I am going to start by telling a little of my story. When I was growing up, my mother was a witness, and my father was not. My mother took me and my brother and sister to the meetings with her. My mom was always so proud of us when we were doing things Jehovahs way, so when I was 12 I got baptized just to have her love and acceptance. When I was 14 I was disfellowshiped. After that my mother would be as hateful to me as she could be and she will now go on trips with the "witness" kids that I grew up with and will barely talk to me. Since I have been out I have seen a lot of cut and dry facts that prove that the Jo Ho's are a very mind controled and controling organization. When I try to show her where they have contradicted themselves in the articles throughout the years she always throws up that I am an apostate and that nothing I do will ever change her mind. Please help me while I still have a chance. This bitch is CRAZY!!!!!!! and now I have 3 children of my own and I cannot get my mom to shut up about the witnesses and now my daughter is wanting to be a witness cause she picks up on the positive responses she gets from my mom when she talks about "Jehovah". How do I stop all this non-sense without totally banning my mom from my childrens lives????? HELP!!!!!!!
Please help me get through to my mother!!!!!
by dissedsis 16 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
patio34
Run, do not walk, and get a copy of Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, which is literally loaded with suggestions, etc. It has everything you need to know about it. I've been devouring the book all week and am only sorry i didn't read it sooner. I'm going to read it at LEAST two times and memorize many of his suggestions. I also hear that he may be on the Dateline show next Tuesday @ 8:00 p.m.
Pat
-
FRUSR8TD
Also...do whatever you can to keep your kids safe...and educate them early...encourage them to think for themselves and draw there on ideas. I have refused flat out to let my wife take my kids to the kingdom hall...and the elders actually told her that if I said no then it's no...she can't take them.
-
Billygoat
I think education is the biggest key. Allowing your children, especially at a young age, to think for themselves is the biggest weapon against mind control. I was taught at a young age (before dad joined the JWs) to think for myself. I had a tendency to ask Dad for the answer and he would never give it to me. He would always come back with, "What do you think the answer is? What do you see?" (I especially remember this when it came to math homework.)
Little did he know it was exactly that training at a young age that would get me out of his cultish organization. Haha!
Andi
-
Scully
First of all, you don't have to tolerate her bad behaviour. If you are, as she says "an apostate", then she should not be discussing religion with you, period. When she starts on a JW rant, stop her immediately and tell her that if she's going to preach at you about her religion, she had better be prepared to give your viewpoint equal time.
She also needs to learn to treat you with respect. That goes for your parenting choices, in particular. Tell her that she does not have your permission to preach her religion at your children. If she continues to do it, you have to exercise your parental rights and keep your children away from her JW influence. You have every right to expect your mother to respect your boundaries where you and your children are concerned, and you have every right to limit her access to your children if she refuses to comply.
Steve Hassan's "Combatting Cult Mind Control" is a good book, as Patio suggests. Another excellent one is called "When God Becomes A Drug" by Leo Booth. I totally agree with the idea that certain people become "addicted" to a strict controlling religion in order to escape from reality, and to inflict guilt and thus manipulate the people around them - much the way substance abusers do. Once you start thinking of the JWs as a form of "mental and emotional abuse" you'll understand how important it is to limit your and your children's contact with your mother and set up non-negotiable boundaries for her behaviour.
Restricting access and enforcing your boundaries is a way of reversing the balance of power that your being "disfellowshipped" has given to your mother. Don't allow it to continue. Empowering yourself like this will keep you from feeling like she's in control - which she is, at the moment.
Most JWs are not capable of being "gotten through to", the way many substance abusers cannot see the harm their behaviour does to others. So, in order to protect yourself and your children, it's sometimes in a person's best interests to have an extended "time-out" from interacting. I can attest to the fact that it will be difficult. I put my own parents on a 2-year "time-out" for interfering with the way I discipline and raise my children. Now that we're on speaking terms again, they know better than to cross the line if they want to continue seeing their only grandchildren.
If you want to discuss this privately, my e-mail is open.
Love, Scully
-
Francois
What would you rather have, a child who has little or no association with its grandmother; or a child who could very likely grow up only to cut YOU off, from itself and YOUR grandchildren by it?
I don't think I'm putting the question too severely. Those are just the choices as I see them.
If this were my child, and it was, I would cut off the association before it went one inch further.
My mother was keeping my little boy during the day while I worked when he was about six. He came home one day complaining about being made to "study" and to parrot a "prayer." I was furious. I was also on the phone to my mother in something like .000001 nanosecond. And I laid down the law in absolutely unambiguous terms. She would stop with the bullshit, and I mean NOW, or I she would never set eyes on my son again.
"It won't hurt him..." she started saying.
"Yes it will. It has hurt me," I told her,"What's your answer? I want it now and you've only got one chance to get it right."
