|
In Reply to: Re: Michael & Debi Pearl (USA) & John Angelico (AUST) posted by Family Specialist on October 25, 2008 at 05:20:15:
The fruit-flies at the Pearl's website (No Greater Joy Ministries) advocate potty training babies at 3 months! That's so profoundly ignorant that it's almost beyond belief. Imposing potty training on an infant at 12 weeks easily lends itself to becoming an abusive environment for toddlers.
What? Wet your panties?? Whack! Just a little "love pat" because the Lord loves you...
If you think I'm exaggerating, look at the case of Mandy Locke (a North Carolina devotee of the Pearl's child-rearing system) who is charged with the murder of her 4-year-old. Well, she might have gone a bit overboard when she smothered the child by wrapping him in a blanket to keep him from getting out of bed. After all, the Pearls haven't openly advocated putting children in what amounts to a straight-jacket, even if their child-rearing philosophy fundamentally supports this sort of external control as discipline. Not by coincidence, Locke's other children were found to have welts resulting from "godly" discipline with a quarter-inch PVC line, the instrument of correction recommended by the Pearls in "To Train Up a Child."
It's important to look at the overall pattern in what these bozos have to say about raising children. They don't talk about a few swats on the butt to set boundaries and establish parental control. They talk about a total system of child discipline that relies very heavily on corporal punishment, intimidation, and coersive control. Oh, and it's done all in the name of their God. At a minimum, it's spiritual abuse.
