Ask an Ex Fundie (VF style)

[JMO]

@raspberrymint Hugs.  I'm sorry to hear that.  My son has very similar issues.  He has dysgraphia, ADHD and a borderline reading disorder (he's considered low average).  The combination has given him anxiety and a little defiance when it comes to anything school or homework related.  I've long since realized that he is exactly the sort of kid who would suffer in homeschooling.  I'm very grateful for his therapists and his reading teacher for working with him to help him progress.  

[FundieGhostWriter]

On 8/13/2019 at 2:22 PM, Monstrous Black Sheep said:

YES calligraphy was heavily pushed

Thanks MBS. This next one might be outside your experience - if so I hope others will contribute. Douglas used to claim, Gothard-style, to be against syncopation (CCM was 'Christian paganism'). Later on Christian cinema, particularly film scores, became his 'passion'. Did he change his stance* on modern music (those wicked beats of - a certain people group)? Or was all film music to be performed by orchestra or string quartet? (OK, maybe sextet, so he could have a couple more cellos.)

I did, at the time, feel that Doug's attacks on modern music ran less than skin deep. To me he seemed to wear his fundamentalism like he wore his tricorn hats. He dressed himself in ideologies, costumes and mere words (lots of them). Perhaps in the end not much (beyond power hunger and the profit motive) was real.

I'm glad your family situation sounds quite positive. Please move forward with caution. The world outside of fundamentalism is also replete with wolves waiting to exploit naïveté. I hope you thrive.

 

*perhaps widen it? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Do any VF watchers know when the colossus stance appeared? Did it arrive alongside 'manliness' and so-macho escapades?

 

[raspberrymint]

On 8/14/2019 at 10:40 AM, JMO said:

@raspberrymint Hugs.  I'm sorry to hear that.  My son has very similar issues.  He has dysgraphia, ADHD and a borderline reading disorder (he's considered low average).  The combination has given him anxiety and a little defiance when it comes to anything school or homework related.  I've long since realized that he is exactly the sort of kid who would suffer in homeschooling.  I'm very grateful for his therapists and his reading teacher for working with him to help him progress.

I've since been a teaching assistant at public schools.  The ones I've worked in are not where I want my kids to be, either.  (I'm no longer a TA because I felt too much was about order and control instead of learning.) 

The K-5 school in my district still uses D.A.R.E., a program shown to be ineffective and backfire.  I moved hours from my family to a city in a different state.  The area where I live is not wealthy.  I'm in the blue collar part of the city, not the part below the poverty line, but there is still prejudice towards young kids here and towards the people here overall.  

I absolutely hated being controlled and distrusted in any sense, and I don't want to give that to my kids whatever hats it could wear.  So, yes, my wife and I will homeschool.  My kids don't need to be ostracized for having two moms, either.  Just because my mom homeschooled me doesn't mean I have to teach like her anymore than it means I have to teach any curriculum I used to teach.  My wife was homeschooled, too.  She wasn't until high school, when she insisted on it.  That wasn't a fundamentalist setting.

I wasn't allowed to teach kids like me.  Firsthand experience means nothing and is apparently a disqualifier if anything.  I don't have the time or money to afford an advanced degree.  Childhood-me was hurt by professionals as well as by my mom.  

I'm sorry if I sound bitter.  I'm not trying to be argumentative.  Any defensiveness is born of a lifetime of having to prove my intelligence to various people.  All my adult decisions that were truly mine were made with the intention of benefitting my future children.  That includes living in a diverse community.  But I will definitely be homeschooling unless necessity requires otherwise.

[DefraudedByPlaid]

On 7/25/2019 at 3:53 PM, Monstrous Black Sheep said:

I think a lot of non-fundies see fundy families as black and white. For instance, believing that the father is always tyrannical (that's why they're patriarchal, right?) -- this is not true. It may be OFTEN true, but it certainly wasn't in my family. For me, the perpetrators of trauma and spiritual abused were leaders like Doug Phillips and other Vision Forum teachers, not my parents or my church (church was never of much consequence to me, although we attended).

Thank you for your responses, @Monstrous Black Sheep. People don't fit into boxes, and while there are so many things to discuss and critique about fundamentalist movements, we should do our best not to make sweeping generalizations.