Bramble

As soon as I had kids--thats when I started having reservations about TWI. During the toddler years I hated going to fellowship as a family. And 'special' events were the worst--fellowship movies or dinners. The entire time--hours--your little ones would be under so much scrutiny, how they were dressed, how they ate, how they sat, manners, whether or not you applied the spoon...and all before they were even four years old. It was insane. I kept my kids away from the fellowship as much as possible. I was glad when they got to be school aged--I could keep them home two out of three fellowships because there was no way to get them in bed at a decent time on fellowship night.

I have kids(5th grade and up) in accelerated reading/language arts, but it must not be the same program your school has. My 5th grader does Jr Great Books in a small group,plus a novel they read together.(Tuck Everlasting was one novel the group did.) They do three book reports each 6 week grading period. But they like those because they can choose different types of reports--oral reports, art type reports, dramatizations etc. They do have to pick books in a certain reading level range, and take SRI tests to determine the level. My kids have homework 4 nights a week, plus the book reports and other projects on weekends.If they get 97% completion on homework, they get to go to a fun incentive each grading period(like rollerskating.) I don't think you are a buttinski at all--it sounds like the AR program at your school will make kids hate reading for life!

smurfette, I'm no theologian, but I think vows count whether the people do them or not! So one should chose to say them very carefully. The piece of paper is very important because it is legally binding. I know some people who have done a vow with no legalities involved.

We now live in a small town, and my kids do have more freedom than they did when we lived in a big city. They can ride their bikes to the pool or to a friend's house. We know almost everyone on our block, the block behind us, and the block north of us, know where many of their school friends live, know their parents--and where they work. When we lived in the big city I heard gunfire more than once, the school was locked down two times. Nothing like that here. But here we don't have enforced leash laws, though people will call the sherriff about dogs. That was a big change.

Vickles, Last summer I was having some health problems and my boss hired me the most terrific assistant she could find, so I could drop down to part time hours and not worry. The woman she hired was terrifically qualified, but so bizarre and controlling she was impossible to work with. SHe talked about me behind my back to many employees, tried to change every single thing in my program--it was a nightmare. I stayed calm and talked with her to her face, talked with my boss, we tried a mediation , nothing changed. Finally, this woman got moved to another position where she could be the 'boss.' They have yet to find another employee that can work with her, constant revolving door. Recently inspecting her rooms, the boss found all types of health dept violations, enough to get us shut down. SO now she is on some type of probation or something, one step away from being fired. I'm glad I took the high road and avoided the gossip mill where I work, because I came out of the mess looking good. Hopefully your situation will be resolved in your favor!

"Hunt Close" was still being recommended to parents in the nineties.

When we were in Twi we lived in a large city. Our neighborhood was a nice middle class one, starter homes built in the 50s, with lots of retired people and young families. But about 2 miles away was a large apartment community that had a bad reputation--meth etc. Once one of my elderly neighbors found a bag of drug parafenalia on the ground not far from our house. We also had a break in while we were home sleeping. Very scary. The boy ran away when he realized there were people in the house. We got a large dog then. He was part pit bull but not aggressive, a lovely animal, my next door neighbor had him but she had two other large dogs, so she gave him to us. He slept in the house at night and I had no further worries. Pets were not very well thought of in TWI, but we weren't corps or HFC so we squeaked by. Plus I don't think our HFC knew that Prince was part pit bull. Whenever he came over we just put the dog in the back yard. Now we live in a small town. We have had no problems here in 4 years except for loose dogs. And we have a neighbor that quit taking meds and busted out his own windows, but that didn't really affect us. His dad got him back into treatment. We still have a large dog (not Prince, he is gone)that sleeps in the house. I don't know if I'll ever be without one.

When my twins started school I made sure they had different hair styles and were never dressed alike, to make it easier on the teachers.Usually their classroom teachers can tell them apart, but the art/music/PE teachers have a hard time. I liked having them together. They stick up for each other and for other kids too( there are some mean kids in their class!) I always have an idea about what is happening at school because they chatter all about it and I overhear all knds of stuff. The next school is 16 miles away, but that still means an extra hour a day of bus time. It just didn't seem that vital to me.

I have twins that have gone through school in the same class. We live in a small school district, so there is only one classroom per grade. They have done well, get good grades, have plenty of friends, some together, some separate. They often plan social things together, but occasionally one will do something the other doesn't, and it isn't a big deal. They are identical, and their biggest complaint is teachers who can't tell them apart. All their classmates can. I was told by an educator that I should split them up because one twin is always dominant. Like I would send one little kid on a long bus trip to make this happen? My twins really didn't seem to have a problem with one being too bossy and dominant, anyway. I suspect if you want them together in a district that splits twins you might have to get pretty vocal about it.

