Child Abuse as Family Value
I saw a post at DailyKos this morning that brought me wide awake quicker than a double espresso.
ABC to Run Focus on the Family Ads, Rejected Ads from United Church of Christ Last Year
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/2/24343/06904
Yes, that FoF, the hate in the name of Christ people. And the comments led me to do a bit of digging on the issue of child abuse in the name of religion. Not a nice way to spend the morning, I can tell you. But it may help to spread the information, and pain around.
So, some interesting ideas from the American Taliban.
My first stop was the No Greater Joy Ministry page and unfortunately,( or fortunately, I’m not sure which), there was enough there for a diary.
This site offers parental advice along with books and a magazine.
It also offers a charming little article called:
Training Roseanna’s Flesh
by Michael Pearl, the male half of the website.
Even the title gives me the creeps. But forging ahead I find a lot of tips to raising the obedient child-some excerpts follow.
Twelve-month-old Roseanna has one adoring mama, one adoring daddy, one adoring five-year-old sister, one adoring seven-year-old brother, and dozens of adoring friends.
But Roseanna has one enemy–her flesh.
Yes, that pesky flesh, she has it just to annoy you too. If she were a good child she’d be incorporeal.
…if you wait until actions become irritating before you discipline, you have allowed them to confirm selfish habits that are then hard to break. You must begin training before the need to discipline arises. There will be fifty occasions a day where you will want to train your one-year-old.
Never too early to break the spirit. And it’s a hobby that never grows stale.
If you are consistent, the assertion of your authority will be such a non-event that others looking straight at you will never know anything occurred.
Which will be handy at the trial later on. I think it’s called plausible deniability?
If your little fourteen-month-old makes an attempt to dismount your lap, and you indicate that you do not want him to, and he makes a protest by jerking away or whining, then by no means can you allow him to intimidate you into compliance. For, by so doing you have allowed the authority to pass to him. You would be encouraging rebellion. YOU MUST ALWAYS BE PERCEIVED TO WIN ANY CONTEST. It is all determined by what the child thinks. If there is a seed of resistance in the child, it must never be allowed to grow. Don’t allow that spirit of rebellion to become profitable.
Heaven forbid.
I keep comparing this with Pastor Dan’s diary from yesterday morning, and can I just say a hearty Bless you Pastor Dan!
Back into the darkness:
If, during the course of a day, no contest arises naturally, you should arrange one. Seek opportunity to thwart the child’s will, to cause him to submit to your command. If you cause him to surrender his will to you twenty times during the course of a day, he will not disappoint you with disobedience in public. Tell him to stop, sit, don’t speak for five minutes, etc. Play the half-hour “quiet time game,” the half-hour “don’t wiggle and squirm game.” Refuse him a treat when he is wanting it badly. Give it to him only when he is joyously submitted to your timetable.
And this is only the school of psychological torture, when this crowd gets into the physical torture they really go to town.
But my stomach can’t take much more and it’s almost time for work so, one hopeful note.
There seems to be an enemy of total domination child rearing lurking about. Or possibly, eight!
On the front page there is a link titled-
Our own set of possessed Damsels
It seems eight or so women have been making life a bit difficult for the NGJ folks! They’ve been warning ministers that allow this group to use their church for NGJ seminars that the authorities are watching this group and that the church may be risking their tax exempt status.
They apparently had a hand on getting the Dept. of Human Services in Tennessee to look into this group, but that seems to have come to nothing.
They have reportedly left nasty reviews of the group’s products on sites that sell them.
While if they have also, as reported, messed about with the web site, this is a step too far but the earlier reported actions give me hope. So I say, bless the damsels and I wish them success.
A good example of creative action, although it doesn’t seem to have made a dent, maybe if it grew to 80? Or 800? Food for thought, I hope.