Joy and Austin: 248 Days Since the Wedding and Still Counting

[shock928]

Sorry I'm ranting now, but I guess Michael Pearl really set me off!

One thing that drives me crazy with these beliefs of disciplining children physically, is it is almost always justified by "Spare the rod - spoil the child." Or “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” (Proverbs 13:24)

In case maybe they forgot... the Bible was written in Hebrew. Rod in Hebrew is "Shebet." It is usually translated to something a shepherd uses to guide his sheep, like a walking stick. So when a sheep went astray, he would use the rod to guide the sheep back to the herd. Why would a shepherd hit his sheep or make them afraid?

He would not calmly and calculatedly take the sheep aside, explain why he was punishing it, and then begin to hit the sheep.(Sorry Michael Pearl, hitting and spanking is interchangeable no matter how much you disagree about that. Look it up in the dictionary.) 

im honestly thinking of taking one for the team and reading to train up a child. The problem is I don't want to buy it and give them a cent!

[Bad Wolf]

@Jenn The Heathen. We used that video when I worked at the battered women's shelter. It really explains the concept well, and stops the adult from getting frustrated or involved in an argument.

[Texas Heifer]

8 hours ago, shock928 said:

I got married to the first guy who was interested at 18 - mostly to get away and "adult" on my own. But he was also verbally and emotionally abusive and very controlling. (minor physical. he never hit, but he did grab and shake you.) I THOUGHT IT WAS TOTALLY NORMAL. I wondered why I was so depressed and unhappy. I wondered what was wrong with ME. It wasn't until I saw a therapist at 21 when she told me what controlling behavior and emotional abuse was, gave me many books to read when it all clicked. You don't know what you don't know. Whatever you think is normal is taught to you as normal. I divorced him. I am now married to a kind and loving person.

Essentially the same with me. I'm glad you are also married to a good person now.

Quote

 I do NOT want to teach my kids that adults are all powerful. And that adults are never wrong, and that they cannot say NO or disagree with an adult. 

I wish my parents had done what you're doing. I still have anxiety when I feel like I'm disobeying, and it's tough for me to outright disagree with my authoritarian, emotionally abusive father (who laughs about how my brother and I thought he was never wrong as children. Oh, we knew he was wrong, often -- we'd just get screamed at if we "talked back." So we didn't).

[lizzybee]

My husband and I were talking about something this weekend that made me think of blanket training and punishing children. We were discussing how our 14mo doesn't really understand consequences yet. We get frustrated with him a lot at dinner because he likes to play and do the windshield wiper motion with his hands on his food tray, effectively knocking his dinner in the floor. Thing is, he still wants his food. I'll take the tray off when he starts doing that and will fork feed him or give him one piece at a time to save his dinner. He'll eat every bite. We get frustrated, but ultimately the deal is he doesn't understand that if it goes off the tray he can't eat it - and why would he understand that? What does he know about dirt and germs or wasting food? He's just playing and being a baby.

So blanket training, for example, is a way of teaching consequences in a very cruel way. But I'm preaching to the choir on that one. Honorable mention to Derrick and his awful human nature comment (or whatever he said, you know what I mean). Why do we have to assume the worst about our children from the gate? It's our job to teach them and love them not treat them like deviant criminals.

I think a lot of times when they're little it's easy to get mad at them until you process why they're upset, why they're behaving a certain way, or whether or not they understand if a behavior is wrong. 

[Jana814]

The think is many Christian parents don't allow their kids to be kids. They think that if raise their kids in church and only read the Bible, and keep them away from the outside world they will be perfect. They can't imagine their kids not being perfect. 

[Bad Wolf]

I think M started blanket training with Jed and Jer, so she could home school without interruption. If she'd sent the older ones to school, she would have had more time with her younger children. What am I thinking?

[tabitha2]

14 minutes ago, Jana814 said:

The think is many Christian parents don't allow their kids to be kids. They think that if raise their kids in church and only read the Bible, and keep them away from the outside world they will be perfect. They can't imagine their kids not being perfect. 

Really? What an odd statement. Unless you are kin to the Maxwells and the like the vast majority of Christian parents are doing the best they can like parents of any faith and are far far from this description. I bet they even go to library’s and let their children see outside people   

[Crazy Enough to Join]

12 minutes ago, Bad Wolf said:

I think M started blanket training with Jed and Jer, so she could home school without interruption. If she'd sent the older ones to school, she would have had more time with her younger children. What am I thinking?