She got it right.
Don't take chances with your children would be my advice.
Francois
-
Billygoat
Wow Francois. That's pretty awesome. If more parents would take that approach, I doubt we'd have so much heartache on this board. Great experience - thanks for sharing. BTW - does your mother still keep your child? How can you be sure she's not doing something behind your back?
Andi
-
blacksheep
“Also...do whatever you can to keep your kids safe...and educate them early...encourage them to think for themselves and draw there on ideas. I have refused flat out to let my wife take my kids to the kingdom hall...and the elders actually told her that if I said no then it's no...she can't take them.”
FRUSTR8TED: Good for you!! Please stick to your guns. I certainly wish MY un-believing father had. Instead, he sold us kids out IMO. He didn’t believe it, but he allowed my mom to have her way and raise us as JW’s. Two of the 3 of us are out of it (as adults), but it has done some damage. He punished us (presenting a "united front" with mom), if we appeared to not want to go out in service, go to meetings, whatever. He seemed to try to portray my mother as some virtuous, righteous, giving person, someone we should strive to be, and a large part of those virtues apparently stemmed from her "appliciation" of the JW beliefs. All the while, he clearly refused to accept the society's teachings. Never went to meetings, jokingly put it down most of the time.
I’ll confess, although I love my father, I think he did not act responsibly in this regard. Probably the biggest factor in my leaving is realizing I would NEVER allow my children to be raised in such a religion, esp. against their will.
-
blacksheep
To the orginal poster: I see a lot of similarity in your situation to mine. I think you've gotten some pretty good advice here, which I'll admit is rather heartwrenching to follow. I can think of nothing I'd like more than to have my children have loving, healthy relationships with their grandparents. Unfortunately, with you're mothers' behavior, it's not going to happen. Stop the cycle of abuse. It IS abuse, from my perspective.
I've pretty much put my foot down (in spoken and unspoken ways) as to how my child will and won't be raised. My mother "knows" we celebrate holidays, and knows that I would object considerably to her trying to brainwash (obviously not her term) my young children. We don't spend as much time with her (or their non-believing grandfather) as probably ANY of us would like, but that's the reality of the situation. Either I or my husband are generally always around.
The thing you have to consider (as others have suggested) is, is THIS the type of grandmotherly relationship you want your children to have with her, really. I know with my own mother, when she does visit, she really manages to make it clear that she's working a visit IN with us: that she has this congretation to visit, has to go out in service with THAT group; has a joint study with THESE people. And she can see us at THIS particular time. You know what? Sometimes, it just doesn't work out. We cannot manage to fit HER in. If that's the level of priority she gives to visits with her grandchildren, she's going to get a matched response.
Face it. JW's, mothers, grandmothers, parents, relatives, simply are not going to provide the level of unconditional love we'd like (and hope we give to our children). There are strings attached. Love is metered out, according to how well we behave, esp, with regard to the JW organization. In all honesty, who needs that??? I don't want my child subject to it. And I'll monitor it closely. And try to do "counteractive" measures when they get older, if necessary.
-
dissedsis
Well, I have talked to my mother before and told her how I feel but she still harps on me in knowing that it is the "truth". When My oldest child(she was 5) came home around Christmas and told me that she didn't want to celebrate Christmas cause she was going to be a Jehovah's Witness I told her that I did not agree and that if she was going to be a witness she could not associate with me. All that night I would not talk to her and then when she went to go to bed she came up to give me a kiss and I told her that I could not kiss her. She got really upset and started crying and went to bed. I know it was harsh but I think that she got the message so I went into her room and I told her why I did that. Then I also explained to her that I knew that when she did talk about Jehovah that I knew that it made "mawmaw" happy and she felt more love from her. I told her that mawmaw should accept her no matter what her decisions are and love her no matter what. What the deal was that my daughter would tell my mom how excited she was about Christmas and the reaction that she got from my mom was not good. All she wanted was her love and acceptance and she got that from my mom when she was interested in what she had to say about "JEHOVAH".
My fear is not that she is going to actually join the witness cult, because even at a really young age she is smart and very perceptive so I know it will continue into adulthood. My fear is that once my mom sees that she is interested and my daughter gets all the love from her then and then when my daughter realizes it isn't what she wants to do then she is going to feel the same rejection as I have from my mother and from all the fucking JO HO's!!! That rejection should not be there no matter what and expecially if you are a parent or a grandparent. I have slowed down the visits to my mothers house greatly and I am really thinking about cutting off all ties with my mother from me and my family, I just don't want to have my children hurt from this. It is a tough decision. And.... I also wanted to add that my daughter is basically the only one that she does this too because my daughter is the only one that does not have her biological father and the father of my boys has stepped in and my mom feels like my husband has no say so on my daughter and that she can push me around. Do I make sense??? I feel like I don't.