Posted on 12/30/2011 5:01:11 PM PST by TheDon
A Christian parenting book has come under fire after the deaths of three children from abuse. The families are reported to have been following the guidance of the book "To Train Up a Child" by Michael and Debi Pearl.
The "Today" show reports:
Hana Williams, 13, died of hypothermia after allegedly being starved, abused and locked outside by her parents. Lydia Schatz, age 7, died after being repeatedly beaten by her parents. And 4-year-old Sean Paddock suffocated after his mother wrapped him in a blanket too tightly in an effort to keep him from getting out of bed.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
Having never read the book myself I can only say this.
Yes it did only in that the parents did not understand what they were reading or did not have the ability to translate the knowledge they received. This does not mean the book is totally at fault but it is the catalyst.
In other words it would have been best they had never read it.
Agreed. Sounds like the opposite of christianity to me! Extremely bad parenting.
This is an old line Amish book, quite different than Catholic, Evangelical and mainline Protestant approaches.
I haven’t read it either, but I can’t imagine it in any way that it promotes the behaviors exhibited by these “parents”.
Ooops! I was confused with a different book by the same title... sorry.
I’ve read the book ... and then threw it away instead into the library-sale been, so I wouldn’t be responsible for someone else’s reading it.
Nonetheless, although I think the authors are profoundly in error about many things, the failure of the parents mentioned in the article to use common sense is not the fault of the authors.
Debi Pearl’s book for wives, Created to be his helpmeet, has some equally screwy advice. A friend of mine who is/was a Christian counselor told me that a lot of her clients have needed her help after reading that book.
Nice tagline. Now if we can just get a decent candidate that can win. If there ever was a time for a true conservative candidate to win big this is it! There has not been such a good opportunity since the 1980 presidential election.
Where is our next Ronald Reagan when you need him?
My mother was the queen of creative attitude adjustment but we were never abused. On the other hand, a lot of the daily chores I had would probably be seen as abuse by today’s “experts”.
So is there any truth to this article? Is the book that bad? I had never heard of it until the first of these articles were posted here.
The parents should have had common sense? You expect too much in this day and age! :)
That bad? Sounds like Dr. Spock had a better book than this!
Some folks take an idea and carry it to wacky extremes or become overly literal about it and lose metaphorical meanings. It is difficult to believe the authors of the book wanted this.
What a stupid article. The book’s authors should sue the article’s author for totally misrepresenting the book.
I was skeptical too, although some mainstream works take a more authoritarian/punitive bent than others (like some of the very early Dobson books, now revised). But it looks like this one really IS in a serious contest with Spock for screwey, except from the other side.
I actually read the book and applied the very commonsense principles. Very sound advice about scheduling children for eating and sleeping. My household had happy and well rested children who were a joy to be around My kids are now teens but I still see how the simple principle of consistency still bears fruit
That never happens in the US whether the criticism of the work is totally on target or grossly wrong. That pesky First Amendment, ya know. You can libel a person. You can’t libel a book — that’s not defined in law.
Don't be naive. You icky Christians are evil. /sarcasm. LOL!
Christianity is not about sadism.
It is about love. That poor 13 year old, starved by controlling parents. That poor 7 year old beaten to death out of “love” and the poor 4 year old killed by those who are supposed to protect him. These parents are stupid and depraved.
This is NOT an assault on Christianity, this is something a “Christian” author did.
How many times do people have to emphasize tough “love” is not love at all, it is hateful.
I read this comment at the NYT when they covered this story and it sort of stuck with me so I went and looked it up:
“If there have been 3 deaths for 670,000 copies. . . that’d be 4.4 per million. In the US, the overall rate of child death by parental abuse was 23.3 per million in 2008, roughly 8 times greater. So, households containing the Pearl book are far LESS likely to experience a child death by abuse that households not containing the book.
If the statistics are to be believed, we could lower the child abuse rate significantly by distributing a copy of the Pearl book to new mothers leaving the hospital.”
Most children’s deaths are caused by selfishness(abortion), drugs, drunk drivers, anger and violence. I can’t think of any that died in a true Christian church service.
The articles says “And 4-year-old Sean Paddock suffocated after his mother wrapped him in a blanket too tightly in an effort to keep him from getting out of bed.”
The Pearls don’t teach that. They teach blanket training, where you train your baby to play on a blanket with toys while the mother is nearby.
The wrapping tightly in blankets thing is some sort of wacky teaching that originated in the adoption movement as some way of simulating a “re-birth” into the new family (for kids who would not bond with their adoptive families) and several others deaths have been reported. But that is not a Pearl teaching at all.
All that having been said, I think some of the things in the book are good. It’s mostly just a bunch of common sense. But I would say that I disagree with them that you can train your child to some kind of completely obedient and always perfect kid.
