Babblin' Botkins: Teaching Your Kids to Fear

My Spawn-baby is now a Spawn-toddler.  He's reached the pre-walking stage where he grabs our hands for support and tries to walk.  We've been offering him our hands for months now - but until this week he was not interested at all.  Suddenly, a switch flicked for him and he wants to learn how to walk.  Right now.  He's walked the length of our house from the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living room.  He only stops to look up at me or my husband to see if we are proud - and we are SO proud - then grins happily at us.

The overarching theme of mothering Spawn this year has been helping him manage his anxiety.  Like many medically complicated kids, Spawn had scary and painful medical procedures starting from a minute or two after birth when he was intubated so that they could place surfactant in his lungs.   He's had a lot of tubes, tape removal and shots in his first 18 months.  On top of that, we had to keep him in isolation or semi-isolation for eight months out his first twelve months so he missed out of being exposed to a wide variety of places like grocery stores, churches, libraries, malls, museums....you get the idea. 

New experiences scared Spawn.  Understandably, he believed that new places and new people - e.g., places that are not our house and people who are not in the "Inner Circle of Trust" - would lead to painful or scary things happening.   I hate that pain and fear was his experience of new things during his infancy, but he needed shots and a ventilator and blood draws to stay alive - and to get him healthy enough to go to libraries, malls, playgrounds....you get the idea.  It still sucked for him - and for me.

I've been working with my parents (who care for Spawn overnight once a week) and his developmental team to help him learn techniques to feel safer when he is anxious.  We tell him about what is going to happen next.  If he is scared, he likes sitting on a safe person's lap.  If he's really anxious and starts to stiffen or shake, he responds well to having a gentle hand on his chest and reminders to take a deep breath while the person holding him breathes deeply, too. 

Honestly, the process has been tiring at times.  As much as I know that having Spawn sit military straight on my lap during a library story time is huge for him, I struggled with feeling like he was missing out because of his anxiety - and I know how painful that experience is from before I entered therapy.

And then....something shifted. 

He found a metal bookend at a library, grabbed it, climbed under an empty shelf, and tried to climb down stairs - without looking behind him to see if I was watching.  At our WIC appointment, he took off down a long hallway to return to a playroom he liked - and he was totally OK with leaving me behind.   Spawn stayed with his PT up in the gym while I went to retrieve his shoes from the car and waved happily to me when I came back instead of trying to escape from her.    Spawn willingly sat on the lap of a new PT - without making her describe that sticker* he left on the gates of hell like he did with Robin his main PT.  (And Robin rocks.  She is the best PT for Spawn - and he's finally admitted that he agrees.)

My Spawn is exploring the world joyfully; all the effort to teach him that the world is safe paid off for him and for me.

That's why the interview between Geoffrey Botkin and his two daughters is so fucked up at the end of "So Much More", a book written by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin when they were teenagers and published by the now-defunct Vision Forum.  Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin don't say anything particularly unusual in the interview - but Geoffrey repeatedly hammers home that the girls should be afraid of the wider world.   Here's a particularly egregious example:

A&EB: Can we make a list of the deceptions? How about "the top ten lies that rule the lives of modern fathers?" A list like this would be welcome to many fathers. Or would it?

GB: It would be welcome to many. To others who are even mildly deceived, their response would be angry hostility to such a list. This is the nature of deception. If you publish this list, many of your critics will say, "These things are not lies, or transgressions, or problems. We can be Christians and still think like everyone else thinks. We have Christian liberty to live the way everyone else is living, and this list smacks of legalism."

A&EB: In our book we define legalism as the fleshly pursuit of man's moralism in hopes of earning salvation. Joyful obedience to all of God's precepts is the response of the grateful believer who has been saved by grace through faith.

GB: Well put. Careful conformity to God's standards for righteous living is not legalism but faithful maturity. Accusations of "legalism" are the first defense of the man (or woman) who is ashamed and reluctant to repent. Are you sure you want to publish such a controversial list?

A&EB: What is your advice, Daddy?

GB: Good answer! I'll give you an abbreviated list that's not too....dangerous. I'll share it in love, and you can print it in love. When the critics land on you with boots and spurs, I'll protect you. Ready? (pgs 295-296)

Let's go over this response by response. 

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth sound like excited teenagers following an interesting new idea.  They are pumped about creating a helpful list for dads of CP/QF daughters.  Sure, the topic isn't my cup of tea - but that's the kind of energy teachers try to get from students in a classroom.

Geoffrey replies by telling the idea is palatable to some people - but most people will respond with hostility.  Not just anger - but anger directed at Anna Sofia and Elizabeth with the intent to harm them.   Remember, the daughters are in their mid to late teenage years.  The book they are publishing is running through a "ministry" that is somewhat larger than most vanity press operations - but not much larger.   Their book has probably been read by tens of thousands of people - in a nation of over 230 million people. Geoffrey's attempt to reinforce a pathological fear of outsiders reflects his mental status and obsessions rather than a rational outcome of publishing a list to a niche market.

