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cantleave

By not celebarting birthdays and christmas and you kids are still being isolated and made to feel different.

In principle I understand what you are saying @cantleave but are you implying that in someway I am abusing my children by taking a course of action that makes them standout and inferring that I should up sticks ASAP to avoid damaging them for life? I suspect this is an emotive subject and I am new here so I don't want to start a heated debate about the potential damage from standing out as different at school but I don't think this is straight-forward. Suffice to say, I don't want to hurt my kids but it's not as simple as just saying "off you go and celebrate Christmas and Birthdays".

cedars

Hello konceptual99 - welcome to the board! I'm also from the UK. Like cantleave I was once an elder, but I spent a long time serving as an MS. I understand completely your doubts and fears - we've all been there! Perhaps for the time being it's best to just take one step at a time. Once you find out the real truth, there's no crazy rush to find out more or decide on a way forward. Do it at your own pace.

I'm curious, have you read Crisis of Conscience by Ray Franz? It's an amazing book - very humble and non-confrontational. It's available for download on Scribd.com, just click here if you fancy reading it.

Anyway, if I can help you in any way, I would be glad to. My email is [email protected]

Cedars

cedars

konceptual99 - I think what cantleave meant is that your children will only face the same doubts and insecurities as you are facing if they similarly grow up depending on other JWs for friendships and without knowing the real truth about the organization. Nobody's suggesting what you should do as a parent to make things easier for them in the future - only you can decide. This is one of many tough dilemmas that we all grapple with.

Cedars

cantleave

@cantleave but are you implying that in someway I am abusing my children by taking a course of action that makes them standout and inferring that I should up sticks ASAP to avoid damaging them for life?

Absolutely not!

What I am saying is that they won't thank you later in life if you do deny them these things, when you yourself know they are Watchtower control mechanisms.

konceptual99

@cedars/@cantleave

Thanks for the comments again - I completely understand what you are saying. This is a situation that is as clear as mud to me at the moment and I really do appreciate your comments on how I can make it clearer - that's why I am here.

As pointed out it's a set of massive dilemmas ATM....

Bangalore

Welcome to JWN.

Bangalore

finally awake

My husband and I just recently extricated ourselves from the borg. We have 3 sons, ages 13, 11, and 5. We tried hard to give them a happy life while we were in, but I can see that they are much happier now. It's tough to figure out the best path forward once you know the truth about the truth unless everyone in the house is on the same page. I was lucky (boy don't I know it!) that Just Ron was just waiting for me to wake up and our kids weren't fully indoctrinated. I wish you the best of luck on your path to freedom :)

nugget

Welcome to the board. Things are always a little muddy at this stage. As parents we want our children to be happy in life and not everyone's experience will be the same. We have an autistic child and an older daughter, there were not witnesses in the local community and no cousins who they saw regularly. They were not encouraged to make friends at school and their constant exclusion from activities of their peers as well as not celebrating holidays and special days served to isolate them and make them socially awkward. It was also the realisation that the friends in the organisation were conditional friends meant they were always vulnerable.

In addition the meetings and literature were often inappropriate for children, gods judgment, violence, crime, masturbation, immorality, earthquakes, end of the world, earthquakes, disease, hopelessness, Armageddon,war wickedness all around were often discussed. These fed on my sons fears to the extent he was self harming and hiding under tables at school screaming about bad books. The study books for childen reinforce the message that they must not have pride in their achievements, that they must trust the organisation and elders and they must constantly strive for gods approval whilst never being sure they are ever good enough. These were not the messages we felt it was healthy for my children to be exposed to. When elders asked why we did not attend meetings I told them how the constant negative topics affected my son and I said I could not see a place for him. The elder agreed there was no place for my son in jehovahs organisation. So salvation is only an option for people with no issues.

For our children the meetings were harmful. Having been brought up in this mess myself as soon as I realised the doctrines were based on lies I had to take my children out. The organisation demands much of us all, even to the extent that we sacrifice our lives over blood, give up education and a chance to fulfil our potential and risk shunning by our friends and family if we differ over religion. I could not risk my children turning into conditional sons and daughters and conditional friends.

You have different circumstances and have your own choices to make but I hope this helps to clarify can't leaves comments and why we personally took the stand we did. It may be worth asking your children how they feel about the sacrifices they make. They are sacrifices and it takes a lot of courage to make a stand every day and risk ridicule. Are you sure that the organisation is worthy of them? All I will say is no one can decide what is best for your family but you and circumstances change over time.

Soldier77

Welcome!

Another book I highly recommend from Steven Hassan is Releasing the Bonds. Also, Don Cameron's book Captives of a Concept.

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