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<\/a>This past week Homeschoolers Anonymous<\/a> has been running a series on Michael Pearl\u2019s child training methods. Over a dozen readers and bloggers submitted their own personal stories toward this series, and they range from analytic to heartbreaking. Many include graphic descriptions of child abuse, so please bear that in mind before clicking. I\u2019ll provide a brief excerpt for each post, just to give you a taste, and for readers who may not have time to click through. I\u2019ve made sure these excerpts are not excessively graphic, though a few do describe the implements with which they were spanked.<\/p>\nEggshells: Ava\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Splat!<\/em><\/p>\n Oh no.<\/p>\n I dropped an egg on the floor.<\/p>\n Here we were, my mom and me baking together, and in my imperfection (would it be the sin of carelessness today?) I had made a mess and ruined the idyllic moment.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry! I\u2019m so sorry!\u201d<\/p>\n I was shaking and nearly in tears. My mom, today, didn\u2019t think it was a big deal, but I was too frightened to notice.<\/p>\n \u201cStop it,\u201d she said, irritated at my fearful apology.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said \u2014 Oh no, I was irritating her now when she wasn\u2019t irritated before.<\/p>\n \u201cStop, you are not an abused child!\u201d Her voice was harsher now.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry!\u201d I sobbed.<\/p>\n \u201cStop crying, you are not an abused child!\u201d<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t. I tried.<\/p>\n \u201cStop or I\u2019LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026Because I didn\u2019t obey and stop crying immediately, I got a spanking. I needed to learn to control myself better. To stop crying when Mom said so, to only apologize fearfully when she was already irritated, lest I irritate her. I must learn to be obedient, to be holy, to be self-controlled. Until I did, Mom would never be happy with me. Jesus would never be happy with me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n To Train a Child, What a Train Wreck: LivingforEternity\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n It all started about two years after I had begun to home school my kids. A fellow mom gave me a copy of To Train a Child. She insisted it was the best help she ever had with raising her children. Since she had about eight at the time, I figured she must have known what she was talking about.<\/p>\n Took the poison home and swallowed it.<\/strong><\/p>\n The whole premise of the book is if your children are not obedient to you, their earthly parents, then how they will ever learn to be obedient to their heavenly Father. So their very eternity depends on whether or not you can get them to be obedient. What I didn\u2019t understand was that it was an outward obedience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My Own Son Cringed at My Touch: Michal\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I was an abusive mother.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n My kids are my whole life. I adore them and would do anything for them. I can\u2019t tell you how hard it is to admit, in writing, that I hurt them. I hurt the people I would do anything to protect and I have to live with that.<\/p>\n With many large families, as the oldest girl, I helped parent my younger siblings. So in my young teens, when these books entered our home, I was reading and discussing them with my mom to help \u201cparent\u201d. I was accustomed to lots of spankings with small branches or belts in my early years and so the book was not surprising to me. Instead of the occasional punishments, though, it laid out a horrific system of beating your children under the guise of breaking wills and spiritual reasoning.<\/p>\n \u201cA child is like a dog\u201d is the first thing I took away from the Pearls book, To Train Up a Child.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sibling v. Sibling\u2014Giving the Child the Rod: Libby Anne\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know exactly when it happened, but at some point early on my mom handed me the rod. She told me I was to spank my younger siblings if they misbehaved or broke any rules and she was not in the room. The rule was that I could spank any sibling at least five years younger than me. This meant that at ten I could spank my five-year-old sibling, and all those younger than him.<\/p>\n This breaks my heart because now, years and years later, my younger siblings tell me they saw me as a bully, that they resented me, that I \u201clorded it over them.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I may have been all that, and I definitely was far from perfect. Perhaps having this sort of power over them brought out the worst in me.\u00a0But I was ten, twelve, or fourteen, and at the core I did what I did because my parents handed me the rod and told me to do so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Being Told \u201cThe Child Will Not Die\u201d: Heather Doney\u2019s Story, Part One<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Recently my Mom told me something that shook me to my core. She said,\u00a0\u201cYour father said if you disciplined a child according to the bible, they would not die.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Then she told me she recognized the Pearls\u2019 book \u201cTo Train Up A Child.\u201d<\/p>\n It all got brought up because my 10 year old brother likes to give lots of hugs of his own accord, and my Mom and I were talking about how nice that is, how sweet of a boy he is, and she said she wished her older sons, now 25 and 22, were as loving and kind to her as her youngest. This started one heck of a conversation.<\/p>\n I reminded my Mom that her youngest had never been told to pull down his pants and bend over the bed, knowing he\u2019d end up with welts on the behind. He had never known what it was like to get hit with a belt or a wooden stick by his own mother. Also, today she instructs him that if our father says or does anything mean during visitation, he is to tell her right away because that is not allowed.<\/p>\n But she used to tell us kids the opposite.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Michael Pearl\u2019s Dangerous Child Training Advice and Renal Failure: Cindy\u2019s Thoughts<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0autopsy report of Lydia Schatz<\/a>\u00a0indicated that she died from a condition called\u00a0rhabdomyolosis<\/a>, 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 into 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.<\/p>\n Due to the severity of the spankings with [Michael Pearl\u2019s recommended] plumbing line, both Zariah and\u00a0Lydia Schatz<\/a>\u00a0suffered renal failure because of rhabdomyolysis.