I haven't posted in a while, just been lurking because things seemed to be going okay with my family. I attend church with my TBM wife to help her with the kids during sacrament meeting, and then I read a book during the remaining time at church. It's not ideal, but I thought it was a workable situation.

Recently, though, my 5-year old son has been having trouble sitting through sacrament meeting, and he says he'd rather stay home than go to church, because it's boring. Yesterday, he also refused to say the blessing at dinner. I don't have a problem with that, but my wife does. She still has hopes of a "forever family", and seeing the signs that her little boy isn't 100% Mormon makes her sad. She spent the evening crying and holing up in our bedroom, and I spent the evening feeling like crap.

I've had thoughts ranging from anger to depression, and although I love my wife, I've had thoughts of divorce. I honestly don't know what to do, and I can't see spending the rest of my life in this situation. I apologize for dumping like this, but I truly need advice from those who have been through this before.

What would you do?

your FIVE-YEAR-OLD son called her on her $#!t.

I would tell her to get a grip on herself and grow up. Seriously. Big Time.

now sees life differently than she does, differently than she had hoped he would. If she can't open her thinking up, it will just get worse for her.

Can you imagine him at 19 telling her he isn't going on a stupid mission either?

It isn't even anyone's fault, except the church.

Have you tried professional (non LDS) counseling? The two of you are going to have to do some serious work to be able to develop a plan for a shared life.

MOST 5 year olds in most TBM families complain that church is boring and occasionally refuse to say the prayer.

Back when we were TBM we had 2 of our boys refuse to say the prayer for a couple months around the age of 5. We just didn't make a big deal of it and a couple months later they were back to saying prayers again.

Your wife is getting upset about a good thing (not religious). Children need to grow up and part of them growing up is sometimes doing things like this - if they are not there is something wrong with them.

She is worried about that kind of behavior from a five year old child? No offense to you, but that is a little creepy. Five year old do not act the way she wants them to. For the most part,even an eight year old really isn't old enough to make the determination of whether the church is true or not.

You and your wife need to figure out how you feel about the church, but let your child be a child.

Your son's "rebellion" could happen in ANY family. It's not because of you.

I think it's great that he's showing signs of following his own path, rather than hers or yours or TSCC's.

If I were his father, I'd try to facilitate his exploring who he is, even at this young age. You'd be setting a pattern for his life, giving him a chance to make up his own mind (within reason, of course). If you do that, he'll thank you for it in years to come.

I agree, I've always felt that parents should give their children the opportunity to explore all religions. If they are only given the opportunity to hear about Mormonism, then it is more likely that they will come to the conclusion that it is the only "TRUE" church".

I understand where you are, I've been there and I can't tell you what to do but I can tell you what the ramifications were for doing nothing. My children grew up in the church they married in the temple they had children that grew up in the church and most likely will continue the cycle.

I have told my husband and children my reasons for not believing in the church, but it doesn't mean anything to them because they still want to believe it's true.

I got used to standing outside temples during weddings and endowment sessions, I'm the one who watches the in-laws kids while they go to the temple. My children made it clear that even though my grandchildren love me they would never make my husband nor I gaurdians because of my apostacy. Instead they would have gone to inlaws that already had a dozen children.

That's what you have to look forward to unless you decide to take a stand and talk to your wife about your feelings and fears and don't feel guilty. You can only be true to yourself, after that you can't be responsible for your wife's feelings they are hers and hers alone.

Believe me, I wish I could got back in time and change what I let happen. I can't.

Stop going to church with her!

Let her experience the full blast of sitting there with kids and no husband.
After all, that's exactly what will happen if you divorce her.

Besides, you are entitled to have your weekends off to relax, after working all week.

I could be wrong and obviously I don't know your wife but it seems to me that her reaction was really dramatic, so I'd suspect it has more to do with your disbelief than just your son's behavior.I think she's crying more because she sees your son's behavior as a threat and it reminds her that you don't believe and she probably fears, that since you don't believe, her children may end up down the same road. And, as you said, she could lose her "forever family." It's a natural fear for her to have. And I think it's understandable, she has to let go of the dream she had of having a church-going, TBM family with a "righteous priesthood holder" at the helm. It's a loss she's feeling and you have to let her mourn that loss. I agree that counseling might help. Being really open and honest with each other about everything you each are feeling right now would be helpful. Talking about it will help both of you feel better and feel closer too. Let her know you love her, it's always good to remind your spouse of that. It's a tough situation which will require a lot of patience and compromise from both of you. I wish I had a better answer, some quick and easy trick that would make everything better but, there just isn't one. I wish you the best of luck and hope things get better.

