Did your kids wise up before you did?

by GentlyFeral 8 Replies latest jw friends

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  GentlyFeral

  ....Don't really know how to phrase my question any better than that.

  See, I left when my daughter was 12 and my son was 19. But they were both ready to leave years before that!

  At 17, My son heard a talk about conforming to the bOrg. "Don't put any energy into being different," the speaker said. "Let the bOrg God's organization set your standards for you." At that moment, my son knew he would never be baptized.

  My daughter was far ahead of him; at the age of eight, as the result of a school science project, she was convinced that reincarnation was real. (No, it wasn't part of the lesson plan.) She tells me now that she began searching for other spiritual information shortly after she began learning to read: "I started reading the Bible story book at meetings," she says. "'This is pretty interesting,' I thought. 'I wonder what else is out there."

  So I guess I'm asking a bundle of questions: Not only "were your kids ready to leave before you did?" but also: "Why?" "What did they believe that was different?" and "How did they arrive at their conclusions?"

  Wait'n' for the stories,

  GentlyFeral
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  coffee_black

  My daughter was about 13 when she started asking me, "Where is the love in the congregation? " She told me years later that she had already decided to leave by the time she was a teenager. She was treated very badly by the other teenage girls in the congregation. My son was 11 when he decided he didn't want to go to the meetings anymore. I was out by that time, but my ex husband wasn't. (still isn't) That was an awful struggle for everyone involved.

  Coffee
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  lisaBObeesa

  Well, I was the kid who was ready to leave the JWs long before my parents. Does that qualify for this thread? Sorta?

  I doubted for so many reasons. When I was in elementary school, I realized that some very good people would never, ever become JWs because they honestly did not believe in it. Good people who would not become JWs?? How could that BE?

  I also thought a lot of the teaching sounded just too farfetched. It was so crazy and convoluted. Yet at the same time, they said all these teachings were very easy to see in the Bible if you just looked. If it is so ‘easy to see’ then why didn’t I see it? Why did none of the other Christian religions come even close to it? It seems like they would have come close to it, right?

  The moment I knew I would never be baptized: One day I told my friend about my doubts. She was the fourth generation JW with anointed grandparents and an elder father. I was about 12 years old and I told her my doubts about the crazy 144,000 teaching and other things.

  She said, “You know Lisa, I have had those same doubts. But my dad told me something that really helped me,”

  “What?” I asked

  “Well, he told me just to not think about it and Jehovah would make the doubts go away! It worked! Just don’t think about it, Lisa.”

  I remember going out in service with her later that same day and feeling sick to my stomach.

  From then on, could not wait to get out of the JWs.

  I left as soon as I turned 18. But while I was a teen, I planted some seeds with my mom. Several years later, she left. Maybe I had a little part in that.

  -LisaBobeesa
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  Country Girl

  I always *felt* it wasn't right, but never really could pin down the reasons. I think my first doubts were when I read Darwin's "Origin of Species" out of the Kingdom Hall library when I was 9 years old. I just grew up with the feeling it wasn't what it was made out to be, and it took the Internet to give me the reasons. I never liked their bad attitude towards women: I resented wearing the doilies on my head. My brothers laughed. I resented having to do *all* the work in the house just because I was a female, and hated the condescending way people talked to me. I hated being different for no good reason in school, and resented that my Mother was always out pioneering while leaving me with her four womb expulsions to take care of, beginning at the age of seven. It was a hateful, bossy religion with no end in sight.

  CG
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  Hapgood

  My daughter left the lie "truth" when she was 18, she was never baptized. At first I was devastated, she was going to die at Armageddon, or so I thought at the time. But it was her treatment that got me to look into this so called religion. Not one of the "loving shepherds" (elders) even inquired about her, it was like she never existed to them. To me her leaving the jws was worse then death, but the treatment (or non treatment) that she got hurt me so much. No one cared! That's what hurt so bad, sure some of the "friends" asked about her, but no one offered to come and talk to her. Their lack of love actually did me a favor, I really with all my heart believed it was the "truth", even though I was very unhappy being a jw.

  Hapgood
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  GentlyFeral

  bttt because I know there are more stories out there!
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  run dont walk

  the mind is an increible thing,

  sometimes we underestimate how smart the young ones are !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  I knew at 12/13 I didn't want to be there, and much like your son I KNEW I would never get baptized.

  just did not believe in the JW garbage.
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  Joyzabel

  Hello GentlyFeral,

  Yes, they wised up faster than I did. My middle one was the perfect elders daughter, pioneering and desirous of going to Bethel. Then she got descouraged by the way some treated her over personal matters. This did it. Big hassle, everyone in the circuit gossiping because she had a navel ring, yet no one had ever seen it.

  She and the 14 year old had already left when my wife and I let them know our plans. They were simply going along with their parents. They were relieved to here it was over.

  Without reading R Franz's books, or Carl Olof Johnsonn's books, or Jim Penton's, they knew something was terribly wrong.

  Jst2laws
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  ballistic

  I'm glad you signed that jst2laws, as I started reading Joy's comments and was somewhat puzzled when she said she had a wife!!