corporal punishment – Page 6 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

“Biblical” Parenting, Part Six: Concluding Thoughts

October 12, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team13 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on September 27, 2012.

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Also in this series: Part One: Introduction | Part Two: A Parent Who Assumes The Worst | Part Three: An Extremely Controlling Parent | Part Four: A Parent Who Tries to Change Minds and Hearts through Spanking | Part Five: A Parent Who Isolates In Order to Control | Part Six: Concluding Thoughts

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Part Six: Concluding Thoughts

To briefly review, my first criticism of Reb Bradley’s book “Child Training Tips” discussed the way his advice pushed parents toward the worst possible interpretation of their child’s behavior at the expense of mercy and understanding. My second criticism looked at the extreme level of control that parents are urged to have over their child’s mind and body, which can prevent the child from maturing and can put the parent at risk of developing abusive habits. My third criticism looked at the shockingly broad definition of rebellion and the abusive use of spanking to force children to change their opinions and feelings. My fourth criticism discussed how isolation weakens families by removing other sources of support, and how isolation negatively affects children’s social and emotional development.

Now here is my conclusion:

To parents

Being a parent is incredibly challenging, and the constant stream of conflicting advice about parenting only adds confusion to the challenge.

There’s an extra level of stress for many devout Christian parents because raising upstanding citizens is not enough for them; they also desperately want their children to share their faith and religious convictions. It’s not surprising that even good and caring Christian parents could get sucked into this severely authoritarian parenting approach, believing it to be in their children’s best spiritual interests; they need to feel in control of their child’s destiny because they believe the stakes are so high.

If you are one of those parents, perhaps it will be a little easier for you to see the relational damage of this parenting approach if you witness a parent outside of your own faith employing these techniques on their child. Is it ok for an atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or Orthodox Jewish parent to force their child to follow their beliefs about religion, punish their child for expressing disagreement, and isolate their child from other influences? In another religious context, doesn’t this look like abusive parenting? Doesn’t it look like the parent cares much more about their own opinions than about their child? Don’t you feel sympathy for the poor child, and suddenly find yourself believing that the parent ought to let their child have the freedom to choose his or her own opinions?

What makes you think that the experience is any different for the child if the parent happens to be a Christian?

Yes, it’s hard to realize that your child’s destiny is outside of your control, but it can also be incredibly freeing. It allows you to be relationship-focused rather than goal-oriented toward your child. Parenting mistakes are impossible to avoid, but as much as possible, let your errors be on the side of unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness, understanding, patience, grace, peacefulness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. A parent who personally lives a sincere and virtuous life and who also has a positive, open, and accepting relationship with their child will make a much more valuable contribution to their child’s life than any parenting technique from this book ever could.

If your children are already grown and your relationship with them is strained, please don’t underestimate the power of a heartfelt apology, of repeatedly telling them how proud you are of them (without a hint of disapproval), and of absolutely never giving them unsolicited advice. My own nearly-destroyed relationship with my dad was able to come back from the brink of total destruction because of these changes that he made.

Today, amazingly, we actually respect each other and enjoy each other’s company.

To kids who grew up with this type of parenting:

It’s very likely that your parents had your best interests in mind, and that they made personal sacrifices in order to participate in this lifestyle. Because of this, they may be very resistant to acknowledging that their choices caused you harm. Don’t let that stop you from processing your past for yourself, acknowledging your own feelings, and trying to overcome the negative effects of that lifestyle for yourself.

The word “bitter” gets thrown around a lot whenever a person faces their past and admits their pain. See that accusation for what it usually is —

— the defensiveness of people who feel threatened because they have not come to terms with those experiences for themselves.

Realize that your emotional pain, like physical pain, is there for a reason, and should not just be ignored. Luckily, it is possible to face your past and create a better future for yourself, even without the support of your parents.

You may feel like you don’t deserve to be loved. You may have a lot of trouble having and voicing your own opinions. You might avoid getting close to people out of fear of rejection. You might feel disconnected from the rest of the world and excessively worried about its dangers. You may feel socially lost, confused, and anxious. You might feel like you don’t know how to enjoy yourself or have fun.

You may feel like every problem or even emotion you have is nothing more than your own spiritual failure.

These are some of the effects that I experienced, but every person is different; some people are affected more while others are affected less.

I personally found it helpful establish a lot of personal space between my parents and me, meet a lot of different kinds of people, hear about the experiences of others who have left fundamentalism, talk extensively about my own experiences and memories with a few empathetic and nonjudgemental people, experience unconditional love from my spouse, and see a good therapist.

There have been ups and downs, of course, but overall the life I have today is better than I ever imagined possible. I hope for the same for you!

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Feel free to share your perspective, opinions, and experiences in the comments, or send me an email: pasttensepresentprogressive [at] gmail.com.

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End of series.

“Biblical” Parenting, Part Five: A Parent Who Isolates In Order to Control

October 11, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on September 13, 2012.

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Part Five: A Parent Who Isolates In Order to Control

Now here is my fourth criticism:

Criticism #4: Parents are urged to isolate their families in order to maintain extreme levels of control over their children without outside interference.

Of all the bad parenting ideas we’ve seen so far in this book, this one is really the last nail in the coffin. The parental suspicion, the extreme levels of control, the abusive spanking — this combination is very likely to lead to a severe family crisis. And when some members of the family reach their breaking point, they will tragically find themselves isolated from all other forms of support, advice, and information, thanks to Reb Bradley.

First, Reb Bradley wants parents to isolate themselves from other sources of advice, information, and support.

He warns parents not to listen to advice from nonChristians, explaining: “Psalms 1:1 tells us that we will be blessed if we do not seek advice from those without Christ. Although they have the appearance of wisdom and offer insights that may seem reasonable, their thinking is infected with worldliness, and leads to regret” (p. 21). In other words, he thinks nonChristians don’t have anything helpful to offer; in fact, he thinks nonChristian advice is actively dangerous, even if it sounds reasonable.

Then, as he continues to explain, Reb Bradley widens his warning to even include Christians who happen to disagree with his version of Christianity. “God tells us that those lacking the fear of God, whether professing Christian or not, are hampered in their thinking an do not have even the basics of wisdom….Christian leaders have undiscerningly received ‘wisdom’ from the world’s experts, then christianized it, and passed it on to the Church” (p. 22). So, even the advice of most other Christians is suspect, according to Reb Bradley. Parents who take him seriously are very alone indeed.

In giving these warnings, Reb Bradley effectively cuts off parents from the support of professional therapists and Child Protective Services, even if the professional therapist and social worker happen to be Christians. This seems far too naive an attitude for a pastor to have, not to mention incredibly irresponsible, since pastors are required by law to report endangered children to authorities in most states, including Reb Bradley’s home state of California. There are many complex issues that people face, Christian or not, and sometimes those issues put others in harm’s way. Sometimes, we don’t have the luxury of time, of “waiting for Jesus to change hearts”. What about cases of children being physically or sexually abused, or severely neglected? In cases like these, the answer can’t be a simplistic “Everybody just pray more and try harder.”

Sometimes, the situation calls for professional intervention, Christian or not, in order to prevent more harm and tragedy.

Although Reb Bradley claims that his Biblical advice will lead to blessings, while other nonBiblical advice “guarantees trouble” (p. 21), I personally found the opposite to be true. As an older teen attending his church, Hope Chapel, I struggled for years to conform to an ill-fitting “God-given” role, as taught by Reb Bradley. Finally, absolutely miserable and out of my mind with desperation, I went to Reb Bradley privately to ask him for help because, as a legal adult, I was finding it impossible to submit to a controlling father who seemed to actively despise me.

Was there anything I could do differently, I asked? The answer was no.

All I could do, according to Reb Bradley, was to stay home and try even harder to be a submissive daughter, trusting that one day God would honor my obedience by making my dad a better leader. In other words, keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

Luckily, when we reached our breaking point as a family, we were able to reach out for other help, which saved our family relationships from complete destruction. A professional therapist coached my parents in how to treat me more like an adult, against Reb Bradley’s “Biblical” advice. Around the same time, my debilitating depression started to give way to new hopefulness as I finally moved out of my parents’ home to go to college at age 23, which was also against Reb Bradley’s “Biblical” teachings.

The reality is that a professional’s “unBiblical” advice was far better for my family than Reb Bradley’s simplistic “Biblical” advice. And I know my family’s story is far from unique.

Now as an ex-fundamentalist, I can see that the tendency of many fundamentalists to isolate themselves reveals their deep insecurity about their beliefs. This insecurity is because many of their opinions are emotionally based rather than intellectually based, so they react emotionally instead of responding intellectually when their opinions are challenged. A person who is truly confident about their opinions can face challenges without fear; and a person who is genuinely interested in the truth is not afraid to have their opinions challenged because they are willing to adapt their opinions when the evidence is convincing enough.

There is no healthy reason for people–especially not adults–to isolate themselves from ideas and information.

I suppose though that such isolation is necessary based on the fundamentalist’s worldview: the Biblical way is supposed to go against our human instincts and tendencies, while the worldly way is supposed to be easy and appealing. It’s because of this type of thinking that we see contrasting sentences like these: “upon hearing biblical principles taught, some parents wrestle with accepting them” (p. 23); contrasted with “those without Christ…offer insights that may seem reasonable” (p. 21).

However, I can no longer accept this simplistic view because I believe that life and morality, even in the Bible, are far more complex than that. After all, parts of the Bible appear to condone or overlook actions that today are recognized as immoral by Christians and nonChristians alike: committing genocide, offering a daughter to be gang raped, attempting child sacrifice, actually sacrificing a child, kidnapping slaves and wives, abandoning a wife and child, murdering a child for rebellion, fantasizing about getting revenge through killing infants, establishing the death penalty for homosexuality, etc.

Clearly, both Christians and nonChristians are capable of having noble and harmful desires, good ideas and bad ideas.