Geoffrey's prediction of how most people would response sounds like most people would listen to Anna Sofia or Elizabeth, consider their ideas, then feel it was important to respond to the ideas.  Honestly, I think most people's response would be "That's weird" followed by wandering away.   Arguing about the practical implications of an obscure theological interpretation is not high on the list of most Americans.  Heck, I like doing that - but I wouldn't start an argument with a few teenagers.    Teaching your daughters that strangers will surround them with anger and derision is twisted - but there is a level of self-importance.   A fierce public rejection is a sign that a person is important and controversial in some way; the realization that the Botkin Family is as average and workaday as the rest of us would be far more traumatizing for Elizabeth and Anna Sofia after years of being lauded as the belles of CP/QF young women.

Wow.  The paragraph where Anna Sofia/Elizabeth rattles off a brand-new definition of legalism is stunning for naivete and arrogance.  Legalism already has a definition: a religious believer who relies on rules or rituals in lieu of personal faith in Christ.   Billions of words have been written around various charges and rebuttals of legalism - so two teenage girls with no academic credentials at all should not be encouraged to write a de novo definition to shield their family against charges of legalism.   If the Botkin Sisters want to engage in apologetics around their family''s practice of Christianity, their parents should have encouraged them to become well-grounded in systematic theology instead of teaching the girls to change the working definition.

On a more technical note, the legalism paragraph is nearly incomprehensible thanks to the theological version of purple prose.

Geoffrey gives the girls faint praise for publishing his new definition of legalism and reinforces that their family is not legalistic.  Nope, not the Botkin family!  Just look at our definition of legalism!

 He must have regretted letting that faint praise break his tone of doom because he quickly doubles down on the scariness of outsiders by giving the girls a faux chance to not publish the list.  Does anyone honestly believe that Anna Sofia or Elizabeth could say "On second thought, let's not publish it.  I'd just as soon not be killed by a mob this week, thanks!"  No, good Christians in tiny cultic belief systems are supposed to be fearless and relish the idea of being a martyr so the Botkin Sisters can either fall on the sword of cowardice or on the mob wielding swords.   Since the sword of cowardice comes with failing to live up to the expectations of their father and mother, the possibility of a mob of outsiders' swords seems less fraught to me.

Thought experiment: how long would the circle of the Sisters trying to get praise and engagement from their dad only to be shot down continued if left uninterrupted?  A few hours?  A few days?  A few years?  A few decades?

Because the strongest praise Anna Sofia and Elizabeth receive is when they relinquish control over publishing the controversial list to their father.    Geoffrey Botkin rewards subservience in his young adult daughters; what does that say about Geoffrey Botkin as a father?

The Sisters are rewarded by being given a watered down version of the "controversial list"**.   Just in case the Sisters feel a moment's relief at the idea of publishing a safer list, Geoffrey twists the knife one more time by telling the Sisters that he'll protect them from the angry mob that's coming for them.  What does that say about Geoffrey Botkin as a father?

About that mob of angry rablerousers?    It's been 14 years since "So Much More" was published.  The Botkin Sisters have had some people express anger about their book, I assume, but the critics who attack them physically - the boot and spurs brigade - never materialized.  Oh, I'm sure the Botkin Family will tell you that the reason the brigade never came is that the Sisters are armed concealed carriers who are always escorted by their dad or brothers and adhere strictly to curfew as they shared in the "Good Girls and Bad Guys" podcast. 

I think the real reason is sadder; the mob existed only in the fevered, paranoid daydreams of Geoffrey Botkin. 

After all, the Botkin Sisters are still living as stay-at-home daughters freely.  No one has forced them to work outside the home - not even economic forces.  No one has forced them to get educational credentials.  No one prevented the publication of their second book.  No one prevents them from publishing blog posts.    Sure, being unmarried and childless in their thirties was never in their childhood dreams - but that's true of plenty of single men and women who are members of other religions or no religion who wanted a spouse and children.   They have every right to be sad or mad about that - but it's a sadness shared by many people in the US.  Not all dreams come true.

I'm proud of the work I've done to free my son from needless fear; my heart breaks that the Botkin kids have been trained to live in fear.

*When  Spawn was giving Robin hell at PT, I joked that Spawn was giving hell to a woman who would gladly go to the gates of hell and back to help Spawn.  Every time I said this, Spawn would give Robin a baleful look like "Mama thinks you'd go to the gates of hell for me.  Prove it.  I left a sticker on the gates of hell.  Describe it to me and we'll be friends." Don't tell Spawn I told you - but the secret is that he didn't leave a sticker on the gates of hell!  Only someone who went to the gates of hell for him would know that he didn't leave a sticker.  Robin figured that out somehow - and Jack thinks she's a great buddy.

**I might review all 10 list items someday - but there's nothing new or groundbreaking in the list.  The controversy comes mainly from the fact that Geoffrey Botkins likes drama to spice up his life.