Quiverfull Mom Expresses "Disgust" For 12-Year-Old Daughter

[oscar]

A mere 10 months after rambling for thousands of words about how she really really really does know God, Mrs. E then un-self-consciously turns around and spews to the world words demonstrating a total lack of love and grace toward her daughter. To me, that reveals a frightening absence of awareness. Yet she continues to publish this junk, like she's just so full of wisdom that she can't contain herself? And in other posts she mentions the opportunities she gets to teach and speak to women?

It seems clear that Mrs. E suffers from mental illness, and is using religion to self-medicate. By strictly adhering to a system of thought and practice that she believes is prescribed by God, she is able to function in her daily life. She seems to believe that this means she has been "cured" of her mental illness.

I think this is why her writing has that fractured inconsistent tone - she claims she is nothing but a wretched worm, but is nevertheless so much better than others because she has some particular clarity of insight into God's demands.

Presumably, her children do not require these same coping mechanisms in order to function, because they do not share their mother's mental illness. Mrs. E does not appear to recognize this. In fact, it looks like she's inverted the causal relationship between her mental illness and her religiosity. To most of us, it seems clear that she has a mental illness, and is using religious scrupulosity as a way to manage her otherwise-disordered thoughts and actions. However, she seems to believe that she would never have developed mental illness in the first place, had she been sufficiently attuned to God's will all along.

Moreover, Mrs. E seems to have little sense of proportion or scale. On her old blog, I remember she wrote that people would be amazed if they knew she had cleaned the crumbs out from under her stovetop every day that month, but they actually shouldn't be impressed with her because all the glory goes to God. Honestly, if you are a normal person, lifting your stovetop and brushing out some crumbs is not an amazing feat. I think this anecdote speaks not only to the fact that she has long been operating under some cognitive impairment that makes ordinary tasks seem more challenging to her than they do to other people, but also indicates her inability to credit other people for their actions.

So her kids don't really get any credit for doing things the way Mrs. E wants them to, because God gets all the credit, but any transgression, no matter how minor or imaginary, means the fleshly world is going to collapse in on them. I think this distorted perspective and concomitant lack of insight explains why she treats her children in such a flinty manner. And she's always been especially cruel towards her daughter.

I just feel so badly for her kids. She's a grownup and gets to choose how she wants to cope with her challenges in life, but they don't have any choice. And I think her husband is a piece of shit for his complicity.

[clarinetpower]

Holy crap.

I just looked at her chore list. The 12 year old does more in a day than I do in a week, and I'm a SAHM. This woman must be OCD, too. Yikes.

I know I would be inwardly seething.

But yeah, if she doesn't clean a fridge shelf a day for weeks--BIG FREAKING WOOP. It doesn't have to be done daily! But every swipe of that microwave is a swipe she'll take at you some day, lady.

That poor child.

[Hane]

Thus far, none of us has mentioned this part of her blog post:

When no one is looking, she is a different person. I actually caught her twice in two days bullying her 6yo brother–she hit him for trying to help her put a game away, and another time she pushed him off HIS scooter and took it from him. She glanced towards the house first to make sure no one was looking.

I have no doubt that these two little pieces of nasty behavior happened. The poor girl is boxed in and emotionally controlled and manipulated 24/7, conditions that set her up to be a master of passive aggression. She has no legitimate outlet for anger or frustration, so she has to sneak bullying into the agenda.

[Kitty]

Let me get this straight. A 12 year old girl does have math and social studies work, but she can only do it AFTER she takes care of her younger brothers? Meaning, her education takes a backseat to raising her healthy, living mother's education? In 2011?

I want to kill this cunt who's enslaved this girl.

[Muffy]

Oscar said,

I think this is why her writing has that fractured inconsistent tone - she claims she is nothing but a wretched worm, but is nevertheless so much better than others because she has some particular clarity of insight into God's demands.

Yes! All your observations really ring true for me, but this one in particular gets at the heart of what has always bothered me about Mrs. E's writing. She sprinkles in plenty of pseudo-humble "Oh poor wretched useless me - it's all God!" stuff, but then the entire point of her having her blog in the first place is because she clearly believes she has vital things to say to other "Christian sisters."

That's one of the things that has kept me coming back and reading her blog in horrified fascination - I continue to be amazed at how she sets herself up as this special authority, even as she obviously treats her children with very little genuine sensitivity and love.

