"No Fuss" Method
Eulaha L. Long:
A week ago, my 3-month old daughter woke up screaming (not crying loudly, I mean SCREAMING!!). I jumped out of bed to see what was the matter, and I automatically put my hand over her mouth. Wow. Even though I wasn't an AK, I spent lots of time around them, and witnessed firsthand the "no fuss" method used on them (the little ones). I guess that's why my first inclination was to put my hand over My daughter's mouth when she screamed. I felt terrible for the rest of the day, and told myself I'd NEVER mistreat my child the way a lot of children were mistreated in the Assembly.
Does anyone know where the "no fuss" method originated?
Margaret:
I do, unfortunately. It was me. We were at Westmoreland Chapel when Lee was born. A couple there who had five well-behaved children growing up in a strict but very loving home gave us a pamphlet called "Children - Fun or Frenzy" by the Fabrizios. G and B visited Westmoreland when Lee was about 18 months old. Betty was thrilled, of course, that we already had the approved approach to child training, and amplified on it from there to include training babies to be quiet in long meetings. The rest is history.
Oscar:
Margaret,
So that is where Betty got her nutty ideas...."Children, Fun or Frenzy". I remember that booklet. Al Hartman got some copies and passed them around in the Valley. I remember that when I read it one thing stood out to me as quite strange. It said that if you found out that your kids had disobeyed during the day that you should spank them for it immediately, even if they had gone to bed. You were supposed to go wake them up and then wallop them!
I remember thinking that that was way over the line even then, which was probably around 1968 or 69. So, we did not adopt that practice. As you know, I got plenty of criticism for not following Betty's ideas, especially when my oldest began rebelling. I've had to do some apologizing to my kids for dragging them through the assembly system. But not for getting them out of bed to whack them. I don't think we did the pillow thing either.
Tom M.
outdeep:
We just put electric wires through my son's mattress so that if I found out something late at night, I could press a convenient button and not interrupt my Evening time with God.
Today my son is grown and a model citizen though the nurses in his psychiatric ward says they sometimes have trouble with him sleeping on the floor. Not sure if there is a connection.
Margaret:
Tom -
I don't think Betty got her ideas from the pamphlet. I don't know that she ever saw it. But she saw that what we were doing would work to keep children with their parents in George's meetings, and later on could be justified as teaching the children to "go the way of the cross."
By the way, we never got our kids up in the night either. I did do the hand-over-the-mouth and the pillow thing, though, which I seriously regret. I gave the kids normal times to breathe, but when it was imitated that part was often left out, with the result that kids sometimes felt like they were suffocating. My kids actually liked the hand or pillow over the mouth and would reach for me to put it back on until they got calmer. One of them was very attached to the little pillow and slept with it. I didn't think anything was wrong at the time i was doing it, but when I saw how it was being used later as a punishment instead of a help that allowed them a few yells without disturbing things too much, I was horrified.
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