To Train Up a Child – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Michael Pearl’s Advice is Child Abuse (According to His Own Definition)

February 1, 2016May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team17 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Hypocrisy occurs when someone claims to have moral standards or beliefs to which their own behavior does not conform. If I tell you that treating your child with respect is important, and then instruct you to disrespect your child, I am a hypocrite.

Michael Pearl is a hypocrite.

This matters a whole lot because ever since high-profile cases of child murder like Sean Paddock, Lydia Schatz, and Hana Williams were linked to Pearl’s teachings, he has repeatedly claimed that those children’s parents did not follow his teachings correctly — that what those children’s parents did “is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of No Greater Joy Ministries.” They misinterpreted. They took it to the extreme. They were abusive, whereas he makes clear you should not abuse.

But Michael Pearl says one thing and then instructs parents to do another. Let me give you an example. This is from Pearl’s September 2001 article “In Defense of Biblical Chastisement, Part 2,” under the section, “When is it abuse?”:

If your child is broken in spirit, cowed and subdued, you have a problem.

This seems pretty straightforward — and in line with Pearl’s claim that there is a line between legitimate child training and child abuse. The standards are simple: if your child training results in your child being cowed and subdued, you have a problem. The problem? You are abusing your child. Hence this section being titled, “When is it abuse?” No Greater Joy Ministries itself lifts up this article as proof that the Pearls condemn child abuse.

Here is the catch: Michael Pearl gives the very opposite instructions elsewhere. This is from Pearl’s July 1998 article “Angry Child,” an article that addresses how to spank a so-called “angry child”:

I could break his anger in two days. He would be too scared to get angry. On the third day he would draw into a quiet shell and obey.

This also seems pretty straightforward. Michael Pearl proclaims his own self-mastery of godly child training: in two days, he can take the angriest of children and render them (1) “scared” and (2) “drawn into a quiet shell.”

Let us go back to Pearl’s definition of child abuse:

If your child is broken in spirit, cowed and subdued, you have a problem.

What does “cowed” mean? It means “scared.”

What does “subdued” mean? It means “drawn into a quiet shell.”

The very things that Pearl says are indicators of abuse are the very things Pearl says are the signs that one has mastered his techniques.

Let me give you another example. In the aforementioned “Biblical Chastisement” article, Pearl says:

You are abusing the child when it starts doing harm to the child.

Again, this is straightforward. Child training crosses the line into child abuse when you are causing damage to your child.

Now look at Pearl’s advice in the “Angry Child” article:

A proper spanking leaves children without breath to complain. If he should tell you that the spanking makes him madder, spank him again. If he is still mad…. He desperately needs an unswayable authority, a cold rock of justice.

Yet again, this is straightforward. Godly child training, or “a proper spanking” as Pearl says, “leaves children without breath.”

I do not mean to get super scientific, but (1) there are no lungs in the human buttocks and (2) breathing comes naturally to a healthy child. Pain inflicted on the human buttocks will therefore only disrupt a child’s intake of oxygen by spiking the child’s stress hormones to a literally traumatic level. That is to say: to spank your child to the point that they cannot take in oxygen, you have to cause nervous system dysregulation. You must overwhelm the child’s brain with pain to the point that the brain’s ability to perform normal human functions — like breathing — become disintegrated. This is why trauma is accompanied by breathing difficulties.

If you are spanking a child to the point that they cannot breathe, you are literally harming their brain. Furthermore, you are potentially disrupting many other aspect of the child’s development. While humans in general have a need for oxygen, children are particularly in need of it. The World Health Organization notes this:

Children have a dynamic physiology that is not only turned up to “high” because of growth demands, but also vulnerable to damage during differentiation and maturation of organs and systems. Their needs for energy, water and oxygen are higher, because they go through an intense anabolic process… Children breathe more air per kilogram of body weight than adults at rest… An infant has three times the minute ventilation of an adult and a 6-year-old has double.

Let us assume, simply for the sake of argument, that spanking your child with a “cold rock of justice” is not child abuse in itself. Let us assume, simply for the sake of argument, that spanking your child repeatedly — never stopping until your child submits because Michael Pearl says in To Train Up a Child that “If you stop before he is voluntarily submissive, you have confirmed to him the value and effectiveness of a screaming protest” (p. 80) — does not cause rhambdolysis (Lydia Schatz’s cause of death). Even assuming those two points, we are still left with the fact that spanking your child until they cannot breathe does physical harm to your child.

When does Pearl say child training turns to child abuse? “When it starts doing harm to the child.”

What does Pearl say child training must do? “Leaves children without breath.”

The very things that Pearl says are indicators of abuse are the very things Pearl says are the signs that one has mastered his techniques.

Michael Pearl’s advice is child abuse according to his own definition.

Humane Child Training: Sarah’s Story

July 1, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Thomas Hawk.

HA notes: All names have been changed to ensure anonymity. “Sarah” is a pseudonym.

CW: Physical Abuse and Infant Abuse

How Horse Whisperers and Dog Lovers Freed me from Michael Pearl

I have a distinct memory of when I first opened up Michael Pearl’s “To Train Up a Child.” I was about 10 years old when I discovered the book in our library. My parents had recently introduced the switch (a roughly 2-3 foot long supple tree branch) as a “disciplinary tool”. I’m not sure if I started at the beginning or opened it at random, but I remember feeling deeply disturbed and attempting to hide the book after I put it down.

While my parents didn’t follow Pearl’s advice to the letter, I was raised in a household with a strong emphasis on obedience.

There was love, yes, and bonding and laughter, but I also knew that outright disobedience would be met with consequences, often painful consequences. If I was told to do something I strongly disliked or even feared – and if my (polite) protests were ignored – I knew I had only two “choices”, if you could call them that. Deal with it or face the punishment. Our first puppy started training with the Koehler dog training method, roughly dragged on a choke chain so that she would “know” to ignore distractions. We stopped shortly thereafter when she grew so terrified of “training” that she’d just freeze; but I’m convinced we started with that method in the first place because the principle of “obey or else” resonated with my family.

I was mostly a bookish kid, with few reasons to conflict with my parents, so I wasn’t spanked (beaten?) very often. But as a pre-teen I became increasingly upset about how “discipline” worked out for my younger siblings. My bull-headed, hot-tempered sister Tabitha often got in screaming fights with my mom, which then turned to violent spankings until Tabitha would at least make a show of submission. (To this day she has a horrible relationship with my mom.) The discipline didn’t help Tabitha learn to control herself. Instead, she learned to lie as easily as speak, and she took her anger out on our even younger siblings whenever she felt she could get away with it.

