Is This Child Abuse?

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Well, I find the concept of personal sin* quite a disturbing idea, especially as a way of bringing up your kid (I am inclined to agree with Flink's assessment of it as emotional blackmail), but I do actually agree that the mother in the video goes around it relatively harmlessly compared to many others religious parents. I still find it rather questionable to teach your kid that "magic comes from Satan" and make him feel guilty about playing with and imagining it, but I admit my arguments regarding dogmatic upbringing were more aimed at strict, religious upbringing in general than the video in particular.

 

*Personal sin is not a thing for Protestants, though I still ended up worrying myself sick about it during a short phase as a kid; that was entirely due to my own troubled mind, though, and is in no way attributable to my parents, who tried their very best to convince me personal sin was not actually a part of Protestantism.

Edited July 17, 2013 by Dannyboy-the-Dane

[Agent Gibbs]

 

But couldn't one argue that mental torture is child abuse? I mean, either mentally or physically, it's still a form of abuse, right?

 

Why is it mental torture, exactly? Where's the torture, really? It's weird that such extremes are jumped to(admittedly even by myself, assumedly) for something that really seems quite docile.

 

I see it as mental torture because of the implications of the conversation on the poor fiction child. This child was given a toy by one of his friends at school and was asked to go see the new movie of this current trend

 

his mother however guilts this child into disposing of the toy, because satan loves magic and that to like something magical is to dispapoint god.

The implications of this are the alienation and ostrisiation of the child from his potentially former friends;

 

*His friends like the magic warrior

*to like magic disapoints god and pleases satan

*pleasing satan is giving into him

*giving into him is allowing his worship

 

so therefore a simple train of thought that child will have is to see his friends as worshiping satan! or perhaps to a lesser extent just enjoy evil. furthermore not liking the current trend will make him an outsider, and if he explains why he will be ostracised further from his peers

Thus he could end up with no friends

 

his mother also describes displeasing god and gods actions, so this child will feel intense guilt for displeasing god even for a short time

 

that to me is all torturing that child mentally giving him all these ideas that obviously contradicted his own nature, all put forward by his mother who happily dishes out judgement on gods behalf with a smile, i find that plain creepy, it gives me images of Carrie

 

and with regards to your other point about when the child is older Rummy, well i think its entirely possible that he would question the beliefs and form his own, but in doing so he would be put at odds with his family, and potentially remove his relationship, so at this point he'd need to make a choice between personal convictions and potentially loosing his family

 

nobody should go through that.

 

The thing is this is close to home;

1. a friend of mine a school lived with her grandfather and he was a very religious man, and he beat her whenever he thought she'd done something that angered god, the issue of magic and thigns god does and doesn't like came up a lot. i haven't seen her since primary school (when this was happening) but from what i've been told, she got older rebelled, left home and got in trouble with the police.

 

2. My dad's cousin was a johovah's witness and his beliefs made him very cruel, in his explanation of god, he once refered to someone loosing a child as the child was obvously a sinner and sent to hell...he said this to the family, he parroted similar things if he turned up to family events, and was obviously the black sheep nobody invited. He will die alone as a poor old man, his next of kin against his will shipped him off to a home and sold all his possesions, and used his beliefs to prove he had diminished responsibility.

 

I just see any child brought up with those beliefs as going in extremes one way or the other

Edited July 17, 2013 by Agent Gibbs