Therefore, if something seems reasonable and good, it doesn’t matter to me whether the source is Christian or nonChristian. Similarly, if something seems harmful to myself and others, I disregard it even if the source is a Christian and even if there are Bible verses that appear to support it. I have a mind and a responsibility to use it.

Reb Bradley, in contrast, sees the mind as such a dangerous thing that he even warns parents against paying attention to their own childhood memories. He says, “Those parents who were victims of poor training are right to avoid the mistakes made by their parents, but they must guard themselves from rejecting solid biblical principles, just because they seem close to what they experienced. If our parents’ approach seemed close to biblical parenting, yet bore bad fruit, we can be certain it was not biblical” (p. 24-25).

Don’t trust your own experiences, parents–just do what Reb Bradley says is Biblical.

If it works, then you did it right. If it doesn’t work, then you messed it up somehow, even if it was pretty damn close. This type of thinking is what allows Reb Bradley to give advice freely, take credit for any good that comes of it, and avoid taking responsibility for the bad.

In addition to urging parents to isolate themselves from other advice/information/support, Reb Bradley also urges parents to consider sacrificing their children’s social connections for the sake of parental authority. Although he says that he is leaving it up to parental discretion as to how much isolation is necessary, his intention is clearly to plant doubt in the parents’ minds about the benefits of peer involvement for their kids. He provides a helpful list of potentially dangerous activities for children:

“Too few parents stop to consider the spiritual and moral dangers of the day-to-day situations in which they place their children. They have wrongly considered to be absolutes things like school, youth group, choir, summer camp, sports, friends, theater productions, music, dances, dating, Sunday school, Christian clubs, etc. None of these are inherently evil, but each puts your children under the authority and influence of someone else – someone who does not love your children as much as you do, nor will be held accountable on Judgement Day for them. Is it possible that one or all of those activities or settings has more of a corrupting influence than a redeeming influence on your children? …Too many parents have thwarted their own efforts at training up godly children, because they assumed they needed to send them off to a community program or to a church-sponsored event” (p. 153-154). [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind that Reb Bradley’s primary audience is fundamentalist homeschooling families who are already prone to over-sheltering their children. Yet here he is, suggesting that some children may need to be entirely cut off from the outside world. Here he is, speaking in support of parents who don’t allow their homeschooled children to have peer friendships or even attend Sunday school once a week for an hour. I know from experience exactly how much damage this can do to a person.

For many of my teenage years, I only left the house once a week to go to church, where I was not even allowed to participate in Sunday school; I was 17 years old by the time I managed to make my first friend as a teen. The resulting social confusion, anxiety, and feelings of disconnect still affect me today. And I’m not the only one who has noticed these lasting effects that social isolation has on children and teens.

People like me are the reason that the stereotypical homeschooler is a socially awkward misfit.

All children need to learn how to relate to other members of their society in order to successfully enter that society as independent adults. In fact, experiments have shown that even young monkeys who are socially isolated are later unable to relate to their age-mates normally, instead displaying more anti-social and emotionally unstable behaviors. Isolating children does a huge disservice to both them and society as a whole.

Yet to Reb Bradley, giving children the opportunity to learn peer social skills is clearly not a priority, not compared to parental authority. In “Child Training Tips”, he never addresses the probable negative effects of isolating children from peer contact. And he never mentions the numerous positive aspects of regular social connection for children–things such as learning how to get along with many different types of people, learning how to make and keep friends, being exposed to new interests/jobs/hobbies, learning teamwork, learning to receive and give criticism and compliments, learning how to communicate effectively outside the family, practicing leadership skills, learning to say no, etc.

Instead, Reb Bradley exclusively focuses on how children’s social involvement can undermine the parents’ goals for their children. All he can see is that outside influences might interfere with parental authority.

It’s not just the social interaction that Reb Bradley worries about though. It’s also the fun. Yes, that’s right —

Reb Bradley thinks that fun activities are not good for children because they promote immaturity and lack spiritual value.

I wish I were exaggerating, but here it is:

“Childhood is so brief, why would we want them to spend excessive amounts of time doing something which offers no spiritual value, and does little to bring them to maturity? If maturity is developed by denying self and responsibly serving others, andimmaturity is fed by spending excessive time in self-indulging, entertainment-oriented activities, why would we want our children to spend multiple hours each week involved in such things? We must evaluate their pursuits and decide if the time and energy required will actually make them mature and prepare them for their role as adults” (p. 155). [emphasis mine]

You know the bright-eyed grin of a child who is having fun? That is the smile of a selfish child who is wasting time on unspiritual activities, according to Reb Bradley.

I really took this lesson to heart as a teen. I had one fun activity in my life during my early teen years: horseback riding. I had to earn the money for it myself, and I definitely kept to myself at the barn, but it was the one thing that I actually enjoyed for, you know, “multiple hours each week.” But then, when my family started attending Reb Bradley’s church, Hope Chapel, I was suddenly “convicted” about wasting my time and money on fun. I felt like God wanted me to quit my only hobby and save my money for Bible college instead. So I did, and my life became a little emptier and darker that day.

But that, in turn, made me notice that I also enjoyed watching movies, which certainly didn’t have any spiritual value. So I made a vow to God that I would not watch any more movies for the rest of my life, and instead use my extra time to pray and read the Bible. After that, it was unspiritual conversation topics and unspiritual trains of thought that plagued me–so I began to spiritualize everything, even to the point of thinking things like, “Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the bread of life…” while making homemade bread. And so it went; one by one, anything that I enjoyed became a source of guilt to me instead of pleasure, and I sank deeper and deeper into depression.

It has taken me years to undo that damage, re-learn how to enjoy myself, and start to feel alive inside again.

Ironically, it was Ecclesiastes that helped me with that at first; it matched my feelings that everything was meaningless, and yet still told me, “I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 8:15).

Remember, in my case, eliminating the fun things from my life was done of my own initiative, as a sign of devotion that was just between God and me. But Reb Bradley is telling parents to use their authority to force that type of devotion on their children. Why can’t he leave anything between the child and God, without a parent in the middle?

Why can’t Jesus call the children himself, and why can’t they respond for themselves?

Why has the verse “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24) somehow been changed into this instead by Reb Bradley: “If any parents want their children to come after me, let the parents deny their children, put crosses on their children’s backs, and march their children down the street behind me.”

In conclusion, we can see that Reb Bradley’s advice doesn’t strengthen families, but instead weakens them by isolating them from the rest of society. The parents will have fewer resources at their disposal, and will be less able to make changes when things aren’t working well. The children, meanwhile, will feel the great insecurity of knowing that every single positive thing in their lives is subject to their parents’ imperfect and spiritually selfish whims, and that they will have no recourse and no allies when their parents take away everything that makes their lives worth living.

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To be continued.

“Biblical” Parenting, Part Four: A Parent Who Tries to Change Minds and Hearts through Spanking

October 10, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team10 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on September 5, 2012.

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Part Four: A Parent Who Tries to Change Minds and Hearts through Spanking

Criticism #3: Parents are instructed to use spanking as their primary tool of discipline, not only for behavior modification but also to force the child to change their opinions or feelings.

Spanking is one of those hot button issues; some parents are strongly against it in all cases, while others find it a useful last-resort parenting tool. However, whatever your feelings on spanking, I think that we can all come together to condemn the abusive spanking instructions that are given to parents in this book.

You see, Reb Bradley views spanking not as one of many parenting tools, but as the only tool.

Before giving parents his specific instructions on how to spank, he reminds them, “Spanking is incorrectly used if it is a last resort rather than the first response for rebellion” (p. 71). He adds, “Beware of trying to cure rebellion with ‘creative alternatives.’ Any alternative to chastisement [spanking] is an alternative to Scripture — God offers no better solutions to subduing rebellion outside the Bible” (p. 74). What are those creative alternatives to spanking that he’s referring to, that are apparently un-Biblical?

“When your authority is not sufficient to motivate your child to pick up their toys, you make a game of it, so that their desire for fun will gain their cooperation.” (p. 61)

“When they will not obey your specific direction to go into their room for a nap, you become animated, playful, and silly, and make the walk to their room look like a lot of fun.” (p. 61)

“Instead of giving them a direct order to go to bed, manipulate them by saying, ‘Which do you want to take to bed with you right now — the teddy bear or the doll?'” (p. 61)

“When they will not cooperate, you create a contest to gain compliance, i.e.: challenging them to get their room clean within a time limit.” (p. 61)

“A three year old who is throwing a fit, may forget that he was upset if an animated parent points out the window and exclaims, ‘What could that be?’ However, the calming effect of the distraction does not subdue his will and should not be a substitute for chastisement [spanking].” (p. 62)

“The parent who is unaware of his authority sometimes resorts to offering bribes to his children to evoke obedience: ‘If you behave in the grocery cart, I’ll get you a treat when we check out.’ ‘If you get into bed for your nap, I’ll read your favorite story.’ ‘You may have cake for dessert if you eat your vegetables.'” (p. 57-58)

From his examples of un-Biblical techniques, we see that a parent is not allowed to do anything to diffuse tension, increase positive motivation, or add humor to the moment. Reb Bradley claims that these parenting techniques are unBiblical even though they are clearly not forbidden in the Bible, and even though the Bible clearly doesn’t claim to be an exhaustive child training manual.

Ironically, these so-called unBiblical techniques are much more in line with verses such as Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,” and Colossians 3:21 “Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.”

Reb Bradley’s advice, in contrast, seems much more likely to provoke, embitter, and discourage the child, since he urges parents to treat everything as a power struggle and to use only direct confrontation and physically-aggressive punishment to deal with it. In addition, the techniques that Reb Bradley deems unBiblical are the ones that the child could most benefit from seeing modeled; offering positive motivation, diffusing tension, and using humor to promote cooperation are techniques that are useful in peer relationships and adult relationships, where spanking is less socially acceptable.