My family used the buddy system – each older child caring for a younger child – and at the time my “buddy” was my two year old brother Noah. Noah was smart but opinionated, and notorious for throwing high-intensity fits when he couldn’t get his way. I still get a sick feeling to my stomach when I remember one afternoon when Noah’s fire truck broke and he couldn’t get the ladder to go down.

He lost it, screaming and throwing things and rolling on the ground, and my Mom decided he needed to stop “rebelling.”

She found the wooden spoon and started a cycle that went on for nearly 30 minutes: spank spank spank, “Noah, stop screaming!”, pause. Spank spank spank, “Noah, stop screaming!”, pause. For a long time, Noah’s screams and flails only grew louder and more desperate. I tried to keep cleaning nearby, but as his diaper came off for harsher swats and he became hoarse from screaming, I couldn’t do anything but watch in horror. Eventually his screams became a little quieter, and she decided that was good enough. She put him to bed for a nap and left to help some siblings with school in another part of the house. I remember cradling his quivering body as he whimpered and telling him that Mom was wrong and she shouldn’t have done that.

Despite how upset I was with these situations, I didn’t yet have the experience or broader context to identify an alternative.

I was homeschooled, in a Christian fundamentalist / patriarchy / quiverful family, and was already indoctrinated with a very deep distrust of the secular “system” that I was told would try to take us away through CPS and brainwash us with secular (aka satanic) content in public schools. I had many young siblings, and I knew that it was necessary at times to control and change their behavior – one had to do SOMETHING if the toddler was trying to play with the electrical outlet, or the five-year-old was hitting a younger sibling. Physical, painful punishment for disobedience was the only way I knew how. I occasionally perused secular parenting books through the library, but I dismissed their “permissive” advice on child-rearing as non-Christian without any real reflection.

Instead, I found a different perspective from a slightly unusual source: animal trainers. I loved animals, and my preteen and early teen years were right in the middle of a revolution in humane, non-coercive training methods for animals. I was mesmerized by watching a video of Monty Roberts taming and training a wild mustang gently, without force or coercion. I eagerly read Jean Donaldson’s dog training book “Culture Clash”. She dismissed techniques that used pain and fear to train a dog as cruel and – just as importantly – unnecessary. Instead, she made a strong argument that you could get excellent obedience, robust and resilient behavioral change, using the basic principles of the science of operant conditioning: get the behavior you want and reward it. Make the things that the dog wants contingent on the behaviors that you want. From there, I went on to Karen Pryor’s “Don’t Shoot the Dog” and internet forums on clicker training and positive dog training. I refrained from putting a pinch collar on my next puppy and instead trained him – very successfully – using treats and toys and praise, with a rare time-out as the ultimate punishment.

As I came to understand that you could change behavior without pain or fear, I began to apply that to how I interacted with my younger siblings.

Unlike the secular child-rearing books, I wasn’t afraid of a “satanic” or non-Christian influence from these animal trainers: how could it be un-Christian to give your dog a treat, or train your horse gently? And unlike many child-focused sources that emphasized the child’s self-esteem and psyche above all, these books gave me tools for what I needed: how to get my “buddy” to go take a nap, or put on his socks, or not put that rock in his mouth. At this point, I was a fourteen year old girl with most of my time filled with caring for my younger siblings. I didn’t have the resources to use advice on how to improve my little sister’s confidence or problem-solving abilities so she could grow up to be a strong, compassionate adult. I needed something that would help me control multiple toddlers and young children so that they wouldn’t fall down the stairs or color on the walls while I tried to cook lunch. I suspect many “quiverful” mothers and big sisters end up in this situation, and this is part of the appeal of Michael Pearl’s advice.

I want to clarify here that I am NOT advocating a parenting style that treats children as animals. Instead, I am arguing that there are lessons in humane animal training that can improve human relationships, especially when those relationships involve children – individuals who often don’t recognize danger, have challenges to communicating, don’t understand adult human rules and priorities, and most of all are vulnerable to abuse from their caregivers. Humane animal training involves a commitment to avoid the use of fear and pain as a “training tool”; respect for the animal as an individual being with feelings and fears; and knowledge of both the science of behavioral change and the animal’s instincts, wants, and needs. These are all important principles in dealing with young children.

Moreover, the success of such methods is a direct counter-point to Michael Pearl’s argument that obedience or behavioral change can only be gained by punishing disobedience.

While they shouldn’t be prioritized above other things like encouraging exploration and developing healthy independence, knowing things like coming when called can improve a toddler’s safety (and a mother’s sanity). Young children often need to learn things like not throwing food and to put toys back in the appropriate box. Humane animal training taught me that if you must change someone’s behavior, there are better and kinder ways to do so than pain and fear.

As a young teen, I was very close to my Mom. I was the oldest girl and her right hand. We spent almost all of our time together and had a “best friend”-like relationship. As I explored kinder ways of dealing with my young siblings, I talked with my Mom about those successes and even sometimes confronted her about how I thought she should change her parenting. Shortly after the incident with the fire truck, we tried a simple alternative: we responded to Noah yelling with a gentle, “I’m sorry, I can’t understand your yelling. Can you speak softly?” Speaking normally was rewarded with our best efforts to help him, and yelling (except in cases of an emergency) was ignored or gently prompted to bring the volume down. This worked beautifully without any need to get out the switch. I’m very happy to say that my Mom did make some changes over time, and as an adult with several young siblings still at home, I’m no longer afraid that they might be living through the kinds of physical abuse that occurred when I was younger.

Now? I’m living away from home, and left the quiverful / patriarchy / fundamentalist Christian mindset a long time ago. I have a dog of my own now. This dog comes when called and leaves shoes alone and lets me clip her nails. I don’t need fear or pain to find ways to help her conform to my weird human rules. I want kids someday. I know the old trope that you’re not supposed to know what you’ll do with kids until you actually have them.

Given my background, though, I’m very comfortable stating this: my children will never be beaten into submission or trained to be obedient through fear.

If I find myself in a situation where I must change their behavior – whether because my toddler wants to run into the road or handles frustration by biting people – I know there are ways to accomplish that change that don’t involve switches or wooden spoons.

The Story of an Ex-Good Girl: Part Sixteen

April 30, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Exgoodgirl’s blog The Travels and Travails of an Ex-Good Girl. It was originally published on January 11, 2015 and has been slightly modified for HA.

<Part Fifteen

Part Sixteen: Gray

I can look back at pictures of those years, and somehow, I look happy in some of them. I know that somewhere in that time I took a trip to Germany with my grandparents. It was one of the few happy times I can remember. In contrast, the rest of those two years, from 15 to 17, were very dark days for me. Our home life was not happy.

Besides my dad being depressed, which lasted at least a couple of years if not longer, the discipline that my brother B received continued, and in some respects, got worse.

