her sisters and mother were beat non stop with belts, called whores and bitches as young girls and and all of them black and blue from the "discipline".....

  I witnessed more kids abused and beat at assemblies than I care to think about, and if I ever returned I'd take names and report to the authorities in the blink of an eye.

  Thanks for your effort but this was too painful for me to read in it's entirety.

  r.
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  blondie

  Thanks everyone for your comments. Seems like we have a variety of experiences. One swat on the rear does not constitute abuse and I hope I did not convey that idea.

  I come from an abusive family and I can only think of 2 times that I was spanked. There are other forms of abuse in this world. I asked my husband about his non-JW experience and he said that his parents were pretty conventional, a product of their time, definitely not "liberal" hippies, yet he had been spanked only a handful of times.

  I grew up in several congregations and saw JW children routinely taken to the back room and paddled and their sad cries would waft into the main auditorium like some strange choir music. We could hear the swats and count the times. One little boy called the meeting the spanking place.

  As an adult, I remember a mother yanking her daughter along (4 year old) to the restroom, with spoon in hand, making her pull down her pants. When I saw the bruises, a grabbed the spoon and broke it. I wanted to spank the mom with it. Later I called child services....

  I worked several years in law enforcement and saw many sad cases, some that probably started out "small" but grew into situations where the child was injured and in one case killed. It turned out that family, friends, neighbors had an idea but were afraid to interfere.

  Do people know that hitting a child is not the same as hitting an adult; that was seems like a "mild" hit has caused organ damage and broken bones?

  I have found that many people, including JWs, have no concept of what is appropriate. Have they even tried reasoning or counsel or ways other than hitting?

  I remember a JW girl who turned in her mother for beating her. Child services found that she was covered with bruises from head to toe and pulled her out of the home. JW reaction; how horrible this girl was to drag "Jehovah's name" through the mud and to "lie" about the beatings.

  Blondie