It seems to me a lot of Mormon parents are incredibly careless about their childrens' needs. I know this is hardly limited to Mormonism but Mormons chant so loudly about the importance of family, you'd think they'd tend toward superior, or at least adequate, parenting skills. But from what I've seen, in many cases children are treated like pets: important enough, loved but replaceable, worth spending time with if something else more important doesn't come up etc. It seems to me that kids are almost an afterthought...an accessory, rather than a priority.

You have to learn to be a good parent and most of us learn it from watching our parents. If your mom and dad were always busy at church callings, always leaving the kids to fend for themselves, leaving the older kids in charge of the younger kids, having too many kids to adequately parent anyway, you just don't learn how to be a good parent ... unless you make a conscious effort to pick it up yourself when you are older. But you don't make that effort to learn if you think what you are seeing around you is the norm and if it's what you see everyone else doing. Here are some examples:

My MIL used to leave her then 5-year-old home alone each a.m. when she left for work, with instructions to pick up her bag and go out the door as soon as Sesame Street ended and walk to school.

My friend used to wake up and find her under 5 year old kids wandering the neighborhood in only diapers or PJ bottoms. They were living with her MIL at the time and her MIL wouldn't let her put a deadbolt on the door the kids couldn't unlock because it would ruin the look of the front door.

My neighbor's daughter cut the tip of her finger off playing with her dad's electric saw when she was about 8 (which of course was left down where she could get it). The neighbor didn't take her daughter to the doctor because she thought it was a waste of time and money and just tied the finger up with gauze. This same neighbor left her 7-year-old home alone so her family could go to a televised temple dedication. He was too young to go - it was for ages 8 and up. The kid baked brownies while his family was gone and my neighbor was so proud he'd done it to welcome the family home.

This is just the tip of the iceberg - I could tell a couple dozen more stories along the same lines.

One relative lost one of their young kids when camping. Luckily she was found after they all searched for her.

And I remember watching some pre toddlers eating on big rocks that were decorative around a tree. (bug spray? dog pee? fertilizer?)

Some TMB neighbors never watched their kids when they were out front riding bikes and playing....not the country but regular streets and side walks. (Strangers? neighbors?)

Kids running around in a restaurant is OK?

And my biggest gripe.........taking sick kids to church, gatherings, movies or malls. (thank you for sharing germs)

K

that's son has RSV and she just really doesn't seem to care. It appears as if they are still going to church on Sunday *sigh* She doesn't want sickness to "inconvenience" her time to get out of the house and really away from her kids.

She was doing who knows what in her house (probably FB) and "lost track" of the kids for "a little while" they had filled the entire bathtub with water and flooded the entire bathroom and hallway..... that takes more than a little while to do. I just get angry about it.


CA girl..... those things you are talking about had my jaw on the floor while reading..... especially the 7 year old home alone baking brownies.... wtf?

You're cousin is a complete idiot! A colleague of mine spent most of the past week working from home & taking her 1 yr old to the dr b/c of RSV. The kid is miserable! What ****ing moron takes a kid that sick to church to spread the virus?!

it baffles me. Her entire family have been an enigma to me, even when I was "TBM"

And no matter what you say, she gets an attitude even if you approach her calmly and out of concern. She gets offended and goes crying to her mother, then her mom will call and oh it is a huge mess.

*kids sleeping without warm bedding in unheated rooms in the snow
*loggin co OWNER mother didn't PAY for measles/mumps vaccine when it came out (didnt' want to spend the money) & my husband got the measles & mumps concurrently age 2- killed nerve in one ear, partial loss in other (profound hearing loss)
*unsupervised kids fought up & down the street publically, & to defend each other it was ROUGH, no expectations of civility
*incidentally it was a Catholic street, all huge families in tiny wood frame houses going up a hill off the lumber mill yard.

*one pair of jeans, one shirt, for school clothes. All year long. per child (& boots)

*being told it wasn't polite to eat until you were full
(& believing it) they lived so poor

hitting kids with everything anything nearby, including chasing one carrying a stick to hit them with down the street as they outran her- in public- & it was seemly or acceptable


I could go on & on

I think kids were undervalued in some times & places, women were underpowered or disempowered - trapped living within bodies in lives without the thought of a right to make any other different sort of life, one that isn't over burdened, unpleasant or sacrificial. & its hard to break the pattern running like water down the drain pouring opportunity to savor fertility & cherish. its not happening when women arepowerless disempowered by learned programming haunting them from the forties or fifties rewrapped in young women's pink.

I have neighbors who lets their 2year old toddler child run up and down the street with nothing but a diaper on and no shoes in the summer time by himself. Their daughter, when she was 4 or 5 went into a neihgbor's home while the neighbors were away (apparently, they left the door unlocked by accident) and left her toy there. She just wandered away from her home and went to her friend's house. I know these parents love their kids, but I would think with the mom being a stay at home mom, that she would at least keep track of her kids better.

We are always looking out for the neighbor kids to make sure that they are not running in front of cars and that they've told their parents where they are going. Drives me crazy.

I honestly think that many LDS parents believe that as long as they are devout and pay their tithing, that nothing bad is going to happen to their kids. Do they forget about the free-agency of those who are careless or who may want to hurt them?

In my experience being raised by an extremely TBM mother, I've noticed some major flaws in her parenting skills due to the brain washing of the church. My mother did a really good job raising me and my 5 other siblings all by herself (my parents divorced when I was 6), she loved and cared for all of us and did the best job she could without a father figure in the home, and for that I am very grateful.

