Raising Children in PM

[andrew]

Quick story re the retreat:

My family has avoided fellowship with other poly families for years, primarily due to the carnage we saw back in the late 90s and early 00s. I've known Nathan online for many years and always respected him, and we even talked about my coming to one or two retreats over the years, but I just wasn't feelin it.

When I let the family know last fall that Nathan and I had been communicating and that based on some prayerful consideration I was thinking we should attend the January retreat, let's just say the reaction was lukewarm and leave it at that. The conversation ended with my saying something along the following lines:

"I believe God wants us to go to this retreat, but there is no requirement that you enjoy it or like anyone you meet, or pretend you're having a good time if you're not. We will go with a good attitude, we will focus on God and ask him to show us why we're there, we will worship God and lead others in worship, and then in the car on the way home we will debrief. If you didn't enjoy it, this will be the one and only time we go, but we will give it a fair trial." Something like that, anyway.

The funny part is that unbeknownst to me and to each other, each of the women brought plenty of things to do holed up in the hotel room, just in case the retreat didn't go well (we found out about this in the car on the way to Dallas and had a good laugh).

Well, long story short, the retreat was awesome, the people were awesome, God was, is, and ever will be awesome, and I met people that I believe I will be friends with for the rest of my life. Nobody was ever "holed up in the room", and I think we averaged about four hours of sleep a night—we just couldn't tear ourselves away from the talking and sharing and getting to know our new friends.

You can read more of my thoughts (as well as Ginny's and others') here. In fact, that whole thread might be useful to share with anyone that you'd like to see attend the retreat that might be on the fence or need a little persuading. It really was that good.

I can't wait. We have one other convention we'll attend in June, and then it will be hard not to just drive out to Tennessee and sit there and wait for everyone else to show up—we're that excited!

 

[FollowingHim2]

Our oldest is 6. We read the Bible to him (or he reads it to us) and we make sure we talk about the men who had multiple wives. He was looking at the computer while I was on BF the other day and he noticed the picture at the top of the page. He asked what it was and I told him that it was a family with a man that had two wives and each wife had a child. He accepted it without question. Really at this point we're just mentioning that some men have no wife, some men have one wife, some men have more than one wife, and all of these situations are normal and ok.

We recently had a woman come to stay with us to learn English. She became a great friend and the children really miss her now she has gone back home. My 4 year old quite often tells me that his best friends are Mummy, Daddy, and Mayumi. Even my baby who wouldn't go to anyone else but Samuel or I started going to her when he was upset or bored. It amazed me how quickly the children bonded to her, even though we made it clear from the start that she wouldn't be with us forever. They took to having her with us as a completely natural thing and adjusted really well. The only thing that worried me was just how much they bonded with her and if she had been a SW and we said she was staying permanently, then she left because things didn't work out, that would be very hard for them and that scares me.

Anyway, I don't see any issues with our children if Samuel did get another wife. But when they get older I'm sure they're going to realise that we're different to everyone else.
BUT, we are already different to everyone else, we live on solar power, we're leaving our family size up to God, we homeschool, we homebirth. All of those things are different to the 'norm' and some come with pretty intense opposition from family, friends, and even strangers. Already I'm sure that our oldest sees conflict with family in some of these areas.

The most important thing that I want to teach our children is to follow what God says no matter the opposition. I hope they will learn this by watching Samuel and I, by learning what the bible says, and by having a personal relationship with God. If we can teach them that beyond all else we MUST follow God, then as they get older I'm hoping they'll see that if we have a SW in the future, even though our family is different we are doing the right thing.

 

[andrew]

BUT, we are already different to everyone else, we live on solar power, we're leaving our family size up to God, we homeschool, we homebirth. All of those things are different to the 'norm'....

Funny thing is that in this group some of these things are the norm! :shock:

 

[andrew]

I don't coach much (any) on this subject. Our kids know our story and know what's up, and I figure they'll make their own decisions before God about what their families look like. They know that I have some experience, and am available for counsel if they want it.

This is a little generic, but in my experience:

- pre-pubescent children pretty much take life as it comes and don't require and to a certain extent don't understand a lot of 'splainin;

- adolescents are at a horrible time of life in terms of self-confidence and self-worth and will have a hard time with a big change from "normal" to "abnormal" if they didn't grow up with this (and a hard enough time if they did grow up with it but then learn with increasing self-awareness as a teenager how abnormal their family really is); and

- adult offspring will handle it pretty much according to what kind of adult they are and what kind of relationship they have with you.

If your adult children are judgmental generally or have issues with you, then this will just feed those fires. If they're pretty open-minded and enjoy a good relationship with you, then you should have some lively conversations but no real opposition. Hopefully they will have outgrown the "I'm embarrassed for my friends to find out how weird my parents are" stage, but these days, in this culture, that's not something you can assume.

 

[UntoldGlory]

We pretty much just watched the entirety of TLC's Sister Wives during family TV time, and would pause often to discuss things (Cherie and I, the kids were around but not usually involved in the conversation). Then individually we brought the subject up to the kids, along the "What would you think about living in a family like that?" lines. My youngest was pretty thrilled with the idea, though he thinks he'd spend a bit more time in his room. My older boy professed to be okay with it, but he wasn't thrilled, though I could tell he mostly worried about having THAT many people and that much Chaos around. I assured him that we probably wouldn't ever have that many people around.

***Edit***
I didn't mention my daughter's reaction, but that's because she's out on her own now and we haven't brought it up to her yet. I can just about guarantee her reaction though. She'd think it was weird at first, then be fine, then be excited. She'd also cry at some point. Of course, she has that reaction for everything from moving across country to going out a different restaurant than she thought we'd be going to...

 

[BandEStensaas]

Our five year old little girl is quite the smart one. She has talked about that she is blessed because one day she will have two mommies and a daddy. She can be a challenge at times and especially since I am homeschooling her and we have a ten month old little boy. We have taught her that families even If different are families.


We feel like it is important to be honest with our children but they don't need every single detail of what goes on in adult situations. We want our kids to know that they can come to us anytime they need to without fear.


We also did home births with our children. My son just amazes me daily because he is so a spitting image of his daddy. He laughs at everything. He is my little doodlebug.

We definitely want more and we trust the Lord will guide us and help us

 

[FollowingHim]

Don't promise her two mummies. You don't know the future. God may intend your husband to have multiple wives - or he may have led you to this truth so that you are able to support others with multiple wives, or so that you've got enough advance notice to be comfortable with the idea when a polygamist asks if he can take your daughter as his third wife a few years down the track, I can imagine over a decade of "mental preparation" time would be very valuable in that situation! Furthermore if she starts talking about that to relatives or strangers things could snowball into a right mess if people assume you're in some weird polygamous cult and assume she needs to be "rescued"...

This really doesn't take much teaching. Our kids are similar ages (eldest is 6). We actually haven't sat down and explained this to them at all. It's just so obvious when reading through the OT that so many people have multiple wives that they just accept it as normal if you don't tell them to think otherwise, particularly when we then go and chat online with friends and simply introduce them as "X and his wives Y and Z". Kids just accept everything as normal.

 

[BandEStensaas]

We haven't promised two mommies we have always prefaced it as a Maybe never used a definite. We also have had her ask us why some people we know only have one wife? So we felt it best not to lie to her. We never smooth over or lie to our children. Yes we have explained in an age appropriate way that some men in the Bible had more than one wife.

We try to invest our children with complete and honest truth. We were raised to just accept things and never question and we don't want that for our children.

 

[UntoldGlory]

It's cool that she's excited about the idea! Our youngest is pretty stoked about the idea too, and has been surprisingly good about not mentioning it to anyone.