by cyberdyne systems 101 19 Replies latest jw friends
I'd be having a word with your ex-wife and tell her not to tell your daughter that celebrating a birthday is "pleasing Satan" or you'll take this matter to court
This has to be the worst possible advice anyone can give you. Open confrontation with the mother will be disastrous for everyone involved!!
Excuse me? You think he should just stand by and let his ex-wife brainwash their child into thinking that her father is doing Satan's bidding?
A sad quote from http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/9/110139/1.ashx :
My wife's submitted parenting plan marginaIizes my son from me with no overnight visits and 18 hours a month visitation until the age of 6. She has states that this is so that, "He will know what he believes in before when he comes to stay with you." This breaks my family's heart to be facing no contact with their first grandchild and nephew.
Who wants to go down that route??
Mary, you are right to be angry.
All I am saying is that is not the way to go, not unless you want a scenario like the one above. Being right is one thing, but confrontation is not the answer. It would not be fair to the child and there are plenty of sad custody stories to confirm this.
Everybody knows that if you celebrate birthdays somebody ends up with their head cut off.
If she ever comes out with this statement, tell her...."So because one person got their head cut off you won't celebrate birthdays anymore? If you knew of one person being killed by a hit and run driver, would you not drive a car anymore"?
Same logic.
Hubert
The WTS has made very numerous mistakes in interpreting the Bible in its short 130 year history and that makes all its original interpretations suspect, the Birthday ban especially stands on very shaky grounds, it is just a human custom like weddings and if biblically it had a couple of negative associations that was just a coincidence.
All I am saying is that is not the way to go, not unless you want a scenario like the one above. Being right is one thing, but confrontation is not the answer. It would not be fair to the child and there are plenty of sad custody stories to confirm this.
I agree that it's always best to try and get things resolved in a friendly fashion first. But if the ex-wife insists on demonizing the father of her child over something so ridiculous as a birthday, and if she refuses to back off, then yes, I think he should take it before a court.
Let me give you an example of what this can accomplish: A friend of mine (an ex-Dub) let his 8 year old daughter go and visit her JW grandmother for the weekend. The grandmother told her granddaughter that Jehovah didn't love her or her parents anymore because they stopped going to the Kingdom Hall. This totally floored the little girl and she spent the next 2 weeks praying to Jehovah that he wouldn't kill her at Armageddon for not going to the meetings. My friend was (understandably) furious and told his ex-M-I-L not to ever say anything like that again or he'd cut off visitation rights. She, in all her self-righteousness, wouldn't listen and next time she saw her granddaughter, told her again that her mother and father and her were all going to die at Armageddon if they didn't come back to the Kingdom Hell. So the father cut off visitation rights. The grandmother took it to court to get her visitation rights back. When it all came out in court, the judge ruled that the grandmother was guilty of inflicting emotional distress upon the grandchild and she could only see her with supervised visitations approved by her son in law.
My point is: Witnesses think they have Jehovah backing them in all their decisions. If this woman continues to tell her child that her father is "pleasing Satan" by buying her birthday gifts----that is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. If a court ordered her to refrain from telling her daughter these things, and if she faced losing custody if she refused to heed the courts' warning, then that just might solve this problem.
Just to stick my nose in - I don;t know how the law is in the States but in the Uk the mother is pretty much always right no matter what - except if she is a proven drug addict. So if mother decides to stop visitation despite what the courts have decided then the father can expect to wait at least 6 months to see a judge to try and get to see his kids at all and even then the court will do NOTHING to punish the mother for preventing fathers access.
Its terrible and unjust but when it comes to parenting fathers are definitely second class citizens in the UK and have to pretty much toe the line unless they are willing to lose any kind of access to their kids for prolonged periods.
I hate that the JWs state that Jehovah doesn't like birthdays because the two instances of it in the Bible, someone's head was cut off. The Bible never states that Jesus ever peed or took a crap. Does that mean it never happened or that we aren't supposed to either?
Dear Cyberdyne:
I certainly do not envy your position. However, I can relay to you a personal experience. I am a JW; my ex-husband was never a JW. He didn't hate JWs when we were married; however, afterwards he hated everything I liked, and this spilled into his relationship with our daughter. She was five when we divorced. He was constantly taking me back to court to stop her from attending assemblies, etc., and I let him! People at the kindgom hall thought 'I should fight' more. But, I knew I was in a battle for her heart, which is emotional, not her brain, which is logical. I knew that children started making judgement calls regarding their parents behavior in the early teens. I was confident that upon reaching adulthood, my daughter would look back and make a judgement call about who caused her the most pain. I didn't want to be the one who caused her emotional pain by dragging her father into court repeatedly.
I was correct. She is now almost 21, and has not spoken to her father for over a year. He won every court battle, but lost his daughter. She is not a JW, but is a happy, competent, contributing citizen...which is just what I wanted, and we have a fantastic relationship. I am taking her to a spa for her 21st birthday. Interestingly, a pioneer sister was asking about her a few weeks ago, who commented that my kids always seemed the most balanced in the congregation.
You have been presented two options here: One is to drag it into court; the other to wait until she can process the information. Should you choose to take it to court, you most likely will not have the outcome that Mary presented as you are dealing with the mother, who has more legal rights, not the mother-in-law. I do agree with Mary that it is emotional abuse, but probably not to the level a judge will intervene.
Waiting until the child is older and can process information has worked well for me. But, each circumstance is different. Focus on preserving your relationship so that you two are still speaking when she is old enough to process the infomation. It would truly be a shame to win your court battles only to lose your daughter.
Should you choose to take it to court, you most likely will not have the outcome that Mary presented as you are dealing with the mother, who has more legal rights, not the mother-in-law. I do agree with Mary that it is emotional abuse, but probably not to the level a judge will intervene.
Sorry, I can't agree. Telling a child that her father is "pleasing Satan" can be extremely damaging to a child. If nothing is done to make the mother back off and stop demonizing the father (no pun intended), then there's also a very good chance that the child will grow up and not want to have anything to do with her father, because she was taught all her life that he's an agent of the Devil.
Perhaps it's true what someone else wrote here: that the laws in England are different and he might not have much of a chance of winning.......whatever happens, I wish him all the best.
Thats so sad .
I hope things work out for you
es