So spanking is the only tool a parent can use against rebellion, but what is Reb Bradley’s definition of rebellion? As I’m sure you can imagine, an extremely controlling parent has many opportunities to see rebellion in the child’s behavior, especially when the parent thinks the goal of parenting is to completely subdue the child’s will. It’s no surprise, then, that Reb Bradley has many strange and sad examples of rebellion to give us, which he separates into two categories: active rebellion and passive rebellion.

Active rebellion is defined as purposeful or premeditated disobedience, although it oddly includes things such as any form of sass and back-talk (p. 75), a toddler crying uncontrollably over not getting their way (p. 76), a child moving away from a parental hug or touch (p. 76), a child who attempts to get off the parent’s lap without verbal permission (p. 77), and a toddler who arches his back against a seatbelt (p. 77).

Even worse are the examples of passive rebellion, which is “less conscious and premeditated than active rebellion…requiring parents to work harder to expose to them their rebellion” (p. 78):

“Consistent forgetfulness: When they can remember to set their alarm and dress themselves for soccer practice, but habitually forget to take out the garbage, they are demonstrating they can be capable when they choose to be. They just need greater motivation” (p. 78).

“External obedience with a bad attitude: They cooperate with your directions, but talk, complain, or whine about it the entire time, i.e.: The three year old who lets his mother shower him, but is permitted to complain throughout the shower: ‘But I don’t want a shower. I don’t want a shower.'” (p. 79).

“Obeying only on own terms: Does not come exactly when called; walks slowly…Dictates to parents when they will obey: ‘I’m getting a drink first,’ or ‘I’ll be there in a minute.'” (p. 79).

“Doing what is required, but not how it should be done: Does chores, but not by parents’ established standards, i.e.: dishes are not quite clean, bed is not made properly, bedroom is not ordered as required” (p. 79).

“Violating unspoken, but understood rules: The toddler who is caught in the bathroom unrolling the toilet paper, may not have been specifically forbidden to unroll the tissue, but the tears he sheds, and the haste with which he continues his deed as he sees his mother approaching, verify that he knows he is doing wrong” (p. 80-81).

In other words, the child can never do anything less than instant, cheerful obedience to a parent’s spoken and unspoken commands. The child’s obedience must be up to the parents’ standards at all times in both speed and quality. Anything less can be interpreted as rebellion.

Please keep in mind that, according to Reb Bradley, the only appropriate parental response for active and passive rebellion is to administer a spanking.

It’s no wonder that children raised with this mentality often have trouble relating to the grace and love that Jesus demonstrated, since they learned instead to evaluate themselves by impossible standards and habitually feel deserving of punishment.

With all this in mind, let’s look now at Reb Bradley’s instructions on how to spank, which he calls chastisement: “Chastisement is a calm, controlled spanking on the bottom…uses a light-weight rod….is done after the first offense, while the parent is still calm” (p. 70-71). He continues by explaining a common spanking mistake that parents make: “Many parents implement chastisement with their children, but are frustrated because it does not seem to subdue their wills. The most common reason for this is incomplete chastisement — it is administered as discipline for rebellion, but is ended before its goals have been accomplished. What are the goals of chastisement? 1. To cause children to be humble before their parents’ authority. 2. To cause them to take responsibility for what they have done. 3. To cause them to submit to the consequences of their actions” (p. 71).

What does incomplete chastisement look like? Here are a few of the many horrifying examples that Reb Bradley lists:

“No obvious sign of brokenness or humility” (p. 72)

“Refuses to hug the discliplining parent” (p. 72).

“Cries out for the non-disciplining parent” (p. 72).

“Extended or extra loud crying (venting anger — not pain or sorrow)” (p. 72).

“Expresses no remorse to God in prayer, and refuses to ask for forgiveness of those they offended” (p. 72).

In other words, if the child doesn’t appear broken, doesn’t want to be hugged right after being hit, cries in the wrong way, or doesn’t seem sorry enough in prayer to God, then “the chastisement obviously did not work, and should be repeated a second time,” or perhaps even a third time, although Reb Bradley apparently rarely hears of a third time being necessary (p. 73).

It would seem that Reb Bradley has mentally adapted the verse, spoken by Jesus, from “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them” (Luke 18:16), to a crusade-like mentality of “Beat the little children until they come to me and confess their sins with appropriate sorrow.”

Reb Bradley also seems to believe that a parent can and should beat their child into demonstrating love through a hug, which is an absolutely disgusting attitude for a parent to have.

As if that’s not horrifying enough, there is also a list of behavior during chastisement that “merits extra discipline” because they indicate resistance to parental authority (p. 73-74).

“Moving away from the rod” (p. 74).

“Putting their hand in front of their bottom” (p. 74).

“Pleading for mercy; making vehement promises of repentance” (p. 74).

“Requesting limited number of swats” (p. 74).

“Extra loud, angry crying” (p. 74).

Why is it ok for me to ask God for mercy, but a child requesting mercy from a parent deserves more punishment? Why is it ok for people like King David and Job to express strong negative emotion, sometimes even toward God, but a child who feels anger when hit by a parent deserves to be hit more? And how is a child expected to override the subconscious physical reflexes that help prevent bodily injury?

If you are wondering what this type of spanking can be like from the child’s point of view, here is a truly heartbreaking first-hand account. Clearly, even calm parent using an “appropriate” rod can be abusive in their attempts to follow these guidelines of chastisement.

Reading this book, you notice right away that almost everything is a strong assertion that is not backed up by evidence, not even Biblical evidence.

The lack of support throughout the book makes the few verifiable claims stand out even more; unfortunately for Reb Bradley, the verifiable data from his book is easily disproved by a few simple google searches. For instance, he claims, without citing his source:

“That society which does away with corporal punishment will raise undisciplined, self-consumed young people, who lack the security that comes from being required to stay within firm limits. Sweden and Denmark, famous for their prostitution, drugs, and child pornography, are the world’s first countries to have outlawed spanking. Not surprisingly, since their first generation of undisciplined children has grown up, these two countries are now reported to have the highest teen suicide rates in the world. Eliminating the rod is not a sign of a civilized society, but of one in moral decline” (p. 69-70).

In mentioning prostitution, drugs, and child pornography, perhaps Reb Bradley is thinking of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where spanking was actually legal until 2007; Amsterdam, after all, has the famous Red Light District and legalized marijuana. Sweden and Denmark, on the other hand, are certainly not famous for these things. In regards to spanking, Denmark didn’t outlaw spanking until 1997, after this book was written, and at least five other countries had already outlawed spanking before Denmark did.

So let’s look at the three countries that first outlawed spanking: Sweden, where spanking was outlawed in 1966; Finland, where spanking was outlawed in 1983; and Norway, where spanking was outlawed in 1987.

According to Reb Bradley, these countries should now be showing increased rates of teen suicide. However, the opposite is true.

In Sweden between 1969-1979, the suicide rate for teens aged 15-19 was 8.69 per 100,000 people. That number had decreased to 6.30 by the 1990s. In Finland between 1980-1989, the suicide rate for teens aged 15-19 was 24.54 per 100,000 people. That number had decreased to 15.51 by the 1990s. In Norway between 1980-1989, the suicide rate for teens aged 15-19 was 15.71 per 100,000 people. That number had decreased to 12.12 by the 1990s.

Although Reb Bradley doesn’t mention crime rates, they are worth looking at too. Currently, the homicide rate in the USA is 4.2 per 100,000 people; in contrast, the homicide rate in Sweden is 1.0, in Finland it’s 2.2, and in Norway it’s 0.6. Murder rates in all four countries are on a downward trend, regardless of the legality of spanking.

This basic data certainly doesn’t prove anything about whether spanking should be legal or illegal. What is does show, however, is that spanking is not a necessary part of a harmonious society with low rates of suicide and homicide. It also shows that Reb Bradley is extremely negligent in his research.

In conclusion, Reb Bradley’s tells parents that hitting a child with a rod is their only possible response to perceived rebellion, and that the spanking should be used to control the child’s behavior, mind, feelings, and even relationship with God.

In giving these instructions, he shows a severe misunderstanding of the Bible and serious scholarly negligence.

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To be continued.

“Biblical” Parenting, Part Three: An Extremely Controlling Parent

October 9, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team18 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on August 30, 2012.

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Part Three: An Extremely Controlling Parent

Criticism #2: Parents are urged to exercise an extreme level of control of their child’s mind and body, which prevents the child from preparing for adulthood.

Reb Bradley is very straightforward about what he considers the primary task of a parent. Several times throughout the book, he reminds parents that their goal is to subdue their child’s will: “keep your objective in mind – subjection of their will” (p. 44); “since the goal of child training is to help a child learn to subdue his self-will, parents must take every opportunity to subdue it when it manifests itself” (p. 60); “the child whose will is not subdued in the first few years of life is hampered in the maturing process” (p. 29).

Why do parents need to take control of their child’s will? Reb Bradley explains his reasoning this way: “maturity is rooted primarily in self-control which, in turn, facilitates growth in wisdom and responsibility. The most basic objective of training children, therefore, is the subduing of their self-will. From the time children are born, parents must develop in them the ability to say ‘NO’ to their own desires and ‘YES’ to their parents” (p. 28). In other words, he sees self control is a basic component of maturity and thinks self-control is achieved through imposing external controls upon the child.

I certainly don’t dispute the importance of developing good self-control, especially in light of the “marshmallow challenge” research conducted at Stanford University.

In this experiment, the researchers left young children alone in a room with a large fluffy marshmallow, telling them that they could choose between eating that one marshmallow right away, or getting two marshmallows if they waited for the researcher to return to the room (adorable video here). The researchers discovered that the kids who had the ability to exercise self-control at age 4 went on to experience more success in academics and in adulthood. So why were some children more able to exercise self-control than others? After hundreds of hours of observation, researchers determined that “the crucial skill was the strategic allocation of attention. Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow…the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from Sesame Street. Their desire wasn’t defeated–it was merely forgotten.” Dr. Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor who headed the experiment, explains, “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it….The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

So Reb Bradley and I agree that self-control is important; what we disagree on is how to help a child develop self-control.

