Maxwells: "Have raised children who have not rebelled"

[VodouDoll]

That's exactly it, FloraDoraDolly. Steve has said before that he loves his children more than he trusts them, and because he loves them and doesn't want them to go to hell, he has removed any chances they might have to get out from under his protection and think for themselves. He doesn't trust them to do things his way so they'll just never get the chance. He considers this to be awesome parenting.

[Dandruff]

If you remove both temptation and free will, then what's left to rebel with?

[socalrules]

The problem is that what Steve sees as rebellion, everyone else sees as normal activity. If you asked my mother, she would say I never rebelled. I did what was asked and rarely got in trouble. Yet, I had friends, went to concerts and the movies, read whatever I wanted out of the library, even dated boys with no chaperone in sight. Every single thing Steve is against. My mother trusted me because she trusted the work she put into raising me. Steve, like other fundies, don't even realize that if you are incapable of trusting your children to make the right choices, even as adults, then you are saying you do not trust the job you did as a parent. If you cannot trust your children, why should anyone take your advice on parenting?

[MamaJunebug]

Let's try restating this grand achievement without using a negative.

"They have raised 8 children who have not rebelled", restated without the negative, becomes:

"They have raised 8 children who each follow every method their parents taught them, to the letter. They have raised 8 children who believe, teach and understand God and life exactly as their parents have taught them to.

They have raised 8 children who accept what they were taught without questions or at least without any demonstrable evidence of brief descents into doubt."

To some people, these things would sound admirable indeed. To me, they sound sad and more than a little disturbing.

[Hane]

I thought that the trick was to raise adults, not children.

(Billy Crystal once famously said, "I don't have children--I have adults.")

[DGayle]

I'll be honest here. I believe that the only kids who don't ever rebel are kids who've been abused. Even good kids are going to rebel in small ways, unless they're scared to. It's part of growing up and becoming your own person apart from your parents.

[Antimony]

If you remove both temptation and free will, then what's left to rebel with?

This is kind of interesting philosophically. Is Steve really raising 'Godly' kids if they cannot choose to be that way? Does God see good and upstanding humans following his law because of the free will he gifted them with or does he see humans he loves but know haven't chosen this?

I'm not theistic but I wonder how Steve would answer questions from this angle about his children. It's even intro philosophy level stuff but are they good people if they can't chose the path, so to speak.

Hope this makes sense, I feel like I'm babbling.

[FloraDoraDolly]

I'll be honest here. I believe that the only kids who don't ever rebel are kids who've been abused. Even good kids are going to rebel in small ways, unless they're scared to. It's part of growing up and becoming your own person apart from your parents.

Exactly! And what kind of a parent would expect their children to always, always, ALWAYS do absolutely everything according to Dad and Mom's standards?

[jaynie]

I'll be honest here. I believe that the only kids who don't ever rebel are kids who've been abused. Even good kids are going to rebel in small ways, unless they're scared to. It's part of growing up and becoming your own person apart from your parents.

It depends how you define "rebel". Some parents consider it normal teen behaviour to be pushing boundaries, rejecting parental beliefs, and even trying out things your parents would rather you didn't. So do their kids go through a rebellious phase if they do those things, or are they simply individuating themselves as expected?

If parents have reasonable expectations like that, if I recall correctly, the balance of evidence is that most teens don't rebel. But if parents are more authoritarian, most teens, eventually, do. Steve's " success" is in being such a comprehensively totalitarian parent that even if a child wanted to break the rules, it would be insurmountably difficult. (On the other hand, people smuggle Chinese media into North Korea, so the border crossing into Steve's little dictatorship may yet prove to have weak spots)

[Peas n carrots]

Even many Amish groups let their children to go through Rumspringa. The Amish are more lenient parents than Stevehovah!

[polecat]

I didn't rebel. *As a teen.* I never talked back, disagreed with my parents or voiced an opinion that was in any way contrary to theirs. I never got in trouble at school and was considered such a model of good Christian behavior that I received "Christian character" scholarships to not one but two Bible/fundy colleges.

