"Many women lack biblical soberness, as seen in the way they treat their houses as shrines to be protected, rather than as spaces in which to enjoy their families. They get emotionally upset if the carpet gets messed up or if the kids accidentally spill milk on the couch. They become emotional wrecks over their physical surroundings. If you have that problem, let me ask you, how would you feel if your husband provided nothing more than an open barn in which to deliver your first baby? That was the case with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Do you think God could have used Mary to be the mother of Jesus if she had allowed herself to become an emotional wreck when her environment was not clean or orderly? Think of the teenage girl, Mary, clinging to the back of a bouncing donkey, contractions pulling at her exhausted body, while her desperate husband searched for a place for her to deliver her child.
"Many have speculated as to what virtues Mary had that prompted God to choose her to be the mother of our Lord. I can tell you what she was like. She had eternity in her heart. She was self-possessed, thoughtful, and always learning to make wise judgments. When a young woman learns to be sober, she will not live for immediate gratification. She will appreciate those things that will last for eternity."
--Debi Pearl, "Created to Be His Help-Meet"
11 comments:
Hmmm...I have a really hard time with this source. Not disagreeing with what she's saying in this quote, but the parenting advice she and her husband give makes my stomach turn...I'm hesitant to speak up here, but find it hard not to...they advocate hitting babies younger than Ezra with a switch.
...and pulling their hair if they bite while nursing (as if they know what they are doing let alone have the capacity for empathy to stop themselves...full on empathy developmentally is more like the seven year old range).
I too hesitated to speak up, but Seppie said it well. Please as you are reading the Pearls be mindful of the problematic elements of their writing. And if you are going to read them, I hope you balance it out a bit with conversations with pious Christians who better understand children (some might be listed on www.gentlechristianmothers.com...one book as a start is _The Christian Parenting Book_ by Dr. and Mrs. Sears).
Dear September and Sierra,
In your responses to Heather's post, both of of you seem to be making ad hominem arguments.
That said, you should know that Heather and I used To Train Up A Child as a jumping off point for discussing discipline in our household. While we diverged from the Pearls on certain specific details, we found the overall philosophy of their parenting techniques both sensible and loving. We have also had the opportunity to meet children of different ages, young adults, and adults who have been raised using the techniques advocated by the Pearls. On the whole, we have found them to be extremely happy and well-adjusted. They have close, loving, and respectful relationships with their parents and show a high degree of discipline and selflessness.
Both Heather and I are relatively well-educated, intelligent, critical readers. We don't just accept what we read, but instead give it careful thought. If we read something you find distasteful and reach different conclusions, you can safely assume it is not simply because we are naive or ill-informed about the source.
Please know that this is my reply to you and not Heather's. If you would like to discuss this further with me, please write to me directly.
-Silver
No one doubts you are intelligent people, or critical readers.
Have you read the alternative sources?
Thank you for the GCM resource -- from a quick skim it looks like a really useful site and I look forward to reading through it more in-depth when I've got the time.
And I think it's interesting to note but there's very little divergence between the the Pearls and the GCM site, at least just looking at their statement of beliefs. The same as when I was pregnant and devoured everything I could find on childbirth, I do appreciate reading different sources and views on child-rearing.
Have you read the Pearls' book? I don't agree with everything they say (and I think it's important to comb through and find what advice is indispensable and improving, and what to take with a grain of salt -- the people who have recommended their books to Silver and I said they do the same), but I think that because they're controversial, they're often misrepresented; when you don't read the book itself, you're likely to find a lot of false or skewed information, or simply things taken out of context or misunderstood. I've found the literature of theirs I've read is worth it.
Heather, I did read a lot of the Pearls stuff many years ago, so I am afraid I can't speak in specifics after all this time.
I see a great difference between any philosophy in which parents are treated as sovereign vs. a philosophy in which the child is taught to respect his or her parents but to be centered on the sovereignty of God. There is a world of difference between gentle Christian parenting and "training up a child" Pearl style.
Also, an understanding of child development is critical to an approach that respects God's perfection. I found the writing of the Pearls to be ripe with unsupported understandings of child development.
Meanwhile, the Pearls advise on their website that you keep quiet if you use their methods for fear that your methods could be "misunderstood" and that your children could be legally removed from your care. Children are removed when the legal definition of abuse has been met. Thus though they are talking about being "misunderstood," what they are really referring to is being caught abusing a child.
I don’t think the Pearls would agree that their approach is treating parents as sovereign instead of being centered on the sovereignty of God. Sovereign may not be the right word for it, but I think their idea is that a child’s earliest ideas of God are inextricably related to their ideas about their parents. Something they grow out of, of course, but to a small child it can be confusing if a parent insists on pointing out their weaknesses excessively.
The Pearls are very emphatic on the point that if you feel like you are about to do anything, anything out of anger, you shouldn’t do it – whether it’s spanking or lecturing or what. Nothing you do, ideally, should be just a gut reaction – which is how spanking is too often practiced. Until recently, that was the only manner in which I was acquainted with spanking, and I think what most people’s idea of spanking still is – is an angry parent grabbing their child and delivering a series of blows. That’s not what’s being discussed here.
Children are sometimes removed from homes for the wrong reasons – I’m sure we can agree on that.
Found on the Pearls' website, nogreaterjoy.com/letters/faq:
"Our teachings are very clear as to proper use of the rod and the whole concept of proper training. Christian Law Association has gone over our materials at our request. CLA, as well as the State of Tennessee DCS, has given a clear OK that they do not contain anything that might be construed as teaching abusive use of the rod.
"We wish we could guarantee that all who read our materials would understand the proper teaching, but we cannot. We have addressed the whole scope of the issue in the To Train Up a Child book -- the heart of the parent towards the child, parental anger, abuse of the rod, etc. Our publications and website contain materials that fully describe what we teach.
"Training is teaching the child early in life what to do and how to respond, using gentle, positive reinforcement. That is the whole scope of our ministry."
But as Silver wrote earlier, we're using the Pearls' as a jumping-off point - reading through and deciding which methods to keep and which to discard. We're not taking it all as gospel, but we're not listening to internet rumors and throwing it out altogether, either.
I am not listening to internet rumors either (of which I would consider many stories of wrongful child removal). I am evaluating a method of discipline. I really recommend you pick up Dr. Sear's Christian parenting book, and his discipline book, in order to round out your careful evaluations of your options.
Thanks for the recommendations - and I mean that sincerely.
You're welcome. There is another book I actually like the best of all, but it may be too different from the approach you are taking. I don't know. You could always check it out (though I'd say check out the Dr. Sears books first). Anyway, it is called _Becoming the Parent You Want to Be_ by Janis Keyser and Laura Davis. It can be both dense and repetative, but I recommend doing the exercises and everything as you go through. The first part of the book is helpful in sorting out how exactly you want to parent and what your parenting values are. The second half of the book gets into specifics for the 0-5 year old age group, and addresses common early issues, such as how to teach kids to share, dealing wtih behaviors such as biting, and so forth. We like that book so much that at one point we had a few copies because we kept loaning it out and then "needing" it.
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