Anonymous – Suffocation Claims

Hopeful Christian said to my wife, “It doesn’t matter if your baby goes limp they will breathe again.” It was a command not advice. We were disciplining our children to someone else’s standard – and to someone who almost all his children had left too!

With discipline there were different levels of buying in and there were some who took it to extremes and others as little as they could. What was said publicly and personally were a little bit different and it was more moderate when it was publicly stated. Different things might get said to different people and so they were contradictory answers.

For the hand clamping and harsh discipline there was never a massive level of buying from some families. The oldest son in each family had the most buy in and they (the leadership) have the most control over those parents. The first kid comes along and the parents were green and it was all coming from Hopeful and so they’ve then started beating the personality out of the eldest child. The oldest son really took it and you couldn’t get away from Hopeful’s direct involvement. So the eldest son had it (their personality) beaten out of them and then they started on their kids. But it decreased as Hopeful moved away and as the kids went down the chain. Hopeful’s influence got further away and the effect was lessened.  Some families were living directly under Hopeful’s nose.

Then you add in the dynamic of a more or less dominant father. Hopeful had more of an effect on less dominant parents and he stepped in whenever he wanted to – even in front of parents.