Once Joe LaQuiere was not there to cow B into fearful submission, my dad had a tougher time getting him to toe the line. A now-teenage B became disrespectful, angry, arguing and talking-back to my dad. He cared less and less that he would be punished for it. My dad gave up using a wooden paddle on my brother. He moved on to more creative tools, searching for one that would put the fear of God into his wayward son. Sometimes it was a belt. Sometimes it was a thin rod like that used for caning. Then, he found himself the winner. I don’t know what it was made out of, but it was a length of doubled-up, flexible, white line of some kind or other, about 1/8″ in diameter, and he used it like a whip, hitting indiscriminately whatever was in reach. This whipping hurt far more than a wooden paddle ever could, and it left no permanent marks, which all the corporal-punishment manuals, like the Pearl’s book, To Train Up a Child, which was a staple in my parents’ bookshelf, all were quick to warn against.

If it doesn’t leave a permanent mark, the books said, it was fine.

I would be on constant alert and tense when my dad and B started getting into it – I knew with inevitable dread that it would end in a whipping, and I swear I hated them nearly as much as B did. My dad would hit his limit, grab B and push him to the basement stairs, and down they’d go. The next thing I’d hear is my brother crying, then screaming for my dad to stop, while my dad chased him around the basement, whipping him as he went. It seemed like it would go on forever. In hindsight, it was probably only 10 or 15 minutes each time. But it was enough. It was too much. With every beating I had to hear, my own heart was getting ripped to shreds, and my fear grew.

My mom would calmly go about her business, ignoring the cries and pleading from below.

More than ever, I tried to use my influence and experience to head off any altercation between my brother and my dad. I played peacemaker as much as I could, and I begged the children not to do anything that would set my dad off. We all knew how he got when things made him angry, but somehow I was the only one who tried to do anything about it. I had always been the one to try to placate my dad and walk the fine line to avoid his wrath, but now it became a desperate need – I HAD to prevent him from getting angry, or my brother would pay the price.

Meanwhile, the whippings had the opposite effect to the one my father intended. They made B even less tractable than before. With each beating, he grew harder towards my parents. He sneered more openly at them. He grew more rebellious and more angry. My dad continued these whippings until B was nearly 17. Then, one day, B stopped taking it. I remember it so clearly. That day, when my dad tried to shove him up against the wall, B pushed back. That was all. That was enough. He had grown bigger than my dad, and now, in that instant, he realized he was stronger. It took my dad just a split second to realize what had happened. He could no longer physically control his son by violence.

He took his hands off my brother, and said B was so far gone in his rebellion that normal discipline had no effect on him anymore…since physical buffeting was useless, he was spiritually turning B over “to be buffeted for the sake of his soul”, as it says somewhere in the bible.

I knew better, and so did B. My dad was simply afraid of what would happen. He never whipped my brother again.

It was some relief to know that I wouldn’t have to hear my brother’s screams from the basement anymore. But it didn’t change anything else. Life was something to be endured, long and weary, with no end in sight. I became obsessed with the color gray. I thought about it, wrote about it, all the time. My life was gray. Everything was gray; meaningless and gray. I felt like I was slowly being smothered by a gray pall, and I no longer had the will to resist it.

Then, finally, came the day when I couldn’t bear it any longer. I remember we were going somewhere in our big van, with the younger kids, and my mom driving. I remember the seat I was sitting in. It’s a crystal clear memory in my head. I sat there, with daily life going on around me, while a storm of pain and desperation raged in my heart, and I knew I couldn’t take even one more second of living my hated life; and in my despair I cried out in my heart, “God, I don’t even know if You’re there anymore – I know You don’t love me, and never have – but I don’t have anything left to turn to anymore! You’ve taken everything away, and I have nothing left – if You even can, just HELP me, please! Do SOMEthing!”

And in that moment, for the first time in my entire 17 years of life, I felt God’s LOVE.

It was warm, and it engulfed me, wrapped me up in something indescribable. In that blinding second, I KNEW, for the first time, that God loved me. I FELT it. I had never felt anything like it before, and I never have since. It was an inescapable certainty. I had cried to God, and He had answered me.

Part Seventeen>

Joel Dinda via photopin cc

Sorry, Michael Pearl, But These Fireworks Are Calling You Out: Lisa Joy’s Thoughts

April 24, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team29 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Lisa Joy” is a pseudonym.

Disclaimer: I have been reading Libby Anne’s reviews of the Pearls’ materials on her “Love, Joy, Feminism” blog as they’re published each week. When I read Michael Pearl’s recent article, “Homeschooling: Success or Failure,” I started wondering what she would say to tear it apart. Then I realized I couldn’t wait to see if/when she’d cover it, so I started writing my version of a rebuttal! So if it sounds like I’m parroting her in some way, I’m not trying to… but I might end up doing so to some extent because I love what she has to say in her book reviews. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or something like that!

“It is such a marvelous pleasure to observe the many young couples coming out of the homeschooling community. They are bright as spring flowers, full of hope and good cheer. Children are springing up like dandelions, without a care in the world, secure in their parents’ love.”

Dandelions… a weed that many people try to kill.

Michael Pearl has a nasty habit of dehumanizing people, especially women and children. He compares them to dogs, horses, pick-up trucks (yes, really!), etc. Now we can add weeds to that list.

“There has never been a movement in America that has so consistently produced godly young people and holy marriages.”

Oh, really? Are these marriages “holy,” or are they simply trapped & trying to put on a good face? The latter is my story — married for 13 years to a man I knew was cheating on me and lying to me. But I didn’t dare leave because that wouldn’t be the “godly” thing to do. <sigh> (Don’t worry, when it finally dawned on me that my children were in danger of being molested, I worked up the courage to face all the judgment and criticism from my church and my family, and I left him.)

“These kids—they are in their 20s and 30s but to me they are kids—”

I am 36. I am not a kid. I’ve been a legal adult for 18 years, so I should be an adult twice by now!

My parents still treat me like I’m a rebellious teen-ager, including trying to correct me when I have what they consider a bad attitude, tell me where I should attend church, what I should wear, whom I may date and marry now that I’m divorced, (or as they would prefer, that I am to never marry again, except to my abusive ex!) and even punish me when I stray from their desires for my life. (And no, I’m not currently on speaking terms with them. Enough is enough! When they learn to treat me like the adult I am – twice over – then maybe we can be friends again.)

“are the most emotionally balanced, mentally positive, and hopeful human beings in the world;”

Either that, or they’re really good at faking it and putting on a happy face so that they aren’t a bad testimony. After all, if they and their lives aren’t perfect, they know that it’s their fault because they aren’t spiritual enough.

“and let me tell you something: Even at 68 years old I can see that among them are the prettiest girls ever. There is something about a genuine joyful smile and an inquisitive, positive expression that lights up a healthy female face like sun, moon, stars, and fireworks at the same time.”

