Happy Thanksgiving! QUOTING QUIVERFULL is a regular feature of NLQ – we present the actual words of noted Quiverfull leaders and aks our readers: What do you think? Agree? Disagree? This is the place to state your opinion. Please, let’s keep
Corpses Don’t Rebel: A former follower of Michael Pearl’s "To Train Up A Child" reacts to the death of Hana Williams
November 2, 2011 By 21 Comments
Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of infant and child abuse.
httpv://youtu.be/BP3gvhaA4uo
This piece was submitted by No Longer Quivering member, “ExPearlSwine” – who understandably wishes to share her story anonymously.
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). But don’t give in. Don’t stop chastising, and make sure it hurts. Don’t let the kid (and the devil in the kid) win.
To Train Up A Child: Michael Pearl's Dangerous Child Training Advice and Renal Failure
April 10, 2011 By 26 Comments
Pearl Method Problems and Kidney Disease Detection: How Many More Zariahs Will Go Undiagnosed, Untreated, or Unreported?
The autopsy report of Lydia Schatz indicated that she died from a condition called rhabdomyolosis, the rapid release of excessive amounts of broken muscle fragments into the bloodstream. Because the body cannot process such large amounts of these fragments, they end up lodging in the kidney, blocking the fine network of microscopic tubules that filter dissolved waste products from the blood and turn it urine. When medical treatments fail to open up these blockages within the kidney created by the muscle fibers fragments, the tiny tubules die and do not regenerate.
Due to the severity of the spankings with [Michael Pearl's recommended] plumbing line, both Zariah and Lydia Schatz suffered renal failure because of rhabdomyolysis. Had Lydia survived, we may never have learned anything about the extensive injuries in both girls, and they may never have been diagnosed and treated. Other children who develop rhabdomyolosis may sustain kidney damage that is not severe enough to cause full renal failure symptoms. If extensive and chronic, this damage can develop into “insufficiency” of the kidney which does not produce immediate symptoms and can be detected through laboratory testing. We only know the details about both children because of the publicity surrounding Lydia’s death, a matter of public record, but disease in children like Zariah will likely be missed because there may be no obvious, immediate symptoms.
Jocelyn Andersen reported on Blog Talk Radio on April 2, 2011 that she had been informed about another case of renal failure in a five year old girl within the Mennonite Community related to child abuse and the Pearl Method. Because individual States in the U.S. maintain their own Child Protective Service Agencies, prescribe different laws concerning child abuse, and limit the amount of information concerning child abuse cases because of privacy concerns, we may never learn the details about new cases of Pearl-related kidney disease unless it is reported by the families of the survivors.
Reflections on what went wrong
October 7, 2010 By 4 Comments
by Jo @ Woman Reclaimed
We’re rapidly approaching the anniversary of when I lost my life as I knew it. I’m finally to a point where I feel strong enough to boldly face where we went, what went wrong and what we messed up so very badly. We fell down the rabbit hole of Patriarchal matrimony. We didn’t necessarily mean to do so. Certainly, we never thought we were down so far as we truly were. We thought we didn’t fully believe in wife-only submission. We thought we never believed that the wife’s salvation is based upon the Husband’s favor. In more ways than I ever understood until the journey of this last year, we did fall into the trap.
Just in case anyone is wondering what my opinion on Patriarchal marriage is now, let me make it VERY clear what my opinion is and why.
Patriarchal marriage is dangerous. First, there is NO accountability to the husband. If the husband is ungodly or inappropriate, then you are to wait for God to deal with him. So basically, a husband can tell his wife to do ANYTHING he wants. The potential to abuse this authority with NO consequences is massive and scary. Only a very few men would not become abusive in some manner or another. There is no safety for a wife if her husband becomes abusive. There is no real accountability for men.
Patriarchal leaders are very open that a wife should never, ever concern herself with what accountability or oversight might exist for a husband, because that would be dishonoring his godhead in her life to do so.
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