Once he left nursery (and lots of adult supervision), my son often wanted to not go to church as well. It turns out that a little girl in his primary class was pretty consistently mean to him and the teachers never noticed it. Understandably, I wouldn't want to go either. So, we'd have him come with us sometimes when it wasn't possible for one of us to stay home with him, and now that her family just moved, my 5 year old is much more willing to go because he feels comfortable again.

Personally, I wholeheartedly believe in leading by example and giving kids the opportunity to come into their beliefs on their own rather than be forced. I'd much rather have a kid who says prayers because he understands why it's important and believes that than because he has to.

And, really, as adults, we've all been where your 5 year old is and usually are very unapologetic about it. If a sacrament speaker or auxiliary teacher is boring us, we tune them out and daydream and don't even think twice about it. If we don't feel like praying one day, we don't volunteer to offer any prayers. Our kids deserve the same courtesy in return.

Most 5 year-olds think church is boring….not wanting to say a prayer is very normal…wife is over reacting…could be she’s got some emotional maturity issues if she thinks she can use the crying, sulking and isolation to manipulate or punish you….feeling like “crap” is guilt….that’s what the wife wants.

Don’t give into to it…enjoy your 5 year-old and engage him/her in activates that will bring you together…include the wife…make special times for her as well.

Right now her “fairy-tale” world is being rocked because everyone is acting outside her ideal parameters ….the dolls at her tea party just told her they don’t want to have tea. Welcome to the real world…its full of real people with their own set of wants, likes and dislikes. She’ll either learn to live in the real world or will be constantly disappointed.

Love and show her while your opinion of the church has changed your feelings for her haven’t and that your love isn’t conditional. The rest is up to her.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 11:14AM by davesnothere.

I have been in your wifes position exmodaddy... I wasnt married to the person, but I was in a commited relationship with them and talking about marriage. We had been dating for a very long time. It was very difficult because I had a lot of comfort in believing families and marriages are forever. I believe the "families are forever" teaching is the largest hook that the church offers, and it's very hard to cast away the possibility of it happening. The church has many members who live in fear. Fear of loosing their family, fear of not knowing your goals in the next life (or even if there is one), and fear of there not being a God to comfort them when life gets tough. The church will tell you everything you want to hear for 10% of your money.

I can completely understand where your wife is coming from. She must be scared as hell, and you need to be there for her. Could you imagine being in her shoes? everything crumbling around you and being afraid of loosing her in the next life, and then she comes up to you and implies that she doesnt want to be with you in this life either? She is loosing all of her comforts. I was a person who constantly looked for comfort as well, but then I realized I was building my "house upon the sands." I later recognized that while temporary comforts are nice, the only person I can truly rely on is MYSELF. If she doesnt believe she can stand on her own two feet, then she is going to have a very hard time when everything around her breaks beneath her.

What everyone else is saying about your child is true. Most children have a hard time sitting in church listening to some monogomous voice on an intercom. Most children need interaction, colors, and hands-on projects in order to be able to learn something. Hell, I hated hearing the monogomous voices on the intercom up until I stopped attending!

I would say please be understanding of her situation. Her recognition that she has been scammed for this long is not easy to come to terms with. She NEEDS you until she can learn to not be co-dependent on the church and you to attend it. People change. She needs to realize this and cope with the fact that people change if she wants this marriage to work. All Im saying is please have a heart for her. Be open with her. I would recommend counceling as well. If she kicks and screams and refuses to compromise, then you need to express that if she is going to act this way then this relationship is going to become very difficult to deal with. She cannot have everything that she wants because this relationship is about the BOTH of you, not just her. I hope this helps... Im really tired today so I hope I didnt say anything too rediculous.

It sounds like she is being kind of self-centered. It is inevitable that individuals will change in a marriage. It's just a matter of how they change and how the other deals with the change and how they deal with it as a couple.

Because she is likely already scared and frustrated by your choices, she's making the leap that your 5 year old is headed the same direction. Whether he is or not isn't really the issue - he's 5! I think that what really is the issue is her feeling a lack of control about the direction her life/family is taking.

You still going to church might actually be making things worse. She might be feeling like there is still hope for you. You are intitled to you own belief system and should not feel pressured to go to church and continue to live a lie as your children watch and wonder if daddy doesn't believe why does he still participate? Make a stand now while your children are young. If my husband expected me to go to church with him and participate in family prayer etc.... It wouldn't last long. Seems like you need to get over the guilt you might still be feeling. Hopefully your wife softens like my husband did. It took awhile though.

The Mormon church is in fact boring, not only five year olds would tell you that.

Do you want him to be heading in the direction of the morg as he matures?
If not, then you need to take a stand now for spiritual and emotional ellbow room.
You and the kids need to be allowed to breathe.

Also, your wife is very foolish to be ruining your family weekends this way.

