Childhood milestones:
- First comment at the meeting
- First public talk
- Dress-up in meeting clothes, first briefcase
- First field service
- Baptism
Ok, interesting. Well, our 3-year-old has been dressed-up already with clothes some JW-friends gave him as a present. Kind of cute and kind of scary at the same time. I will have to think about my position on field service, once my wife picks that up on a regular basis again. Although I believe I will have quite some advantage there, because I will be able to offer a lot more fun stuff to do with my kids when planning on how to spend saturday morning.
Baptism is big of course. I plan on setting the rule that they can decide about that not before their 18th birthday. What opposition will I face here? When somebody pressures them they can always blame me and my rule.
And thanks, jgnat, for the links!
There are two areas you can/should discuss with your wife. The blood doctrine and how that applies to her and your children and the Pedophile problem.
I've done a lot of research on the blood doctrine. Although I couldn't convince my wife to not carry the blood paper thing around, I at least made her accept all the blood fracture stuff and use of blood saving methods. And I made myself very clear that our children will always be allowed to accept blood transfusions no matter what.
On the pedophile subject I haven't really gotten to her. When talking about things like that (strange JW rules/interpretations or any flip-flopping doctrine), she blames humans to be imperfect, even if they are elders or GB. There is bad people everywhere.
Now, lucky72's list (thanks, great post!):
- insist that we had friends and associated with kids outside of the organization
Check. Also my wife is ok with this.
- allow us to play sports and be involved with extracurricular activities
Check. Also my wife is ok with this.
- discuss doctrines. I think this would have made a big difference to me because I had so many doubts and getting a different, well thought out and reasonable perspective from my father, at a young age, would have been enormous. We did occasionally engage in debates when I was in high school, such as evolution vs. creation, but I think I was too far gone by then
Ok. Will keep this in mind.
- argue with the fact that witnesses are the only ones who have the truth and that everyone else will die at armageddon. Present evidence of "goodness" in other groups. Although I had many doctrinal questions growing up, I never really questioned that all other religions were evil, so it made my other issues seem secondary. It also made me reject any argument against the witnesses (occasionally presented by my grandparents) as being "apostate". I think if these discussions had started at an early age, in conjunction with a discussion of doctrines, I would have been eagar to entertain alternatives
Ok. Shouldn't be a problem. My wife does see goodness in other groups already, so no opposition there.
- insist on college (if that's what your children want) and don't wait to have that discussion until the last minute. Deep down, I really did want to go to college out of high school and I remember wishing at the time that my dad would have insisted. I did eventually go to college during the brief change in policy in the 90's, and it helped give me the confidence to finally get out.
Check. Also my wife is ok with this.
- Do not underestimate the peer pressure in the congregation. Because my mom was very active and my dad was an unbeliever, we had several elders take my brother and sister and I "under their wing" and the pressure from them and their families was huge! We felt the pressure from the "good" families because we wanted to be considered "good association", and this influenced my willingness to participate in lots of witness activities enormously, especially because I had no friends outside of the organization.
Ok, haven't thought about that very much. Thanks for pointing it out!