But oh, my heart was rebellious. I hated everything that I was forced to do. I hated the oppression and the control and the suffocation of it all. I hated the play-acting. As an adult, I began to finally chip away at that shell they'd built around me in ways that horrified and terrified my parents, and my god, the cool, crisp air of freedom was exhilarating.

The poor Maxwell kids may be seething with rebellion in their hearts, but unlike me, may never get the opportunity to breathe the fresh air of living their truth. And if any of them ever do, they're far more likely to go off the rails because they have never been taught how to make good decisions but only to follow their parents' orders.

[Jana814]

Am I the only one who wants these kids to "rebel" right now? Come on, Maxwell kids, here is your chance!

I've wanting them to rebel since the moment I first read their blog.

[Jana814]

Even many Amish groups let their children to go through Rumspringa. The Amish are more lenient parents than Stevehovah!

Yes they r!! The Amish want their kids to have options but the Maxwells don't.

[Arete]

That is bull that the Amish are lenient and allow their kids to rebel. They don't let those kids attend a real high school during the Rumpspringa, or allow them to do service projects with English kids or go to a science museum. What they allow them to do is go to parties where there is tons of alcohol, possibly drugs, lots of hookups, and present THAT to their teenagers as the sum total of life in the outside world. So the kids think the choice is between being a hedonist or a meaningful family life among the Amish. Together with their 8th grade educations, that does not constitute any real choice or lenient parenting.

I apologize for the derail, but I just can't take it when people hold up the Amish as some sort of example of healthy parenting. It's a sham meant to scare their teenager into choosing the Amish way of life.

[docmom]

IMHO having children who never "rebel" is indicative of a giant parenting fail. Unless you are perfect and do everything right (and I'm pretty sure there's some stuff in teh bible that says otherwise, not to mention Steve's own good person test) then your children SHOULD question how things are done and should do some things differently. If children didn't depart occasionally from the ways of their parents we'd all still be living in caves.

[browncoatslytherin]

I apologize for the derail, but I just can't take it when people hold up the Amish as some sort of example of healthy parenting. It's a sham meant to scare their teenager into choosing the Amish way of life.

uh, i don't think anyone here was advocating amish parenting as healthy. just that it is not as restrictive as the maxwells, which it isn't. steve and teri would never allow their kids near alcohol or drugs or the opposite sex unless there's an engagement on the horizon. while the amish may not be presenting the real world accurately, the kids are at least allowed to get a little wasty-faced and experience some things that the maxwells never will. that was pretty much the only point. :P

[Four is Enough]

That's exactly it, FloraDoraDolly. Steve has said before that he loves his children more than he trusts them, and because he loves them and doesn't want them to go to hell, she has removed any chances they might have to get out from under his protection and think for themselves. He doesn't trust them to do things his way so they'll just never get the chance. He considers this to be awesome parenting.

Of course they're not going to Hell. They're already there.

[moodygirl86]

Define rebellion please, Steve. It's such a subjective word. Like many others on this thread, me and my brothers were never particularly "bad" kids - we didn't do drugs, vandalism, shoplift or get into major trouble at school (as in suspension or expulsion). And all of us are honest, law-abiding adults. But we were by no means perfect either.

1) J, the eldest, went through a proper Kevin-the-teenager phase at 13 or 14 where he was really defiant and rude to Mum but soon stopped when he realised he wasn't impressing anyone (though I've seen photos of him from that time and he does look scarily similar!)

But he's a really nice bloke now at 34 and a brilliant dad to his two kids.

2) E, next brother down, had a reputation for being the cock of his school year/a bit of a hard nut. He's now mellowed out a LOT.

3) Mum does joke that I "rebelled" as I was her third child after two boys and she would have liked me to be a girlie girl, but I disappointed her by turning out to be a tomboy and a punk. However, that's not rebellion in the generally accepted, non-Steve sense of the word. I didn't always finish my homework on time, I had the odd underage pint and wasn't afraid to challenge authority figures if I thought they were being unreasonable. I was also a bit of a class comedian, which made other kids laugh but must have got on teachers' tits.