I think that parents who rely on excessively authoritarian parenting techniques are actually hampering their child’s development of self-control; a “subdued” child who simply follows orders to avoid spankings will likely be unprepared for the freedom of adulthood.

Going back to the marshmallow challenge, Mischel found that when he “taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes.” Mischel explained, “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”

The parents’ task, then, is to give their child the tools to increase their child’s chances of success. Parents can help their child identify natural rewards and natural consequences of decisions, and parents can help their child develop helpful mental patterns such as how to pay attention and how to distract themselves. These tools, along with the determination of a strong will, will better prepare the child for the realities of adulthood. Reb Bradley’s approach of spanking the child for disobediently eating the marshmallow doesn’t give the child any tools that will last into adulthood.

A potentially more harmful aspect of the total control that Reb Bradley promotes involves bodily ownership. It appears the he considers parents to be the owners of their child’s body; to him, a child attempting to establish personal space is actually rebelling against the parents. In his book, he lists the following actions as examples of “active rebellion”: “a child moves their shoulder away from a parent reaching out to touch or embrace him” (p. 76); and “walking along, a parent reaches down and takes their child’s hand and the child attempts to pull it away (If the child is in pain because the blood in their hand has drained to their shoulder, and gangrene is setting in, they should be able to respectfully ask to have their hand back.)” (p. 77); also “after being placed on their parent’s lap, they attempt to get off. They should be permitted to respectfully ask to get down, but only after the parent is satisfied that they are willing to remain” (p. 77); finally, “while being held in their parent’s arms a toddler struggles to get down” (p. 77).

In other words, a child is not allowed to refuse a hug or touch, refuse to hold hands, or exit a lap or arms without verbal permission.

This type of training–overriding a child’s sense of bodily ownership and personal space–could be extremely dangerous for the child, making them an especially easy target for a predator because the child has fewer personal boundaries to overcome.

This danger becomes even greater when combined with Reb Bradley’s other advice to parents. He tells parents to require their children to show an excessive amount of respect to people in leadership and people who are older than them. He explains, “The Bible commands…that children respect…a church leader, or just someone older” (p. 119). He continues by explaining what the word respect means to him: “Respect: to treat those in authority with the realization that they have power in your life. It means that when they speak, you listen and obey them, fearing the consequences they could bring for disrespect” (p. 120).

Once again, we see that something positive, like treating people with respect, has been taken to an unhealthy extreme in this book due to Reb Bradley’s obsession with obedience and authority. A child who regards every adult as an authority, who has no practice saying no to an adult, who has no sense of bodily ownership or personal space–that is an incredibly vulnerable child!

But there’s more: Reb Bradley also takes away the child’s only remaining defense against predators: parents who are open for communication. “Unless it is an emergency,” he says, “children should never be permitted to criticize those over them in authority” (p. 124).

Growing up should be a process of learning how to take care of your needs, make good decisions, and keep yourself safe. That is what maturity looks like, and the ability to follow orders has very little to do with that.

Reb Bradley seems to think otherwise; he claims that “learning to honor adult authority when young prepares a child for future adult relationships in areas of work, social relationships, and citizenship” (p. 119). Perhaps it has been too long since he participated in the culture outside of church events. Regarding work: with some exceptions, most employers today value qualities that authoritarian parents unknowingly suppress, such as the ability to innovate, show initiative, and solve problems. Adult social relationships are about communication, understanding, and cooperation, which are also skills that authoritarian parenting does not allow children to practice. Citizenship, besides the usual payment of taxes and such, is about looking out for the best interests of the country and your neighbors, which sometimes involves activism against leaders who are abusing their power. And for those who join the military and other similar professions, where unquestioning obedience to authority is valued–joining was an adult decision, and it comes with appropriate training, such as boot camp. For most of society, life is certainly is not all about obedience to authority; I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt like a confused and vulnerable little kid inside for years after entering independent adulthood, struggling to get the tools I needed to operate in the world as an adult.

However, the concept of absolute authority and total submission is so important to Reb Bradley that he even gives special instructions to parents who want to start this type of parenting approach when their children are older. “Give them a time period (perhaps 6-8 weeks), during which all parental commands will be given without reasons, and no appeals will be considered” (p. 48).

How did Reb Bradley choose that 6-8 week amount of time, you ask?

Well, he admits to being inspired by the length of boot camp, and it seems clear that he sees this as a type of boot camp experience for the unsuspecting child.

He continues: “explain to them that if at the end of the time period, they consistently obey quickly and respectfully, then you will begin to give wisdom behind your commands…..The reasons you give will be brief and may not be discussed at the moment of instruction” (p. 49). Oh wow, what a great reward for the totally obedient child! Allowing them to hear a brief explanation later–really, it’s so generous of the parent. Yes, that was sarcasm, but this book certainly gives parents the impression that children ought to sit around eagerly waiting for the crumbs to fall from their parents’ table of wisdom, and that the parents are very generous to share at all.

In urging parents to withhold information from their children, Reb Bradley seems to put parents in the role of God in their children’s lives. Or, at the very least, he sees parents as siding with God against their children. Discussing the Biblical story of Job–the righteous man who suddenly lost all his children, wealth, and health for no discernable reason–Reb Bradley focuses in on the unresolved ‘why’ of the story. “Although God could have explained to Job His reasons for allowing the trial, He never did tell Job ‘why.’ He would not honor Job’s disrespectful insistence on an answer. Even after Job finally humbled himself and repented of his pride, he received no answer from God” (p. 51). Although the obvious application of the story is that sometimes good people suffer, and we can’t always know the reason why, Reb Bradley decided to put a different spin on it: “as parents we must follow God’s example and not reward our children’s disrespect” (p. 51).

Holding so much power over another person is not something that humans handle well.

This is famously illustrated by the Stanford Prison Experiment run by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. In this experiment, a group of seemingly normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of either prison guard or prisoner. The prisoners were given new identities and placed in a mock prison, and the prison guards were told to keep order. According to the Wikipedia article, “the participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo’s expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue.”

How long did it take for things to get out of hand? The entire experiment had to be stopped early, at the insistence of Zimbardo’s girlfriend, after only 6 days.

In my opinion, there are far too many similarities between the mentality of the prison experiment and the mentality of this version of “Biblical” parenting.

The parents, like the prison guards, are told that they are managing bad people; in addition, like the prison guards, the parents are also told that they have absolute power over those people. It shouldn’t be surprising that in many cases, the parent-child dynamic gets completely out of hand and becomes abusive. After all, haven’t we learned by now that “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely”?

In summary, Reb Bradley’s extreme emphasis on authority and obedience hinder children’s ability to develop the skills they need for adulthood. The child, as a result, is likely to be more vulnerable, while the parent is at risk of developing abusive habits from holding so much power.

*****

To be continued.

“Biblical” Parenting, Part Two: A Parent Who Assumes The Worst

October 8, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team16 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on August 26, 2012.

*****

Part Two: A Parent Who Assumes The Worst

The task of reviewing Reb Bradley’s book “Child Training Tips” has been a lot more challenging than I expected. First of all, where do I start when I disagree with almost every sentence that this book contains? I can find almost no common ground on which to begin. And how can I explain my reasons for disagreement when the very things that I see as horrifying are held up as admirable goals by the author?

Because of these difficulties, I have decided that these posts will simply be a way for Present Me to explain to Past Me that this so-called “Biblical” parenting is damaging to individuals and relationships because it sacrifices all other virtues for the sake of authority and submission.

Those quotation marks are around “Biblical” for a reason, and it’s not because of my changed opinions about the Bible. Instead, it’s because the type of child and the type of parent that this book promotes are not found in the Bible.

It appears that Reb Bradley’s “Biblical research” may have gone like this:

Step 1: Hmmm, what is my ideal godly child like? *scribbles some notes*

Step 2: Ok, now I’ll dig up some random Bible verses that seem to support my idea of a godly child, regardless of whether those verses are about children or parenting. *Adds a few Bible verses here and there*

Step 3: *Reads notes* Wow, what a high standard–it must be from God! Obviously, children who are left to themselves will never become that way. I guess that means parents have to take charge. What are some control tactics? *Finishes book*

To be fair to the author, I do believe that Reb Bradley is a good-hearted and caring person, despite everything that he has written in his book. However, I think he doesn’t realize that he and his wife, very busy with their pastoral responsibilities and not at all detail-oriented, probably implemented these parenting techniques very differently than many other parents. Many fundamentalist homeschooling parents, who are the primary audience of the book, spend far more time supervising their children and are much more focused on details. With those parents, these parenting techniques can quickly escalate from bad to abusive.

With all of that in mind, here is my first criticism of Reb Bradley’s “Child Training Tips.”

Criticism #1: Parents are pushed to assume the worst about their children instead of being encouraged to demonstrate the virtues of mercy and understanding.

The evil nature of children is one of the premises of the book, and parents are actively cautioned against thinking otherwise: “One dangerous, humanistic idea…is that children are basically good” (p. 18). The role of parents, therefore, is to work against their children’s natural badness, to “bring them up to maturity by twisting them against their nature. Twisting requires firm effort, sustained throughout their childhood.” (p. 17).

This belief in the depravity of children is unfortunately not unusual in Christian circles; however, this book takes that belief to a whole new level by continually pushing parents toward the worst interpretation of their children’s behavior. Some of the more horrifying examples of this negative and suspicious parental attitude are in regards to the discipline of young children. As the mother of a toddler myself, I found myself absolutely speechless and heartbroken numerous times as I read.

Many attentive parents will notice that in the first few months of life, their babies develop an important skill–the ability to turn their heads toward a sound. This skill is important not only to help keep the babies safe, but also to help them notice what is going on around them so they can learn about the world. This inclination to look towards sounds, especially unexpected sounds, is reliable enough that medical professionals have historically used it to test for hearing loss in infants and toddlers. However, to Reb Bradley, a baby’s inclination to look towards a sound means something completely different.

