by Julia Orwell 35 Replies latest jw friends
It hurts my heart to think of the children. Are they solemn? That's what I was like, and I still tend to be. Those kids have no concept of 'bliss'. I understand how you feel.
xo
tal
Hoping more people will write their experiences ... let's tell it like it really *is*, peeps!
I observe that they can be solemn, acting out, or ambitious to go to bethel. They don't seem to be normal, well adjusted teenagers. One Year 9 girl I know was yanked out of school because she had a 'worldly' boyfriend. She got involved with truanting and that. It's a shame, because when she was in primary school she used to tell me how much she loved learning and that she wanted to be a teacher. Her parents married at 18; mum hasn't worked for years, and dad started working at 12. She's now 14 and could really be going somewhere, but she's been screwed up.
Well I was the kid that grew up in a box sadly. my parents took me out of school at 12 years old against my teachers wishes of course and put me in homeschooling which was a joke because my mom had extreme depression and was in bed everyday . So i pretty much had to learn everything alone.I would beg my parents to let me go back to school but they where terrified of the world so they thought if they kept me home i would be protected from doing bad things. I graduated at 16 and was not allowed to go to college or work outside the family business all this due to there fear!!! I had a 4.0 grade average i was a bright smart girl and they threw it all away... i still feel very angry of how better my life could have been.. now at 30 I am still trying to get over the fear of being capable of working and having financial success .
Julia: I believe that the JW kids are not allowed to BE kids.
True dat! Their childhood is stolen.
I remember my daughter at that age. Her friend at the time started criticizing her because we missed a lot of evening meetings, and she wasnt reporting time yet. It hurt her feelings terribly and the friendship ended. That was her last JW friend. I saw little miss goody two shoes years later, she asked about my daughter, all concerned with her spiritual welfare, I wanted to slap her self righteous little face.
When I enterd middle school my Dad had just been DF'd for smoking, and one day Mom said, " If dad's not going to meetings we're not going to meetings!"
greatest day of my life .. so I immediately began petitioning to play football.. so through grade school never being able to play with other kids, was gone..
The best time of my life was midddle school and high school .. I was a JW who finally got to be a non JW..
I just wanted to wear the pads, so cool here is a pic of me in my first year practice gear ,, Oh the glory of it all.. LOL
Like many others have posted already, grade school is not a pleasant memory for me.
Back when I went to school, it was 1-6, 7-9 and 10-12.
When I went from grade 6 to 7, it changed, and became 1-5, 6-8 and 9-12.
Anyway, grades 1-6 were okay, I suppose. My mom started studying before I started school, but was not fully entrenched until... well, I guess the 2nd grade has some 'horror memories' attached to it. (No Valentine's Day).
Middle School - I basically disappeared. I found the school library, and where to go in it to become invisible at lunch time, when the other kiddos were socializing. I was pretty much a mis-fit, and a nerd. I didn't get beat up, but came close several times from some of the show-off kids.
I did well in class, got A's, and a few B's. Teachers were always trying to get me to look towards college - which I knew was going to be an impossibility.
In High School, I transferred half-way through to a different school in the same district, so no one knew me. 11th grade. Other JWs? There were a few. In fact, there was a group of them that sat together at lunch time. I joined them when I felt welcome. I usually felt out of place, though - even with them.
My ex-wife also went to this high school. I never saw her, and she never saw me. She commented on it years later when we were married, and I told her that I just knew the places to hid out at.
We were required to take physical education - or at least I was in the 11th grade. I hated that. I had to change clothes and wear these shorts and a t-shirt. I was nerd enough as it was, but was even more so during P.E. They played sports during this hour of activity, but it was usually volleyball or something that I was no good at (name a sport - and I'm no good at it).
I finally got tired of just standing there as they went past me in turn rotation, which meant that I basically did not ever get to play, so I asked the coach if I could run the track that they had there at the high school. I didn't have to compete with anyone - except myself. The coach said I could, so that is what I did during P.E. I actually got really good at it, and enjoyed it.
I was not allowed to join any clubs, take band, play football or any other sport (a coach approached me and asked me if I wanted to be on the basketball team - I had to tell him 'no'.)
No proms or other dances.
I was not allowed to 'walk across the stage' at graduation - and had to get my diploma afterwards by going to the main office.
I could accept no 'honors' - I would have gotten one on seniors' honors night, had I gone.
No dating. No girlfriends. Nothing.
Of course, it didn't help that I was such an awkward teenager.
Yeah. Grade school is a painful memory.
But... I'm okay now... <twitch> <twitch>
Regards,
Jim TX
I think over-strictness became a problem with JW's at the point that they thought the end was coming in 1975.
The whole organization thought they were marching into the promised land in military order - like the Israelites in the exodous.
Everything was tightened up. Even the new smoking rules were instituted in the context of purifying the congregation for God's approval just before armageddon.
The article that launched the no-smoking rules was titled: Keeping God’s Congregation Clean in the Time of His Judgment
THE TIME FOR DIVINE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
26 These rulings with regard to spiritual and moral matters of the Christian witnesses of Jehovah may appear to some to be very strict. But this represents no effort to act in an arbitrary, dictatorial manner. The strictness really proceeds from God, who expresses himself through his written Word. In view of the time in which this generation of mankind is living, it is the time for careful attention to cleanness of conduct by those who desire to please God and to enter into his approaching righteous new order.
That article came out in June 1973. That was 40 years ago when they expected the outbreak of the Great Tribulation even before the end of the 6000 years in 1975. From that point on JW's went crazy. The leadership in local congregations was expanded from one overseer to many overseers. This meant that every Tom, Dick and Harry could now qualify as local governors and to do so they had to have "theocratic" children. Basement parties were over. Congregation picnics started to disappear. Responsibiity in the congregation from mike handlers and attendance takers to litterature clerks were stepping stones to ELDERSHIP and any evidence of deviance had to be monitored and punished.
After all, with armageddon so near everything became a life and death matter.
I was a socially awkward teenager and the fact I seemed to be accepted into the Jw congregations was one of the big factors on le becoming a Jw. Must've been hell tho for you kids who had no choice. Billy the ex bethelite said on another post that he had to pretend he didn't miss Xmas and all that and tell the other kids he got presents year round. The Jw kids at school used that one on me. Thankfully though I was allowed to be a loud, active teenager cuz I wasn't in a Jw family and didn't go to assemblies till I was 18 and finished school.
The educational neglect of jws is horrifying. When I was studying my mum was a teacher at a school with heaps of Jw kids and I had to defend my new faith against her strident observations of how badly behaved a lot of these kids were and how little the faith valued education.
I thought the JWs were cool at high school because when we all had to go to our scripture class the JWs were allowed to just hang out together.
I don't know if they have religious instruction these days but we had it for one period every week.
I was brought up SDA but because there was no SDA minister in the town I went to the Anglican religious instruction class.
