Mom not charmed by Wiccan teen

The Washington Times ^ | 11-16-2003 | John Rosemond

[sitetest]

Q. My 13 year-old daughter came home from boarding school last weekend and proceeded to announce at a family dinner that she is a witch and a Wiccan, which apparently is some witch religion. Then she told us she is an atheist.

My mother, who was present and is a big fan of yours, told me you would advise me not to tolerate this. So, I took away my daughter's Wiccan books and forbade associations with peers who are Wiccans. In response, she rebelled, and the more I tried to control her, the more she rebelled.

I recently have started attending church and have decided this is something the whole family should do together. Should I make my daughter go with us?

A. Your mother may be a big fan, but she did not correctly predict my advice concerning your daughter's apostasy. I advise parents to not tolerate blatant misbehavior. Wicca, which is a New Age religion that involves nature worship and belief in magic, is not misbehavior. Its practitioners are, in my estimation, deluded, but this is not something I would forbid, and if you had read my book "Teen-Proofing" before you so impulsively waded in to the maw of this situation, you would have known that.

You're tyring to control what you cannot control - namely what your daughter thinks. My advice is that you simply say something along the following lines:

"You are free to believe what you want to believe. As for me, I know from personal experience that people sometimes do not mature spiritually until they are well into their adult years. Until then, they wander. If your wandering has, at this point, caused you to become convinced that you are a witch, so be it. Just don't ever again disrupt this family with announcements of that sort, which you know as well as I do are designed simply to draw attention to yourself. Good witches never, ever attract attention to themselves, but you should know that. That tells me, by the way, that you really don't understand the responsibilities involved in being a witch. In any case, you are going to church with us. We do this as a family. You don't have to listen. You don't have to believe. You can even sit there and practice casting spells. Perhaps you can cause the minister to begin babbling incoherently."

In short, this is a time for not taking your daughter or yourself too seriously.

[sitetest]

Excuse me while I go wash my hands after having had to type this drek.

Your thoughts?

[sitetest]

Ping.

I appreciate additional pings if you have lists.

[sitetest]

If this was previously posted, I apologize, but I did check.

[sitetest]

Ping.

[katnip]

I have only one child. A son who is 11.

I dread his adolesence as I know they get into all sorts of experimenting with different thoughts and rebellion to form their own personalities.

The only "boarding" school I would ever consider sending him away to is a monestary though. Yikes, what kind of place is this ninny sending her 13 year old to.

[sitetest]

Ping.

[sitetest]

Dear katnip,

I understand your concern.

What do you think of Mr. Rosemond's approach, here?


sitetest

[MarMema]

If my child came home and said she was going to be Wiccan she would be meeting with our priest and deacon very quickly for further discussion, in the church office. I'd have to go with what our clergy advised me to do, but I have some ideas that I think would work in our home.
1. If you are not Christian then you don't need gifts at Christmas or Pascha.
2. If you are not Christian, then you don't eat with us at the table since we pray and thank God for our food. Non-Christians can eat alone somewhere very unhospitable and uncomfortable.
3. If you are not Christian then you don't come to church with us, and since you are detracting from the family by refusing to be part of us, you can stay home and clean floors or something equally undesirable.
4. There are plenty of other enjoyable parts of being Orthodox in our home that my children would miss very much, no Orthodox camp in the summer, no working at the church bazaar, no staying up all night and having a celebration meal together at 4 am on Pascha.

You can't control what children think but you can make life very miserable for them in order to help them make better choices. Teen rebellion behavior is acceptable in all areas to some degree, except for spiritual arenas.

[sitetest]

Dear MarMema,

For me, the most frightening aspect of Mr. Rosemond's prescribed course of treatment is that it takes so totally unseriously real spiritual evil. I really feel for the mother in this case.


sitetest

[sitetest]

Dear sandyeggo,

"It almost seems to me that either he did not write this column himself, or he wrote it while under some sort of....spell."

LOL.

It would be even funnier if this weren't so horribly serious.


sitetest

[Destro]

When I have kids I will email you repeatedly for advice.

[sitetest]

Dear sandyeggo,

My wife reads him. He's relatively new to the Wash Times. We lost Dr. Dobson for this drek.

I don't know under what circumstances he would send a child to bed without dinner. It happened to me once.