Stop and really read this again. Let it sink in. This. Is. Sick. I hope all of you are holding your mouths to keep the vomit from hitting your keyboard or tablet or phone. I know Debi Pearl has her issues, but I feel sorry for her right now. I would be horrified if my 68-year-old husband publicly admitted to admiring women 1/2 or 1/3 his age. Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but for an old man to admit that a pretty face reminds him of “fireworks” is beyond gross. Sick. Sick. Sick.

Michael Pearl says in his “Created to Need a Help Meet” book that when he’s at church luncheons, he wants to be surrounded by pretty ladies! What a sick, dirty-old-man vibe I’m getting from him. <shudder> Even if you’re okay with a 68-year-old having these kinds of thoughts about a 20-year-old “girl,” (really a woman but always a “girl” to Michael Pearl!) remember that he’s married. And he just published this on the Internet and in print. His wife is presumably reading this. Just. Yuck. Nasty. Must. Stop. Thinking. About. This.

“I see young mamas and daddies producing a whole new generation of godly, wholesome kids.”

Or producing a whole new generation of abused, trapped kids who must put on a happy face or they’ll be beaten when they get home for making Mama and Daddy look bad in front of other people?

“If we can’t beat the progressives today, we will beat them tomorrow in the numbers game. While they kill their children and stuff them in a green refuse container bound for the city dump, two of our kids multiply to become eight, ten, or nineteen in about 20 years. Think about that—two million homeschoolers today, ten to sixteen million in twenty years. If you can’t out-vote them today, out-breed them for tomorrow.”

I heard this kind of thing when I was a kid. Homeschooling has been more-or-less legal in America since 1985, when my family started homeschooling. That’s awfully close to 30 years – a generation and a half. So – where are all the thousands and thousands of homeschool graduates who, like me, now have children of their own that are school-age? Oh, wait, that’s the whole reason for this article.

Because these thousands and thousands of homeschool graduates who were going to take over the world haven’t done so yet.

Also, not everyone can have 8, 10, or 19 kids. There’s infertility, serial miscarriages, dangerous pregnancies, painful/uncomfortable pregnancies, financial and practical considerations such as housing and food and clothing, “kids” who are close to 40 and haven’t married yet (thank you, courtship!), and couples who choose not to have kids even though they probably could. And – assuming 2,000,000 is an accurate number, which I kinda doubt coming from Michael Pearl – how many of those 2,000,000 are homeschooling for non-patriarchal reasons? Dad’s (or mom’s) work schedule, convenience of other pursuits (did you know that Ross Lynch of the Disney Channel & the “R5” band is homeschooled? Also the Jonas Brothers?), peanut allergies, disabilities requiring frequent hospital stays and/or constant monitoring, learning disabilities, etc. I don’t think Michael should be counting on a great army of straight (mostly) white Christian conservatives just like him rising up from the ranks of homeschooling to rescue America!

Another point – doesn’t it irk you that if you aren’t following Michael Pearl and similar patriarchal teachers, then of course you’re killing your children & throwing them in dumpsters?! There’s no middle ground. I’ve seen this over and over as I read Libby Anne’s reviews of the Pearl materials. The Pearls see people as all being in one of two extremes – their way, or the way of absolutely horrifyingly evil.

“I know there are a few highly-publicized stories from time to time of homeschooling failures. There is an online militant group of ex-homeschoolers who hate the experience and are actively trying to denigrate us; but anything that grows large will accumulate detractors and dissenters—great enemies even.”

News flash, Michael Pearl – we are the homeschool graduates that were going to take over the world!

Remember us? From your last paragraph? Sure we’re 20 and 30 years older than the generation that you say will end up out-breeding them, but we were told that we would be the ones that would be the mighty army raised up to overwhelm the enemy with our godliness!

I am curious as to which “online militant group of ex-homeschoolers” he’s referring to, because last I checked, there are quite a few of them. There’s the Homeschoolers Anonymous blog. There’s the Recovering Grace blog. There are dozens and dozens of personal blogs that address everything from page-by-page reviews of the Pearl books to personal experiences of de-programming from the cult-like environments (or actual cults!) in which we were raised.

“Satan hates goodness and will find broken people who want everything to be as broken as they are. But we are not moved by their bitterness; we have too much joy and hope to be brought down by someone already way down near the bottom.”

Good thing that you, Michael Pearl, are so godly and perfect that you can so easily ignore the pain that has brought someone “down near the bottom.” What an arrogant – okay, I’ll stop there but you finish it up with your choice of words!

“Not every homeschool experience will be a great success. Some will be total failures; others will be good but not altogether good. In some cases, out of six children a family may lose one or two to the world, but they will have two or three that are exceptional human beings. The Devil is after us. The flesh is still weak. The world has not lost its luster. So there will be casualties. We are saddened by every failure, but we are not daunted or discouraged. The large number of beautiful successes keeps us charging ahead with confidence.”

Again – I heard when I was a kid that I was in the generation that would rise up and change America – and the world – back to godliness. Now Michael is admitting that only about 1/3 or maybe 1/2 of homeschool graduates will be “exceptional human beings.” Another 1/3 to 1/6 will be lost “to the world.” I guess the other 1/3 to 1/2 is just mediocre so they don’t count for either camp? Very convenient, too, that Michael and similar leaders get to designate what is “exceptional” and what is “worldly.” What is good to Michael Pearl may be considered carnal to the Bill Gothard camp. The Doug Phillips followers have yet another definition of what is good and godly. The Amish and the Mennonites and the Independent Fundamental Bible-Believing Baptists have their own definitions. It must be so nice to be a Michael Pearl or a Bill Gothard or a Doug Phillips and get to decide what is godly and what isn’t… that would make life so much easier on me, because I would be the godly one and all of you had better do what I say or you won’t be godly like me!

“It has been our ministry to help parents raise godly children from birth to grandkids. We have addressed every conceivable subject several times from different angles, written over twenty books and thousands of articles, read your letters and answered many of them. We have heard your stories and sought to understand problem areas and the things that make for consistent success. So one more time, I will address the reasons for the few who fail.”

“The few who fail”? I guess if he repeats it often enough, he can convince his followers that the “online militant group of ex-homeschoolers” he mentioned before is in fact just a couple of hotheads. Except that he just said that approximately 1/3 of homeschooled kids go “to the world,” and 1/3 apparently just disappear. That doesn’t sound like “a few” to me. That sounds like 2/3. That’s the majority. Like, 2 out of every 3 homeschooled kids is considered a failure.

If a friend recommended a restaurant that was so delicious and so wonderful and only 2 out of every 3 people got food poisoning… do you think I’d want to eat there?

