The Impact of Cults on Childhood Development

[Dexter]

Just found an interesting article in my search for answers. Here are some excerpts:

McLean describes her upbringing as living in a cult-like situation. “I’ve been drawn to books and documentaries about cults and part of the reason is because I really see something familiar,” she says. “It’s this feeling that there’s one person who is completely in charge and who’s almost supernatural, who knows everything and who has all the answers and who is somehow in charge of the world. And you are constantly trying to please that person. And it’s not that you just want to make them happy; it’s that you feel like your survival depends on it.”

One of her earliest memories of the abuse she says her father inflicted came when she was around two, she tells Rolling Stone. “My dad couldn’t find a key to a piece of furniture and he thought that I hid it and he was just screaming in my face,” she says. “I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know where the key was and I was just trapped in that moment having to endure the fear and the trauma until it ended. That was just a normal kind of thing that there would be screaming and yelling.

“You’re conditioned to feel like he has power over you… like he had ultimate power,” she says of the atmosphere in the household growing up. “I really felt like he was some sort of God. So, it’s not just that I’m worried that he’s gonna yell at me. It’s like he has … enough power over my life that if he’s angry at me he can do anything to ruin my life.”

I didn’t read the whole thing but the parts I quoted above seemed to ring a few bells. Anyone who got in the firing line of certain elders, or even hyper-diligent parents trying to prove themselves to the elders, might also relate.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... n-1187117/

[Lillith]

Thank you Dexter.
A harrowing read, with denials and gaslighting from a narcissistic father, who apparently didn’t physically assault his daughter, but did psychologically abuse with his rages and control.
On the subject of bringing up children:
I was explicitly taught in the ladies meetings, to smack my little children. One elders wife even told me they smacked their crying babies when they woke at night.
I’ve since apologized to my now adult children, but they said they were ok about it, because they knew they’d been “little rotters”.
However, that’s because we’d taught them to equate physical punishment with consequences for doing wrong.
We’d been taught it as the biblical way.
I don’t believe that any more!
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” isn’t in the Bible!

Proverbs does talk about the “rod of discipline”.
“Rod” - meaning gentle correction as in the action of a shepherds rod (he didn’t beat the sheep); and “discipline” meaning teaching.

The following sums up the reading I’ve since been doing, on non violent child discipline.
www.dandelion-seeds.com
An article on positive, non violent parenting, from a biblical perspective.

You become like the god you worship -
in the cult leaders case, a violently angry (definition of “wrath”) sheep beating “shepherd”.
Christ followers can do better than that!

[Dexter]

Proverbs does talk about the “rod of discipline”.
“Rod” - meaning gentle correction as in the action of a shepherds rod (he didn’t beat the sheep); and “discipline” meaning teaching.

I was a fully grown adult before I finally realised that discipline ≠ punishment. Case in point: learning a new skill is not a punishment but it does require discipline.

And you're spot on about the rod. With a nudge, nudge here and a nudge, nudge there; here a nudge, there a nudge, everywhere a nudge, nudge. That's the way it should be. None of this Whac-A-Mole business.