Meekness vs. Anger  -Yielding my personal rights and expectations to God (Psalm 62:5)  – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

After a year with our family, Kay left…and in many ways, so did my mother.  Admittedly, my mom was more organized and seemed to take more control over her wild boys.  The housework was being done and Elijah, the oldest, was being homeschooled four days a week.  There was a schedule that hung on the kitchen wall and woe to the person who didn’t keep to it. My father came home, when he was in town, to properly prepared and served dinners and a wife who “took time to make herself pretty” for her husband, “lest he should think she didn’t consider his desire to come home to beauty, rather than chaos”.  Admittedly, the outside world thought my mother had got over her PPD and was now the picture of domesticity.  However, the reality was that her vibrant and dynamic spirit was replaced with submission and guilt.

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Gentleness vs. Harshness – Showing personal care and concern in meeting the need of others (I Thessalonians 2:7) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

From my earliest memories, my mother was a study in contrasts.  Our home was chaotic (three boys and a new baby, all under the age of five).  After my birth, my parents purposed to begin homeschooling.  I say “my parents”, but that just means that dad decided mom would be doing her Christian duty best if she homeschooled.  Not to mention the fact that dad’s employer and spiritual advisor had an up-and-coming curriculum that he was constantly retooling for use by homeschoolers.  Mom could homeschool the children and dad could use the experience as a testimony and leg-up at work.  It was a win-win – for dad. 

My mom, on the other hand, was struggling and we all knew it.   The boys took advantage of her disorganization and frustrations, as most preschoolers would.  Many times a day, she would gather me from my blanket or playpen, sit down to nurse me and cry.  She would sit in the rocking chair, in the midst of the noise and activity generated by the boys, and stroke my back while tears poured from her eyes.  When I was done eating, she’d try to create the illusion of control and happy domesticity before company or my father returned home.

I think my mother suffered from post partum depression when I was born.   When my brothers told my father how mom cried and sat in the chair most days, my father finally realized she needed help.  He turned to his spiritual advisor for advice.  This man told my father that my mom’s problems were from a lack of faith in the Lord and that the only way to get her over her depression was to get her to submit to God’s will.  He asked my father to allow him to send “help” into our home.  My father readily agreed and “Kay” was sent to stay with us for a month. 

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“Humility v Pride” – Recognizing that it is actually God and others who are responsible for the achievements in my life (James 4:6)

by RazingRuth

Disclaimer: With my father, I have to be careful of the details I give.  His place in the movement is easily identifiable with a few key data points.  I hope my readers can understand that even though I hate what was done to me, I hate what could be done to people I love even more.  In which case, identifying my dad isn’t something I want to do.  It’s also unnecessary for my purpose.  Now that that’s out of the way -

After Joseph (boy 3) was born, my father was called into a particular ministry that demanded he travel most of the year.  My mom said that this was the hardest, darkest period of her life.  With three boys under four and my dad gone most of the time, she was the manager of the house and discplinarian. 

The boys were a handful. One day, a downstairs neighbor called up and asked my mother if her washing machine was off balance because the neighbor kept hearing a very loud thumping noise.  Mom said she didn’t have any laundry in the machine, but would check out the noise.  As it turned out, Eli and Samuel were standing in the laundry room “fixing” the washer with hammers.  One day, I asked my mom how she couldn’t hear them before the neighbor did and she told me that she’d been so exhausted that she must’ve “zoned out”.  Now I wonder if she was just too tired to check it out or care.  [Read more →]

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Persuasiveness vs. Contentiousness – Guiding vital truths around another’s mental roadblocks (II Timothy 2:24) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

One of the goals of homeschooling, for ATI and I’m sure other communities that homeschool, is to forge tighter bonds within the family unit. As my teacher and the only other female in the house (prior to the first sister), my mother and I developed a very tight bond.  I looked to her as my mother, of course, but also as any small child looks upon their teacher – I thought the sun rose and set with her.  She, in return, shared similar feelings about me.  I was the girl she longed for (secretly).  A wish fulfilled, she would say during the quiet moments we shared together. 

One of the quiet moments she insisted on, in a house full of chaos, was our “reading time”.  I was always allowed to stay up later than the boys.  This was something they always wanted to express their opposition to but rarely did because of the consequences of questioning an authority figure.  After all, I was younger than three of them!  Yet, the boys were all bedded at precisely 8:20 every night.  As I said, the reasons for my later bedtime were several.  For one, I helped my mother get everyone ready for bed.  She and I would give the smaller ones their snack and supervise their baths.  Then, I would dress the smaller ones for bed while she got the older boys in bed clothes and tucked them in. 

