Pearls On When A Baby Is Too Young To Spank

[debrand]

Aren't there any laws to stop these wackos? I mean, isn't promotion of child abuse a crime? At least a civil suit for the children who have died because they follow the Pearls.

Several people have tried to call CPS on them. There have been news stories on the Pearls. Apparently, advocating child abuse is not a crime-or at least one that law enforcement will do anything about.

nogreaterjoy.org/articles/our-own-set-of-possessed-damsels/

This article was published in 2005

For the last year or so, we have had a group of about eight “damsels†working overtime trying to disrupt our ministry. When we advertise for a Seminar, they call the church where we are scheduled to be and warn them that their tax-exempt status could be in jeopardy, or that we are being watched by the authorities. One pastor, believing their lies, almost canceled a seminar 24 hours before it was to take place. We explained the situation, so he let it go on, but he stayed home so he could not be implicated. Recently, when we held a seminar in Chattanooga, Tennessee, being warned by these damsels, the Department of Human Services of Tennessee sent a “spy†to observe. We welcomed him readily. We have nothing to hide. A few weeks later, the head detective for the state of Tennessee dropped by our place to visit. We knew we did not have to talk to him, but again, having nothing to hide, Michael answered all his questions for about an hour, gave him our booklet “Biblical Chastisement,†our DVD set, The Joy of Training, and several of our books. Biblical Chastisement was written for just this purpose—a defense of Biblical child training. He talked to Deb for about an hour and also spent time with our office staff. He then called and spoke with one of our grown, married children. So the nice detective left, having come to the conclusion that the ladies who were reporting us did not KNOW us. He was satisfied that everything we do and teach is within the law. Since he left, I have honestly been expecting him to invite us to teach foster parents how to train the State’s children.

[docmom]

Dumping it is not a great offense for a six-month-old, but he will not always be six months old, and it won’t be cute for long. It will make you downright mad when he is three years old and flings a whole plate of food into your lap.

I have a three year old. She has never flung a plate of food into my lap and I have never, ever hit her. She also doesn't run out into traffic, hurt other children or kick up a fuss about going to sleep at night. There are millions of people in this world who were never beaten as infants and we do not have an epidemic of plate flinging going on. But Mike will never see this. He only sees what he wants to see!

[thoughtful]

We are talking about a man who sadistic terrorized his children to fear not only the hot wood stove but his yell of HOT regarding that stove.

And thinks it's a riot that he can still make them jump. From TTUAC:

It was so effective that, thereafter, if I wanted to see them do a back flip, all I had to do was say, "Hot!!" They would turn loose of a glass of iced tea.

Gee, I wonder who had to clean up the spilled tea and broken glass.

He's a sick shit of a man.

[wayward]

Their next book: "To Train Up Your Fetus."

[France Nolan]

I was really lax with my fetus training. Fetus Nolan loved having kickboxing class at 3 AM.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Yes, if you let him kick as a fetus, it wont be cute for long, because obviously he will still kick you at age 20 as you didnt hit him for it.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Man. Not only are their methods sadistic, they are also way too much effort for my lazy self.

Who in the world thinks you can reason with a baby? A baby is going to do what a baby wants to do because... it's a baby. So as others have already posted upthread, rather than set the baby in some environment where it can hurt itself or cause you trouble by throwing food around or whatever it is and then you have to go all elaborate with the "training" and the "switching," why not just restrict the baby's environment? A bit of food at a time, don't put the fancy clothes on to start with, don't let the baby have ACCESS to the hot stove or deep pools of water? Don't put things that can be tipped over and spilled next to the baby when it's squirming around on the floor? Get a baby pen, already. Kid can "talk" with you while you do work in the room but hey! can't get to the stove! Only safe non-breakable things that the baby can't trash, inside the baby pen!

Ah but then I guess the kid doesn't learn how to properly "submit" without question and not ever have dreams or ambitions. Crushing that right out seems to be the actual goal of all this "training."

[Letgo]

Who in the world thinks you can reason with a baby? A baby is going to do what a baby wants to do because... it's a baby.

The Pearls do not believe in reasoning with a baby. The baby does what it wants to do because it is selfish, self centered, rebellious, demanding, and uncivilized. That is why the bad behaviors must be beaten out of the baby. Glad I could clear that up for you.

The Pearls believe that if you begin hitting when your child is an infant then he or she will quickly learn to obey and you eliminate problems in the future.

[anachronistic]

I love babies. There is no evil in a baby - there couldn't be. Babies are perfect, wonderful; they make you want to pick them up and nuzzle them. How can anyone look at a baby and think 'I want to hit him/her'?

I nanny for a 9 month old. I learned recently that around his age, babies understand about 40 words. But they certainly don't understand cause and effect, or even object permanence, yet. (That's why it is so hilarious playing peek a boo with them, because they really don't know where you went under that blanket.) They are learning, learning, learning, all day long - science, math, language - they are like tiny sponges just soaking up the world.

It makes my heart hurt to think of all those babies learning nothing but pain. I really hope that many of them learn to dissociate young enough that they don't feel it. I mean, that'll mean they'll have even more issues as adults, but at least then they'd be protected from the pain. (you can dissociate without having full-blown dissociative identity disorder; I'm certainly not wishing that on them.)

[martian]

I wonder what the long term harm is. What kind of issues will those kids have one day?

My (non-professional) guess would be that the kids are at risk for developing an insecure attachment strategy - possibly a disorganized attachment - as opposed to a secure attachment strategy with their parents. Essentially, with this kind of parenting, the kids are placed in the bind of not knowing which parent they're going to get in an interaction, the nice one they can trust or the mean one they need to avoid. It's incredibly stressful for them since kids really need a secure emotional base to launch themselves from into exploring the big, scary world.

Wikipedia has a handy chart summarizing attachment style, though not much discussion of disorganized attachment in particular. Also, it's possible to have both a primary and a secondary style of attachment or even a different attachment style with different caregivers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorganized_attachment#Attachment_patterns

It's hard to summarize what the long term problems might be (not good? awfully bad?), and a change in quality of caregiving can alter outcomes by a lot but, very generally, a disorganized attachment style can be a risk factor for things like borderline personality disorder, if we're talking worst case scenarios, or better case scenarios would be high risk for depression and anxiety. I can post more links if anyone's interested.

I'm sure fundies don't believe in the science underlying attachment research, though, so maybe their babies will be immune.

[martian]

It makes my heart hurt to think of all those babies learning nothing but pain. I really hope that many of them learn to dissociate young enough that they don't feel it. I mean, that'll mean they'll have even more issues as adults, but at least then they'd be protected from the pain. (you can dissociate without having full-blown dissociative identity disorder; I'm certainly not wishing that on them.)

Funny you should mention that. Dissociative behavior would be one of the hallmarks of a disorganized attachment strategy. An interesting article on dissociatian in children here: http://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2013/04/the-fragmented-child-disorganized-attachment-and-dissociation/

[France Nolan]

Yes, if you let him kick as a fetus, it wont be cute for long, because obviously he will still kick you at age 20 as you didnt hit him for it.

The (now) Toddler Nolan has kicked and slapped me in frustration. Instead of hitting her back because I'm a grown ass woman and not a toddler I told her that hands are not for hitting/feet are not for kicking. I did something even crazier by actually removing her from the triggering situation and allowing her to calm down before we talked about why it's not okay to hurt people and how to use words for our big feelings.