I’ve been avoiding talking about this series of pieces up on the No Greater Joy Magazine website. They are about Gentle Parenting, and are supposed to be by Michael Pearl. The only problem is that the syntax, yet again, does not sound like either Michael or Debi, but some not so clever forgerer that knows Mike well. This is more of that “pay no mind to the man behind the curtain” nonsense they seem to be promoting to pretend Michael is well and it’s business as usual. Not quite. Michael Pearl allegedly thinks you should beat your kids while being gentle.

Faux Michael goes way out of his way to claim that their avocation of parenting is mostly the same as Gentle Parenting. He starts by pointing out he’s seen it all and it all fails. Verbal vomit that is meaningless except for setting for Michael’s own views on beating the bejesus out of your children, just like it is alleged his grandmother did to him according to family members.

The reasons that child abuse ‘skyrocketed’ in Sweden is that they OUTLAWED CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, making all forms of physical violence against the law. People were not hitting more, they were facing the natural consequences of breaking the law!

What Michael misses about the ‘no punishment’ is that most gentle parenting involves allowing natural consequences, like those Swedish parents getting arrested for beating their children. Gentle parenting is more about being mindful in the moment, understanding and empathizing with the needs of the child. We’ve talked about that so often here, why it’s counter productive to beat a toddler who is crying from hunger or tiredness. You meet the need and do not punish.

Michael is trying to claim in many paragraphs here that 95% of what Gentle Parenting stands for he and his ministry believe too.

Too bad there is copious evidence he’s lying here. He has a daughter that had a meltdown when asked to pick a restaurant, a daughter that did the same when asked to pick out a new set of clothing, an angry divorced son without custody of his children, and none of them can possibly be described as financially successful or holding some great career. The proof, as they say, is in the eating of the pudding, and that’s some pretty weak nasty pudding.

Anderson Cooper is a broadcaster with compassion, common sense and is not a sadist. If you have to cite normal folks as evil it’s likely time for self-reflection. Michael’s brand of parenting is so not Gentle Parenting and beating children has no part in decent parenting, only abusive people. It’s been shown time and time again to produce lower IQ scores, produce bullies and those that will deliberately harm others, low self esteem, and so many other things.

Are Michael’s pants on fire, or his stroked out brain misfiring? Again, none of his children can be considered even remotely successful in any way, shape or form.

Again, see above. Beating children produces broken and troubled adults with difficulties navigating the real world. There are no greater examples of this truth than how poorly all of the Pearl children have turned out. Proof in the pudding indeed! This garbage is all followed by a lot of hand wringing about how Gentle Parenting has taken a hold in Christian communities and will warp the kids for all time and eternity.

Next time: Part 2. No better. This is all just truly nauseating and abusive.

Stay in touch! Like No Longer Quivering on Facebook:

No Longer Quivering

If this is your first time visiting NLQ please read our Welcome page and our Comment Policy! Commenting here means you agree to abide by our policies.

Copyright notice: If you use any content from NLQ, including any of our research or Quoting Quiverfull quotes, please give us credit and a link back to this site. All original content is owned by No Longer Quivering and Patheos.com