Since I'm not a Christian Scientist, my daughter relieves medicine when needed and vitamins regularly.  She understands the importance of exercise and nutrition, and has regular visits to a doctor.  She's extremely healthy, and stands in stark contrast to most of her classmates; most of whom seem undernourished, unkempt, and slightly less joyful.  I'm sure they're delightful children, but it disheartens me to see them walking around in clothes with holes, unwashed hair, untreated vision problems, etc. when (and when I began noticing this I was extremely horrified) their mothers are walking campus with Gucci sunglasses and Coach purses, or driving their state-of-the-art minivans while their children are wearing sandals in the winter.

And then I began relieving the emails: telling me to ignore reports of a potential child predator on campus, to allow my daughter to maintain her normal routine without protection and to instead "pray for his truth."  I relieved mails that obviously indicated that the school was crumbling financially - programs were being cut, the football team was eliminated.  Yet Christian Scientists were urged to ignore the economic depression we are in and continue to throw absurd amounts of money at the school, keep buying those Luis Vaton bags and look away as our homes go into foreclosure.  Principia is disintegrating, and it is taking our families with it.

What will it take for the Christian Science church to wake up and quit plummeting its members into destruction??

Concerned Dad,

I'm glad your daughter is receiving medical care and is living a better-grounded life than her CS classmates. I'm genuinely surprised to hear that the Prin kids appear undernourished, unkept, and have holes in their clothers. That is not characteristic of Christian Scientists I know, either at Prin or elsewhere. While it's true that CS children often suffer unintended emotional and physical neglect, my experience is that they usually look happy, healthy, and well kept unless they are suffering from an obvious physical malady. My Prin experience was at the college and many years ago, though. I haven't been back in several years.

The CS mindset is built around denial (although CSists would deny this...). Most of the people who "wake up" end up leaving CS.

I started to see that my mom and her CS circle had the mentality that they would provide for themselves, and leave the children to raise ourselves. Surely everyone could see that we were floundering because of my mother's mental defficiencies, but nobody helped us out.  She died of cancer when I was a teenager, and my siblings and I were again not concidered with regard to our emotional problems. 

I left Prin and the CS church as soon as I was on my own.  I'm a pediatrician now, and the black sheep of the family.  My brother and sister, however, attended Prin through college, and are now both morbidly obese.  I don't think my brother will see next Christmas, and my sister's finances have crumbled so badly that she is now crashing on my couch.  Yet my sister still wants to have children, and I see her maintaining the mentality that my mother and the other adults involved in my growing-up years had maintained: her money, her care and her consideration serves herself first, and any children she brings in will have to take care of themselves.  It is horrible - especially when Christian Scientists are supposed to be non-materialistic.

Thanks for the posts.  Makes me feel alot better to not be alone in my concerns.  And I should mention that though I agree that Christian Scientists and their children show an outward, "put-on" appearance of joy, it is obvious to me that there is some spark missing behind their eyes.  I understand that you can't truly feel joy unless you've also acknowledged pain.

Ann, I'd love to disclose my daughter's age group, but to protect her identity I'd like to keep that confidential.  I will say, though, that she is not at the college.

I wish I could pull her out of Prin, but her mother and I are divorced.  The divorce was pretty emotionally bloody for everybody involved, and I had to fight against a lot of alienation precisely as a result of the Christian Science mentality.  I never wanted to believe it when I was warned of CS's "cultish" posture, but when I could no longer watch my child go un-immunized, or stand by as her mother refused to let me take my baby to the hospital when she'd broken her arm, my ex and her CS circle launched such violent legal moves to separate me from my daughter's life that I nearly lost her forever.  My choice to leave the marriage was difficult, but the ropes I had to climb to save my children from losing all communication with me because I was no longer compliant with the teachings of the church were even harder.  My ex and her family nearly crushed me financially and destroyed my daughter's financial future.  In order to stop the carnage I had to agree to allow her to attend Prin for a number of years.

I just wish there were something we could do to help the kids who are being neglected, emotionally and otherwise.  Though, as I said, I am not terribly devout, I believe strongly in God and can't stop praying that somehow He will knock some sense into the CS church, and force it to guide its "believers" to a healthier way.

http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1578506.html

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