To him, it means that the baby is capable of understanding and rebelling against a parental command.

He explains it this way: “If your crawler reaches for the stereo, walk over, offer a firm ‘No’ and clap your hands once. If they respond to your voice and the sharp sound of the clap and turn away, they got the message and should be held accountable from then on. You may even want to skip the clap” (p. 134). In this example, we see that the parent must not only assume that the infant understood the reason for the sudden noise at that time, but also that the infant will remember the meaning of that particular clap forever. The parent is pushed to see a confused or forgetful infant as rebellious instead.

A second example can be found in Reb Bradley’s abysmal understanding of language development: “To test a toddler’s understanding of your vocabulary, without showing him anything, offer him a familiar treat, like ice cream or a bottle. Does he respond? If he does, then he is old enough to understand a simple direction such as, “Come here, son,” and should be chastised each time that he chooses to defy your authority” (p. 134). Admittedly, I do have an advantage here because of my linguistic background and my experience in teaching a foreign language, but I’m sure that I’m not the only one whose jaw dropped from reading those lines. Even for adults who are learning a second language, who have far more life and language experience, it doesn’t work this way. For instance, an adult language student who understands the question “how are you?” does not automatically understand even a variation of that same question, such as “how’s it going?”

If the small difference between “how are you” and “how’s it going” is not automatically understood by an adult, how can a toddler be expected to make an even greater leap of understanding?

Knowing the name of a favorite object like “bottle” is a relatively simple language task; recognizing a string of multiple words and realizing that an action is required in response is an entirely different skill. Even worse, there are many different forms that a so-called simple command can take, such as the negative commands “no hitting,” “don’t hit,” “I told you not to hit,” “stop hitting,” “you must not hit,” “we don’t hit,” etc., and the positive commands “eat your carrots,” “please finish the carrots”, or “you need to eat those carrots.” Adding to the complexity, parents often verbalize observations or make suggestions that sound a lot like commands to the language learner, but aren’t. For instance, my toddler often hears “turn the page” while we are reading books together, even though I am simply letting him know that he can turn the page if he wants to (if he’s not too busy sucking his thumb, that is). Once again in this book, we see the toddler is held to impossible expectations, and the parents are pushed to assume defiance rather than enjoying the beauty of newly blossoming language ability.

A third example is Reb Bradley’s troubling assumption that toddlers naturally cry when they see their parents coming, and that their crying is due to guilt. He explains it this way: “Although some rules are never spelled out, and some behaviors are never specifically prohibited, our children still know better. They intentionally disregard what they know will please you. What gives them away when they are caught, is behavior which suggests a violated conscience….The toddler who is caught in the bathroom unrolling the toilet paper, may not have been specifically forbidden to unroll the tissue, but the tears he sheds, and the haste with which he continue his deed as he sees his mother approaching, verify that he knows he is doing wrong” (p. 80-81). The world must be an irresistible place to toddlers, whose new mobility allows them to access a constant stream of new experiences. Each object is like a small physics lesson: what does it feel like? How heavy is it? Does it taste good? What happens when I drop it? Can I put it inside of another thing? Does it come apart? With so many things to learn in such a short time, a baby needs a healthy curiosity and a drive to discover.

Sadly, it never seems to cross Reb Bradley’s mind that the exploring toddler with the toilet paper could be crying out of fear of the parent, not from guilt.

Perhaps too many times the toddler, engaged in a fascinating new discovery, had been stunned and confused by a sudden punishment; perhaps now the toddler fears a similar response from the parent, and cries accordingly. Is there really something so obviously bad about unrolling toilet paper that even a baby can recognize it as “sinful” and feel guilty??? In my own experience with my very curious toddler and his little toddler friends, I have absolutely never seen this reaction. Instead, my toddler beams at me and tries to show me what he found. Of course, if I have to take it away from him for his own good, he is upset, but that doesn’t stop him from beaming at me over his next discovery. His reaction is a positive one because he has no reason to be afraid of me.

Infants, crawlers, and toddlers are not the only victims of the suspicious parental attitude and impossible expectations that this book promotes. Parents are also actively encouraged to assume the worse of their older children, and to act accordingly.

Parents are told, “Never give instructions more than once” (p. 53), with no acknowledgement that a child could have a legitimate need for repetition. I know from personal experience and observation that even adults can fail to hear a person speaking to them when distracted or absorbed in a task.

Surely a child is worth the same consideration that we give to an adult in such situations.

In fact, children should deserve even more benefit of the doubt, since their hearing sensitivity develops slowly throughout childhood. According to “What’s Going On In There?”, an excellent book about cognitive development written by a neuroscientist mother of three, “newborns are virtually deaf to quiet sounds, and…babies remain hard-of-hearing at six months, when their auditory threshold is still some 20 to 25 decibels higher than adults. Thereafter, it gradually improves until puberty. Thus, toddlers and pre-school-aged children still have hearing thresholds about 10 decibels higher than adults” (Eliot p. 245).

Also relevant is the time that it takes for children to learn to identify important sounds from background noise, something that most adults take for granted: “children’s ability to distinguish signal from background noise does not fully mature until about the age of ten” (Eliot p. 246).

Yet according to Reb Bradley, children not only shouldn’t receive instructions more than once, they also should not receive any warnings before punishment: “Warnings make you an accomplice to their crimes. By not bringing immediate consequences, you are aiding and abetting them in their disobedience…..never threaten to spank” (p. 55-56).

This guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude is maddeningly combined with a refusal to allow the child to communicate at the relevant time.

A child who attempts to explain himself is simply trying to avoid responsibility: “there are no good reasons for disobedience (Except in case of emergency, of course.) When confronted with their defiance they should not be permitted to offer an excuse. If trained well, it might not even enter their minds to offer a justification…..A parent should first establish a child’s guilt and have him accept responsibility, and then find out the reason why” (p. 58-59).

Why should parents refuse to listen to their child’s perspective before assigning guilt? Because, Reb Bradley says, they might be tempted to show mercy when they hear their child’s point of view: “Parents accept excuses because…they put themselves in their children’s place, and know they would want mercy if it were them” (p. 60).

So, to be clear, Reb Bradley thinks that accepting any excuse and showing mercy would be a bad thing because it weakens parental authority.

One has to wonder when reading this if Reb Bradley sees Jesus’ mercy and acceptance as a sign of God’s weakness as well.

Tragically, parents are even discouraged from showing mercy to their children in special circumstances. Reb Bradley cautions parents against adapting their approach or changing their standards for any reason. He says, “every child is different from all others, but that does not mean they can be held to different standards. God’s standards are the same for everyone” (p. 135), and he specifically includes special needs children in that statement: “Yes they are harder to train than a ‘normal’ child, but God’s standards are the same. In fact, the parent must apply the same principle of child training to the special needs child as to any child” (p. 137-138).

It would certainly be convenient if we could judge every person by the same standards, but even Bible-believing Christians can’t agree about what those standards are or how to apply them. There are too many variables and too many unknowns, even within the same cultural context. Adding to the complexity is the fact that people often fail to understand themselves properly, so how can we accurately judge another person reliably?

It certainly isn’t as simple as Reb Bradley seems to believe.

These verses from the Gospel of Matthew do a much better job at acknowledging the complexity of life when they warn against over-confidence in our own perspective: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-5).

But, you ask, what if your children are sick, sleep-deprived, or under extra stress? Is a parent allowed to be more tolerant and merciful then?

Reb Bradley believes the answer is no.

Regarding sickness, Reb Bradley says parents must not change their standards because “some children find such solace in the tolerance shown them during an illness that they convince themselves they are sick much of the time” (p. 113). In other words, showing mercy to your sick child will cause them to act sick even when they aren’t. Regarding hunger, fatigue, and irritability, he adds that “many parents excuse their child’s misbehavior if the hour is late or if they have missed a nap. This reinforces to the child that they needn’t always exercise self-control” (p. 113). Thus we see that parents are encouraged to be be suspicious that a sick child is simply trying to avoid responsibility, and that a sleep-deprived child is simply taking advantage of the opportunity to act out.

Reb Bradley occasionally stops to warn parents against excessive harshness, or advises them to discipline themselves to show love to their children, but frankly those few sentences don’t mean much after reading page after page, chapter after chapter of advice that pushes parents in the opposite direction. And even more telling is the lack of a single positive sentence about children in the entire book; even the few warnings against harshness don’t speak positively of children.

In summary, the parenting style modeled in Reb Bradley’s book is excessively focused on parental authority, to the point of specifically urging parents to sacrifice understanding and mercy anytime that those virtues might interfere with establishing or maintaining their authority.

*****

To be continued.

“Biblical” Parenting: A Review of Reb Bradley’s “Child Training Tips”

October 7, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team16 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on August 22, 2012.

*****

Part One: Introduction

Every once in a while, I realize something shockingly obvious, something that confronts yet another false assumption that has managed to cling to my mind even as I’ve moved further and further away from my fundamentalist Christian roots.

In the whole Bible, there is not a single verse that credits parents for having raised a good child.

Nothing from God, nothing from any adult sons or daughters in the Bible. Not one word of thanks, not one word of credit.

It would be easy to insert a few parental credit verses into the Bible. Maybe we could add a little phrase here or there in the Old Testament, such as “King David, because of his godly parents,” or “Moses, thanks to his childhood training;” or maybe we could stick something in the New Testament epistles: “The fruit of the Spirit and of spanking is self-control.” No? Perhaps the Gospels then? Maybe Jesus on the cross could say something like, “I couldn’t have gotten where I am today without the support of my godly mother Mary. There she is, people. Let’s give her a round of applause!“

But those verses are not there.

So why do fundamentalist Christian parents today feel they have so much control over their children’s destinies?

Why do they think that they can help their child get closer to God by getting in the middle? Why do they put so much pressure on themselves, considering themselves failures if their children grow up to take a different path?