Was anyone here around right when her first blog disappeared? Does anyone remember if she'd gotten any angry feedback through comments, or did it all happen behind the scenes?

[NurseNell]

She asks for advice but comments aren't allowed and there's no way to contact her. Does anyone know her real name? I thought I saw it on one of her post signatures yesterday but I don't find it now.

[Mompom]

I can't believe I'm saying this. Is there a way to trace this and report to CPS? When I read this I see the Stephen King book "Carrie". Am I the only one? The extreme paranoia that her daughter is not completely devoted to God makes me want to vomit. I had to take breaks from this thread because it was so disturbing to read. Oh, sweet girl, you are in our thoughts! This woman takes the cake for crazy. Really above and beyond. I know lots of people with mental illness and the way to help is to NOT ALLOW THEM to hurt their families. 1. Of course you need to protect the family but 2. when they get sane again, they realize just what they have done. This is horrible on so many levels. I just wish she could go have fun, learn, and have friends.

[NurseNell]

I can't believe I'm saying this. Is there a way to trace this and report to CPS?

I've wondered this too. And if you read back she's shown the same attitude to her daughter, it's not a recent thing.

[Austin]

I can't believe I'm saying this. Is there a way to trace this and report to CPS? When I read this I see the Stephen King book "Carrie". Am I the only one? The extreme paranoia that her daughter is not completely devoted to God makes me want to vomit. I had to take breaks from this thread because it was so disturbing to read. Oh, sweet girl, you are in our thoughts! This woman takes the cake for crazy. Really above and beyond. I know lots of people with mental illness and the way to help is to NOT ALLOW THEM to hurt their families. 1. Of course you need to protect the family but 2. when they get sane again, they realize just what they have done. This is horrible on so many levels. I just wish she could go have fun, learn, and have friends.

Oh, my gosh, I was just going to post the "Carrie" connection! I was just trying to read through to the end of the thread first, but yes, the intersection of mental illness, religious extremism, and a teen (almost) girl. Bad, bad combo.

[NurseNell]

On her blog she writes this:

Your child will never learn anything positive from other children. At best, your child will not be negatively influenced.

You can read the entire post here:http://homeschoolblogger.com/mrse/page/4/

I would guess these kids are very socially isolated, which of course makes it easier to treat them the way she does and hinders the kids reaching out to others.

[NurseNell]

She even takes the joy right out of Christmas:

Yes, they will have presents in the manger (we don’t do Christmas trees, but we have a manger that we put gifts in). But what they will not know is that the biggest gift I plan to give them is me

Great, just what the kids need, more of their mother with all of her wisdom.

[Austin]

This woman is a joyless hag who takes the joy out of everything.

[oscar]

Was anyone here around right when her first blog disappeared? Does anyone remember if she'd gotten any angry feedback through comments, or did it all happen behind the scenes?

Her previous blog vanished after she wrote several posts critical of her church and pastor. She was speaking out against age-segregated Sunday school, and criticizing other parents at the church for being lazy and raising ill-behaved, undisciplined children who could not sit through family-integrated services. Her pastor spoke to her and her husband about the divisive and inflammatory nature of her online writing. She ended up taking down several posts and then shutting down the blog entirely. I seem to recall that her husband was making her do it.

Edited to add: And this is why I think her husband is a piece of garbage. He seemed quick to step in when she was embarrassing him in front of their community, but she's been horrible toward their children - the daughter in particular - for years, without any apparent intervention.

And you know she'd have written about it if her husband had requested that she treat the children differently, making a big, passive-aggressive deal over her "submission."

[Muffy]

Her name is Camilla Anderson, from what I can remember from her old blog, before she was "Mrs. E." Her husband's name is Eric, which is where the "E" comes from, I guess.

I have a hunch this situation is like so many others that have been discussed here. Her children are clean and well-fed, living in a clean house. They're not in any physical danger. As great as it would be to see someone swoop in and rescue the poor little 12-year-old girl and save her from a life of limited education and the psychological abuse caused by her mother's obviously manic pickiness, that's not anything that CPS would ever be able to do.

I join the others in praying for the girl. I'm thinking it must be very very hard to live in that household!

