Discipline or child abuse? Still going on in the hall?

by Pickler 12 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  Pickler

  Does anyone else remember all the discipline of children at the meetings? I was just thinking how I never see anyone physically punish their children anymore. Growing up attending meetings there was a constant stream of children being taken out & hit, as well as all the whispered threats, arm squeezing, pinching etc

  Some dads even took their kids out, and then you knew they were in for it!

  What was horrible was the approval amongst a lot of the elders & older ones in the hall, you could sometimes see them nodding their heads in agreement as the poor kid was dragged out. In a strange way parents got a lot of social approval for harshly disciplining their children. In the meetings discipline was equated with love. There was never anything about the dangers of giving angry, repressed people free reign to lay into their kids.

  I once saw a sister slap her daughter really hard in a meeting, this girl was 18, and so mortified.

  My Mum bought wooden spoons in bulk because she got sick of breaking them on us ( I know that sounds funny, but it's true !)

  The thing is, in my generation we were all hit, a lot. None of us would say anything about it, it was sanctioned in the hall, if some of these children were then sexually abused, well......where could they go? What could they say?

  I really hope someone is going to post that times have changed & this is not seen as OK anymore?
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  cofty

  I have been out for 16 years but when I was in there was a culture of beating children. It was far more prevalent in society in general when I was a child.

  Making a child sit still and quiet at a meeting is just stupid - hitting them for moving or talking is shameful.

  Hitting a child with any object - belt, spoon, slipper etc is illegal in the UK. It is legal for a parent to smack a child but if it leaves a visible mark they can be prosecuted. You never see children being hit in public anymore.

  Soon we will look back and wonder why we ever thought it was remotely acceptable to hit children - it is abuse.
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  the girl next door

  When my daughter was about a year old the congregation I attended had what I called the baby patrol. If I child made any noise at all, a MS would come and stand at the end of your aisle and stand there till you got up and went in the back room with the child and got them to stop making noise. If the child continued, one of elders wives would get and take the child from the mother and take them outside till they stopped crying. I refused to let the wife an elder that I knew their children and did not want my child growing up like them in any way. The Presiding Overseer, that's what they were called back then, gave me speech and read me the scripture on using the rod. Spanking is just not my thing. I let him know with a few choice words that he was not my husband nor the father of my child and that his opinion meant nothing to me, in fact I told him that his children were some of the rudest adults and I would never take advice from him as a parent. I did not go back to a meeting till I got a person and the baby patrol was abolished.
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  cptkirk

  she slapped her 18 year old daughter during the meeting? that sounds kinky to me. I've seen little kids dragged by their arms into the back while screaming, and then when they get to the back all you hear is more screaming and beatings. apparently they put the kibosh on that though, was too salient i guess....if nobody complained it would still be going strong i'm sure. there is some kind of hero worship of certain men, if they think a man is very spiritual, but he is also violent, in many cases , "the body" sort of has a voyeristic attachment to this. like, here is our savior, he is spiritual and violent so he will lead us to victory.....he'll lead you to the crazy house is where he'll lead you. but the rush feels soooooo good. nothing like a good christian man with veins coming out of his forehead and breaking tables while screaming the name of the lord, that is just a voyeristic orgasm baby.
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  troubled mind

  I have been out for almost seven yrs . In our old hall when our children were small there was a time when we had fifty kids under the age of 10....There were LOTS of crying children . The Elders made an announcement not to take a child outside of the hall for a spanking ,because the neighbors might not understand 'spare the rod '.
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  breakfast of champions

  Used to be bad, but I don't see that going on anymore ( at least the times I go).

  Story: Bunch of small kids in our hall, and the other week, by the time the Service eeting rolled around, the back foyer was crawling with them and their parents. The attendant "put his foot down" and told them they need to get back to their seats in the auditorium. Two couples went back to the auditorium, got their stuff and left.

  According to my wife, the following Sunday, there were NO KIDS at the hall. Evidently, they did the phone in or found something better to do with their kids.

  No wonder their retention rate is 35%.
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  Pickler

  So it seems that this culture has died out then....that's good.

  interesting troubled mind & cofty it's because of legal changes in the world & fear of what the neighbors will think, no change for the better driven by elders or the WTS!

  Girl next door......good for you, I wish I'd seen you stand up to that elder!

  Cptkirk you say it sounds kinky, it was. I thought it was so wrong, one of those things where you feel sick afterwards, but, everyone seemed to think that this mother was completely within her rights to do this. No one would have dreamed of saying anything.

  Thats my 10 posts gone....catch ya later
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  Journeys edge

  I think it needs to be noted that it wasn't just witnesses that felt smacking was the best way to discipline a child. I grew up in a non witness household and was regularly beaten and this was the norm in many families. Go round any supermarket and you would see frustrated parents hit their toddlers who were screaming because they were bored or couldn't have something off the shelf.

  Times are changing inside and out of the organization as attitudes towards hitting kids changes.
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  jwfacts

  The most disturbing discipline I remember was when the Watchtower conductor from Hobart congregation, Geoff Whitting, came down off the stage to wack his young daughter, maybe 6yo, in front of the entire congregation.
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  Room 215

  Years ago, "spanking" as it was called (you seldom hear that word anymore) was widespread-- and recommended from the platform and in themagazines -- as appropriate discipline for unruly children. That's faded out over the past 30 year o so.