In the homeschooling circles that I was raised in, many of these unhealthy ideas about parenting came from several books that claimed to be about true “Biblical” parenting. First on the market was a 1979 book by Richard Fugate, called “What the Bible Says About Child Training.” Fugate’s book appears to have inspired two other books that surpassed his own book in popularity: Michael Pearl’s 1994 “To Train Up A Child” and Reb Bradley’s 1995 “Child Training Tips.”

Based on these books, the small collection of homeschooling families who attended Reb Bradley’s church Hope Chapel along with my family had high hopes for their children. Yet in the dozen years since, many sincere and dedicated parents have seen all their work fall apart before their very eyes as their children reached adulthood, or even earlier.

I am one of many who didn’t “turn out right,” yet another disappointment to the former parents and leadership of Hope Chapel.

Everyone responds a little differently to poor results. Some, like Michael Pearl, laugh at the critics and refuse to self-reflect at all. Others, like Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, who were just young parents when we attended Hope Chapel together in the late 1990s, apparently felt that they could avoid poor results by doubling down in intensity on poor little Lydia Schatz, who was disciplined to death in 2010 at age 7.

Of all these responses, I find Reb Bradley’s 2006 blind spots article, “Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling”, to be the most promising because it represents a very small step in the right direction. Here is a quote from the introduction to the article, in which Reb Bradley acknowledges the unexpectedly poor results:

“In the last couple of years, I have heard from multitudes of troubled homeschool parents around the country, a good many of whom were leaders. These parents have graduated their first batch of kids, only to discover that their children didn’t turn out the way they thought they would. Many of these children were model homeschoolers while growing up, but sometime after their 18th birthday they began to reveal that they didn’t hold to their parents’ values.

Some of these young people grew up and left home in defiance of their parents. Others got married against their parents’ wishes, and still others got involved with drugs, alcohol, and immorality. I have even heard of several exemplary young men who no longer even believe in God. My own adult children have gone through struggles I never guessed they would have faced.

Most of these parents remain stunned by their children’s choices, because they were fully confident their approach to parenting was going to prevent any such rebellion. Some were especially confident, because as teens these kids were only obedient. Needless to say, the dreams of these homeschool parents have crashed, and many other parents want to know what they can do to prevent their own children from following the same course.”

When I first scanned over many of his points in that article, I was encouraged by the things I saw; acknowledgement that parents don’t have total control over their children’s destinies, a de-emphasis on authority, and a much-needed emphasis on relationship and acceptance.

If only there weren’t this little paragraph at the end of the introduction [emphasis mine]:

“After several years of examining what went wrong in our own home and in the homes of so many conscientious parents, God has opened our eyes to a number of critical blind spots common to homeschoolers and other family-minded people. Bev and I still stand behind what we have taught on parenting in the past. However, we urgently add to it the following insights.”

It is because of that sentence, and because of my own desire as a new mother to deliberately throw out the unhealthy ideas of parenting that I was raised with and around, that I have decided to write a critical review of Reb Bradley’s book “Child Training Tips: What I Wish I Knew When My Children Were Young.”

My critique will be posted in several installments online for the purposes of discussion, and I welcome any comments or feedback from the authors, from parents who have used this parenting approach, from now-grown children who experienced these techniques, from parents who are considering using it, or from horrified online bystanders.

*****

To be continued.

Have I Forgiven Them?: Katharine Diehl’s Story

October 3, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. It was a guest post by Katharine Diehl for Caleigh’s “I Have a Voice” series and originally published on September 16, 2013.

About the author: Katharine Diehl is 22 and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has a BA in psychology and her poetry has been published in Squalorly and Fickle Muses. She works part-time but she needs more money, so if anyone would like to pay her to write or be a professional poet, she is available. She blogs about writing and writes about other stuff at frozenseawriting.tumblr.com.

*****

I can never tell if I have forgiven my parents.

Not for spanking my baby brother, who was crippled from neuroblastoma and died at the age of 5. The spankings were rare, compared to other families; my dad had a sort of business going, creating “spankers” out of conveyer belt. My sister and I laughed at the children we knew whose parents hit them with spoons or pieces of wood. I was tough. I could take it. But I hid and shivered when I knew they were doing it to my sick brother.

Later my dad held my brother, after the coma, after he was gone, and sobbed.

Once I put a few acorns in my winter coat pocket and zipped it up; when I opened it months later, there were tiny dead worms. I was a little girl and squeamish and terrified, and my dad yelled at me for not knowing that the worms would hatch, and he put the worms in his hand and chased me in a circle around the living room, trying to get me to touch them and clean out my coat. Later I had a nightmare he was chasing me with a WWII Japanese sword his grandfather had given him.

When I told him about it, he cried because he did not know I was afraid of him.

That is the essence of my childhood. I think that my parents loved us but were disappointed that they did not have good children, and blamed themselves, and read too many books by Dobson and the Pearls. I was not good. I had a rebellious attitude. I asked too many questions. My sensory integration problems made me afraid to touch terrycloth or crumbs or let others brush me lightly, and loud noises made me feel ill, and my parents worried that they were signs of rebellion. The other children in our church were so well behaved.

My friends’ parents told them not to tolerate my behavior.

Things got better after the black years of early adolescence — nights when even God would not listen to my pleas to take the burden from my heart and cleanse it. I prayed to him every day and read the Bible, especially the Psalms, but the peace that passes all understanding would not come. But I began college on a scholarship, found new friends, and took long, lonely walks for hours where I was able to inhabit my body instead of dissociating constantly.

I learned to soothe myself with reading and walking instead of food.

My parents, grown more liberal, allowed me to visit a therapist after some panic attacks, and when I got on medication it was as if the dirty pane of glass blocking me from the world had finally lifted and there I was, naked and standing in the singing air.

Last fall my progress shattered, that delicate glass framework that held me up, when my little sister overdosed on ibuprofen. I had seen her, homeschooled, isolated, only one friend who lived a state away, spending more and more time in bed during the day. She woke, ate breakfast, and retreated to wrap herself in a blanket and sleep again. She looked like a sad burrito, I joked, and she looked at me blankly. I found her thinspiration blog, and saw the cuts in her arms. I was afraid to tell my parents, though they were concerned, because I felt homeschooling caused her isolation and I could not say that to their face. After all, I’d turned out okay. Maybe it was a phase. I am ashamed to say that I did not advocate for her, did not tell another adult.

I was afraid like a little girl instead of the woman that I was. That I am.

I was about to present my proposal for my senior honors thesis before a group of professors when she called my cell and hung up. I called back and left a message. Finally she picked up — she was home alone — and asked me what happened when you took too many pills. I said she should go to the hospital, and she started to cry. So I did the only thing I could do. I called 911 and they swooped in and took my skinny little sister, cuts all over her arms, to a hospital and kept here there for a week.

She told the doctors she was trying to kill herself, and then she changed her story.

My parents believed the second story.

She, too, has gotten better — it was the catalyst allowing her to receive therapy. She also has Celiac, and her moods have improved since changing her diet. She went through an out-patient eating disorder program and she is a healthy weight now. She is dealing with other problems now that I don’t feel comfortable sharing, but all together, she is healing herself. She is making herself whole and it has ripped me apart and put me back together, I think, being able to see her do that.

My boyfriend has helped me. He has been my rock and my shelter, as blasphemous as it is to say that- because he is not a god, but a friend and a lover. I met him when I was 20 (I’m 22 now), and he is not a Christian. My mother has suggested I marry him (a law student) and “be very poor” with him. I think she doesn’t want us to live in sin any longer, because when I visit him, I stay overnight. Whenever I return home, my dad says he hopes I had fun — but not too much fun.

My sister says I am wounding my family by dating an agnostic. My aunts asked me if he loved Jesus with all his heart.

The answer is no.

But I love him with all of my heart.

And that is that. My parents have apologized for things that never bothered me — criticizing me too much, fighting too much. I know they love me, but they will never see that their insistence on those rigid Christian values and their insular homeschooling, their need to shelter us, are the things that have harmed.

They did not cause my little sister to become suicidal, but like a mushroom grows best in moisture and the dark, the conditions were there.

I had a dream once that my dad’s mother — an alcoholic in his childhood — came to me and told me that she was the mother of all our sorrows. I have always tried to place my troubles (and triumphs) in a narrative, in archetypes, because it makes them easier to bear; but I have rarely had dreams with such truth in them.

Trouble and sadness are generational. My grandmother’s mother, a strict Spanish Pentecostal, made her kneel on rice and pray for hours until her knees were embedded and encrusted with the raw grains. My dad’s father died in his childhood. My mother told me once that she felt she lived her life in a dark room with no windows. My parents have never forgiven themselves, though I have made halting progress toward forgiving them.

I say this to say that placing blame, no matter how it helps, can also hurt.

My blood has sadness in it from generations of mental illness and cruel religion. I don’t know who to blame. Myself most of all and least of all, perhaps. The blame is dispersed and I hope and pray and tremble that the sadness will leave us — that my children, if I have them, will never be taught about an angry God or fear that they are not scrupulous, pleasing, or pretty enough.

My precious children, I will say, you exist. That is beautiful and I know that is enough.

I pray that God, whoever or wherever He is, feels the same.

The Survivor

October 2, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial TeamLeave a comment

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Faith Beauchemin’s blog Roses and Revolutionaries. It was originally published on September 21, 2013.

It’s no secret that my life has been a little weird.

I’ve been trying to deal with my bizarre past in the last few months. The process still feels like probing a wound, and I’m trying to figure out right now if I can afford the therapy I know I need.

Some weeks are fine. This past week was most definitely not. Homeschoolers Anonymous was running a series on child discipline, which was good and necessary and appropriately headed by trigger warnings. I read the stories, I couldn’t stop reading them, and they brought back some of the most traumatic memories of my childhood. Memories I had repressed. An onslaught of things I hadn’t really thought about in years.