Ask her to take a good look at the widows and the divorced in church - they are low on the ward/stake totem pole and struggling to make ends meet.
Is that what she wants?

Even a TBM should know better than to ruin their marriage over Mormonism.

If you were sealed,just remind her that her job is just get get to the ck on her on and you or another righteous priesthood holder will be provided. I you haven't been sealed, she got what she paid for and can't expect you to change.

Two words: Couple's therapy.

Spend the time looking for a real, professional, but non-Mormon marriage counselor... and invite your wife to go... in the interest of "strengthening your marriage"... you love her so much, you want this marriage to work...

So make it work, but with professional help...

You asked, "What would you do?" and this is one of the things I did for my wife, and it helped tremendously. Our marriage is better than ever.

Good luck and I hope it works out. It's worth the effort for the kids. :)

From personal experience:

1. She married a priesthood-holding, active tithe-paying, member. Now she is married to an athiest, non-believer. Consider her point of view and how her world may be turned upside down.

2. Your son is 5 years old. 5. Five. F-i-V-E. He's not 18 and able to make informed decisions by himself. Every little boy and girl considers church boring at sometime or the other. We all did. He'll outgrow this as well. As far as the prayer thing don't force it with him. Your wife will expect him to pray and you may want to encourage him to honor his mother and pray when she asks him to. By doing this you will score points with the wife while prolonging any "big" issues that may be forthcoming.

Who you are now is not who she married. The softer that experience can be on her the more successful you will be in getting her out while keeping your marriage intact.

Marriage isn't 50/50. It's 90-10. 90 for your spouse and 10 for yourself.

It took my wife a while to wake up and when she did it made our marriage stronger. We've been married 20+ years and have had our rough patches but once the church thing becomes a non-issue, things get better.

Grab your wife and give her a big hug. Tell her he's five F I V E and there will be times he will refuse to eat the food she's served. Does that mean he will never eat again? Or that he doesn't love and respect her? Or that he has an eating disorder?

No.

She is losing it because of her fear that you--YOU!-- are taking away your son from the iron rod. You need to calm down and tell her that in child development, five is the age where a boy transfers his identity from primarily the mother to primarily the father. He resolves his Oedipus conflict, if you will, by realizing he will never have you and he better have you as an ally since he can't marry Mommy.

It is perfectly normal for him to want to do everything you do--including not liking Mormonism.

The best resolution to give this little guy the benefit of having his real Daddy raise him, is for you to stick up for your wife. Tell your son that he is to do what Mommy asks. That real men respect their parents by obeying them and that includes prayer and the blessing. Even if he doesn't want to, it's part of his job of being a good son.

If he asks you why you don't say a blessing or prayer, tell him when he becomes a grown up he will get to choose too, but while he's a kid, the grownups choose for him. This is not exactly secret information--most children at five have already noticed that grownups get to do things children don't. Give him an example of you going to church with Mommy even though you don't agree. You do that because you love and respect Mommy's choices.

All of this, of course, varies with each person's stage of recovery. Some people would rather their children end up raised by a stepfather than have to sit through Sacrament even one more time. That's a feeling we all can understand.

Your feelings matter very much and some people are helped by venting here and then are able to act as a loving companion at Sacrament meeting, actually enjoying showing the gossipy ward that they have not dissolved into an unshaven, stumbling drunken lout. And most thrilling of all, when the bishop (or her parents) says something to your wife about her deserving a better more faithful man, she knows that you sit through this boring meeting when you don't even believe--all because you love her.

She will begin defending you and then the whole shebang starts to unravel. Be patient, my friend, there's hope.

Anagrammy

I agree with almost everything you have to say. However I disagree with this:

>>If he asks you why you don't say a blessing or prayer, tell him when he becomes a grown up he will get to choose too, but while he's a kid, the grownups choose for him.

A couple of our kids refused to say a prayer for a short time when they were around the age of 5. One time we were at my parents house and my dad gave one of them a really hard time which I wasn't happy about. My wife & I always said OK and then picked someone else to pray. Within a few weeks or a couple months the kids wanted the attention again and would resume saying prayers. No one should be forced to pray only invited.

Oh, I agree with you.

I only told him to tell his son he should obey his mother because there is a larger issue of parental unity here being ripped apart. That is why his wife is in her bedroom crying.

My advice is first aid for the marriage, which in my view is the higher priority.

Your view is globally correct, my friend. Ordering people to pray never produced piety but Mormons don't mind that. Look at how willing they are to humiliate 12 year old Deacons if they mix up a word or two. If this boy is going to be a Mormon, he will have to do things a certain way--dressing, speaking, haircuts, etc.

Letting a child choose is a much higher road. Maybe the mother would allow that--but it sounds like her heart is breaking.

