There is a significant difference between going to a function of a few hours duration, centered around a non-religious activity (hayride, lunch, whatever) and going to camp, which implies more than a day and often sleeping at the location away from home.
From my viewpoint it’s not a matter of “this is what A believe, this is what B believes” or getting “mixed up”, it being put in a situation where the message is “your beliefs/customs/etc are inferior to ours” or “you shouldn’t be A, you should be B, because only B is right.”
If it was non-religious it would be secular. “Non-denominational” implies it is religious, but not a *particular *sect or (Christian) church.
Someone in my thread I just made asking about what documentaries to show my high school debate students just suggested “Inside Deep Throat.” Does that count?
Nope. Although this was in Saskatoon, Canada where there is a fairly large agriculture program at the local university.
I think he might have been suggesting that it was easy to get scholarships to the College of Agriculture at the U of S, but the idea of studying agriculture to become a mathematician… :smack:
She talked about “trips,” not camps. Camps are usually pretty heavy on the indoctornation and probably not appropriate for someone of a different religion. But a trip can be any number of things. I’m guessing by context and usage that the suggester either didn’t mean or didn’t entirely understand “non-denomination,” and was probably genuinelt trying to express it would be something in the range of appropriate and comfortable for a non-Christian person.
Totally reasonable for a parent to decline for any reason, really. Nobody is saying shr was wrong to turn it down. But this seems more like a slightly misguided polite invitqation, far from “the worst advie you’ve ever recieved.”
Then again, I think Africa is a great place to meet a husband, moving to China after grad school is a great idea and stuffing your face wth dick is a solid plan.
I think a lot of Christians have very misguided ideas about what would be appropriate or comfortable for non-Christians. It comes from being a member of the majority dominant religion in their culture.
Anyway, I have another one for the thread: When Whatsit Jr. started kindergarten he had a lot of behavioral problems, and I was told by many people, “He’ll grow out of it, he’s just being a boy, etc.” Yeah, after I got him meds and therapy for Asperger’s/ADHD, he “miraculously” started doing better in school and, most importantly, making friends. “Boys will be boys” my ass.
OOH, I’d love to know the trick to that. Just will myself to sleep. Wish that worked for me.
Well, to be fair, there are fewer calories, and semen is actually a mood enhancer:
:D:o
I don’t think the point was that you could get a job without a degree, but rather that the degree you get is at least somewhat significant to your job prospects.
I’m not sure how the topic came up, but I once told a cab driver that my then-GF was going through a cancer scare, and was scheduled for a full hysterectomy, and was scared shitless about the whole thing, and didn’t really have anyone to rely on for emotional support but me.
His response? Leave her, because she would no longer be a Real Woman.
I own one of those emergency car battery chargers that you charge from home current and then carry around until needed. My father insists, quite vehemently, that I should not carry it in my vehicle lest someone steal it; rather, I should leave it at home at all times.
I’d like to say he’s getting nuts in his old age, but he’s always been like that.
Actually, as much as I don’t like making you sad, I have to say you’ve got the situation pegged. Well, at least part of it. By the time I knew my ex-FIL he was bedridden with the brain tumor that would kill him. So I don’t know how they had interacted. I do know he was abusive to his wife and son. That might be why I finally told her, in the (vain) hope that she might sympathize. It’s not as if we were close like that.
But it’s all long in the past, E-FIL has been gone for years, and I don’t know if E-MIL is still alive, either.
I once posted for advice about my (then) boyfriend’s habit of correcting me in front of other people. The overwhelming response was that not only should I DTMFA, but that my boyfriend needed counselling STAT!
Not one person challenged me as to whether I had let my boyfriend know how his behaviour was affecting me. I decided myself that this was what I should do, he was mortified when he realised what he was doing and after a bumpy start, he no longer corrects me in public.
I’m sorry I didn’t see the rest of this thread. Very busy right now!
These posts explain my feelings very well. I was just taken aback by the neighbor’s “non-denominational church” line. Churches are Christian and she knows we’re raising our daughters as Jews. She happens to be a really good person and a terrific parent. I was just shocked at her presumption that everyone she meets or knows is Christian.
It’s the same thing with our local school district. They held classes on Passover and then gave kids off Good Friday. The neighborhood Jews were shocked and irked. When we tried to explain to school officials that this was unfair we were met with indifference and shrugs.
I had that experience growing up, too. My middle school was majority-Jewish, so school was closed for the High Holidays and teachers made a point of not assigning homework on the first night of Hanukkah or the first night seder at Passover, because they knew that we wouldn’t be able to do the work.
When I moved to Texas, however, my teachers could not understand that not every student is Christian, so I (and other non-Christian students) had to deal with a lot of insensitivity with respect to religion and culture. I don’t take offense to a lot of things, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the same concessions made to those of the dominant religion. If you’re going to excuse students from homework because of a revival meeting at a local church, you need to excuse non-Christian students because of their observances. (Yes, that actually happened. One of my teachers told us that we would be excused from homework if we brought in the program from that revival. The rest of us would still be on the hook. That teacher was an idiot for this and other reasons, all of which having to do with religion.)
My own contributions to the topic at hand come from my mother. After my first child died, she thought it would be a splendid idea for me to get pregnant almost immediately after. Never mind the fact that I had no idea how the baby died, or what kind of damage was done to my reproductive system; the best fix for infant loss is to have another!
My other “worst advice” came when I was pregnant with the sprog. She thought this would be a great time to go on a reducing diet so I wouldn’t have any baby weight to lose, and wouldn’t it be fantastic to weigh even less!
Since she has yet to give me good advice about anything, I just blow her off entirely. Yet she thinks hers is the best advice in all of human existence. :rolleyes:
