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 ...
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.
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