“How many times have you heard me say, “More is caught than taught,” or, “Your attitude speaks louder than your words”? I have often said, “Children are rooted in the soil of their parents,” and, “You must model what you want your children to become.””

So if Johnny or Susie ends up going bad, it’s your fault, not Michael Pearl’s. Shame on you for being so imperfect.

“It is not enough to teach morals, good character, the Constitution, Creationism, and modesty. Goodness without God is humanism at its finest.”

This is exactly one of my big complaints about the ATI curriculum. It’s a bunch of rules, but with very little to no teaching on having a relationship with Jesus. In fact, Jesus is barely mentioned. The only major teaching I can remember about Jesus was “The Commands of Christ.” Emphasis on the commands. Still no relationship. Most of the Pearl family-related books, such as “To Train Up a Child,” and the “Help Meet” books, throw a few out-of-context Bible verses at you, interpret them for you, then tell you what you need to do in order to raise kids properly, or be a good wife, or keep your wife in line. Again, there is very little emphasis on a relationship with God.

To be fair, I have not read/listened to any of Michael Pearl’s doctrinal teachings, but the family books are by far the most popular of their materials, so that’s what I’m basing my complaint on. They’re just another manual, another to-do list, of what you must do so that you and your family will be godly, as defined by Michael and Debi Pearl.

“Right living without worship is the arrogance of Cain, unacceptable for its lack of faith. Satan can tolerate us being good as long as God does not receive the praise and worship. The world can appreciate and even praise our morals (it makes for good citizenship), but they despise us giving glory to the God of creation, who is the judge of all men.

“Good kids without God are just bait for the sharks of this world. Sometimes the bait in its naïveté wants to be eaten. We can control the family and our environment so as to protect our children from the world—until they get old enough to seek it out, and then the only protection they have is that which is within. If God is not within, they are empty vessels waiting to be filled with folly and fornication. Those who fall from the highest moral standards fall further and land harder, doing more damage.”

Or – maybe those kids grow up, get a taste of the “real world” at their jobs, in their communities, or in their marriages, and realize that the big bad world wasn’t really as awful as our parents thought it was.

“I have observed that most of the failures come from families who did not raise their children in a community of believers.”

Ah, here it is again! The failures aren’t the Pearls’ fault. Nope. Definitely not. The failures aren’t Bill Gothard’s fault. Or Doug Phillips’ fault. Or patriarchy itself’s fault.

It’s because you didn’t take your kids to church.

Except there’s this little thing called “home church,” that the ultra-conservative homeschoolers and/or ultra-controlling homeschoolers like because then there’s no Sunday School, no friends, no youth group to steal the teens’ hearts away, no rock music to invite demons into their souls, no teachers or pastors to offer a different opinion… if another family or two joins your home church, then they’re carefully screened and carefully controlled to make sure that they don’t bring in any worldly influences.

“Few families are completely balanced, able to supply all the needs of their kids.”

Shock – there’s one line in this article that I actually agree with? Kinda. I disagree with the word “few,” because all families are imperfect, because all parents are imperfect, because all people are imperfect. Still, I come within 3 letters of agreeing with this statement. Don’t worry, it won’t last long.

“But in a church of like-minded saints there is balance. The church of Jesus Christ is God’s supply line of ministry to the family. If your family is not part of a Bible-believing congregation of saints, your children are being deprived of God’s method of sanctification and ministry. If there is no church or community of believers within comfortable driving distance, then move to where you can hear the preaching of the word and participate in ministry, and your kids can socialize with other godly youth.”

My parents changed churches 5 times in my growing-up years, and a 6thtime since I got married. Yes, that’s 7 different churches within my first 25 years of life. If you’re going to change churches every time you disagree with a church policy (not doctrine, *policy*) or every time they play a taped accompaniment with <gasp> drums with a soloist, then that’s not a very stable environment for your kids to grow up in. Remember that because you follow Michael Pearl, and/or Bill Gothard, and/or Doug Phillips, your family is one of the spiritually superior ones, so chances are, you’re more spiritual than your pastor or fellow church members. It’s difficult for a kid or teen with that mindset to be able to fully engage in and learn from church. Been there, done that.

Also, it’s very easy for Michael Pearl to tell families to “move to where you can hear the preaching of the word.” He’s never had to do that, because he is the preacher of the word. (Whose word, I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect he’s preaching Michael Pearl’s word more than God’s Word. Again, my only exposure to the Pearl philosophy has been through their parenting books, but there’s precious little true Bible in there!) It’s not exactly easy for a family, especially a large family, to just pack up & move to a new place and find a new job for dad that will allow mom to still stay home with the dozen kids, plus how about a house that they can afford debt-free that will fit all those people?

“But when everything else is right, if the husband and wife relationship is not a thing to be envied by the children, you can be sure that you are going to lose some if not all of your children to the world. The last you will hear of them as they look back over their shoulder is, “Hypocrite.” I have heard many say, “If that is what a Christian is, I don’t want anything to do with it.””

Nope. That’s not what turned me away from my parents’ brand of Christianity.

It was actually reading the Bible for myself (gasp… a WOMAN reading the Bible FOR HERSELF?!) and realizing that most of what they taught me IS NOT IN THE BIBLE.

“You need to have a family Proverbs time.”

Conveniently enough, one of the other articles in this newsletter just so happens to be about Proverbs Time! The Pearls are very good at self-promoting their other publications, as you’ll see in a minute.

“You need to “go to church.””

Why is “go to church” in quotes in the original article? You either go to church or you don’t. He doesn’t seem to using a quotation from another source. So these quotes just don’t make sense. Weird.

“You need to involve your family in ministering to others. You need to teach morals, character, and the Bible stories; but most of all, you need to look at your children and smile with delight, and they need to see you looking at your spouse and smiling with appreciation and thanksgiving. It is the difference between success and failure.”

Anyone else notice what this is? IT’S A TO-DO LIST.

If you can check off all these things – Proverbs Time, “go to church,” minister to others, and so on… then your kids will be a success. You can beat them within an inch of their lives (or beyond, as tragically has happened several times) and they will still grow up to love you and admire you and want to be just like you and raise their kids to also be just like you.

“Read again Created to Be His Help Meet and Created to Need a Help Meet. Listen to my FREE Romans messages online, and my series Sin No More, available through the NGJ web store.”

There it is – more self-promotion. Just in case you haven’t bought the “Help Meet” books, or the “Sin No More” series, then hurry your little self over to the No Greater Joy web store and send us money, stat! At least Romans is free… but it still seems a little tacky to be promoting his own materials as the solutions to all your problems! This also reminds me of Bill Gothard, Doug Phillips, and the like. Excellent sales technique – create a problem, then conveniently offer a solution the customer can buy to solve that problem. When that doesn’t work, encourage them to buy more solutions.