I would be physically shaking by the end of each story, and yet I had to read more, to try and process the fact that yes, I had been abused as a child.

Just when you think you have a handle on your life, and then it spins completely out of control and you’re dumped into a jungle of memories and problems without a clue where to begin looking for a way out. That’s one of the reasons I’m looking for a therapist, because hopefully she’ll at least have a compass.

I tried to go out last night with my friends. I said I was out of money so I couldn’t drink at the bars, which was true, but I turned down a free shot too, because the truth is, as badly as I wanted to block out this past week, I didn’t trust myself to. I was already being super weird and swinging like a pendulum between talking about myself too much and being weirdly quiet.

If I got drunk, I’m pretty sure I would have started babbling about what was actually bothering me, and “Hey guess what I just realized I was physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused as a child by loving, well-meaning parents” isn’t exactly acceptable party talk.

So I went home early, leaving without saying good-bye, walking alone several blocks to my truck and driving home stone-cold sober. I got home, tried to start writing about the memories I’d been rehashing this week, and was so upset I just curled up in a blanket and stared at the wall until I fell asleep.

That scared me, when I woke up this morning. Is my grip on a normal life really that fragile? I got up and started my day, but when I was flat on my back during my yoga routine, I remembered the thought that has gotten me through other difficult situations:

You are you.

I’m still me. I am the same person I have always been. Yes I’ve grown and learned and developed as a person through things I’ve done and things I’ve experienced and things that have been done to me. But I’m still me. That used to be a horrifying thought, back when I hated myself and believed that my natural self uninfluenced by God was purely evil. But I’ve learned to love myself and so now that thought’s a comfort.

I am strong and I am a survivor.

If I could handle everything that has happened to me, I sure as hell can handle dealing with what those memories mean to me now.

My will, my personality, my spirit was never fully broken. I’m the same person who faced down near-daily spankings and dealt with it partly by creating imaginary adventures about escaping dungeons and forced servitude and unreasonable authority figures. I’m the same person who was unbearably weird and unbelievably unsocialized and managed to purposefully, intentionally, painfully catch up on most of that missed socialization (though I’ll be the first to admit I’m still pretty weird). By now I have done and lived through enough that I look back at points in my life and can say, “Yeah, I did that. Yeah, I survived that.”

Whatever happens, I will always be me.

Hopefully I’ll continue to strive upward and continue to turn into improved versions of me. One of the ways I can do that is by dealing with shit from the past, with help of course. But there’s that core, that consciousness, that continuous self, and somehow that knowledge gives me the courage to move forward.

“Diplomas Play No Role For Us”: The Case of the Wunderlichs

September 26, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

“Diplomas Play No Role For Us”: The Case of the Wunderlichs, by Jennifer Stahl

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Jennifer Stahl’s blog Yeshua, Hineni. It was originally published on September 16, 2013 with the title, “German Homeschooling Case – The Wunderlichs.”

I’ve just finished getting myself caught up with the issue of sects in Germany who try to home-school and have had run ins with the law. Generally, but not always, the HSLDA has has been meddling in Germany with these issues rather than let people hash out the Constitutional law within the courts and appealing to the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.

For what it is worth, I was home-schooled from the sixth grade forward under the Home School Legal Defense Association umbrella. (1993-1999)

I do not believe in breaking the law to do whatever you want. You have to lobby to have the laws changed.

You have to argue, within the court system that Constitutional law is antiquated and argue that the law must be changed so that you can work within it; if that is what you truly believe.

However, in the last decade or so, many sects of Christian home-schoolers who have been pressing the issue have been doing many things to place their children in danger; giving sub-par education, little or no medical attention; living the life of isolationists — which has caused the government to be well within rights to be breathing down their necks or taking their children into foster care.

The problem here is, Germany looks at issues like this as if it were a family matter. It’s more than looking at it as a purely domestic matter that any German allies can weigh in on. This doesn’t concern other court systems in the EU, and the European Court of Human Rights has already weighed in on German Homeschooling cases. It doesn’t concern allies, such as the United States.

You also have to remember that while Germany’s treatment of groups with cultish or extremist sectarian beliefs sometimes amount to “discrimination” in many of our allies eyes, its laws must be seen the context of its history and the fear of political as well as religious extremism. We are finding more and more, that people who do separate themselves out of society do tend to trend towards both religious and political extremism.

This does not at all exclude or include the cases that the HSLDA has been weighing in on.

With this in mind, you have to know that there are around 400 Homeschooling families in Germany if the HSLDA is to be believed. Schuzh says it is closer to 500 families. This also counts the Romeike Family, The Wunderlichs and the families of the Zwölf Stämme, which I have discussed before.

This blog, however, states the numbers are rather questionable:

How many Germans ignore German laws on compulsory education, can not be measured as most parents simply [home-school in secret] or emigrate in secret. Stefanie Mohsennia knows about 200 free-learning German families and speculates that there are currently over 1,000 families in Germany who do not send their children to school. “There are always more.” says Stefanie Mohsennia…Leben im Untergrund – Homeschooling-Familien in Deutschland [Living underground – Home-schooling families in Germany]

As far as what the European Human Rights Court has to say:

[The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe] refused to admit the applicant’s constitutional complaint because it had already dealt with the decisive constitutional issues in its settled case-law.

…[The EU Human Rights Court] notes that there exists a difference of treatment between the applicant’s children and… children [who] were physically unfit …or… [whose] parents move around the country…
… the Court finds that the above distinctions justifies a difference of treatment.
Konrad and Others v. Germany

Konrad v. Germany also makes it clear that Germany’s “Basic Law” guarantees “the right to establish private schools.” The state does therefore not have a monopoly on education, only the right to regulate it.
Locus Standi: International Human Rights and Home schooling

Yet, when the news did break in American papers about the Wunderlich family last year, and this year – everything became sensationalized, and suddenly there is a lot of fear-mongering and lies being spread about how the compulsory schooling laws came into place, and why they came into place in Germany. [To clarify: It has been repeated quite often that these laws came into place when the NSDAP was in power and we’re very “Nazi” for not repealing them.] It’s made me physically ill that this is being said over and over through right-leaning news, and therefore disseminated to other Christians.

I literally have relatives that are terrified that I am suddenly surrounded by an up and coming Fourth Reich.

Why don’t we have a look and see why?

“The education administration in future will also not recognize so-called homeschooling and act in proportionate measure considering the individual case and circumstances.””
WND: Government declares war on homeschooling parents (2006)

“A copy of the report justifying immediate seizure of the children was obtained by HSLDA. The reasons given for the seizure were that the children were ‘socially isolated,’ not in school and that there was a ‘flight risk,’ – none of which appear to be true,” the report said.

The family fled Germany because of a series of fines imposed for homeschooling and the concern that German authorities inside Germany would take custody of the children.
WND: French police grab 4 kids on German orders (2009)

Wunderlich said the Jugendamt “told me that the children must go to school.”
“We are very saddened by the way our country treats us,” he said. “Our nerves are black and short, and we are very tired by the pressure.
“I don’t understand my own country. What are we doing wrong? We are just doing what should be allowed to anyone.”
WND: State takes custody of children over socialization (2012)

Within days of the family registering their presence in Darmstadt, authorities initiated a criminal truancy case, and just months later city’s ‘Youth Welfare Office’ was granted legal custody of the children.
The Daily Mail UK: Armed Police turn up at family home wiht a battering ram to sieze their children after they defy Germany’s ban on homeschooling

After the children were taken, authorities “invited” the parents to a meeting with social workers. They were told they were not even being allowed an immediate court hearing on the status of the children.
WND: Police storm homeschool class, take children by force

Petra Wunderlich said her heart was shattered. “We are empty,” she said. “We need help. We are fighting but we need help.”
Life Site News: ‘We are empty’: Police storm German homeschooling family’s house, seize children

In an interview in Berlin last year, Dirk Wunderlich said he was prepared to go to jail rather than send his children to school. “But I’m not afraid of this,” he said. “I’m only sad for my family. I will go (to jail) laughing. You can do what you want, but my children will not go to school.”
CBN: German Officials Abduct Homeschooled Kids from Parents

…Failing to find employment, Mr. Wunderlich last year had to bring the family back to their home country of Germany. Within days the “Youth Welfare Office” was granted legal custody of their children on the grounds of criminal truancy.
…The Wunderlich family’s experience foreshadows an ominous future for other German homeschooling families… and … raise concerns about the freedom of families in all free nations…
CrossMap: Government Seizes German Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s Homeschooling Children—Whose Kids Are They?

On their return, German authorities began a criminal truancy case against them and the children were placed in the custody of the Darmstadt Youth Welfare Office. Authorities found the children to be well treated… but seized the children’s passports to prevent the family from leaving the country.
CNA: German raid on home-schooling family draws condemnation

The court order allowed the police the use of force against both parents and children; it stated that the children had “adopted the parent’s opinions” regarding homeschooling, and that “no cooperation could be expected” from either the parents or the children.
Gatestone Institute: Europe: Treating Homeschoolers Like Terrorists

The Wunderlich’s lawyers will argue their case on the basis that the current education law is too vague. They are also arguing on the basis of the international treaties Germany has signed, since they appear to be violating those treaty obligations. HSLDA is helping support the Wunderlich’s lawyers… Although the Wunderlichs are hoping for a court date in September, they are still waiting.
The American Conservative: German Children Seized From Parents for Crime of Homeschooling

HSLDA lawyer Michael Donnelly said that when child protective systems in countries such as a Germany– which “claims to be a ‘liberal democracy’ committed to pluralism and human rights – allows for police raids to take children from otherwise good families who are providing a home education, liberty is at risk everywhere.”
WND: Homeschool case focal point for hate mail

What do the Wunderlichs think about this, themselves? Well, let’s hear it in their own words:

In 2005, our first child Machsejah reached the age of compulsory school attendance. We started home schooling from then on. At that time, war with the education agency began… A civil fine was levied. Then we were sued. We were found guilty of violating the compulsory school attendance statute and a monetary penalty was imposed. That was in 2008.
Interview with Dirk Wunderlich through the HEDUA Part 1

Our complete and no-holds-barred rejection of the institution of the school is reflected by exactly this argument. Even if public schools would align themselves with our beliefs and other educational ideas at the 100% level (without compromise whatsoever), we still would not send our children to school. The reason is that we are convinced that God’s intentions and plans for us cannot be realized within the artificial setting of school.
Interview with Dirk Wunderlich through the HEDUA Part 2

HEDUA also has articles here, here, here, here, here and here that explain how the Wunderlich family sees their situation.