I have a heart rhythm condition and was taught this technique by the doc to reset my heart rate, thus avoiding a trip to the ER. I was also taught a 'bearing down' technique similar to pushing in child birth(harder than a bm :o-->) which also squeezes the heart. I've used it many times with good results, though I have a sore throat afterward. Funny, when I was in TWI I thought I was having unrenewed mind panic attacks--even though at the time I might not have been thinking about stressful stuff. I didn't seek help until we left. I've since learned that any type of stimulant needs to be avoided, low blood sugar and unbalanced electrolites can set it off, and during a stressful event it is not a problem--the rhythm acts up after a stressful time(for me, anyway.)

I had difficulties with my first birth. I probably would have died a hundred years ago.

I knew some wonderful corps in the 80s. Most left TWI, and the few that remained seemed to have changed. I got to experience corps nazis in the nineties, and they trained nazi HFCs, too.

Prior to TWi I was a Democrat, from a liberal democrat family background. While in, I renewed my mind to TWI values, but in the back of my brain I always knew and understood why my family would think diferently. Now I am again a Democrat, don't have to filter myself through TWI thinking. I left the Roman Catholic church as soon as I left home, and was agnostic but searching for a few years before I hitched up with the Way. I explored Bahai and some Eastern thought, which was all that was available in the small college town I lived in. Since leaving the Way I've explored quite a bit outside of Christian doctrine and now call myself eclectic wiccan or pagan with wiccan tendancies. I'm not into joining a group.

I wonder if innies are nervous about posting on it? I remember how it was to write the thank you's etc to leadership--had to make them glowing, etc, or you were spiritually immature. Imagine if your posts would be graded by your leadership for glowiness!

I meant that I had 3 kids when my oldest was 22 months old(twins arrived). I guess I could have had a baby, then another 10 or eleven months later,and then another at 10 or so months after that, but I wasn't that nuts!

Twins. With my first it took 8 months to get pg, so we thought it would be like that the second time around, so started early--but I got pg the first week.

* I taught a one room school with six kids, all cousins. * My gr grandfather wasn't white but we don't know what nationality he was--they said he was 'English.' * When I was young I was so limber I could put my knees behind my neck. * My favorite candy is Milk Duds. * I once saw my husband across a crowded room, and knew I was going to marry him. * The first time my dad saw my mom, he knew he was going to marry her, and told his father so. * I ran with a group of girls(in college, pre TWI) who followed a band around--we called ourselves the Road Dogs. * The Road Dogs once lost me at a huge outdoor battle of the bands type festival with 10000 drunk kids.And I didn't know the name of the cheap hotel we were staying at. After that I had to carry paperwork in my pocket. * I had 3 kids in 22 months. * Lindberg's(the Flying Ace) son would pick up his UPS and mail at the school I taught, so the mail carrier wouldn't have to drive up to his ranch.

As far as I'm aware, schizophrenia cannot be treated only by therapy. There has to be medication. Therapy is really helpful if it can convince the patient to stay on their medication, to understand their illness and accept the fact that they need the meds...cuz it tends to get worse over time. What was mild at age twenty could be very bizarre a decade later. ALso gets worse under stressful conditions. Schizophrenia (Anderea was treated for schizophrenia)is way beyond being emotionally screwed up. It is a brain that makes its own, false, reality. It can happen to someone who was once emotionally healthy, just like diabetes can affect a child who was once physically healthy. Under the onslaught of the illness, emotional health doesn't hold up real well, which is where therapy can help. Therapy can not make them not schizophrenic. Medication helps with the delusions(false reality) and hallucinations(seeing, hearing, feeling things that aren't happening), but it doen't cure them.

Ahh, so sad, to hear the Quigleys are still there.

Rascal said: You know what is REALLY wierd, is when you leave twi as a couple....after your twi faces begin to fall away, you realise that you really don`t know this person at ALL! That is so true! Plus, my husband was several years older than I and settled in a career etc, while I was a pretty free wheeling college girl ( he was one of the wows who got me into the word my last semester at college.) He had had more time to develop hobbies etc, prior to the Way. So when we got out he knew the types of things he was interested in exploring(motorbikes and gardening.) Not me. In college my hobbies were clothes and boys, pretty much in that order, too. I didn't do much with my career then, either.So for me these past few years have been years of exploration, far more so than for him. I think this is pretty much what I would have done in my twenties, if I hadn't been so busy with ministy stuff. I'm glad Mr Bramble finds by fleeting intersts in this or that amusing.

Johniam--yup, maybe her husband had no idea she was ill, no idea she had been treated for mental illness in the past, no idea being off medication might be a bad thing, no idea he was leaving his kids with someone unstable, no idea an unstable person might do something bad to his kids. Maybe he was totally innocent and had no responsibility at all in this situation. And btw, I believe Mrs W knew and turned a blind eye to VPW.