This is what I think Michael is saying:

“Yes, some homeschooled kids are failures. It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t the system’s fault – it was their parents’ fault because they didn’t follow my checklist! Here, buy more of my stuff & listen to me preach & at least your kids will be successful!”

Wifely Duties and Baseball Bats: Morgan Dawn’s Story

January 22, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Morgan Dawn” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warnings: rape, extreme physical abuse.

At the age of 3, I was adopted by a Navy couple.

Life was great for about 6 weeks, when they adopted a baby boy. That was when the horror began.

I was pushed aside, because I was “just a girl.” By the time I was 10, the couple had 3 biological kids, on top of myself and the other adopted boy. My adopted mother had lots of health issues, so she was either pregnant or sick.

My adopted father decided that since his wife wasn’t able to perform her “wifely duties,” that job would fall to me. The rapes were a weekly occurrence from then on. When I went to a DOD school official, my family decided that the “safest” thing for me was to be homeschooled. After all, I was a pathological liar.

Right there, my life changed.

They started reading everything they could about “To Train Up a Child” and proper disciplines for “obstinate children.” Drop a glass on the floor? I had to stand on that glass until my feet were bleeding badly. Slam a door? My hands were slammed in doors until I couldn’t help but pass out from pain.

I would sneak out of the house to see my boyfriend at night. One thing led to another, and by 13 I was pregnant. The father was killed in a drive-by shooting when I was 6 months along. I managed to hide the pregnancy (my adoptive father was on deployment to the Middle East, so no one was close enough to tell) until he got home. He wanted sex, and I said no.

O, the pain that “no” would cost me.

He took a baseball bat to my body for hours. By the time the paramedics were called, I was hanging by a thread, and in preterm labor. They said I’d never walk or talk again. My daughter was given (without my permission) to a family “friend” who let her drown in a pool on her 6th birthday.

Homeschooling hid everything.

No one really saw me anyways, so not seeing me at all because I was in body casts didn’t alert anyone. When my face had to be reconstructed for the 2nd time, everyone was told that my biological family had passed on defects that needed fixed. Schooling was “Here’s a book, read it and be prepared to debate on it”, but if the debate wasn’t “right” I’d get beat. It was hell.

By 18, I was ready to leave. By then, there were 10 kids total, and I was expected to sacrifice college to take care of them all. I couldn’t. So, one night, I left and never looked back. I’m now forbidden to talk to anyone in the family.

They were all told that all I was was a whore who left because I was pregnant.

I moved out of state with the help of a few friends that had known me before I was pulled from school. Apparently I was the only reason for homeschooling, as the other kids are all back in school. I was the evil sinner who needed punished. And now, I love that title.

At least this “evil sinner” is now living life the way she wants. I’m currently in school for Social Work, living with my biological mother, engaged to a wonderful man, and happy. The happy is so strange, but I like it.

There is hope out there.

An Open Letter to Debi Pearl

November 14, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on October 24, 2013.

Dear Debi,

I was very excited when I read your article of this past August, titled “The Roland Study.” In that article, you began with this opening paragraph:

My grandson Roland, who just turned one, has taught me more about the development of babies and toddlers than I learned my first sixty-plus years of life. It is not that he is such a fine teacher; it’s just that, now that I’m a grandmother, not responsible for meeting the daily needs of my children, I can seriously focus on what makes him tick: how much he understands, what causes him joy or anxiety or fear, his interests and responses—and, most importantly, what a child is capable of learning at various ages.

I am glad to know that you, like me, have become fascinated by listening to children and trying to understand what makes them tick.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? I am writing because I am concerned about your husband’s book, To Train Up A Child. I understand that he stands by what he wrote there, but I have read the book multiple times and feel that the central messages of that book run contrary to what you wrote in your article.

Let me offer some examples.

First is the way one views the natural behavior and needs of infants and toddlers. You urge parents to “always assume your cranky baby is sleepy, sick, or bored, and do something to alleviate the problem or meet the need.” This is wonderful advice! Yet in to To Train Up A Child, Michael has this to say of a cranky baby:

As the mother, holding her child, leans over the crib and begins the swing downward, the infant stiffens, takes a deep breath and bellows. The battle for control has begun in earnest. Someone is going to be conditioned. Either the tender-hearted mother will cave in to this self-centered demand (thus training the child to get his way by crying) or the infant is allowed to cry (learning that crying is counterproductive). Crying because of genuine physical need is simply the infant’s only voice to the outside world; but crying in order to manipulate the adults into constant servitude should never be rewarded. Otherwise, you will reinforce the child’s growing self-centeredness, which will eventually become socially intolerable.

In other words, you say that cranky babies should be assumed to be sleepy, sick, or bored, but Michael urges parents to view a cranky baby as selfish or rebellious.

Which is it? Should a parent respond to a cranky baby with love and compassion, as you urge, trying to find a way to meet that baby’s needs, or should a parent view a cranky baby as “self-centered” working to “manipulate”?

Next is the issue of actually listening to your children. In your article you write that, as a result of “studying” your grandson Roland, you felt as though you were “quietly listening to him speak before he could actually talk.” Yet nowhere in To Train Up A Child does Michael focus on teaching parents to parents to listen to their small children, whether they can talk or not. In fact, the word “listen” appears only three times in the book. It once refers to a girl listening to train whistles, and once to a father listening to his daughters sing, and the third time it is the child who must listen, not the parent:

However, if you are just beginning to institute training on an already rebellious child, who runs from discipline and is too incoherent to listen, then use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise. You are to rule over him as a benevolent sovereign. Your word is final.

In other words, you urge parents to listen to small children, to try to hear what they’re trying to say, but Michael focuses on forcing them into submission without ever mentioning listening to them.

Which is it? Should parents listen to their children, even young babies and toddlers, or should children be the only ones to listen, required to “surrender” because the parent is “bigger” and “tougher”?

Finally, when speaking of your study of Roland, unable yet to walk, you state that “I could clearly see that he knew what was happening and wished he could join the parade of feet running here and there. This baby boy was frustrated by his baby body.” Yet nowhere in his book does Michael point out that children might be frustrated, whether by the limitations of their bodies or by anything else. For instance, Michael states this:

How many times have we observed the grocery store arena? A devious little kid sits up in the command seat of the shopping cart exercising his “childhood rights” to unlimited self-indulgence. The parent fearfully but hopelessly steers around the tempting “trees of knowledge of good and evil.” Too late! The child spies the object of his unbridled lust. The battle is on. The child will either get what he wants or make the parent miserable. Either way, he conquers.

In other words, you urge parents to consider that they’re children’s actions may be the result of natural frustrations, but Michael seems completely unaware that this could be the case —

— or else he simply doesn’t care.