I do agree that there are issues with how certain sects of Christianity (and even Scientology) that homeschool are handled in Germany. We’ve seen how this plays out with the court cases involving the Zwölf Stämme. There are sometimes gaps in information between the courts, or the Jugendamt is sometimes slow to enforce the Schulpflicht or fines for not sending your children to school.

As far as the Wunderlich family goes, things are clearly not on the up and up. They were told by the state and each city seat that they’ve lived in that they can not continue to homeschool. They continued irregardless.

They’ve come out openly laughing in the face of the government. They’ve said that they’re happy to go to jail and lose custody of their children so that they can create a separatist faith movement and parallel society from their own home.

They’ve moved from city to city, and when that wasn’t working; they left the country. This raises questions. I don’t know what all questions this raises, but it certainly leaves holes in information that can lead one to many conclusions, of which, I am not ready to make any.

All the news articles I’ve read in English (from Fox, The Blaze, World Net Daily, CBN, World Mag and others) so far show very clearly that the authors know next to nothing about Germany, German law, German society at large, or the German educational system and its history. Instead, they’re happy to perpetuate myths and simply assume the police is this evil entity, because surely the HSLDA would not lie.

The information that I can find says that the court has found “The welfare of children is at risk. The children have not been receiving the education that would have been age-expected.” This is enough to create concern in a nation full of over-acheivers who look for everyone to at least meet age-expected educational goals.

This sets a whole lot of questions flying. I do not know what to make of that. Does this mean that the children are now learning above their age grade, or that they are falling behind? I do not know.

Let’s see how the German news is handling this:

… the parents refuse any school system: “There is, however, compulsory education, the parents can not escape.” It does not mean just education, but also about social interaction and involvement that allows other world views to be heard. The children have been placed in a juvenile facility after a confirmed judicial decision by the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main. All attempts at discussion to reach an amicable agreement with the parents, during the summer holidays have been unsuccessful.
Idea: Jugendamt nimmt Christen die Kinder weg [Child Protective Services take Christian children away]

…“Diplomas play no role for us. Our goal is heaven.” “Our family belongs to no specific Christian denomination, we are simply believers.” Dirk [Wunderlich] attended the Kreis Bergstraße’s Odenwald school, and he emphasizes the importance of Jesus Christ for himself and his family…
Echo: Schulpflicht: Jugendamt verteidigt Trennung von ElternSorgerecht – Vier Kinder aus Wembach werden schrittweise auf Schulbesuch vorbereitet [Compulsory education: Youth Office defends separation of parents from children. Custody – Four children from Wembach to be gradually prepared for school]

Side note here: The Odenwaldschule [where Dirk Wunderlich attended] was known for a huge scandal that went down where the children were being sexually abused by some of the teachers. There was also mentioned of physical discipline being carried out. (It’s mentioned here in German, but not in the English Wikipedia article. You can find more here, here and here.)

This is not insinuating anything about the family, but giving additional information that is not readily knowable to people who do not live in this area.

I know others who went to this school and nothing ever happened to them, and they are just as shocked as the rest of us that anything happened there. As far as the education at the school goes, it was one of the best in the area.

…Parents are of the Christian faith and have hermetically sealed off their children from the outside world. They will have also refused to let the children be taught at a state-recognized private Christian school, reports the “Hessischer Rundfunk”…

…Evangelical Christians fight especially hard for the right to homeschool. They want their children to be kept away from worldly influences and try to educate them in their strict faith-driven world view…
Spiegel: Schulverweigerer in Hessen: Polizei holt Kinder aus streng religiöser Familie [Truants in Hessen: Police bring children from a strictly religious family]

“If and when the children return to their parents, it is still unclear,” says Frank Horneff. In fact, the family will have to wait a while until a decision on their possible reunification. The District Court of Darmstadt intends to have the parents in for a hearing at the end of September.
Die Welt: Behandelt, “als wäre ich ein Terrorist” [Treated “as if I were a terrorist”]

For the time being, this is the only news coming out, other than from Der Blaue Brief which is linked to the HSLDA and other homeschool groups in Germany.

However, I do want to point out some very integral things that are not much discussed when it concerns Christian sects that wish to homeschool here in Germany. There are passages in Scripture that suggest that Christians are to take an unassuming, blameless lifestyle wherever we find ourselves; unless that government is causing them to break commandments in the Bible. Especially concerning our witness to those who do not believe as we do.

It is my full belief that breaking the law to do something you are convicted to do — especially something that is not commanded by G-d explicitly in the Bible — is a terribly bad idea.

Frequently moving around to escape the law, leaving the country when the court catches up to you, and hiding your children from the world is terribly suspicious, and not something the Bible commands.

Meddling in another country’s affairs to subvert the government (speaking of the HSLDA here, which is an American Homeschool Legal Defense Association), is also not a really good idea.

Especially when the Human Rights Courts of the EU have already twice made a ruling on similar cases, and the Constitutional Court of said country you are meddling in said “No, this is not happening and here is why.”

On the heels of the Wunderlich case, we have issues with abuses that have been uncovered by the Zwölf Stämme. My question here is: what kind of parenting methods are going on in the Wunderlich home that we might maybe need know about? (Remember, Corporal Punishment is illegal in Germany and has been for over a decade.) Also, why is the HSLDA so very invested in Germany, and constantly sending funds back and forth to keep the courts here spinning?

Why are Americans being called upon to support these families, and why is the HSLDA lying about what is happening?

What exactly are they helping to hide, besides these families squirreling away their children and teaching them that the government is out to steal and destroy their souls? Why are these families so afraid of the readily available Christian education?

There are so many questions here, many, which I feel will not be further answered until we hear more from the different court cases as they go forward.

I’m sorry that the families have been separated, but I can see where this is something that had to take place considering how blatantly the Wunderlichs are in their defiance of German law, and how happy they are to make themselves out as martyrs. I hope that the children can see their parents, but I pray that we do not find out that there has been any physical or psychological abuse going on as we’ve heard from a few other homeschool groups. (As mentioned in the documentary above, and in the case with the Zwölf Stämmen)

There don’t seem to be very many answers to this issue at the moment.

Corporal Punishment and The End of The Red Stick: Heather Doney’s Story, Part Two

September 20, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on February 18, 2013. Read Part One of Heather’s story for HA’s To Break Down A Child series here.

*****

Trigger warning for To Break Down a Child series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

This picture could be anybody’s little sister blindfolded and hitting a piñata at her Dad’s house for another sibling’s birthday.

My little sister lives in a different world than I did.

But it isn’t. It’s my little sister.

She lives in a different world than I did. One with her own bedroom and court-ordered visitation and Christmas presents from a kind stepmother. She has never been homeschooled. She does not remember a time when our family didn’t celebrate birthdays, or was too poor to buy a piñata, or was too “modest” for her favorite summer clothes to be allowed.

She could be using any stick to hit this piñata but she isn’t. She’s using the “red stick,” the most infamous spanking implement our family had.

As far as I know, none of the younger siblings attending this party were ever touched by the red stick and I imagine just a few had been threatened, but the grim knowledge of what it was used for had been passed down.

The red stick had started out as a handle to a child-size broom and then when the broom broke 25 years ago, it became a toy (a walking stick, a bat, a pretend sword) left in the yard until my Dad picked it up off the patio one day, tapped it against his palm a few times and said, “This would make a real good spankin’ stick.”

Then it became something totally new. An object of fear.

It stayed hanging on a nail or propped in a corner in my Dad’s bedroom or office for years except when it was picked up and used to threaten or to leave welts.

“Daddy, please don’t spank me. I’m tender.” No red stick today, only fodder for years of teasing. “Aww, is my little heatherjanes still tender?”

“Do you want a spanking? Don’t make me get the red stick.”

Mom catches one sister padding her underwear with toilet paper in anticipation of a beating. After that, it’s bare bottomed.

“Pull down your pants. Bend over.” Red stick.

Sitting in the “punish chair” corner ’til sundown, hearing the car crunch gravel in the driveway, shaking, hands going cold. Red stick.

“But I don’t want to try and eat a pickled pig lip out of that jar, Dad. It looks just like apig’s lip.” “If you don’t try it, you’ll get the red stick. You’d better eat it and like it.” Tears. Gagging. Spitting chunks of pickled pork into the sink. Red stick.

Pain, shame, anger, fear. Yelling. Red stick.

Running, cursing, slipping, falling, being caught and dragged. Red stick.

Grabbing the red stick tightly, just as tall, if not quite as strong as the woman holding it. “Let go,” Mom says.

“No,” I say, “You’re gonna hit me with it.”

“Yes,” she says.

“Well,” I say, “I’d be an idiot to let it go then, wouldn’t I?”

It strikes me that this photo is the only known picture of the red stick. The only official proof of it ever existing or being used is in a pleasant scenario. As it happens, the red stick finally died that happy day, broke while connecting with the piñata and ended up in the garbage.

A sibling sent me a message informing me that the red stick had met its end and that when Dad was out of range, they had celebrated its demise. I was glad, too: glad it was gone and that it did not die the way I had always imagined it would — splintering into pieces over a child’s behind.

It would never be used to hurt anyone again.

It had broken being used the only way it should have ever been used, in the original spirit it had once had — innocently in child’s play.