Chewymom

Part 4 of my series on GFI

For parts 1, 2, & 3, please see:
How I Got Involved with GFI
Why I Loved GFI
Becoming a Contact Mom for GFI

Soon after I became a Contact Mom, we learned that we had to move to another town. That was fine in terms of GFI, because most of my close GFI-friends were (obviously) not in real life, they were online. And since the computer was moving with us, all was good. We settled into a church in our new city which, although not offering any GFI classes, had lots of families who were using the materials. As soon as word got out that a contact mom had joined them, I became quite popular! I also became pregnant with child #4 around this time.

Around this time, also, my dh began to struggle in his faith. He was having a hard time leading us spiritually, and I began to feel a little bit uncomfortable answering questions as a Contact Mom. Most of my time on the GFI Forum, when I wasn’t moderating things, was spent answering questions that went beyond the infant stages. In fact, many of the questions were from moms whose whole family needed help, and here mine was, starting to struggle along. Internally, I was questioning the wisdom of being in a place of “authority,” when personally things weren’t going so well. This was especially true since we were in a new city and a new church. I was torn between wanting so badly to make good friends and be well-respected, and being real and letting people know we were struggling.

Meanwhile, some charges were being made against Gary Ezzo. Now, articles had been coming out for a while, but there was always what seemed to me to be a good response from the GFI camp. I was so puzzled about why so many people seemed to have a vendetta against Gary. I decided (along with many others, I believe) that these people might be raising kids according to the world’s standards, and they didn’t like the light of truth that GFI was shining upon them. And besides, faithfully following the materials (PFP, PFTTY, GKGW) was hard! I mean, if you wanted your kids to be perfect, you had to watch them like a hawk and never put up with wrongdoing. You also had to be very, very careful about who they played with. And that was exhausting! Yes, these must be weak parents who were criticizing the Ezzos.

Still, some of the accusations against Gary were troubling. I began to wonder if he shouldn’t step aside for a while. After all, I was questioning the wisdom of ME being in a position of authority while my family was struggling. Now, Gary’s own church was distancing themselves from him, as were many other people formerly involved with GFI. Clearly Gary was having his own “issues,” and yet he never seemed to question the wisdom of being in a position of leadership.

Another red flag had actually begun to be raised back in our previous town, when instead of being on the inside looking out, I was briefly on the outside looking in. It felt good to be one of the ones who was doing things right and who was looked up to. But when I was on the “outs…” well, that smarted a bit. I started wondering about the exclusivity of GFI. Was this just a characteristic of that one town, or did it permeate the organization? The longer I was involved, the more I began to see that this same pattern repeated many times over. There was a paranoia of having our children exposed to anybody who was slightly different in their parenting philosophies. Churches, playgroups and families were being torn apart. GFI families were becoming only comfortable around one another. Except comfortable is a funny word to use, since for me, I was on pins and needles around “likeminded” families–always wanting my children to behave better than theirs, and feeling terrified that they would say or do something that would give us away as “not quite acceptable.”

Thankfully at our new church, although many families had used GFI materials, this attitude was not prevalent. My theory is that this is because the elders were very wise and never allowed classes to be officially taught. It was a big city, and families were busy. They would listen to the tapes off and on, while driving through traffic, or on a rare quiet evening when soccer games were over and the kids were settled, and they weren’t picking up on the “importance” of complete obedience to the plan.

Although I was seeing these little flags, it never became a flashing neon sign until I tracked down the Abels. They had been such an integral part of the beginning of the Ezzo’s ministry. (Or shall I say business, since by this time it was out from under the umbrella of John McArthur’s church and was now a for-profit company.) I mentioned our friends at the Master’s Seminary in my first post. The wife, “M” was one of the first “real life” contact moms within Grace Church. She had served right alongside Julie Abel. So I really valued the Abel’s opinion–they were friends of friends! I read what they had publically posted, and I emailed them. Eric kindly and graciously responded to my email. I shared that I had growing concerns and asked why they had left. He was not malicious at all; he did not reveal any “sordid details” of their departure. He just reiterated what was said in their public statement and said that especially as their children became older, they were seeing the need to become less controlling.

I was beginning to wonder about the whole control thing myself. My second child, DS13 was starting Kindergarten. He was seriously lacking in self-confidence and the ability to make decisions. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great kid! Respectful of adults, always saying, “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir,” using the “interrupt rule” (you Ezzo people know what I’m talking about - lol!), NEVER getting a card pulled. But he could not make a decision to save his life. I began reviewing in my mind how we had trained him. Oh yeah…it started to “click” with me. He was doing just what we had trained him to do. Wasn’t that the point of the whole “red cup/blue cup” thing? (Again, Ezzo people…you know this….) We taught him that he was not capable of or allowed to make a decision. We controlled everything, we were the final authority, we made the decisions. And now I was expecting him to pick out his clothes in the morning? To decide what to play at recess? How could he? He had been specifically trained NOT to!

With all of this swirling around in my head, I decided it was time to hang up my Contact Mom hat. I debated just becoming inactive while I sorted things out, but I knew I would still be more associated with GFI than I really wanted to be. I knew I needed to get out.

To read the history behind this post, please see:
How I Got Involved with GFI
Why I Loved GFI
Becoming a Contact Mom for GFI

Stay tuned for:
Disassociating from the Ezzos
How I parent now

CM

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2005 at 7:22 am and is filed under GFI/Ezzo/Babywise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.