[Muffy]

When I first saw the most recent post, the one that asks for advice, I actually clicked to leave a comment. What happened was that it logged me in under my Facebook profile. I'm not a fan of cross-posting to Facebook, so I didn't comment. But I did get to poking around on Facebook and found Mrs. E's profile. What was oddly jarring to me is that unlike other frumpy fundies, Mrs. E is "normal" looking - actually sort of perky and cute. Go figure.

[oscar]

She and Erik are not hard to find on facebook, and at the moment, she has quite a bit of content visible to the public.

[NurseNell]

She and Erik are not hard to find on facebook, and at the moment, she has quite a bit of content visible to the public.

I did find her. Her daughter looks like a lovely young lady. Nice looking family.

[easternabeille]

Well I can't seem to find either one of them on fb but I did manage to find their business website

[oscar]

http://web.archive.org/web/200710120346 ... aanderson/

Here is cached content from her old blog, just in case you haven't gotten your fill of wackadoo crap from her new blog. It's the wayback machine, so I'm not bothering to break the link. In particular, note the entry entitled "Children's Ministry--From My Perspective," where she badmouths her pastor, her pastor's family and other families within the church. It's klassy as all heck.

Edited to add a direct link to the aforementioned entry:

http://web.archive.org/web/200710200315 ... on/339265/

[Muffy]

Oh wow. Oscar, thanks for the link to archived posts of "Mrs. E's" old (and even more disturbing blog). I had forgotten some of the gems she'd posted. Here's an excerpt from an article about how she got her baby to sit through an entire church service:

A mother recently emailed me, after reading somewhere on my blog that we have trained our baby to sit in church, and she asked me how I did it. After I typed her a response, I realized I had a great blog entry and I definitely wanted to add it to this journal as part of the wonderful journey on which God has led us!

It was quite an experience and a challenge to train the baby to sit in church, but we know that it was God's best. We want all our children to love church services and Pastor's teaching and authority. If they are trained and raised right, church is an exciting and fun thing because they have grown to love God, and the Word of God. We have been met with a lot of misunderstanding (and even some hostility), but God continues to make it very clear to us to stand for what we believe in--for exactly what He has shown us to do.

So for the baby, we started at about 8 months old--as soon as we realized he understood what "no" meant. We resolved to hold him still in our arms with a gentle but firm restraint so he knew that moving, getting down, playing, touching things, etc. was not an option (just like riding in a car seat! They don't get out because it's not an option!). Our arms became his "church car seat." Any fuss was met with a loving but firm whispered "No! Church! No fuss!" in his ear and a light tap on the legs to let him know we were serious. As soon as his fussing got too loud, we removed him from the sanctuary to a private place (a back room, an office), but as soon as we got to the room, he received a real spank (click here to read a full description of how and when I spank so that your imagination doesn't run away with you) that stung a little with the words, "No fuss! Church!" Then, if he cried and wailed, we continued (still in the private room) to hold him on our lap in his "church carseat" position. If he continued to cry, about every 10 minutes, he would get another little tap and a firm, "No! No fuss! This is church!" No matter what, during church time, he was never allowed down or rewarded with play time for his fussiness. When we were criticized, we would respond, "Babies can sit in a car seat for over an hour. He can sit for church." Our Pastor once retorted (because of all the pressure and complaints he received about us), "Well, in a car seat they can fall asleep." I said, "He can fall asleep in church if he wants to!" We would then practice at home using video sermons (hoping to speed up the process for the sake of everyone at church who thought we were crazy). I would sit with him on my lap with our correction rod in one hand. I would point to the TV and say, "Church! Shhh! Pastor! You sit." If he wiggled or fussed, I would immediately say "No! No fuss! Church, and then give a little sting with the rod. I would then say, "You listen to Pastor. Shh!"

I always try to say "No!" before the spank so he has the chance to comply and he hears the command first.

