Readers Write: Talking with Friends/Aquaintances About Destructive Parenting Practices

I hope the title didn’t make you think I was going to tell you how, since, well, I don’t know how.  

A reader asks,

Hey Molly,

I was wondering (since you and your blog are such a wealth of information to me at the moment) if you’ve come up with an effective way to talk to people who are pro-Pearls.  There honestly is a LOT of the Pearls stuff that I like, but the 10 percent that I dislike I rabidly hate.   Just wondering if you’d had experience talking to people who like TTUC without totally being offensive.  Because, at the moment, “their discipline techniques make me want to puke,” doesn’t seem like a great opening intro.  Ha.

I responded with my usual wisdom, which is obviously what draws readers to this blog by the droves—as in, said something like,

Uh…I don’t know. 

So what are your thoughts, commentators and commentors?  When I bought into the Pearls, I handed out their books (at least twenty, if not more) on both parenting and on marriage.  I can’t believe I ever swallowed their teaching now, but that doesn’t really take back the books I handed out then, you know? 

It’s particularly painful when I see parenting practices that I believe to be destructive.  Over-zealous Pearlites: a baby being swatted (oh, wait, make that, “trained“) at four months, learning to only reach for the toys that momma says are allowed, or a grown woman in turmoil about her sister going through a messy divorce (”Please pray for her, will you?”), and then finding out the reason for her turmoil has nothing to do with the fact that the woman’s been beaten and abused by a sadist for twenty years, but rather, because the sister has chosen the ungodly path of divorce instead of the godly path of quiet and meek submission.   

My experience, thus far, at trying to talk to super-pro-Pearl people (when and if the subject comes up, as well as attempting to discuss the issue with as much warmth as possible, not openly seeking conflict or a “debate”) is that my questions are either politely ignored or I get a worried glance as if, by questioning the Pearls, that can only mean I’ve left the faith and am sacrificing chickens with the pagans at night.   The look is made more familiar because I handed it out a few times myself.  When someone was against the Pearls, no matter what their actual argument was, all I heard them say was something like, “I don’t believe in giving children boundaries, I let my kids run all over me, plus I don’t obey what the Bible says.”  Let’s just say I had filters up that pretty much made it impossible for me to hear at all.    

There’s a place for liberty, and I know that, but it’s a little different when a philosophy causes other people a great deal of pain and/or suffering.  Who feels like giving “liberty” to the person who starts swatting their crying 2 month old baby, all because all he got out of the Pearls teachings was that God says we need to condition our kids into appropriate behaviours through use of the rod, and that there’s no age too young to start.  

Remember when  Ezzo was all the rage?  Now there’s enough people having come out of the Ezzo camps singed, disillusioned, and regretting they ever heard the name.  It used to be only a small trickle—and they were made to feel crazy, like something was wrong with them, that they were obviously not on God’s team since they’d just rejected, “Growing Kids God’s Way.”  Now the trickle has turned into a thunderstorm.  Ezzo still has followers, yeah, but the throngs of adoring fans are gone.     

You can quote me on this one: I believe, though it may be ten years out, that the same exact thing is going to happen with families who follow the Pearls.  I don’t even want to know some of the nightmare stories that are going to be told, but the few I know (some of which in real life) so far are enough.  

~Recommended Reading: Perfectionism and the Pearls