What about the children?

[tjohnson]

I have not attended a church meeting for almost 18 months. My wife has gone a few times, mainly just to confirm that the church is what we all know... a cult being driven by money... :duh

However, we are now struggling with our 3 children (ages 12, 10 and 6). The six year old never really liked church and hasn't really even noticed that we no longer attend. The problem lies mainly with the 10 year old, who has 3 friends that bug her daily at school as to why she doesn't come any more. Also, living in a 50% LDS community, we have essentially cut our children's "playmates" down by half... :Crazy:

So, I would like to hear suggestions about helping our children find friends that are not tied to the church. We can deal with the teachings of right vs. wrong, moral values, etc. at home... the problem is helping them find friends that don't have parents tied up in the LDS cult so much that they actually won't allow their children to play with our children. :duh :Crazy:

[why me]

I have not attended a church meeting for almost 18 months. My wife has gone a few times, mainly just to confirm that the church is what we all know... a cult being driven by money...

However, we are now struggling with our 3 children (ages 12, 10 and 6). The six year old never really liked church and hasn't really even noticed that we no longer attend. The problem lies mainly with the 10 year old, who has 3 friends that bug her daily at school as to why she doesn't come any more. Also, living in a 50% LDS community, we have essentially cut our children's "playmates" down by half... :Crazy:

So, I would like to hear suggestions about helping our children find friends that are not tied to the church. We can deal with the teachings of right vs. wrong, moral values, etc. at home... the problem is helping them find friends that don't have parents tied up in the LDS cult so much that they actually won't allow their children to play with our children. :duh :Crazy:


I think that you got a problem. Perhaps it is best for your children to keep the LDS friends and explain to them the different situation that your family is now in. To break a friendship is up to the child, especially if the friendship is not causing a bad example for the child. But you can also encourage the children to find more friends. You will find, as you have already have found, that regardless whether in the church or outside the church many children can come with strange family baggage which can directly or indirectly influence your children. You just need to be careful. I don't know if a parent can place his or her belief system (as in this case) onto the child. This is only my opinion, of course. I am no expert in all this. All the best. :)

[silverfox]

I think that you got a problem. Perhaps it is best for your children to keep the LDS friends and explain to them the different situation that your family is now in. To break a friendship is up to the child, especially if the friendship is not causing a bad example for the child. But you can also encourage the children to find more friends. You will find, as you have already have found, that regardless whether in the church or outside the church many children can come with strange family baggage which can directly or indirectly influence your children. You just need to be careful. I don't know if a parent can place his or her belief system (as in this case) onto the child. This is only my opinion, of course. I am no expert in all this. All the best. :)

If tjohnson is experiencing what we have - it's not the inactive or nonbelieving parents that severe the friendships...it's the TBMs not wanting their kids to play with nonmembers or inactive kids. It happened to my kids.

My 10 yo is most affected. I actually switched schools to one out of our ward so that she was not so limited by "old" connections. It has made a world of difference. Of course this doesn't always solve anything nor is it practical for everyone. We have an open school district.

I didn't make the switch because of this...the switch was made because the classrooms were smaller but it's made a world of difference in allowing her to not by limited to who she knows in the ward or from going to church.

I don't think there is an easy answer. We've become more open to different types of people which has helped but sadly none of them have kids my kids' ages.

I think we should have regular Post Mo activities so our kids can mingle and get to know each other. They need support, too.

[flotsam]

This is on my mind a lot too. In fact, I think this social circle is one of the reasons I keep quiet and do my objecting in a undercover. My wife and I just don't have the social ability that we need to make good friends around the neighborhood. The social circle the church provides us gives our boys at least some kind of social context to interact with. And I think that's healthy.

It is true that there are alot of weird things that get put in their head during Sunday school. However, we're a very talkative family (with each other, anyway) and the boys will always tell us about things their thinking about. Like Sunday when my oldest asked, "At church they said tatoos are bad. Right?"

I took it as a chance for them to think about what was being said to them. I told them about other cultures where tatoos are a sign of spiritual devotion and hypothesized that tatoos are a way of speaking with your body. Problem is, the speech always stays there. So most likely you really want to be sure that you want it.

After about a minute of talking, he lost interest and started talking about his video games, which he was itching to get back to.

Oh well.

Another strange incident was when some of our friends invited us over for FHE to make a video about Nephi and his blass prates. It was weird weird weird. Every other minute one of the dads would direct the guy playing Laban to go attack the good guys. And then, the part where the angel tells Nephi to kill Laban. Holy Cow. Mom was the angel, telling her son to cut off some guy's head because God wanted him to. (shiver)

I made a video of the whole production. Hey. I know, I'll put it up on my website. It's freaky.

http://www.geocities.com/sugarbeetnik/nephilow.mov

The file is about 3 meg. So you'll probably only want to download it with a DSL connection or better.

Anyway. I'm trying to see church as a place where we are presented with incongruities that we can reflect profitably upon. Usually through logical critique and comparison with outside sources.

[flotsam]

The freaky Nephi movie, for those so inclined. Admittedly, I host it on a Geocities site. So my transfer allocation may go over. If so, just come back in an hour or so.

You'll want to right click on it and download the file. Then play it on your Quicktime player.

http://www.geocities.com/sugarbeetnik/nephilow.mov

[smallone]

We too, have three children (12, 8 & 5). We stopped going about 10 months ago. It was most difficult for our 12 year old, although they don't attend a school were very many of our ward does, there was one girl who was in our ward that she was best friends with that did. This girl would ask her about why she wasn't coming at first (and she would tell her that I was having health problems, which was true-briefly, but then she would try to think of another excuse. Not wanting to tell the truth, that we don't believe, because she was afraid of what her(friends) parents would think) and eventually she stopped asking and then a few months ago moved away suddenly. Her other best friend then took up the task of asking her, until she recently moved away as well. This has left our oldest relieved and sad at the same time. But we hope it will give her more opportunity to meet new people, the only problem is most of the kids that attend the school are TBMs, there are only two in her class from last year that were not and one has moved to another school. We too, live in a saturated mormon valley. So enough for my long story and down to advice. We are trying to get her involved with some different environments this summer, as well as myself. That way I can get to know parents better-which in my book is essential. We are going to do some activities with our local Nature Center and find some things that take place on Sundays so we know that these people are at least not TBMs. Locally we have a great Farmer's Market were you can just hang out and visit, so we are going to try doing that on Saturday mornings, they also have a small section for child activities. Also we are going to hook up with some people that we know through our Post Mormon group that know people in our situation that don't attend the social gatherings anymore or who have friends they know. It certainly isn't easy and it isn't that I don't want my children to play with mormons, but usually they just don't understand and are too scared to take a chance on lettting their children be exposed to us. Our two younger ones will be able to tell their friends up front that we aren't active or whatever because they are still young enough. Our 12 year old on the other hand, is at an age were it is hard to tell your friends the news. She could switch schools, but doesn't want to. So I told her to just try to make friends with a lot of people. If your 10 year old ends up in a different class than these three friends maybe she would have a chance to meet some different children. Can you request a different class at the school-something to think about? I bet if you look in your local paper or even the Chamber of Commerce you will find interesting things to do this summer that maybe you didn't realize were available before so you could meet some new people. GOOD LUCK!!