Are they ok now?
Did You Screw Up Your Kids Because Of Being A Witness?
by minimus 23 Replies latest jw friends
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MsDucky
I have four daughters and the twins are the Witnesses. I disassociated myself about a year or so after I got baptized; but I still believed in that stuff. I pretty much raised my daughters to believe in Jehovah, not the organization. The oldest and the youngest didn't care about it, but the twins did. The oldest is the only one that had to go to meetings with me. The twins were just babies and didn't know if they were there or not.
I still was indoctrinated or an apologist for 18 years. Although, I did celebrate the girl's birthdays. The twins are full-blown witnesses now. There's nothing that I can do about that. I had to kick them out when they started dictating to me how to live in my own house (do not watch this movie, you can't hang that on your door, pulling their dad's army stickers off the car, getting on me about smoking, wanting me to go to the meetings, etc...).
I'm starting to feel more and more uncomfortable around them. I don't know if this is one of the stages of grief or what? At first, I was so very depressed about losing them to the religion; now it's like I don't want to put up with them anymore. When they come over, they act like they're doing us a favor or something. We have grown distant, they almost seem like strangers to me now.
I put on my Facebook page that I'm an agnostic. I got tired of all that Jesus stuff that some people were putting up; so if they didn't get any response they'd know why...this is leading to an old exjw friend (We were both still dubs at the time.) finding me on Facebook. She has always been a trouble maker and a gossiper. She's a Jesus, Jesus, Jesus addict now. Anyway, I started wondering if she's been blabbing her mouth about my religious status because for some reason the twins have gone back to where they won't tell me if they're leaving town or the country or not. One is going to the Dominican Republic again. I just found out from my youngest daughter, who happened to call the twin when she was packing.
The youngest invited them over for supper this evening, which made me angry. She really doesn't understand the witnesses dynamics about eating with an apostate. The twin was like well I don't know if I can make it and so on and so forth. I had to tell the youngest to not do that because it made me uncomfortable and it made them uncomfortable. I told her if they wanted to come over on their own accord that this was fine. . .but the eating part. . .well you know how that is.
Yes, I screwed up my twins; but the rest is on them. I'm starting to get stronger about them moving on. I think? Time will tell.
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Lozhasleft
Yes I did Minimus and No they are not. Sadly.
Loz x
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Think About It
Mine were born in, but I got them out when they were in 9th & 7th grades. They both graduated from college, don't remember much about our JW life, and it seems that WTS thinking has no influence on anything in their lives. They both are good moral people with great ethics.
Think About It
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StAnn
Yep, my oldest child was raised a JW. He thinks he's okay now but I still see things in his conduct that he isn't aware of. I wonder if it will hit him all at once someday or if he'll just go through life unaware. He's had a very difficult life because of the WTS.
StAnn
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asilentone
great for you, think about it.
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minimus
MsD, I'm saddened to know that the WT. screwed you and your kids up like that.
My 32 year old daughter LOVES celebrations, holidays and parties. I feel bad that she didn't get to enjoy these things but now that she's got her 2 kids, she's loving it all!
YAY!!!!
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Thor
Both of our kids were raised in, and yes that did screw them up to a degree. We believe that both are doing pretty good now.
Things come up in conversations now and then that make us feel sad and sorry for the pain we caused them. Even though they say we are forgiven.
Primarily the school years were the toughest, they had to stand out as the weird kids that could never do many of the normal things the other kids did. Looking back we realize that they missed out on the normal relationship building skills that most people learn as they interact with their peers in the early years.
In some ways we wish we could turn back time and do it over but we cant.
They are great people and successful, so who knows what could have happened good or bad, you cant change the past. They are such awesome people we must have done something right.
Some of the things we do feel good about are, they know that they were loved unconditionally their whole lives. We were always a close family and had fun together. We never cut our relatives out of our lives and in fact had maintained a good relationship with our extended family. We also always believed in higher education and encouraged our kids to work toward college from elementary school on. Our son graduated and is happy in his career and our daughter has one year left.
Right after we left they had no friends of course but our son has now made many friends and our daughter is starting to as well. They both have good relationships with their significant others as well.
We are the ones with the friend problems but there is always hope.
So all we can do is go forward and make sure we are the best parents we can be to our children.
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not a captive
It left its mark, for sure. One daughter who felt the brunt of it, it really hurt her the way onre elder spoke to her when she expressed a doubt. He came down on her so hard it probably sent her out sooner than if he had been kind. So I should be glad, I guess. But she said it took her 15 years before she could pray.
I hate that.
Actually, it would take a long time to figure it all out and write it down. It's like an alcoholic gets dried, Everyone is happy and we are going to take it from here--but there are residual effects.
I'm just glad we are alive and all out. We can help each other go on.
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misguided
I've managed to get 5 of my 6 kids out unscathed. My youngest is still being indoctrinated by his father, and I have a tough time trying to anti-witness to him. I only hope that he sees the real truth about `the truth` in the end.