After the boys were in bed, mother would come to my room and climb into my bed.  She’d continue my “homeschooling” by reading to me for thirty minutes.  I have no doubt that, had it been allowed, she’d have done the same for the boys, but when my father was home, the routine was for him to go have “Bible study” with the boys (after they’d been put in bed).  When he wasn’t home, they were made to listen to inspirational and devotional tapes. 

Mother would always read one passage from the Bible and then put the Bible down and read to me from a collection of fictional novels she’d saved from her girlhood.  The books were always approved by my father, so they usually weren’t modern, children’s literature (I never read Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary, for example).  I was, however, exposed to Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jack Wild, Lewis Carroll, E.B. White and Patricia McLaughlin.  She didn’t just read to me, either.  She would expand upon what we were reading and talk to me about vocabulary, history, and the bigger theme of the books.  It was heaven.  (See! It wasn’t all bad.)

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by RazingRuth

Two babies in ten months.  Samuel came three weeks early.  That was my mother’s introduction to parenting.  I’m sure she must’ve been over-whelmed.  With my father starting to travel on occasion, I’m sure she was lonely.  But she had her church friends and they were quick to prop her up when she needed it.  They assured her that feeling lonely was normal, but that she should commit herself to prayer and supporting God’s will.  Still, when Samuel was six months old, mom admits that she cried when her doctor called to tell her she was expecting again.  This next baby would be the third in as many calender years.  How would she tell her mother, my grandmother, that she was pregnant again so soon?

The call was made by my father.  My grandfather picked up the extension line at my grandmother’s command.  What transpired between my father and my grandparents would begin a decade of bad blood.  My grandparents did not approve of their daughter being a brood mare.  They’d raised her to be more than that. Three babies, so quickly, was ‘asking for trouble’.  Little did they know that this was just the beginning. 
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Hospitality vs. Loneliness – Cheerfully sharing food, shelter, and spiritual refreshment with those whom God brings into my life (Hebrews 13:2)-Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

The older I got, the more responsibilities I was given. When I last left my mother’s list of progeny, she’d just had me (I think). In 1986, she had “Caleb”. In 1988, she had twin boys, “Matthew” and “Luke”. We called them the Dynamic Duo because they were never still and would go on to win the “most likely to end up in the emergency room” award. After the twins were born, my father started travelling alot and my mother had a miscarriage, so it was three years before “Becca” was born, in 1991. All of the children after me were “my charges”/buddies. 

1993 was a monumental year for my family…and for me. 

Very early on in the year, one of my maternal grandparent’s died. The other followed shortly after. We’d moved back to the South by that point and it fell to my mother to plan and host her parent’s funerals. She, as it happened, was pregnant with Rachel. By default, the hospitality planning fell to me. Until now, I never realized just how bizarre it was for grown people to pass off the responsibility for hosting a wake to a nine year old child. I’d like to say that my parents must have been doing something right, or that I was preternaturally mature, because I pulled it off.

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Security vs. Anxiety -Structuring my life around that which is eternal and cannot be destroyed or taken away (John 6:27) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

(Note from Ruth: This chapter is about my experience and my life.  This is not intended to represent any family but my own or any childhood but my own.  I fully realize that the adults involved made choices that were, even if influenced by ATI discipline strategies, in fact, choices.  Not all ATI families utilize the same strategies or would implement them in the same manner.  In addition, I am not going to name, even in pseudonym, the brothers who perpetuated the abuses I speak of here.  They were children at the time these things happened and just as much victims of the circumstances as was I. I’ve also had my therapist give me input on writing this portion of the story.)

This chapter of my story will be a little different than the other chapters.  Until now, the posts have been chronological in nature rather than addressing a subject matter or topic.  In this chapter, I want to talk about abuse. 

I’ve received e-mails and comments from people asking if certain ATI/Gothard teachings led to abuse in my family.  The answer is “Absolutely.”  I’m sure that many belief systems or methods of child rearing can be distorted and twisted into a system of abuse, but Gothardism (as I’ll call it) seemed to be particularly adaptable.  The patriarchy system is another potentially misused ideal. 