Which is it? Should babies and small children be assumed to be rebellious and selfish, or should parents consider that their children’s behavior might be the result of natural frustration, like Roland’s frustration with not being able to walk? Why does Michael not address the fact that the child in his anecdote might be hungry, or overstimulated, or tired?

I know this may be hard for you to hear, Debi, but many parents who read To Train Up A Child come away viewing their children’s normal behavior as sinful and interpreting their children’s natural needs as selfish as a result. They don’t come away with the idea that they should listen to their children or try to understand what makes their children tick, because that’s not in there.

Let me take a moment to tell you a bit of my own story. When my daughter Sally was ten months old, she discovered some potted plants on our coffee table. I told her “no” but she would not give up her interest in them, and, as a result of reading To Train Up A Child, I saw that as disobedience and the beginning of life-long rebellion. So I began to switch her hand every time she touched the plants. Nothing worked, and our relationship suffered. It was only when I called the contest off and took some time to try to understand Sally’s perspective—something never suggested in To Train Up A Child, by the way—that everything changed and my relationship with my daughter began to blossom. Rather than viewing her actions as disobedience or sin or selfishness, I sought to meet her at her level and understand what made her tick.

You said in your post that you have learned more in the last year about the development of babies and toddlers than you learned in the entire first six decades of your life.

Debi, I’m asking you, please reread To Train Up A Child and examine the advice given there with your new understanding in mind.

Ask yourself what message parents will take away from the way babies and toddlers are portrayed, described, and represented. Ask yourself about how articles like this and this and this teach parents to view and understand children. And then ask yourself whether it might be time to pull production of the book.

Thank you for listening,

Libby Anne

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.

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.

Public Schools and Home Dictators: Keziah’s Story

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

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Keziah” is a pseudonym.

*****

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.

*****

I have half-moons on the sides of my nose. They are actually the third set of bags under my eyes. I didn’t cry all night, or stay up late with a baby. In my mid-thirties, I cannot sleep at night. Once my distractions and duties rest for the day, ghosts play in my dreams and the memories of fears warn me to stay awake. The dark is when bad happens and my parents trained me to fear it.

A lack of light is evil.

Even now, I want to write anything but this. Writing is my life’s work, but this shouldn’t be my story to write. I shake my head, furious that I know this tale, my stomach forcing me hunched over.

I won’t write it – fuck them. Then I remember the other “them,” and write. I sigh. The quiet “them”no one talks about. My being a “them” that no one talks about, that my parents still try to silence.

*****

I remember a tired face, another face of my current age; this face was my face, only on a different person, twenty years ago.

This face stood over a five-year-old me, throwing fists on a starving body, as punishment for adding sugar to cereal or adding pepper to an already perfected meal, thus insulting the cook. I saw this face as I stood shaking every morning as it scowled at the unruliness of my hair, turning my scalp to fire so that it was perfect – a twisted mix of undiagnosed OCD and passion to present perfect children, so the ultimate secret remained so. I turned green every morning and threw up many and that face didn’t care. It showed anger that I was wasting food, wasting hair-fixing time so it could return to bed.

And yes, I was going to school – a public school.

You see, a home dictator doesn’t have to be a homeschool parent, or a religious zealot. A home dictator needs a cause – which can be simply to bury their pain or to feel powerful. My home dictator was mentally ill, and surrounded by enablers: my dad, her siblings, her parents, and once I was old enough, me.

You see, if an outsider catches a glimpse of a home dictator, they recoil – in fear, in disbelief, or with thanks their kids are unaffected.

You see, a child victim’s role in life is to protect the person assigned to protect them who actually fails the most. Any psychological means keeps that victim quiet, even in a public school. The maelstrom of life creates a lack of words for people still learning their words.

If the victim speaks out, that teacher or counselor must act because revealing the fear may happen only once.

You see, an outsider who escapes has little recourse. Often suffering and sometimes still dependent, she gets little help from a state agency – especially once she is no longer a minor. When I contacted CPS for my younger brothers and sisters, the initial phone worker asked little and the investigator saw food in the fridge and left.

American culture (and perhaps others, too) can change this. When I contacted my state’s child services, they wanted to know what they would find. I told them they would find no evidence – only children who believe those workers will take them to a new home, one where they will be raped and beaten, maybe experience the same treatment they do now, only worse, because they will have no parents who love them.

And those children will lie and protect. They will be confused and scared.

You see, there will be no evidence of abuse.

The weltschmerz of these children has inspired action and a weird happiness kept me reading Homeschoolers Anonymous. I fit in, even though I was never homeschooled a day in my life.

This movement that the Internet has enabled, comprised of parents and victims, the growth of psychology and the explanations of science and brain functions the masses can understand and access, this can be the kairos to educate about child abuse.

The identity of “them” is often formed in the name of God, for pride, for the appeasement of elders, for the appearance of good parenting. Homeschooling provides a hidden world, a place of acceptable child abuse.

The same stories happen with “them” in public schools, out in the open, with the same training methods so that children remain silent.

Corpses Don’t Rebel: ExPearlSwine’s Story

September 19, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Vyckie Garrison’s blog No Longer Quivering. It was a guest post by ExPearlSwine originally published on Patheos on November 2, 2011.

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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.

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The death toll from parents following Michael and Debi Pearl’s teachings continues to mount. Another child is has been “biblically chastened” to death via corporal punishment, and Michael Pearl is defending his teachings in the mainstream media while promoting his new book. Gary Tuchman and Anderson Cooper both reported on the death of 13-year-old Hana Williams, whose adoptive parents Larry and Carri Williams subjected her to beatings and neglect while following the teachings of the Pearls.

Michael Pearl defends himself and his teachings during his CNN interviews using two arguments:

First, the presence of his book, To Train Up a Child, and the presence of his other teaching materials on “biblical chastisement,” in the homes of homicidal parents, is purely circumstantial. It makes no more sense, Pearl argues, to blame To Train Up a Child for discipline-turned-abusive-turned-murderous than to blame Alcoholics Anonymous brochures in the home for deaths due to drunk driving, or weight-loss materials in the home for obesity.

As Anderson Cooper pointed out, this defense is illogical.

AA literature says not to drink, especially while driving. Pearl literature emphasizes inflicting physical pain on children in order to break their wills and achieve total obedience to parents. In the Cooper interview, Pearl talks about physically chastising to “get the child’s attention.” What if your child still isn’t paying attention?

Pearl’s second argument comes up every time his teachings are linked to children beaten to death: kids end up abused and killed because parents, despite owning copies of his teachings and trying to follow them, aren’t really following his teachings. They are missing the joy part, the reconciliation part, the praying part, the loving part, or whatever. They discipline in anger instead of in love.