We were grocery shopping and my mother told us that we would have TV dinners that night, and we could each choose what we wanted. I chose a spaghetti dinner. She warned me it wouldn't taste like what she made, and I wouldn't like it. I was rather insistent. She made quite an effort to dissuade me but I wouldn't hear of it.

So, we got home, my mother cooked the TV dinners. The steam was rising off the "spaghetti sauce", and I was salivating. I took one bite and was so repulsed I wouldn't take another. My father got very mad at me and I was sent to bed without dinner.

A pleasant memory. ;-)

As for this Mr. Rosemond fellow, I think he has TV-dinner spaghetti where most folks have their brain.


sitetest

[katnip]

What do you think of Mr. Rosemond's approach, here?

He on one hand is recommending the mother treat the daughters interest in witchery as silly, but on the other hand seems to recommend the mother encourage the daughter to learn more about wicca so she can be a better witch.

I wonder what his recommendation would be if the daughter expressed an interest in doing drugs?I'm stunned he didn't tell the mother to get her child out of that school.

I, like Marmema would be running to my priest with child in tow and do whatever Father recommends.

[MarMema]

Yes, I agree. Hopefully the mother will disregard the advice given to her by this person.

We have two teens and two almost teens in my home. I have several good books on raising teens. I can put up the titles if anyone is interested...both stress over and over again the fact that what teens really want is to know you care and will still set rules for them, just like kids who are adopted and test you. :-)

So for us, raising teens is the same as raising adopted kids was, when three of them were younger. They act out to get you to show them you will enforce limits, and you are still there for them. Teens are like two year olds, they want to be independent but it frightens them, so they want and hope you will show them that you are still just as strong and reliable as you were before.

There are plenty of arenas in life for kids to test themselves and grow, and show how they are growing up. Plenty of safe places where you can give them a loose lead and let them run, especially at church. The critical part of parenting teens, I think, is making wise choices about the arenas. As you are pointing out here as well, I think.

Last year I took my 15 year old daughter to a store and let her choose her own makeup. I said no to the deep red lipstick but let her have her second choice of pink stuff that I think looks terrible. She smears it on like there is no tomorrow for church and I ignore it. What is important is she loves going to church and she doesn't wear inappropriate clothing. If she must have thick pink lipstick on, I can live with it.

Last week at the parish council meeting they were asking for volunteers to cook and clean for our parish feast day. After several women raised their hands and offered to cook and serve, my daughter raised hers and offered to clean after the meal. She did it completely on her own and without asking me first. Now that's worth a lot of pink lipstick in my book.

My husband and I would interpret this child's ( in the story above) wiccan statement like this - "I am wiccan and my soul is in serious danger, do you care enough to do something about it and stop me?"

Our now nine year old adopted daughter, Irina, when she first came home to us from Russia would do the most obvious and disobedient thing, much to our amazement, as we knew she knew better. Then she would ask, "Mama, is it still my America NOW?" ( her way of asking, are you still going to keep me even though I did this?)

I don't see any difference between what Irina did and this child is doing. Both were in frightening situations and worrying about abandonment ( boarding school at 13?), and are asking to be shown that limits and parents are still a reliable and trustworthy thing in life.

[k omalley]

I really like MarMema's suggestions. I have three daughters who are now all adults. Sometimes kids like to jerk their parents chains to get a reaction. I think I would watch such a situation for a week or two, the daughter may lose interest in Wicca quickly. If after a couple of weeks she was still following Wicca I would do what Marmema suggests.

[MarMema]

I'll have plenty to share by then, Des and you are more than welcome to any ideas of ours!

We actually do get requests from counselors, even in other states at times, to help other parents with kids from Russia as supporters and trainers.

[katnip]

My husband and I would interpret this child's ( in the story above) wiccan statement like this - "I am wiccan and my soul is in serious danger, do you care enough to do something about it and stop me?"

This struck me hard. You are very wise.

What are the names of the books please?

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Great post. Your children are fortunate.

[MarMema]

You are very wise.

Um no, we adopted a six year old who set fires and told us she was going to get up in the middle of the night and stab us to death in our sleep, among many other things.

As a result, we spent about 5 years in intensive, sometimes daily, serious counseling sessions at the attachment center northwest.

Now we are often asked to help other parents over the phone or via email with ideas to parent very disturbed children. But what you learn in attachment work primarily is how to read kids, to interpret them, to understand what they are really saying. Then you learn to address the real issue behind their behavior. (Most parents, I think, miss this interpretation of a need.)

