Michelle Duggar’s Take on Time Outs

[Elle]

Not to mention the idea of using book reading as a PUNISHMENT is..... well it's a good way to ensure that your kids hate reading. I mean, what the hell?!

This is why grounding me didn't work. I'd just read, and the one thing my parents couldn't bring themselves to take away from me was books, especially the encyclopedias that I read so much that their permanent home was in my own bedroom.

When my brother already hated reading books, because he preferred to be outside running around, then he'd be made to read a book and do a report on it. If he didn't already hate books, then they wouldn't have used books in any way. It was a better use of time than having him sit in his room playing games or staring at the ceiling.

But if your kids love to read, then forcing them to read more will make them think it's bad. And if your kid doesn't like to read anyway, then you aren't going to make them love books by forcing it.

[Elle]

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My pastor's wife told me my infant was being manipulative when my daughter was 2 weeks old. I had her (the baby) sleeping in the cot next to me so she could breast feed on demand and the Pastor's wife, Charlotte, told me that the baby was manipulating me by "demanding" to be fed in the middle of the night. That when her children were born they were brought home and put in a cot in the bedroom furthest away. When they were put to bed the very first night, the door was shut and the infant was allowed to cry all night. After a couple of nights the child "learned" to sleep through the night. She had 3 children.

It was the coldest thing I have ever heard and I still shudder to think this is how some women mother their babies. The idea of forcing a infant to sleep alone and hungry brings me to tears.

Michael Pearl proudly told of how his daughter chastised a friend's mother for not whipping her 10-month-old son because "if he's old enough to cry, he's old enough for a whipping." Since most babies cry upon being born (which opens the lungs, which is why babies' butts used to get a pop if they weren't already crying), the means newborns are old enough.

I think it's cruelty and neglect to not feed a hungry infant. Their tummies aren't very big and don't hold several hours' worth of food! And yeah, her babies may have started to "sleep" through the night, but I guarantee you they woke up still and just didn't cry from hunger since what they did learn was that no one would be there. Babies who don't cry because they've learned that their NEEDS won't be met break my heart. My daughter didn't cry often because as soon as she started fussing, she got a boob or her diaper changed. She learned that she didn't need to cry because her needs were met that fast. The few times she cried we felt like failures that her tummy had to hurt before we got food into her. I can't imagine leaving a baby to suffer through hunger pangs and lay there in a wet, maybe poopy, diaper, because no one will come help you.