Anagrammy

bc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My wife & I always said OK and then picked someone else to pray. Within a few weeks or a couple months the kids wanted the attention again and would resume saying prayers. No one should be forced to pray only invited.

One of the hardest things for a teacher to do is to get kids to read aloud. So I always make a huge fuss over the kids who are willing to read ("Wow! You did a really great job. That was a hard paragraph but you knew almost all those words. Good for you!") Pretty soon every hand in the class is up when you ask for a reader and the kids complain bitterly if you don't pick them.

To Exmodaddy, I agree with the others that your son sounds like a completely normal five year old.

The larger issue is that your wife is discovering that people, situations, and life in general have a way of dashing one's expectations. This is a difficult but necessary life lesson, and it is part of growing into adulthood. Perhaps you could model for her how to handle disapointments with grace and humor, i.e., "Honey, I think that Heavenly Father is just preparing us for the day when our son runs off and joins the circus. Evidently he felt that we could nurture a unique little soul."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 11:39PM by summer.

I am going to steal that one for my daughter as a word of comfort.

Ana

Never been thru that, but seriously....her son doesn't like church at age 5 and she is upset. How about giving the boy a chance when he is 10...then she can be upset. That is ridiculous. YOU can not make a kid like church. He doesn't even understand any of it yet. Suggest he go every other Sun. and you do something with him on the off Sun. Talk with him about how it is important to your wife that he goes at least that often. Let him know you are there trying to support your wife and him and each are important.

Don't allow her to throw this in your face. Sounds like she may say it is your fault. Talk to your wife about reasonable expectations. Tell her you can not know if the above will help but are willing to try it. She is acting very childish to sit in a room and cry over this. And no....you should not endure that the rest of your life. So over time you will know what to do. But hopefully she can wake up and you can all leave together.

Dont' force, or allow your son to be forced to say prayers at dinner at ANY age if he is an introvert.

The mormon ideal is that everyone is an extrovert, and is comfortable being one. If your son is an introvert do not force him into trying to become an extrovert by saying prayers in public (even if it is just family dinner).

All I can say is, I'm glad I was not raised mormon. If I had been, seeing the things that are expected of a mormon male, I would literally probably have committed suicide and never made it out of my teens. There is no way that I could have ever gone on a mission.

What would happen if you rocked everyone's world and did just as you pleased? That would be interesting.

A five year old who finds sacrament meeting boring is an observant youth. The kid doesn't need to be corrected, but the environment has got to be changed.

Without a constant flow of information, school would be too hard for a five year old to sit through. Sacrament meetings are notoriously bereft of information. Instead of blaming the source, Mormons tend to blame the victim. Mormonism is a turgid, glacially slow prospect for anyone who is bright.

Mormon church "classes" are focused on obedience for the sake of obedience. The repetition of Joe Smith's holiness is suffocating. Weird Mormon doctrines such as BoM stories stifle the creative mind. I can't think of a better way to ruin an imaginative and sensitive child than a Mormon upbringing.

I was just like your wife a few years ago. She is probably really depressed about all her plans of an eternal family being destroyed seemingly by you. That seems horrible, but in time, going to church alone got really old, and I began investigating the things that had never made sense to me on the Internet. So fast forward a decade, mourning the loss of an ideal life like a death, and I'm so very glad that my husband was true to himself and wouldn't fake it. If you can't have your beliefs in marriage, she is being unfair to you. I hope you can make it through and stay together, only if she is sane and rational. If she isn't I don't think you should stay in a relationship where you are the bad guy. Joint custody might actually open your little ones eyes to what a normal home can be like. Not full of evil and debauchery like the church threatens will happen to those who fall away. Also I don't think a child can discern truth if they are trained in the Mormon programs from birth. I certainly couldn't help the choices I made, I regret very deeply my sole focus was to marry a nice rm and pop out babies and neglect myself and my education, but I was a good girl and did as told. Please protect your children, teach them to question everything, look for facts, use logic, choose their own path!

From the mouth of babes...

The young child understands intrinsically the mind dulling rhetoric, and it is a lesson all adults can learn from.

I did the same thing to my parents at the same age. I hated church, thought it was boring, didn't want to go. So my dad sits me down and explains WHY I should go.....JS story, etc. THAT sounded really made up to me.

For me, that only made it worse, because I could see my life had been decided for me by mormonism and my TBM convert dad. I continued to "rebel" until they let me quit attending at 13 yrs old.

I went back at 22 yrs old, served a mission, married in the temple, started attending BYU. 2 years into my degree, I read up on the history, etc...and that was it for me. I knew I had been right as a child, the church was made up by men and was used to control people into submission and obedience.

Your child is right.....how could he not be? Satan can't temp kids under 8 yrs old right? And if Satan isn't the cause of the issue, what is then?.....oh the fact that the church is bogus, that's all.