Before we were born, my mother followed the unique Gothard admonition to read the Bible to us in utero.  This is what he calls “PBT” (pre-birth training).   The recommendation stands that the mother read to the unborn for at least thirty minutes a day.   Gothard believes that the unborn can hear the scripture in the womb and will absorb the scripture much as they absorb the nutrients passed from the placenta, through the umbilical cord.  

He also recommends reading scripture to the newborn and having scripture be the first words they hear.  In my family, this was taken to the extreme.  Most of us were homebirthed.  When we were born, my father demanded that his voice be the first we hear and the first thing he said to each of us was from 1 Peter 1:14, 15.

“¹⁴As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. ¹⁵But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;”

I wasn’t blanket trained – that would become commonplace in ATI families later.  I was, however, from birth, forced to spend one hour per day listening to a recording of the Bible.  In early infancy, this was usually done during my time in the wind-up swing, while mom cleaned or did other things for my brothers.  

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Self Control vs. Self-indulgence – Instant obedience to the initial promptings of God’s Spirit (Galatians 5:24–25) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

The training started when I was just a toddler.  I don’t remember who introduced it or how it was introduced.  I just remember that, at certain points in the day, one of my parents would have us line up in the family room and begin barking commands.  “Ruth, go to the table and sit in the chair.  Stand up.  Sit down.  Sit on the floor.  Move the chair.  Come stand by me.”

It was common for one or two of the commands to not make sense. “Ruth, pick up that magazine and move it into the bathroom, but don’t put it on the counter.  Put it in the shower.”  The goal was to get us not to question the command or the logic of the instruction – the goal was immediate and unquestioned obedience. 

My mother never asked us to do anything “wrong” but my father would introduce “challenges” (as he called them).  “Ruth, hit your brother.”  This contradicted our household rules.  However, if I did not walk over and tap my brother on the arm, I would have to sit in time out.  I can’t tell you how common this “game” is in QF/ATI families. 

Another incident, that I’ve described before, happened when I was very small and was asked to take a diaper to the trash for my mother.  I had a sensitive gag reflex as a kid.  Smells or sights could make me vomit.  My father saw this as a character flaw and lack of self-control, so he mandated that my mother find a way to break my sensitivity. 

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Deference vs. Rudeness – Limiting my freedom in order not offend the tastes of those whom God has called me to serve (Romans 14:21) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

Within five months of ‘Elijah’s birth, my mom figured out she was expecting again.  It dawned on my mother, on Elijah’s fifth month birthday, that she hadn’t had a period-  she chalked it up to nursing -when,  in actuality, she was already eight weeks along.

She was ecstatic, as was my father.  In their bliss, they called my mother’s parents to share the news.  It was met with moderated joy.  My mom’s mom asked, quite innocently, if it was such a good idea for mom to be pregnant again so quickly.  When she was assured that it was healthy, by my father, my grandmother suggested that the timing might be a good thing because it might be better for mom’s teaching career (less chaos by not going back only to be interupted by another birth – this way, she’d ‘get the baby making out of the way).
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Resourcefulness vs. Wastefulness – Wise use of that which others would normally overlook or discard (Luke 16:10) – Bill Gothard

 
by RazingRuth

Six boys in one room and me, sitting like a princess, in my canopy bed.  If that’s not a recipe for jealousy, then I don’t know what is. 

My parents would often go to little “retreats” put on by the QF/ATI crowd wherein they’d discuss the practical issues of living QF.  How do you fit seven children in a house built for five people max?  How do you feed your quiver?  How do you clothe your brood?  In the beginning, the answer usually involved the patriarch finding a way to make more money or the matriarch finding a way to start a home-based craft business. 

For my mom, it was sewing up respectable and “delicately modest” nightgowns for “delicately modest” women.  This was before the internet days, so it was all word of mouth and internal referrals.  This was before the Jim Sammons seminars, so while we lived frugal by necessity, it hadn’t become the mantra that would keep us all in worn out hand-me-downs and ratty shoes,…yet.  So, mother also made our clothes.  This income provided the reconstruction of the boys room.

Until this point, the five “older” (non-infant) boys shared two double beds that were shoved into the room.  They barely fit, which meant that there was essentially one, room-sized bed.  Mom appealed to my father to change it because, as it was, she and the boys couldn’t ‘use’ the bedroom to move around in or store anything (like clothes). 

To enhance her chances of getting him to do something about the boys’ room, mom offered to fund the endeavor by dedicating one month of her earnings to it.  She made $135 (this was back in the day when $135 would go pretty far).  Father prayed about it and sought advice from his council of fathers and agreed. 

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