I knew my brother was very ill long before my children were born, he was never alone with them or even unobserved, like in a room with a closed door. We did have an incident where he threatened my sister with a knife, one of the burgler incidents--that is why he is in a hospital now. Yes, he knew he had the knife and was threatening to use it on a burgler who had broken into his house. He was not aware it was my sister. And it didn't bother him, he didn't apologise or acknowledge it even happened. Immediatly afterward, my brother, who was with her, talked to him for a while, he snapped out of it and asked my sister how her son's football game went. Yes it was weird and creepy. We are not sure how well his memory works when he is delusional or hallucinating. His thoughts are not normal, neither is his memory. He is insane. He is unpredictable. Mentally ill people need treatment. Some mentally ill people need treatment in a facility for most or all of their lives. I think that is where Andrea Yates should be, since she is so dangerous. SHeesh, she testified that Satan told her to do it. Andrea Yates reaction--I would not be surprised by anything she might do or feel. She had a history of postpartum depression and schizophrenia. Would you have left your children in her care, knowing that, and knowing she was unmedicated? Would you ever trust her, even if medicated? I wouldn't.

Johniam--I guess you have never known someone who was mentally ill? Someone you cared about, someone who's entire future and life took an awful turn that they could not control? My brother was sane as a child. He was bright and funny, had lots of friends and interests, he wanted to be an oceanographer. He got good grades, was in scouts, loved to hike and bike ride. He made money selling nightcrawlers and raising cucumbers. He had all the Hardy Boys books. In early adolesence he began having delusions(parents caught him walking through the dark house with a hunting knife once--thinking there was an intruder), which my parents wrote off as too much imagination. In later teens--well, must be the hippy influence. But he could act and talk sane enough--he knew to keep the crazy stuff to himself. But sometimes he would confide things to my brother... He also sustained a head injury at age 22, and things got much worse after that. In his late twenties he disappeared for almost a year, and was found living in an abandoned car. He crashed a bank board of trustee meeting, sure he was on the board. He was filthy, had been panhandling for months. My father was called and flew down to that city, cleaned him up and took him home, where he has lived since then. Through the years there have been many crisis times, odd disapearances, police dragging him home from some wild stunt etc. We live in a small town, he is well known as the local crazy guy, people know to call my sister or brother or I if he gets out of control. He did take medication but quit when my mother got sick. When his delusions reached the point that my sister and I could not be alone with him(he thought we were burglers), following my parent's death, we had to get him into a hospital(he would not voluntarily commit.) I'm sure you would write my brother off as a possessed creep who so deserved his ugly, insane life. Must be some wicked choice he made at 13 or so, right? That was TWI's attitude. But I remember the boy he was, fun, busy, and full of ideas and plans and hopes. I saw my parents give him the best life they could. In many ways, it is like that boy died. They could have shut him up in a hospital, or left him on the streets. I'm glad none of them got involved with the Way. I can't help but think that Andrea Yates did not have loved ones looking out for her, who knows why? You really think VPW had a mental illness of this severity? Really?

I have a sibling with serious mental illness(paranoid schizoprenic, obsessive compulsive and bi polar. Nice mix.) With medication he is still not able to live a 'normal' life. With out medication he is completley delusional and believes/thinks/acts in weird, dangerous, unpredictable and unexpected ways--which seem logical to him. He is also genius level IQ, a scary guy when not medicated. He is currently in a mental hospital, and will probably be there for at least two years. Maybe longer. He has lived his entire adult life(he's in his fifties) with family members. When he is on medication(which takes months to take full affect) he does not particularly remember his delusions...my mother once had him write down a wild story so she could 'investigate' it, he does not remember the story or the writing it down and was quite upset when it was given to him( we were trying to help him voluntarily commit himself and go to counseling by pointing out how crazy he can be.) I see Andrea Yates more as a victim than anything else. How could her family and husband not know how sick she was? Some one that ill, that delusional---surely it was noticable, if anyone was paying attention. Unless she was isolated? SOmething was wrong there, beyond her mental illness. Who would leave children with someone that ill? I have the impression their religious beliefs were somewhat like the Way's--prayer and casting out of spirits, memorising bible verses, total denial etc was how her mental illness was handled. Perhaps reproof/correction type stuff. SO helpful with real mental illness.

There was a certain subtle view that wives were not to be trusted, even wives like I was back then, so committed to the ministry, burning myself out trying to do everything I was expected to do. This is the real issue we left TWI over--our leadership was looking for things to accuse me of, while being buddy buddy with my husband. It was very subtle and hubby didn't see it for a long time, just made excuses for his ole buddy the HFC. It finally became obvious to my hubby, HFC showed his fangs a little too much, too often. My husband's sense of betrayal was huge when we left, while I just felt relief. He is still very angry when something comes up to remind him about that time. We have tried to figure out why I was a target for this creep...I think I must have reminded him of his ex wife. But we'll never know.