by dinah 19 Replies latest jw friends
How many times does this happen? This question just popped in my head while reading the thread about being disfellowshipped.
Disfellowshipping is harsh, but to do this to a KID?? Kids make mistakes. It should NEVER cost a child this much to make a mistake.
Since the Watchtower treats baptism as a legal contract with the organization, then baptism shouldn't be allowed for minors. The difference, imho, if you get baptised in other religions, you aren't signing your life away to a legal entity.
I was baptized at 13 and DF'd at 16. It was devastating to say the least. Add to that a miscarriage and it was hell. I was back in within a year, halfway thru my senior year. My best friend was 2 houses down, and of course no worldly friends. It also triggered health problems that I feel can be attributed to fibrmyalgia. The symptoms all started after I came home in shame from Idaho, where my BF lived.
They don't explain the reprocussions that come from getting baptized. Kids make mistakes, it's a part of growing up.
momz
It happened to most of the teens when I was growing up. Everyone was getting baptized between 10 and 13 years old and most of them were df'd by 16 or 17. Even now, I know a little girl that got baptized at 8, thats right, 8 years old. By 10 she was a regular pioneer and by 14 she was df'd. When JWs find out that I didn't get baptized until my senior year of high school they always asked me what took me so long since I raised in "the truth".
Kids make mistakes, it's a part of growing up.
Amen. I was baptized at 9, and all I can say is that it was a mistake!
In the congs around where I grew up, it was really strange if a JW child would wait to get baptised till after 18. But I later came to admire them. Even if they later choose to baptise, they resisted the huge pressure I myself could not resist (of course growing up under mind control they eventually surrendered, but even so). Hey, my mother was really worried when I was not a publisher yet at the age of 12!
13-15 was a very common age. 8 also occurred, and a 12-year-old girl baptised on the same day as me (15), but I don't know what happened to her later.
But I know a lot of young people around me faded or DF'd (even more than one time) when they were still in their teens.
Now I find it crazy. 8, and even 15, years is much too young! There's no chance that you understand the consequences of what will happen if you later should choose to believe in something else (of course at that time you say that this will never happen, so it's irrelevant).
kifoy
Kids make mistakes, it's a part of growing up.
Amen. To bad, then, that this mistake turns into a life sentence.
To sentence a child to life for a bad choice they did when they were 8 years old, only happens in countries/societies we don't like to be compared with.
kifoy
Shopaholic,
Eight years old!! That's ridiculous!
I was 13, but in no way understood the consequences.
Seems to me that many grow up and figure out the whole thing is a sham, but have already dedicated themselves to this monster.
Jesus waited till he was what about 30? What was his problem ?
This is truly one of the saddest aspects of being raised in a JW household: You're presented with the prospect of baptism when you're still virtually a kid. The emotional development between 12 and 20 is enormous; yet even before emotional maturity is reached, you're making a decision that will have huge repercussions.
I would venture that. the younger you are when you're baptized, the sooner you drop out and face the big loss of your family and friends.
if parents would begin to 1) pay attention to the new findings about the development of the adolescent brain and 2) actually CARE that the wiring in their brains is so not in synch with an adult brain, then they would KNOW to discourage any LIFETIME COMMITMENT ( the frontal cortex, seat of reason, does not fully mature, they are now saying, until mid 20s!)
oh! wait!!! that would mean that the emotional blackmail** would have to cease!!!.....
** i may have been the egghead that brought the borg into our lives, but i never even ASKED one of the kids when they were going to be baptized...... the older daughter did, at 11.... but her reasons for wanting to were so linked to her mental health issues ( BPD / Histrionic PD) which were undiagnosed at the time and which i believe NULLIFY the baptism....
no way on EARTH am i going to let them disfellowship her based on that and the SA issues within the cong..... but again, i suspect that because of said issues, no one is pursuing the well and widely know cohabitation she has had, as an elder's wife, our former study conductor, called on the house where she was living ( in sin!) with purple hair and goth attire no less....