Or—and I suspect this is what Pearl really thinks but can’t say without contradicting his own child-training directions—they should have known when to stop, when they were being cruel and abusive instead of loving, even if the child was still in rebellion and hadn’t budged an inch. At some point, a loving parent with some sense and a conscience will stop inflicting more pain. This is what Pearl believes, or at least one would hope this is what he believes.

This isn’t what he teaches.

I followed the Pearls’ teachings for years, and the children I subjected to “biblical chastisement” are very much the worse off for it. I’m wondering which part of Michael Pearl’s teachings he’d say I was missing:

Get Pearl’s teachings and read every single word and pray. Check.
Start striking infants with objects on the hand or in the buttocks area as soon as they are able to reach for something you don’t want them to touch and ignore your “No.” Check.
Hit them harder if they continue. Check.
When they cry, lovingly console them and “reconcile” them to yourself and God. Check.
Always use physical chastisement on them when they don’t respond to spoken correction. Check. If I didn’t strike them, my husband did.
Believe that they will end up juvenile delinquents and go to hell if you slack off. Check.
Pray and study the Bible some more. Check.
Be joyful about chastising your baby all day. Praise God while you slap a three-month-old’s hand with a ruler and think about how godly he’ll turn out. Half a check. It was hard.
The children will quit rebelling and be wonderful children who sweetly, quietly obey and love you to pieces. . . No check.

This is what I was missing: the part where the Pearls’ teaching worked. Only one child out of the oldest four quietly obeyed in response to chastisement, but she also had signs of severe emotional disturbance. She withdrew into herself and didn’t speak until she was two. The other three oldest children out of my Quiver Full of kids would rebel. And rebel. They would go to the wall rebelling. They would rebel until the cows came home and the bulls came home and calves were born.

The more you hurt them, the more they rebelled.

Michael Pearl has only three methods to deal with continued rebellion in children, since his teachings are straight from the Bible, and therefore infallible:

Blame yourself. You must not be getting my teaching right.
Hit harder. Pain is of the essence.
Blame the kid. What else is left? Other people’s kids give in and act godly.

Oh, and don’t forget to be loving and joyful and kind and patient just like Jesus (only I can’t see Jesus removing the diaper of a baby to inflict any degree of pain on her whatsoever using any object or even his hand, by any stretch of my imagination). Butdon’t give in. Don’t stop chastising, and make sure it hurts. Don’t let the kid (and the devil in the kid) win.

When the Pearls’ methods failed, I got stuck on method a. Blame yourself.

I re-readTo Train Up a Child. When I knew I had it right, I hit harder. Prayed harder. Did the whole disciplinary routine smiling from ear to ear and cooing like a dove. My babies acted freaked out by my grin (it was a lot like Debi Pearl’s vacuous, huge grin in the Tuchman interview) and were enraged by my efforts to “lovingly reconcile” with them after spankings. They kept up the fight. At this point, I think I would have admitted to myself that something was wrong with this whole child-training method and stopped torturing the toddlers all day to no avail. If you have to be cruel to get the Pearl method to work on some kids, it’s wrong. I had a husband, however, who was firmly convinced that Pearl was right. He went right for the b. and c. options: hit harder and blame the kid.

Options b. and c. are hard to do without getting angry. They are hard to do without leaving bruises, especially since Pearl discipline is cumulative: faced with entrenchedrebellion, you are supposed to hit repeatedly and in the same areas. My ex-husband got angry with the kids for thwarting the Pearl method, but he remained coldly self-controlled. He also left bruises. A lot of bruises.

Why didn’t I stop him? I finally did, but early in my marriage I was paralyzed by fear and brainwashed by bad teaching.

We both feared raising ungodly kids. We were looking for confirmation that some part of this system worked, and my ex-husband began to get results. The children flinched when he even moved. Cowered when he reached for a spanking implement. Had semi-seizures on the carpet following “biblical correction.” We got compliance with our wishes. Eventually, there wasimmediate and unquestioning compliance. My ex-husband had quelled the rebellion in three kids. He had created unfocused, freaked-out little robots who obeyed. The joy and the peace that was supposed to suffuse our home according to Pearl, we thought we could dispense with. Maybe it would come later; the Pearls are a little vague on where the peace and love should come into the process, just as they are a little vague on how you can keep “chastising” repeatedly with progressively increased force in the same places without leaving bruises.

To Train Up a Child is a manual of progressive violence against children.

Not only are there no stopgaps to prevent child abuse, the book is a mandate to use implements to inflict increasingly intense pain in the face of continued disobedience. The part about not causing injury is vague and open to interpretation, but the part about never backing down or shirking your parental duty to spank harder and harder is crystal clear. The Pearls’ teachings will lead, inescapably, to extremely strong-willed kids being abused and sometimes murdered by fundamentalist parents who are determined to “break” those children. The Pearls’ defenders will say, “Oh, they took it to an extreme and should have known better.” If anyone knows better than to keep inflicting more severe discipline on an intractable child, they can only apply that knowledge by scuttling the Pearls’ sadistic teaching and being more reasonable.

I think Hana Williams was a lot like my oldest three kids, only stronger. I think Lydia Shatz, the other recent Pearl casualty, was a lot like them too. Maybe their iron wills and endurance came from being born in Africa and living under harsh conditions. Perhaps, like some of my children, they had some innate sense that their parents were screwed up and that all their parents’ so-called “Christian love” did not cancel out or justify their own physical suffering. They resented being classified with the demons for daring to disagree, for wanting a relationship with their parents that wasn’t based on changing their behavior, personality, or identity. The pain only stiffened their resistance. They were not going to be broken by people who continually inflicted pain on them.

The only way to break the wills of children like this is to kill them.

The 911 call that Carri Williams made to the police dispatcher says it all.

Operator: What’s the emergency?

Carri Williams: Um, I think my daughter just killed herself.

Operator: Why do you say that?

Carri Williams, Um, she’s really rebellious, and she’s been outside refusing to come in, and she’s been throwing herself all around, and then she collapsed.

What’s wrong with Hana? “Um, she’s really rebellious.” She won’t do what we say.

No, she’s not, she’s dead. She can’t rebel any more. And you’re blaming her, saying she did it to herself.

Thank God I escaped from thinking like you, Carri Williams. Thank God some of my babies were mothered without pain, once I got away from their father and all the right-wing fundamentalist teachings that had ruined my life, Pearl’s teachings included. Will I ever forget the confusion and pain in the wide baby eyes of the oldest ones, when I first swatted their tiny hands? They were startled, bewildered. And then they opened their mouths and cried the cry of the completely betrayed, the absolutely alone in the world. I was the only person they even recognized yet, and I had hurt them.

To this day, it haunts me, as you will be haunted by your last glimpse of Hana alive, just before she collapsed. Hana’s last stand.