So while I didn’t know you then, I am very blessed to “know” you now, and I thank you so much for continuing to share. It is very much appreciated!

Now, my challenge is knowing how to treat these people when I deal with them, which is on a regular basis. I know I have to love them and be gracious, but it is so hard knowing how to converse with them without being/feeling combative or defensive. No matter what I say, I can hear MY OWN response with a sigh and an eye-roll spouting back a familiar catchphrase in my ever-so-sweet humble female voice. I know from experience that nothing and no one but God can knock some reality into their skulls or serve up a big, hot slice of humble pie.

I appreciate your recognition that we can’t turn our children into what we want them to be. And I’m so sorry for the pain you’ve been through before coming to that realization. Blessings!

Brian McLaren says not to be a trouble maker but don’t be complacent either. That’s a difficult position to be in sometimes~ it’s easy to *appear* as a trouble maker!

Alison, it was not the Tripp material that urged parents to paint a picture of a God who hates children. I just wanted to clear that up because I have not read that in their books nor heard it in the video series. The situation was one in which a member of the church who worked with my then 8-year-old son was advising us on how to deal with his repeated misbehavior. (He was misbehaving while he was with this person.) She told us to spank him harder and more often. If he had not made a credible profession of faith, he was to be told that God hated him and was his enemy. I had never heard of such a thing and I read a lot of parenting books. Some research on my part revealed that this was a belief of Calvinism, although some would call it hyper-Calvinism.

The same church ran a video series of the Tripp material and a Sunday School class. The videos were pretty good but the interpretation of the class leaders came down to : spank them in the morning, spank themi n the noontime, spank them early and spank them long. I wish we could have dscussed some other aspects of parenting in a 12-week long class.
Tripp himself adds talking and praying to the spanking. Talking and praying is good and maybe for some children/families even the spanking is useful. My concern about this is the formulistic, even manipulative, approach, i.e. Spanking+Saying a Prayer=Changed Heart. In the above example with my son, it looks to me like I would have been bullying him into the Kingdom.

Another example might illustrate what I am trying to say. A friend called me and said “You are such good parents and I know you are into Shepherding so I’d like you to help me with a problem we are having with our son. He has been bickering all the time with his little sister. It reached a point where he stormed off to his room during dinner and said he would rather not eat than have to deal with Sister’s irritating behavior. He doesn’t want to talk to or reconcile with Sister. How can we change his heart?”. Well, I was thinking that you can’t change his heart. Little sister is irritating right now and maybe spending more time away from her is a good idea. You can’t make him love little sister, although you can say “You may not destroy the peace of our home by bickering,” That’s it.

I have read and listened to tons of Pearl and Tripp and a little bit of Ezzo. I agree with Alison that there is some good stuff in their work. I trust that I have taken the good and just left the stuff that didn’t apply to my family situation. The big, big mistake I made, however, was to buy into their philosophy that there was a formula I could follow or a program I could use to turn my kids into exactly what I wanted them to be. I was So foolish and went through much emotional and
physical pain before I saw how I had been deceived. I am not blaming the parenting gurus;it was my fault. Now I try to trust what I call “mama gut”.

Alison, the last line of your comment hits the nail squarely on the head. The way we interact with our children (as well as with our husbands and others) is the most influential and powerful thing we can do to encourage them in their relationship toward God. I would add also that our own relationship with God is something that children can sense even if it is not talked about. Molly, in that regard, I was wondering if you had done a post (or considered doing one) on how your change of heart has impacted your children?
Just generally, because I know that subject is a bit too sensitive to go into in detail. Thank you again for your blog, your honesty, and a safe place to discuss these topics.

(((hugs))))

I hope that I have mellowed as well. I know there’s a lot I don’t know. Life does have a way of humbling you. God at work.

Fundamentalists (when they go wrong, they don’t always) do need to be loved, I can say for myself. Underneath the self righteousness and “zealous zombie” demeanor, and the apparent deafness, there are huge amounts of pain. Unrealised pain. I think we need to remember that.