I will post the book names in a sec. Meanwhile I want to plug what I think is a great parenting class, too. Love and Logic uses many of the techniques which enabled us to parent seriously disturbed children and stay sane too. It is a far better choice for those seeking ideas than the books I mentioned but I will go get them now and come back.

[MarMema]

Get Out of My Life, but First could you drive me and Cheryl to the Mall?

"--but it's the title of Chapter 2, "What They Do and Why," that best captures the book's spirit and technique. Anthony Wolf's modus operandi is not so much to make pronouncements about what parents should do, as to explain adolescent behavior in a way that's bound to leave parents with a changed view of the plausible options."

You can see why I liked it. It's about interpreting behavior and looking for the need behind the challenge.

[MarMema]

The other one probably won't appeal to you.

"Don't stop loving me. A reassuring guide for mothers of adolescent daughters".

[sitetest]

Dear sandyeggo,

Is there anyone willing to defend Mr. Rosemond's approach?

Is anyone not too terribly concerned about his attitude?

Or do all pretty much agree that the man is suggesting that this mom abandon her child to the demons?


sitetest

[MarMema]

maybe this girl doesn't want to be away at boarding school at age 13

Absolutely, I think you are correct. She is feeling abandoned and pushing to see if anyone cares. Taking on witching as a lifestyle is an extreme choice to announce.

If a child really wanted to do this and knew her parents would not approve, and lived at boarding school, why tell the parents at all? The announcement was the key.

The newspaper person missed the boat entirely. It was not about teen rebellion but about feeling loved. Teen rebellion is usually a lot more sneaky.

[tiki]

First of all, my 13 yr old wouldn't be in boarding school. Whatever she might gain academically would be too large a trade off for a family life.

What I think I would do if my 13 yr old told me she was a Wiccan is try not to react at all. They are usually doing it for the shock value anyway. Then after I had caught my breath, spent some time on the computer figuring out exactly what Wiccans believe I would open a dialogue with her. I'd almost guarantee that she wouldn't know much and I'd beat her at every argument and make her frustrated and I'd be frustrated and we'd both cry and I'd tell my husband whe he got home and he'd say something with so much common sense no-one could ignore him followed by some wisecrack that made us both laugh and that would be the end of Wiccan stuff.

LOL I really did start this out as a serious thing but in the end at my house "Father knows best" and our sons (I didn't have any daughters) loved and respected him so much that I really think this is what would have happened.

[saint]

1. If you are not Christian then you don't need gifts at Christmas or Pascha.

This would only push the girl farther away. She didn't get love or acceptance from her parents in the first place as they sent her away from home. God in His love gave us the ultimate gift while we were still rejecting Him in a way much worse than what teenagers do. How can we deny to show love to our kids at the time they most need it?

2. If you are not Christian, then you don't eat with us at the table since we pray and thank God for our food. Non-Christians can eat alone somewhere very unhospitable and uncomfortable.

Jesus ate with sinners. He invited sinners to eat with Him. When sinners asked for healing, He gave it. How can a Christian parent turn away a child so obviously asking for healing love? Turn her away and she'll only go twice as deep into trouble, until God sends someone who knows His love to help her.

3. If you are not Christian then you don't come to church with us, and since you are detracting from the family by refusing to be part of us, you can stay home and clean floors or something equally undesirable.

Jesus showed God's love by being a servant, not by requiring others to serve Him (...clean floors or something...)We show His love to others by being servants, not by requiring service from them.

4. There are plenty of other enjoyable parts of being Orthodox in our home that my children would miss very much, no Orthodox camp in the summer, no working at the church bazaar, no staying up all night and having a celebration meal together at 4 am on Pascha

Jesus demonstrated His love by humbling Himself and putting us first. Where is the love in denying your child the very excercises that can teach them and bring them closer to God?

[sydney smith]

He gave excellent advice. To make a big deal of a 13 yo's new found 'religion'(that will last probably a week) is as silly as you women and your 'parenting books'. John Rosemond is a common sense man. No wonder the world is going to hell in a handbasket with you women raising the kids nowadays.

[sitetest]

syd,

If you're going to address "you women", you need to address someone other than me.


sitetest

[sitetest]

Ping to 29 & 30 in particular.

