Overheard this morning:

DD: I don't want to go to church today. It's sooo boring.

DW: Do you you remember the promises you made when you were baptized? Are you someone that breaks their promises?

DD: ......No.....but I HATE church!

DW: Then why did you choose to be baptized and make those promises?.......What are you going to do if you stay home?.....you need to do something to show Heavenly Father and Jesus that you're thinking of them! Are you going to pray and read your scriptures for three hours?

DD: Fine, I'll just go........I HATE Sundays!


I hate Sundays too...and I'm trying hard not to hate DW right now. She's flopped back and forth between "There is no God", "Yeah, Joe was evil, but the church is still good.", "Even if the church isn't true, I could never leave.", and "I can't deny the spiritual confirmations, priesthood blessings, etc..." the last few years. Right now, she's obviously in a manipulative TBM phase. I respect her right to believe whatever she wants, but I don't respect her choice knowing everything she knows, what she's admitted in the past, etc... She has no integrity, and I HATE how she's manipulating our kids. All of my kids hate church and fight going every week, but she tries to manipulate them, and when that doesn't work she just forces them. I doubt any of the kids are going to stay in the church once they get a little older, and I don't know if my marriage is going to survive the fallout from that. No words can describe how much I hate TSCC.

Ugh I feel for you. Those are the same kinds of manipulative things my mother would say to me as a kid. Ummm....I didn't have a choice to be baptized! They always act like the children have a choice, but they don't. They use guilt and manipulation for everything. Such a cult.

My first thought is to encourage your kids to respond with "because I was eight and you forced me to!" in response to the promises thing.

But I doubt it would make the situation better...

How old were you when you were baptized -- 8-years-old or an adult.

If you were eight, you were way too young to be making any type of commitment for life -- and if you were an adult, you were lied to and information was withheld about the organization you were joining, so not valid.

On the plus side, that kind of TBM parenting pushes kids out of the church quite nicely. It's pretty much what happened at my house. My TBM husband now wants to know why our kids "don't want God in their lives." Gee, I wonder why.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2017 06:02PM by want2bx.

Yes, the good news is that your children are on their way out, but, you are probably right, there will be fallout, unless your wife forms an understanding, over time.

Mormons think manipulative lies is the norm, part of the "best-way-to-raise-kids" Mormon parenting philosophy. In the real world, it is a form of abuse.

As a devout TBM mother, I still never spoke to my children, like your wife did. I felt it was not "ethical" to guilt-trip kids, and to heap blame onto them, when their fragile egos couldn't take it. Stripping a child of his ego, is part of brainwashing.

Don't worry so much! Children are way smarter than Mormon parents are told to believe they are. I know that your daughter, in her heart, knew that her baptism was NOT A CHOICE, and that her mother was lying to her, when she said it was her own choice. No matter how many times I read the BOM to my children, and taught them those stupid Primary lessons (that I believed at the time), my children could never believe the Joseph Smith story, or any of the other tall tales.

Your wife might come around, like I did. They day I "came around" was when I sat them down at the breakfast table, looked them in the eye, and asked them, "WHY do you hate church so much?" Then, I sat back, and listened to what they had to say. It was an earful! They told me about repeated physical abuse and bullying, an attempted molestation, adult-generated slander and gossip against my children and me, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity--all of it, in our own neighborhood Mormon ward. I had known about a lot of Mormon adult business frauds, spousal cheating, lying, stealing, etc, but had kept it hidden from my children, not wanting them to lose respect for Mormon authority. It would follow, I suppose, that their children would be just as corrupt.

Watch out, that your children don't learn to lie, from their mother's example. I believe that young kids have a natural genuineness and strength of character, and that they learn corruption, through bad examples. Keep them straight, as to what the Truth is, and be loving and real, yourself. I always had integrity, even though I was a Mormon, and I valued that in my children. Integrity and Love, above all else. Family above religion, always. Show them kindness and understanding, and maybe demonstrate, through example, how to set boundaries and stand up to bullying. Hopefully, you can avoid the "repercussions," that lie ahead.

The highest and best solution to your family problem is to help your wife to see the Truth. This is something we all wish we could do, with our still-Mormon loved ones! We will never give up trying.

To be sure, the worst problem in my family's life--the thing we fought about the most, what made us the most unhappy--was that damn cult!

After our talk at the breakfast table, I told the kids that we never had to go to that church again! This was when I still, pretty much, believed, but was still able to follow my heart. My heart told me that child abuse is evil, and the temple blood oaths were evil, and that demanding tithing from the poor to buy real estate and build malls for the rich, and to lie about polygamy, seer stones, and Mormon authority from God--all that was evil, too.

Children can be wiser than adults, sometimes; hence, brainwashing is necessary. Don't let that happen to your kids. You can weather the storms, and come out the other side, and still keep loving your wife. I hope you resolve things before your oldest child reaches missionary age!

Sorry for the rant, but I'm pissed, too.


"No words can describe how much I hate TSCC."

I love this post. Using guilt as a pressure-point for manipulation is unethical, especially when applying such a ridiculous standard of "you chose the church when you were 8 years old and now we are going to hold you to it!".

What does an 8-year old know about anything? An 8-year-old only believes what his/her parents tell them. 8-year-olds will do whatever they need to do to remain safely in the good graces of their parents. This whole thing of baptizing 8-year-olds is a horrible and manipulate practice. True Anabaptists wait until children are older to make that decision. Of course this argument will fall on deaf ears because to a mormon, being an Anabaptist is like being a Catholic - not a true religion.

To be clear, I'm not an Anabaptist I'm an atheist. I'm just saying that other religions at least recognize that 8 years old is not old enough to truly accept a religion as one's own "truth".

You need to pin your wife down. Ask her exactly how she would have reacted if they had refused to be baptized at age eight.

Explain to her that at that age, kids are completely dependent on their parents, and fear rejection. Rejection means death.

So effectively in their mind, they made promises with a gun held to their head. Can't really use those promises against them.

And now she is still shaming them, with the intent of instilling the fear of rejection, either by her, or church members, or god.

So essentially, the whole thing is based on motivation by threatening death.

And this, folks, is called free agency.

At least the chances that you will have a relationship with your children are highly possible. Men who leave the church wind up in an ugly divorce with no contact with their families. It destroys families. Ask the men who have gone through the pain of losing their children because they no longer believed and wanted out. I cry reading their stories.

I wrote that book.