However, since I am the only one out of my 5 siblings that has "fallen away", I've seen some pretty obvious flaws in the way my mother approaches her parenting towards me. For example, everything and I mean EVERYTHING is church or God-related. I can't even have a normal son to mother conversation with her. Everything is always "I know that if you obey Heavenly Father, such and such will happen..." or "I know that if you pay tithing and pray and read your scriptures, God will bless you..." or "God only wants what's best for you", "Follow the Prophet", "Go on a mission", etc. etc. etc. I, as well as paintinginthewind said, could go on & on.

Just for once, I want my mom to say something like "I know that if you work hard and persevere and don't get into trouble, that you can go far in life and become whatever you want" or "I know that if you make good life choices and be a good person, you will be successful and enjoy life" or something like that! Just for once I want my mom to support me in my decisions and talk to me like mother to son, instead of God to mother to son.

It makes me sad that she believes in the church so much, that everything has to involve the church and God. It is pretty clear that my mothers top priority is the church, not her children. And I say that, because she refuses to help me out financially while i'm in college, because I don't go to church anymore and I didn't (and most definitely won't) go on a mission. She is willing to fork out thousands of dollars for my brothers and sister to go on a mission, but she is unwilling to lend me 50-60 bucks for groceries. She still thinks the reason I can't find a job is because I don't pay tithing. In reality, I can't find a job because this is the worst economical time America has seen since the great depression (basically).

That is what's wrong with mormon parents. Love is conditional. They only love you and treat you well if you are mormon. If you decide otherwise, they treat you like a second class citizen.

Sorry for venting.

I feel you on that one, I wish just once I could have a normal conversation with my mom.

I can't really say anything in general as I dont' see a lot of mormon parents but I can attest to what my MIL does.

My son is 21 months old. When he was barely a year old, she was feeding him raw carrots (one of the things that kids choke on the most) and he did choke. My husband and I were in the next room and luckily he was able to cough it up. It seemed like such a no-brainer to me to not feed an infant a raw carrot.

She will also call my husband and ask to watch our son because she doesn't see him a lot. Every once in a while I would drop him off even if I wasn't working to let her. Then when I would pick him up a couple of hours later, my youngest SIL who is 18 would be sitting with him. Apparently, MIL likes to take him and then when it comes time to feed/change/pretty much anything besides play, she'll hand him off to SIL and go to the mall. She actually did this a few times and so I do not drop him off anymore.

Based on what I've seen I say that it's a miracle she had all 6 children make it to adulthood.

I think that a good part of being a parent has to do with the type of person you are. I've had many mormon friends who were also wonderful parents; some not so much, but most were just fine. Being mormon or not has had no impact on my parenting.

TG

One thing I noticed, when I used to live in SE Idaho in a predominately Mormon town and also in Utah, is that the parents didn't scold their children or teach them common courtesy, at least not in public. I would take my daughter to the park or to a play area and more than once she was hit or pushed down by other kids and the parents were either no where to be found or said and did nothing to reprimand their child for assaulting my child. This was quite common. I always made a point to correct my daughter when she did things like that (I'm talking about little kids, toddlers and preschoolers who tend to do such things). I would chastise her and make her apologize to the kid. But I never saw other parents doing this.

Now I live in Texas and in the same sort of situations I see the parents here are always correcting their kids, making them apologize and all that. Also they teach them to say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" and "yes, sir" etc. It's so different from what I saw in Idaho and Utah. Maybe this is more of a regional thing than a Mormon thing but either way it's interesting.

Mormons keep telling each other that they're "family-centered" (which is BS in its own right), so that they talk themselves into believing that they're good parents, no matter what they do. Look at the hot-sauce woman in Alaska who tortured her (adoptive) kids - she actually thinks she's a good mother! I've seen some horrible treatment by TBMs who think that - whatever they do - they're good parents because they believe in a "family-oriented" church, and that they're protected as a family, because they pay their tithing. Disgusting.

I have interacted with many Mormon parents and have been impressed by very few.

My ex-SIL (well ALMOST ex - BIL is finally divorcing her) treats each of her four kids as you described - as an accessory or afterthought. She came from a HUGE family, was always the sitter for the younger kids. By the time she married she was tired of children, so her own kids have been neglected.
Her children have been left home alone regularly since the oldest was 7, and have been babysitting for other ward families since they were nine.
Several years ago before I knew just how irresponsible she was, my children spent the weekend there. I found out they had been left alone while SIL went shopping. I never allowed my children to stay there after that incident. SIL asked several times for my kids to have sleep-overs, etc. and I politely declined. When she insisted, I had to tell her that I didn't appreciate my children being left alone. She got huffy and said that HER children were responsible enough to be left unattended and implied that mine were not. Umm, no 7 year old should be left home alone, period.

TBM MIL lost one of her 5 kids in the Luxembourg! The family had gone to visit Patton's grave, but poor middle BIL was left behind because MIL THOUGHT he was in the van. The groundskeeper found him, flagged down another American family and called MIL, who by now had made it back home to Germany. MIL agreed to let the other family, who she did not know, take BIL home with them for the night because they "sounded nice" and it was "very late in the evening to be getting back on the road"!!!

The horrible parenting stories could go on all night, but I think everyone gets the drift...