Loyalist, if you could ping your list, I'd appreciate it.

[sitetest]

Ping again, especially to 29 & 30. I'd love to read your views.

[Cvengr]

For anybody reading the question and answer, be well advised that dabbling in the occult is by no means a lark into an imaginary world without reality.

There have been documented cases where even teenagers from Christian families, who themselves state the Apostle's Creed and make gestures of faith have become at least demon influenced and believed to have been demon possessed. Where demon activity arises there may have also been a direct linkage to the child or events having done something to attract the evil spirit.

Dr. Ed Murphy, author of "The Handbook of Spiritual Warfare", (Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1996), gives a personal testimony of a similar event and how he handled the situation, notably through Christ, in his Introduction to the handbook.

The approach by the Washington Times writer would be similar to a parent telling a child who brings home a leash to an alligator that such things are very immature to try and bring attention to themselves. He fails to deal with the consequence of the real beast, all the while ignoring true love9personal and impersonal) for the child, thereby justifying the child's rebellious attitude (in the child's eye) via a personal tit for tat.

Here is a counterexample from Dr Murphy's Handbook, which he entitled, Carolyn's Story. (May take a few minutes to post..)

[Keyes2000mt]

13 is still not too old to make them go to church. You can't punish them and change what they think, especially with the Internet. But

[Maximilian]

Excuse me while I go wash my hands after having had to type this drek.

I say hooray! for this kind of column because hopefully it opens the eyes of any Christian who is so deluded as to listen to the advice of John Rosemond and his ilk.

After saying, "Let your daughter practice witchcraft. It's a normal part of growing up," what will his next advice be? Certainly teens who are "discovering" their religion are also "discovering" their sexuality. Nothing wrong with a little experimenting in that area too, I suppose. Or would lesbianism, unlike witchcraft, constitute "misbehavior"? He probably thinks it's all right as long as you don't create a scene by announcing it at the dinner table in order to draw attention to yourself.

[Maximilian]

For me, the most frightening aspect of Mr. Rosemond's prescribed course of treatment is that it takes so totally unseriously real spiritual evil.

Good point. Dabbling in the occult like this is the classic method of inviting diabolical influence. I wonder if anyone could find some of the links to past articles by Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the exorcist of the Roman diocese?

[sitetest]

Dear Maximilian,

"I say hooray! for this kind of column because hopefully it opens the eyes of any Christian who is so deluded as to listen to the advice of John Rosemond and his ilk."

Mr. Rosemond's column is fairly new to the Washington Times, and I'd only read it a few times before this. My wife had been reading his column regularly, and had been unhappy with his substitution for Dr. Dobson's column (though some folks have problems with Dr. Dobson, too).

However, today's column seemed to me to be quite far over the line. Evil is real. Satan exists. To treat involvement in the occult so lightly is mad. What should the mother ignore next? Prostitution? Self-mutilation? Attempted suicides?


sitetest

[Cvengr]

From pages ix-xi, Introduction, "The Handbook for Spiritual Warfare", by Dr. Ed Murphy, 1996, Thomas Nelson Publishers. Dr. Murphy from the back cover notes is Associate Professor of Bible and Missions at San Jose Christian College in California. I picked up the text recently from Fuller Seminary Bookstore for $8 and find it is a good read.

Carolyn's Story

"Ed, you must come home right away." My wife's voice trembled across the long distance line. " Carolyn has been acting strangely since you've been away. As I dealt with her last night, I saw a demon glaring at me through her eyes."

" A demon!" I exclaimed."That's impossible. Carolyn is a Christian. Christians can't have demons."

"I know she is a Christian." Loretta replied. "I also know Christians aren't supposed to have demons. But it was a demon that stared at me through her eyes. That was not Carolyn."

I was shocked, incredulous, angry, and confused. How could demons abide in the same body as the Holy Spirit?

As the oldest of our four children, Carolyn had always assumedleadership for the other three, being an example to them of stability, discipline, and strong commitment to Christ.

True, we had been having our first behaviorial problems with her on this missionary furlough from Columbia, South America. I was not overly concerned, however. Any fourteen-year-old girl dropped suddenly into the turbulent environment of the 1960s in the United States would experience readjustment difficulties, Besides, Loretta and I were so busy in ministry that I felt Carolyn was reacting to our neglect of her.