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n When Hitting Means Love: Rochelle\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember my first spanking. I actually don\u2019t remember all that many specifics about spanking.<\/p>\n I remember dad breaking the plastic spoon on me\u2026and then a switch\u2026.and then another switch\u2026.and then pulling off his belt and using it on me. I remember the sick feeling that I would get when mum would pull dad aside to tell him about how school went that day. That I didn\u2019t get everything done again.<\/p>\n That I spent the day listlessly looking out the window in tears, trying to process moving again and dealing with depression as a 10 year old.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n My Father Decried Michael Pearl\u2019s Softness: Warbler\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n My parents swore by\u00a0To Train Up a Child<\/em>.\u00a0 Any new parents that they met and invited over to the house were shown the book, read passages and encouraged to purchase a copy of their own.<\/p>\n First-time-obedience and spankings were commonplace in our home.<\/p>\n My dad would spank us with his hand, but my mom\u2019s hands were more fragile and after breaking one too many blood-vessels in her hands on our bottoms, she graduated to a paint-stirrer.\u00a0 When those continued to brake, she had a paint-stirrer custom made out of a 2-by-4 and varnished.<\/p>\n It was solid wood and it hurt intensely.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n My Regret: Quick Silver Queen\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I wish I hadn\u2019t done a lot of things, and wish I could change other things, but basically, I have one regret in my life. One thing that I wish I had done differently. One thing that still angers me to think about, because of the cruelty.<\/p>\n Thanks to a friend of mine who posted the link on facebook, I read an article titled \u201cFirst time obedience, really?<\/a>\u201d First-time obedience is something that is extremely important in my family. It pretty much goes along with\u00a0formula parenting<\/a>. The example my dad would always use as to the merits of first-time obedience is if one of his very small children ran out into the street (which wouldn\u2019t happen anyway), and a car came, he would say \u201cStop!\u201d or \u201cCome back!\u201d and they would do it immediately, unlike (again, his example) \u201cyour cousins\u201d. (Sorry, uncles and aunts. Don\u2019t feel bad, though\u2026at least your kids still have brains that aren\u2019t being controlled!)<\/p>\n So while seeing the downside to it (which I will elaborate on in a minute), I was also warring inside myself. It would save someone from death, right? So it\u2019s good? But on the other hand, I saw what happened, and it was most certainly not good.<\/p>\n Two years old. Rebellious. Self-willed. Wicked. Too young to like or dislike anything. Too young to have opinions.<\/p>\n Wait\u2026what?!?<\/em><\/p>\n Uhh yeah, that\u2019s my parents for you. They don\u2019t believe in the \u201cterrible twos\u201d\u2026they believe in \u201cterrible hearts\u201d.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Corpses Don\u2019t Rebel: ExPearlSwine\u2019s Story<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The death toll from parents following Michael and Debi Pearl\u2019s teachings continues to mount. Another child is has been \u201cbiblically chastened\u201d to death via corporal punishment, and Michael Pearl is defending his teachings in the mainstream media\u00a0while promoting his new book<\/a>.\u00a0Gary Tuchman<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Anderson Cooper<\/a>\u00a0both 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.<\/p>\n Michael Pearl defends himself and his teachings during his CNN interviews using two arguments:<\/p>\n First, the presence of his book,\u00a0To Train Up a Child<\/a><\/em>, and the presence of his other teaching materials on \u201cbiblical chastisement,\u201d in the homes of homicidal parents, is purely circumstantial. It makes no more sense, Pearl argues, to blame\u00a0To Train Up a Child<\/em>\u00a0for 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.<\/p>\n As Anderson Cooper pointed out, this defense is illogical.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Until the Dark Takes Us All: Shade Ardent\u2019s Story<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n this isn\u2019t just a story about mike and debi pearl and their book \u2018to train up a child\u2019, it\u2019s a story about my own growing up.<\/p>\n this book has become a popular book to bring about near-perfect obedience, in which the child has no voice. i grew up with its predecessors and then when the book came out, they applied it to us too. with fervent hearts, and willing fists, they applied discipline and attitude adjustments to us until our skin broke, and our hearts were numb.<\/p>\n unlike many brought up with these teachings, i was not home-schooled, rather i was private small church schooled.<\/strong><\/p>\n i see little difference beyond the size of the class in the methods of isolation and quality of education. we were being raised in what i now understand to be quiverfull movement.<\/p>\n by the time the pearls came on to the fundamentalist scene with their discipline books, mine were already well-versed in the methods. not only were they experts in this style of discipline, they\u2019d taught it year after year in the churches we attended. i grew up in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist cult of secrecy and shame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Public Schools and Home Dictators: Keziah\u2019s Story<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I have half-moons on the sides of my nose. They are actually the third set of bags under my eyes. I didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n A lack of light is evil.<\/strong><\/p>\n Even now, I want to write anything but this. Writing is my life\u2019s work, but this shouldn\u2019t be my story to write. I shake my head, furious that I know this tale, my stomach forcing me hunched over.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t write it \u2013 fuck them. Then I remember the other \u201cthem,\u201d and write. I sigh. The quiet \u201cthem\u201dno one talks about. My being a \u201cthem\u201d that no one talks about, that my parents still try to silence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Corporal Punishment and the End of the Red Stick: Heather Doney\u2019s Story, Part Two<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This picture could be anybody\u2019s little sister blindfolded and hitting a pi\u00f1ata at her Dad\u2019s house for another sibling\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n\n
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