This is so true. Even to just make sure your kids learn how to read and sum by 18 (which is doing a very bad job at education) is a huge effort on parents' part. It's absolutely absurd to think one mom can both pop out that many kids, feed and clothe that many kids, and educate them. Let alone if the kids have medical issues or learning disabilities. Nothing even has a chance to ever change with the Duggar kids until they start limiting fertility or utilizing public school, imo.

[shock928]

21 minutes ago, Texas Heifer said:

Essentially the same with me. I'm glad you are also married to a good person now.

I wish my parents had done what you're doing. I still have anxiety when I feel like I'm disobeying, and it's tough for me to outright disagree with my authoritarian, emotionally abusive father (who laughs about how my brother and I thought he was never wrong as children. Oh, we knew he was wrong, often -- we'd just get screamed at if we "talked back." So we didn't).

I'm sorry you went through something similar. (If you are from Texas- I grew up there too!) It's taken a long time to get to a point where I feel I can have a voice. But my dad doesn't call me or vice versa. We don't see each other much - I live far away now. I avoid confrontation with him. One book that I would say helped me the most of all is called Controlling People by Patricia Evans. It has been fundamental for me to understand why people verbally or emotionally abuse, and how they came to be so controlling and how I can react. 

One very important lesson I learned in that book is how unconcsious the behavior can be! One small example in it is, "A parent tells a child after they fall, "You're not hurt! You're fine, you're just trying to get attention." So the child takes in someone else's definition of their reality, and someone else's definition becomes reality rather than their own. In a way being trained to believe the opposite of what is our own truth. 

I'm also a firm believer in that hurting people hurt people. So I've come to just accept that my dad was hurt as a child himself- and doesn't have a relationship with his own emotions. When I started to see him as not just someone who hurt me, but someone who had been hurt my views about him changed and I knew I could let go of my own childhood and sever the cycle. It helps me to know he is an imperfect person who was an imperfect parent, and I can take control back by letting it go in a sense. The cycle broke when I had my own kids. 

I hope some of that made sense - and I wish you the best!

[Texas Heifer]

1 minute ago, shock928 said:

I'm sorry you went through something similar. (If you are from Texas- I grew up there too!) It's taken a long time to get to a point where I feel I can have a voice. But my dad doesn't call me or vice versa. We don't see each other much - I live far away now. I avoid confrontation with him. One book that I would say helped me the most of all is called Controlling People by Patricia Evans. It has been fundamental for me to understand why people verbally or emotionally abuse, and how they came to be so controlling and how I can react. 

One very important lesson I learned in that book is how unconcsious the behavior can be! One small example in it is, "A parent tells a child after they fall, "You're not hurt! You're fine, you're just trying to get attention." So the child takes in someone else's definition of their reality, and someone else's definition becomes reality rather than their own. In a way being trained to believe the opposite of what is our own truth. 

I'm also a firm believer in that hurting people hurt people. So I've come to just accept that my dad was hurt as a child himself- and doesn't have a relationship with his own emotions. When I started to see him as not just someone who hurt me, but someone who had been hurt my views about him changed and I knew I could let go of my own childhood and sever the cycle. It helps me to know he is an imperfect person who was an imperfect parent, and I can take control back by letting it go in a sense. The cycle broke when I had my own kids. 

I hope some of that made sense - and I wish you the best!

Yep, I'm from Texas. Born and raised!

Our fathers sound really similar, as do our backgrounds, experiences, experiences in therapy, relationships with our fathers now, and realizations about our parents being imperfect people. It's a little spooky, actually. 

The main way I chose to sever the cycle is by not becoming a parent. I have too many FLEAs. I come across as a loving, caring, patient person...and in many ways, I am...but my past traumas have made me fearful, and I have a tendency to lash out when I am overwhelmed and/or embarrassed. I react badly when I feel cornered or ganged up on. I fall apart when I get too stressed. It's only recently that I have begun to learn how to deal with stressors in a productive, non-hysterical way.

I absolutely believe my parents did the best they could, and I don't like to feel like I'm blaming them, but the fact remains that my father's aggressive, dismissive, often quite unkind child-rearing methods, along with my mother's very passive ones, royally screwed me up. When I chose not to have children of my own, I got a lot of, "oh, but you'd be such a good mother!" from everyone -- except my own parents, which basically told me they didn't think I would be a good mother any more than I did. I am just too damaged. I refuse to screw anyone up the way I've been screwed up myself. Frankly, I don't think my father should've had children, and if my mom hadn't been so determined to have us, I think he'd have preferred not to.

 

This is not to say I judge you or anyone else for choosing to have kids! It just wasn't a good idea for me, and I'm okay with that.

[mizandry]

6 hours ago, shock928 said:

im honestly thinking of taking one for the team and reading to train up a child. The problem is I don't want to buy it and give them a cent!

