I feel like being a Mormon is like being in a High school! It seems like all Mormons care about is there appearance and what there image looks like the most..like us teens suffering with insecurities in high school! I feel like it's completely ridiculous! My Sister has a whole lot of hours of dance every day of the week! My Parent's try to make me go home teaching with my dad every month! They make me go to seminary every day, young mens, home teaching, They used to make me do piano but I got buisy with school and I quit..They make my other two sister do the pian and the other one does violin and they have practice every week and constantly in my house a musical instrument is playing 24-7!! And it's the most annoying thing on earth! And they forcefully make me volunteer for things that I don't want to do..moral of the story is that something about the parents of TSCC really likes keeping everyone buisy because it builds a "firm foundation" and just seeing all these poor mormon teenagers being buisy all the time makes me sad for them because they are doing stuff that they don't want to do because there parents are making them and that TSCC is all about appearence of "Choosing the Right" and whoever can be the most "Christ Like" and it just makes me feel like this religion really is a cult because it's all about what I said before...It just makes me really sad :( It just really feels like being a mormon parent probably feels like highschool all over again. I would seriously love some insight on all of this and maybe some experiences from some exmormon parents that might have felt like TSCC was like H-S all over again and all there stories! Come on people! Lets get into some Honest serious deep emotional stories about what it was all like and how ya'll felt! <3 all my love to those who seriously suffered :'( <3 ~Thanks! :*~



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2016 02:11PM by damyn.

That may not be only Mormonism that makes parents raise kids by keeping them so busy with projects and extracurricular activities in addition to schooling it makes their heads swim!

It has become a national pastime for parents to keep their children so busy with activities that they are better equipped to compete for spaces in colleges at admission time.

And to try and keep their children off drugs, or getting into other things that would cause them to self-destruct before reaching maturity.

I didn't have that kind of rigid structure growing up Mormon in the morridor when I did. My children had lots more structure because it was how their entire generation has been raised, with or without a church in the background.

Busy and Mormon do seem to go together, so you got that right. It isn't always good or best to stay "busy" for appearances sake. What's best is to do what needs doing, and concentrate on priorities whether as a family, as a student, or whatever. Kids grow up so fast anyway, it's nice to stay kids as long as you can cuz being a grownup takes up the rest of our lives anyway.

(Add: and stay young at heart for as long as you can, so you'll still feel like a kid even when you're 80.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2016 10:11PM by Amyjo.

Mormonism makes them think they know it all (best), they are okay/ saved/ perfect (best), and they do no wrong (only the 'best')!

Many Mormon fathers and mothers can be quite militant and be uber picky perfection fulfilling image keeping up with the Joneses freaks. Can be 10 x worse than normal families, who aren't commanded to blow up and split apart when one of them has ideas of their own (who don't say "families are forever" and then don't practice what they preach).

Each child isn't considered autonomous, equal, loved, or considered when one or more, at any given time, are lost in the flock, not allowed a voice, a choice or a consideration because there are too many(?), because their creators lack or have no luck, time, choices, imagination, creativity, (free) agency or their church/home life/ controller/ cult/ "leaders"/ parents/ environment suck(s)!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2016 11:44PM by readwrite.

I'm happy to add to this my TBM parents weren't perfectionists in the TBM sense of the word.

They did become inactive following their divorce, by the time I was finishing up high school.

Neither denounced Mormonism however. My dad was the more philosophical of the two. He believed in parts of it, and discarded the parts he didn't believe. (He didn't specify which those were, and I didn't get to ask him before he died.)

Mom was the more controlling one of the two when it came to parenting. She was just overly strict, my dad was more neutral.

My very TBM friends and classmates I grew up with are today much less uber TBM than their parents were/are. Probably more of them have had faith crises like we have, but haven't totally opted out yet, unlike ex-Mos. They hang in to pacify their parents, relatives, or significant others.

What doomsday people and LDS have in common is they both think they're living in the "end times." That has to rub off on their children - may be why they push so hard. Not only to be "perfect" or "perfected," but to be saved in the resurrection.

When the focus is on works instead of grace, that makes being busy more important than just being good people by trying to live right.

The adage "Look busy, Jesus is coming," could be their slogan! :)

Oh, please don't let this competitiveness squash any love for music you might have.

My parents were not too bad. But my grandmother was terrible about it. She was right upfront about us (her grandkids) needing to outshine all our "cousins" back in Utah. We were props for her success, and she didn't try to hide it.

I never became a violin or piano virtuoso, much to my grandmother's disappointment, but music played a big part in saving me from the crazy.

Anyway, if music just isn't your thing, find something else that you love to keep you busy enough to keep them off your back, and also save you from the crazy. Whatever your thing is, develop it and run with it.

I'm watching a young mother with kids ages 4, 3, and 6mo that is working overtime to keep the kids busy. The 4 year old is reaching burn out. He has all of his church stuff, pre school, violin, riding lessons, computer class, and then has to be read to for a minimum of two hours a day. He doesn't have time to be FOUR!

Mama is hiring someone to come in and help her so she can spend six more hours a week reading to the kids. The 3 yo isn't having any of it. She's already been labeled the devil child. That makes me so sad. She's a funny, bright, artistic, and curious child. She's anything but evil. I want to slap her mother for sticking her with that label at such a young age.

The only good I can see coming from any of this is that the kids will burn out and rebel from all the non stop church crap that's being pounded into them 24 and 7. The 4 yo refuses to sing "I am a Child of God". Instead he sings bla bla bla. Pisses his mother off but she can't seem to make him sing that damn song. lol

Girls like that 3yo have a way of shining their light right through the basket that Mormon parents stuff them under. ;-) I wouldn't be surprised if she bursts out creative and rebellious in spite of everything her mother tries to do.

The three year old child sounds like the type that would flourish in a Montessori school, if her mom would open her eyes to her potential!

Hope she does break out from that suffocating environment in a good way. Poor little kid.

:/

*



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2016 01:19AM by donbagley.

"It seems like all Mormons care about is there appearance and what there image looks like the most..."

Appearance is so important to Mormons that they control what you wear and don't wear, your haircut, how you speak, whether you can curse, what your vices and hobbies are, everything. Controlling members is about controlling how the church is seen by others. They even imply in lessons that everything you do reflects on them, so you better look and act good in order to make them look good. The church is like a narcissistic parent who thinks their child exists solely as an extension of their own ego.

There's always too much consistancy in TBM behavior.

Let he who has eyes ...

I read the total as the bustiest :)

whoops, I read the 'title' as the bustiest,