Demons were the furthest thing from my mind. I knew nothing about them except that, according to Scripture, they existed, were especially active in Bible times, and in modern times were to be found "on the mission field." To my knowledge, however, I had never met one during my then ten years as a missionary.

"Loretta," I declared, "you must be mistaken. Carolyn can't have demons. Besides, I can't come home yet. The conference won't be over for several days."

"You have to come home," she insisted. "I can't handle this by myself. Ask Dick Hillis for permission to come home today."

"Last night I went into Carolyn's room to talk with her. I found her lying on the floor with her feet up on the bed listening to some weird music. When I called to her she did not answer. She was in a trance.

"As I spoke to her about her recent rebelliousness towards us and the Lord, she suddenly changed before my eyes. She became hostile and began yelling at me to get away and leave her alone. I noticed a mysterious 'darkness' in her eyes. It was not Carolyn who glared at me through those eyes but another personality, an evil personality, totally unlike the Carolyn we know and love. I am sure it was a demon."

"The words that came out of her mouth were not Carolyn's. They were evil, cynical, haughty, and God-defying. I spoke to the evil thing and commanded it in the name of the Lord Jesus to release Carolyn so I could speak directly to her alone. Suddenly her eyes changed and Carolyn was back in control of herself."

Deeply disturbed by the conversation with my wife, I told Dick Hillis what Loretta had said. To my amazement, he affirmed that under certain circumstances Christians can be partially controlled by demons. I had never heard of such a thing before. In all my years of theological and missionary training, no one had ever taught me that true Christians could experience demonic bondage.

(See Merill F. Unger, What Demons Can Do to Saints (Chicago, Moody, 1977) and C. Fred Dickason, Demon Possession and the Christian(Westchester, Ill.; Crossway, 1989).

(cont'd next post)

[Conservative til I die]

I know the inclination is to come down hard on the kid, but parents need to handle these things a bit more tactfully. It's not about being the kid's pal, but realizing that the ages of 12-18 are times where kids are trying on new faces. It's a tough time.

We can all try to sound like hard-asses here about how "My kids will *never* do that" or "the first time will be the last time" but seriously, who are we fooling?

I was raised in a fairly sheltered, strict, and loving home with values, moreso than my friends who I "experimented" with were. But I still did my share of experimenting with alcohol and drugs, making ridiculous and arrogant statements like "There is no God!" and "Abortion is a woman's right!"

I came around because I had that good base with my family life to come back to. My other friends had lax parents who looked the other way (buried their heads in the sand?). Their kids are still good people and still my friends but they've become big liberals, and more than a couple are recovering drug addicts at the age of 24-26.

[man of Yosemite]

I saw a woman get involved in Wicca, and she got weirder and weirder, reaching a point where she was fired from her job, also her daughter was acting up at home. There is no such thing as a good witch. Witchcraft is a lie of Satan, tempting people to experience power other than God's, with their personal destruction as it's aim.

[Conservative til I die]

Why not disown him?

[Conservative til I die]

Remember when TV dinners were a rare treat? I do. Seems so long ago, in the days before the 'net and CDs.

[Conservative til I die]

I agree with your post.

[k omalley]

I don't think that he is suggesting that we abandon our children to demons. I'm no expert in child rearing, believe me, each one of our daughters was trial and error. I don't think though that the answer is to immediately freak out. Whem my youngest daughter was 16 she told me she was going to become a Buddhist. My neighbor gave me sage advice and told me "she is just jerking your chain." She was apparently as she soon forgot about being a Buddhist. Again, I would carefully observe the situation for a couple of weeks before taking radical action.

[sitetest]

Dear Conservative til I die,

"I know the inclination is to come down hard on the kid, but parents need to handle these things a bit more tactfully."

There's something in between "coming down hard" and tolerating one's child getting involved in the occult.

This is more akin to involvment in drugs than it is in posing as a rebellious atheist, or adopting outrageous politics.


sitetest

[sitetest]

Dear k omalley,

I'm not recommending "freaking out", or acting hysterically. But neither do I think that toleration of occult involvement is acceptable.


sitetest

[Salvation]

But thanks anyway for typing it!

[sitetest]

Dear Conservative til I die,

I didn't like TV dinners then, and I don't like 'em now. ;-)

I guess my mom was just too darned good a cook.


sitetest