Kids are still kids, and just like adults, they are going to make mistakes.
But the mistake being made here is blaming a well meaning husband and wife who wrote the book for the crimes of 3 unbalanced adoptive parents who never should have been approved for adoption anyway.
Actually they are not Amish. They are a very conservative Bible Church. I think they’d say they were Evangelical.
I’ve read that book. I can’t imagine that someone would need “help” after reading it. That’s so weird!
I haven’t read the child rearing book but in the marriage book, Debi advises a woman to remain with an abusive Muslim man who threatened her with a knife. She advises that a man who molests his children be turned in but that the kids come to prison to visit him, the wife remain faithful to him throughout the prison sentence, and then when he’s released, it will be a time of joy and reconciliation. This couple, the Pearls, give some dangerously wacky advice.
Maybe it is just me, maybe I am just prejudice but I think the best parenting skills can be learned from your Grandmothers.
Maybe it is just me, maybe I am just prejudice but I think the best parenting skills can be learned from your Grandmothers.
The bottom line with Debi Pearl’s book is that all problems are the wife’s fault. That message is loud and clear throughout the book. Go read some of the 100+ negative reviews on the Amazon page. Debi misuses Bible scriptures to try and back up her beliefs. Some of her advice was okay, but I remember feeling so depressed while reading it and my common sense told me that something was wrong.
And what drugs is this woman on?
I know I've done much better now after years of counseling and physical therapy. LOL!
“Debi advises a woman to remain with an abusive Muslim man who threatened her with a knife.”
I’m going to have to re-read that book! I do not remember that at all!
Why would anyone want to try to combine an old line Amish book with a new-ageish “re-birth” pop psychology and think they could come up with anything that is realistic.
“he whippings with the cat o 9 tails were the worst.”
My Grandmother had an answer for really really bad kids! She always said “Take them to the field and horsewhip them”
However even she would have thought a cat o’ 9 tails was extreme considering a horsewhip would have been used on really really bad kids.
Ever read “Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder? A teacher whipped a really bad boy in school with a rattlesnake bullwhip.
The Bible view of women and their role is never going to be popular and I can’t imagine that the majority of readers who populate the Amazon message boards would find very much to like about the book.
The Pearls do teach things that would make them very unpopular in modern times, like that the women should be the keeper at home, that the women should render due benevolence to her husband, that the man is the head of the home.
I didn’t agree with everything the book said, but I can’t find fault with it where it agreed with the Bible.
The Pearls are not Amish. They are sort of a very conservative Evangelical type. But when the book was released they originally used a picture of an Amish wagon on the front of the book as a tribute to the training methods of their Amish neighbors.
That looks sort of interesting. I’m always interested in fringe groups like that. It’s somewhat amazing that they have been able to keep their culture alive.
Agreed, stupid article. Stilted amateurish journalism like this is what The Onion has aped for years, only this is not funny.
Good for you. I would have done the same.
Nonetheless, although I think the authors are profoundly in error about many things, the failure of the parents mentioned in the article to use common sense is not the fault of the authors.
Exactly. I tend to think that parents who read a book that espouses beating children into submission and other extreme forms of physical punishment, were probably prone to do so even without the book, the book was just further justification for them doing so.
why not just skip the kid and whip the wife, good grief. you get a Christian lady who has a psychotic Moose hubby, the lady is supposed to just welcome the angry nut back home with joy? at the least she should welcome him to leave her life. i think she should move to a state where she can pack a gun.
“To Train up a Child” is a very fine book that should be read by all parents and especially those with large families. The author is a modern Evangelical who passes along parenting lessons he learned rearing his children while living within an Amish community. It is like reading reports from a time traveler who went back to examine the family life of our great-great-great-grandparents.
Notably, the book suggests strategies for implementing the biblical injunctions to correct childhood misbehavior by spanking. Parents are warned to avoid punishing in anger. In my opinion and having raised children to adulthood, corporal punishment is indispensable in a household of rambunctious boys. Administering the correction with businesslike impartiality is essential for maintaining those all-important parent-child bonds of affection.
A book that recommends moderate spanking cannot be blamed for parents killing their children.
That does not change by one iota the egregious syncretism of that approach
>> Having never read the book ...
>> [the book] is the catalyst.
Seriously?
Could not stand this legalistic, behaviorism, training children as if they were worse than animals, with classical conditioning.
However - read Sears books and immediately liked them, knew it was the right way- Highly recommend!
Dude, I'm gonna have to look that up to find out what you mean.
Ok, I googled it.
Not sure WHO voiced approval of the approach the parent took that ended with the death of the 4 year old boy, but it wasn’t me.
I’m just saying that wrapping kids in blankets is not what the Pearl’s teach.
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