You don't have to buy it - it's online  ... 

[Jellybean]

Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism has page-by-page reviews of several Pearl books on her blog. The reviews can all be found here:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/reviews

[Dandruff]

18 hours ago, Alice in Fundieland said:

Last night, Pickles posted an email exchange between one of her followers and Terry Forsyth. In the email, Terry said Joy and Austin’s baby is due in 2 weeks. He also implied that he and Roxanne selectively used only some of the Pearls’ “methods” and that the Pearls were invited to Fort Rock because of  Michael’s knife/tomahawk throwing skills. 

Well that makes it better (sarcasm).  Invite a wife-raping, child-abusing, author of a book that resulted in the deaths of several children to a family camp to throw knives.  I'm sure he'd have nothing to say if a child nearby happened to "misbehave".

6 hours ago, Bad Wolf said:

I think M started blanket training with Jed and Jer, so she could home school without interruption.

That's how I remember it.  I also believe, after she had "success" with the twins, that she used it on Joy.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

5 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Well that makes it better (sarcasm).  Invite a wife-raping, child-abusing, author of a book that resulted in the deaths of several children to a family camp to throw knives.  I'm sure he'd have nothing to say if a child nearby happened to "misbehave".

That's how I remember it.  I also believe, after she had "success" with the twins, that she used it on Joy.

Joy is older than Jed & Jer, so would have been to old for blanket training, I would hope, 

[singsingsing]

4 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

Joy is older than Jed & Jer, so would have been to old for blanket training, I would hope, 

She's only a year older than them. What's the age cut-off for blanket training? 

[SorenaJ]

I thought all of the Duggars were blanket trained? Remember seeing an interview where all the little girls (and perhaps Jackson) was playing quietly with toys on a blanket, and the interviewer commented on how well-behaved the kids were, and I was just like "hmm yeah, wonder why". 

[Rosalie]

Idk how trustworthy this page is, but acc to this page, all kids have been spanked with a rod:  http://defamer.gawker.com/police-report-reveals-the-duggar-discipline-method-th-1707154965

[Carm_88]

I thought that Michelle started blanket training with JD and Jana when she was overwhelmed trying to care for the twins and two year old Josh. Maybe I have the wrong set of twins. 

[VelociRapture]

1 hour ago, Rosalie said:

Idk how trustworthy this page is, but acc to this page, all kids have been spanked with a rod:  http://defamer.gawker.com/police-report-reveals-the-duggar-discipline-method-th-1707154965

The information is correct. One of the Duggar children (one of the boys - not Josh - as all the daughters’ statements have been accounted for) interviewed during the molestation investigation stated that the parents used a rod to punish the children. The reports can be found on this site:

 

[Rosalie]

I just cannot understand how any sane parent can think that corporal punishment of the children is a good idea. Or that breaking a child’s will, forcing it to obedience should be done.  

[SweetJuly]

10 minutes ago, Rosalie said:

I just cannot understand how any sane parent can think that corporal punishment of the children is a good idea. Or that breaking a child’s will, forcing it to obedience should be done.  

If you think that your child will go to hell unless you break their evil, manipulative will, if you think that the only way to Jesus and salvation is breaking your child's will, then corporal punishment suddenly looks very appealing.

The twisted thing is that these people truly believe that being this abusive is to their children's ultimate benefit.

[lizzybee]

Good lord I just can't imagine desiring to break my son's will. Tears come to my eyes even thinking about it. Not my precious baby. If there's hellfire waiting for me for not doing so, bring it on. This punishment for good belief system is such an evil, evil mentality. 

[justoneoftwo]

I love how willful my child is!  How people can see that and not see a strong personality I don't know!

[Rosalie]

8 minutes ago, SweetJuly said:

If you think that your child will go to hell unless you break their evil, manipulative will, if you think that the only way to Jesus and salvation is breaking your child's will, then corporal punishment suddenly looks very appealing.

The twisted thing is that these people truly believe that being this abusive is to their children's ultimate benefit.

Well, they do read the Bible very selective... I am no expert, but the way I know Jesus, he was a mild person not punishing other.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:7-11)

But I guess they’re obsessed with the original sin, thinking they can beat the original sin out of their infants...

[Bad Wolf]

COP (Certified Old Person) here. When I went to school, teachers were allowed to hit, spank, slap, whenever and for whatever reason. Miss your spelling words, talking in class, or get your math problems wrong, you had to be hit to help you learn.

Sometimes, it became a challenge, how to annoy the teacher so much that she would be driven to slapping our palms with a ruler. No, we weren't masochists, I think it was our way of taking control.