How did it go? Well, the baby is now 21 months old. It has been about one year since we have started training. We have never once given up or let our goal slide. We have tried to be 100% consistent (sometimes our training was interrupted due to the presence of another church member in our back office or from someone coming and going to the restroom). But now the baby will sit through a 1.5 hour service. He has grown to LOVE church. This last Sunday night, we got there early, so I let him play in the nursery and go potty. At 5 minutes before six, I said, "Come on! It's time for church!" He yelled, "Church! Church!" and he ran out the nursery door to the sanctuary. I let him mill about through the people and interact with the adults, and then our pianist started playing. As soon as he heard that, he started running down the aisle telling everyone, "Church! Church! Church!" He saw Pastor coming down the aisle and he pointed and yelled, "Pastor! Pastor! Pastor!" (He was excited that church was starting). He then climbed onto OUR pew (the place we always sit--he found it on his own), grabbed a hymn book, and started singing at the top of his lungs to the music that the pianist was playing. He was doing church! I sat down and motioned to my lap and said, "Get over here! Church is starting! He climbed up and I put on my "church carseat" hold, and we started church. My hold is still firm even though he's getting the hang of it--because he still tests the boundaries. My boundaries will not move!

Now, my child is still a strong-willed boy. He does perfectly well until about 15 minutes into the sermon, then he tries to twist or fuss. I tell him "No! Church!" in his ear and he usually stops. Sometimes he still tries to test the boundaries. If he fusses for more than 3 seconds, I whisper, "Do you need a spank?" That usually stops him. If he insists and fusses for 5 or more seconds, I immediately take him out into a back office, give him a good spank that has a sting, (follow this link to see a specific description of how I spank my children) immediately put him back into his "church carseat" position, and I say firmly, "Church! No fuss! You be quiet!" These days, when I take him out, I can spank and within 30 seconds he is properly corrected and happy, and I can usually sit back in the service for the entire rest of the service with just that one correction. We are now moving on to training him to not touch our pen or Bible as we take notes, and teaching him to sit on the pew independently.

Here's the link to the archived post: http://web.archive.org/web/200710200313 ... on/282061/

It's interesting that the child she was "training" in this post went on to develop struggles with OCD and Tourette's. :|

[amie]

..........

[BravaAmica]

No meds what so ever. Jesus healed her of everything. She believes she was not really bi polar but that because she wasn't in line with Jesus in her life he was giving her a signal to come to him. She doesn't have a lot of those posts on this blog. Her old blog was a gem of stuff about how disease doesn't really exist and how if we all came to Jesus he would heal us too.

So she's in a manic phase now? What's going to happen when she crashes? Will she think she is (or worse, her children) are possessed by a demon and in need of exorcism/ dsicipline? I fear for her kids.

[Annette]

If you click on the comments link at the bottom of a post, you can see her replying to her comments.

[oscar]

I'm sorry - I don't mean to get so hung up on this one infrequent blogger. I know there is an entire movement that is spawning a generation of kids who are being systematically disabled from ever being able to take their rightful place in the world as individuals. But it's just so disturbing to me to see such a blatant example of psychological abuse paraded around by someone who thinks she "really knows God."

I've been thinking about why Mrs. E's blog is so particularly upsetting to me. Following her writing over the years, it seems like she has become increasingly awful, thanks in no small part to the patriarchal/Quiverfull framework that legitimatizes and reinforces her most damaging beliefs and practices.

Now, some of my friends and relatives have occasionally recommended material like, "Created to be his helpmeet" or "Babywise." I've explained that I have serious reservations about the advice therein. And in response, I hear things along the lines of,

"Oh, there's some bad stuff in there, but lots of good stuff too - just ignore the parts you don't agree with!"

or,

"What that person did was awful, but they would have done something bad no matter what community they were part of or what advice they received. It's not fair to criticize everyone based on the actions of a few bad apples."

But Mrs. E's blog provides such a clear counterexample. And it's worth emphasizing that her current writing - which is troubling enough on its own merits - is actually sanitized and edited to avoid giving offense. Those poor kids.

[BoomerLynn]

Oh wow. Oscar, thanks for the link to archived posts of "Mrs. E's" old (and even more disturbing blog). I had forgotten some of the gems she'd posted. Here's an excerpt from an article about how she got her baby to sit through an entire church service:

Here's the link to the archived post: http://web.archive.org/web/200710200313 ... on/282061/

It's interesting that the child she was "training" in this post went on to develop struggles with OCD and Tourette's. :|

This makes me so angry and makes me want to cry all at once. What kind of sicko spanks an 8 month old baby to get him to be quiet in church?!! That is horrible! At my husband's old chuch the people with infants would usually sit or stand in the back near the doors and if a baby fussed they would just walk out into the lobby until the baby calmed down. This is what a good parent would do. For someone who follows the whole "Children are a gift from God" mentality, she sure does treat her "gifts" terribly.