4) And M, the youngest, is definitely the good one out of all four of us, but even he got into trouble once for bunking off school with some mates. The other boys got suspended but M just got detention as it was his first (and only) offence.

It's called adolescence, Steve! Perfect time to make mistakes and learn from them.

[Artemis]

If you raise children as human beings and you communicate with them about rights and responsibilities, they don't need to rebel, so you don't fear them rebelling. if you raise children as if they were all inherently evil, of course you fear them rebelling.

[Jessica]

That's like saying you've trained your bird not to fly away when it has never been let out of its cage.

[browncoatslytherin]

That's like saying you've trained your bird not to fly away when it has never been let out of its cage.

for real. their faith must be so fragile if it can't withstand exposure to different and "worldly" things.

[sparkles]

When you say you can't trust the adult children whose hearts you kept in a death grip, it really speaks volumes not only about your parenting but the strength of your faith as well.

FAIL!

[Toothfairy]

Parents, at some point in their child’s life, probably in the teen years, their role should move from protecting your child, to teaching them how to make good choices. That learning to make choices part scares most parents. What if they make a mistake?

Parents fear this because frequently those parents have made all those mistakes themselves. Or trying for their child to be raised not to experience failure or mistakes. This is a set up for failure. If you on't make mistakes, how will you grow?

We all need to live our lives, learn to make choices, for better or worse and sometimes in the process we fall down and get hurt. A good parent can loosen their grip enough to let the child make some decisions and learn from them before they reach the point of having to face those huge life altering decisions all alone.

Steve stop being scared and face the real world like a big boy. Stop living your own life through your kids. Stop protecting them from emotions and the world. You got to make that choice to live this lifestyle, now it's time for your kids to make that choice and decide if they want to continue in this lifestyle that you ruined their lives with. Unfortunately since you brainwashed them so much, they don't have the skills they need to go out and experience LIFE, you drained it all out of them.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

What they allow them to do is go to parties where there is tons of alcohol, possibly drugs, lots of hookups, and present THAT to their teenagers as the sum total of life in the outside world. So the kids think the choice is between being a hedonist or a meaningful family life among the Amish.

Very much this, and it's not restricted to the Amish either - this painting of the choice as "meaningful life in our particular very narrowly prescribed religion, or a life that is completely meaningless and based around nothing but the most primitive bodily pleasures and waste" is common to various fundie groups.

The idea that you can leave religion and yet still have a productive life with meaning and healthy goals is very, very threatening to these groups.

With the Amish in particular, the most threatening behaviors that were considered true rebellion that I've read of (and personally know in one case) were (1) attending a Baptist church (read: some other sort of religious establishment, particularly Christian of some sort) and (2) going on to high school and further education.

If you do these things starting on Rumspringa or otherwise before being baptized you won't get the full shunning treatment, but it's definitely a rebellion and leaving, you "fell off the path" and are a disappointment pretty much. You won't get baptized and so you just will drift away from the world and just kinda naturally have less and less in common with family that stay in.

There are groups similar to "Footsteps" for ex-Amish (read: Amish that decide not to baptize in) too. They have similar needs, to boost up their education and English skills and get themselves employable or able to move up in education, and just acclimatizing to the outside world in a healthy way. If you read around stories from people in such groups, a very common theme is frustration about people who are still religious refusing to believe that they could want to exit for intellectual reasons, and instead acting as if surely the only reason they want to leave is for the sex and drugs and other bummy lazy reasons. Plus very often there's a big helping of "and don't spend any time with your younger siblings because you will tempt them into your life of sin and screw up their lives, so just stay away."

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Define rebellion please, Steve.

Honest answer to that question, you really need to read the book featured in the ad that sparked the thread - "Keeping Our Children's Hearts."

He spells things out in detail, and it is quite a creepy book. It's all about just how this "sheltering" of children is supposed to happen. Bonus, in the end there are testimonials from all the kids about how much they appreciated this parenting. Just... yeah. :pink-shock: