There is actually book written about how to "train up" a child
(and the dude who wrote it is STILL not in jail but should be)
At this time there are a lot of words being exchanged about a book by a fundamental Christian about training children's will to be broken through none else than the old fashioned switch method, and this is something that the person who wrote this believes is appropriate for babies who are nursing and who bite...he tells the reader in this book that to stop the baby from doing that, all you have to do is give a little pull on the baby's hair and to keep doing it until the baby is trained to not do that.
I am a parent. I have three normal kids who have been taught - NOT trained- to be the best humans they can be, and they have not disappointed me yet.. I was raised up "in the church." I know well the idea that people believe that GOD said "spare the rod and spoil the child," but I have yet to find those exact words. I do, however, know all about the verse in the Bible that tells us that the "Sons shall bear the weight of the sins of the father," and in my opinion, not only is that Karmic in nature, but more, it speaks very well the truth that I am aware of after having lived through it. The man who fathered my children is still the child who is scared, who is hurt, who is dealing with the demons that now he must face and do so without the help of a prescription that will make him NOT angry, NOT say ugly things, NOT do all those things that a clouded mind doesn't know that it is doing because it is so not aware of anything OTHER than the fight ensued with themselves. The sons who pay for the sins of the father are the sons who were, themselves, abused by those same men. The "sin" part of that, the way that I am thinking of it, is that these boys who become men with the idea in their head and because of the example they were shown that abuse is discipline because the Bible told them so who grow up to be the example of this one living truth.
And that one living truth is that yes, absolutely, children are like sponges and they do pick up on everything they see and hear and energetically receive from all sides. They grow up with the belief in their head that the way to get people to do anything for you is to beat them to the punch and keep them under control, and it is for no other reason than that the child who they still are on the inside still does not know what to do with all the pain they go through so they do as they were shown, take a child's and a woman's words as defiance rather than freedom of thought...you can guess what happens then, right?
It is my ...assumption....that if this "writer" is willing to switch a baby to train it like a dog not to bite its mother's breast, then, too, said same person likely is one who has also, through his words and threats controls the mother of his children and there is no one who can tell me or make me believe that there is not also at a minimum, and yes, through that action that the man demands from his family, emotional abuse. I could never hurt a child, let alone a baby, to train it in a manner that is hurtful, because that baby is not going to forget that he or she was hurt - no one would. What this "training" does is sets the kid up to be bullied and sets the mother up, through the use of religious or spiritual abuse, for a lifetime of subservience and servitude rather than what we are all meant to be in this life - in service, not indentured. Yet this is not what "author" Mike Pearl wants the world to know.
The book, thus far, reads as though his sorry attempt at making light of this all in comparing children to mules and dogs (and the fact that he says he is not fond of cats tells me, too, that this is a person who will show children how to be bigoted against anything that such a creep would say is ok just because HE does not like them) and also to soldiers in the military who, through constant training of standing still on the commanding officer's words, have been brainwashed into giving up their own free will to choose, and the choosing here is not about anything other than the right that anyone, namely children, have to being all who they are, no matter what.
This book and its sorry attempts at humor even invites "unbelievers" to test out his methods of horror and abuse and encourages people to do so in order that the parents...the very ones meant to also teach these little people values and character that is natural rather than physically forced on to them...can have a break from the madness that is raising children.
I did not grow up in a militarily run home. I grew up in a 'scared we are going to hell home...what? Roxanne? Mapuana? You mean you know what is going to happen before it happens and you know what that person over there is going to say?"...yes, I did, and throughout the bulk of my own life, and due to the unneeded parental overflow of fear of what they might have to go through if I did something against the teachings they gave me in church. From a young age I believed that I would go to hell because I was gifted Spiritually. It was my mother more than my father who exacted this in me, and it was because she had the crap scared outta her when she was a kid by all the stories she was told about how we would bring some strange curse back to her family if we thought we might be able to practice whatever it was that I was told is akin to black magic. It was not till many years later that I was able to study why it was that this happened, and what exactly it was that brought this thought to her and her family, and it all boils down to how much a person really and truly has bothered to learn about a thing.
I bothered to learn.
And this is really what needs to be done - bothering to learn. If we bother to create new human life to be the mirror of who we are, and we are worried that the people who we bring into this lifetime are going to make us look foolish, that is not on the children but on us, the parents. Every single little thing that we say and do, and the energy that we put forth in the form of Love and Discipline through and with Love, and everything and every way that we show and share our Love with the rest of the world is shown and reflected through the light of our lives called our children. Why on earth would we want to squash that light with force and with violence, and why would we want to give the world another shot and people who are outwardly morally upstanding but who inwardly are still those very tiny kids with issues they are too scared to talk about for fear of going to hell? This is the sickest paradox of all- that parents control their kids who believe every little thing they are told and shown as being the truth, and it is our first heart break when we find out, at whatever age we find out (for me it was 42...no shit...), that our parents, for all their well-meaning intentions, really had no clue of what they were doing or saying and most of the time the things they are teaching their kids is the same information they were handed as children.
This is the ugliness and the black eye of domestic violence. When people think about the words "domestic violence," immediately the first image in their minds is that of a battered and bruised, emotionally and mentally drained woman who looks somewhat emaciated. This is the poster child for abuse at home. Yet, the reality is that domestic violence is not only a "woman problem" but a family and community problem. Violence in the home imparted on those who are told they are not in charge but in servitude becomes violence in play when children are toddlers, and becomes the bully at school throwing sand at other kids. Violence at home becomes that bully in the sand box playing house with that cute little girl with the boingy things in her hair and who emulates what he or she sees at home and violence at home becomes that silence of tears behind the door that is your teen-aged daughter who will not tell anyone her boyfriend is beating her or being awful to her because that violence at home is right outside that same bedroom door. Violence at home begets that same daughter marrying her high school sweetheart who was initially the bully in the sand box in grade school and who begets children who will be raised in the fear that she has known her whole life as normal, even though she, in the middle of her self and down to the very bones of her very soul, always believed that something was just not right.
Violence at home is the reason that people in high schools are gunned down for no apparent reason. Violence at home is the reason that drive-bys and robberies and assaults happen for no reason at all, and violence at home is one of the very most preventable communicable diseases known to man, and is also the very one which we all have, at one time or another, turned a blind eye to when in reality it was never that we were turning a blind eye to anything because the majority of us were raised in an atmosphere of religious fear, emotionally draining arguments where only the abuser got what he needed and to hell with the rest of the humans, not only under that roof he or she likes reminding people that THEY bought and that THEY ARE NOW ENTITLED to everyone in that house being scared of them and for what?
So that the abuser can feel comfortable with the controlling bullshit that he or she suffered as children themselves. I know this is the truth, because I have a parent who is scared to death of everything even though she tells me all the time that she is not and that her God has her back, and the other, who was my caretaker when it mattered for a kid to have decent and loving care, who was brutal with me when she felt I was out of line, and even if it were unintended. Yes, this is the truth and there is not one person reading this who will deter me from speaking my own truth, because in speaking my own truth, I not only get to let those whose eyes happen upon this blog know that they are so not alone, but more, I see where I have been, know what I have been and realize now that no matter what, for the most part, I did not deserve any of the abuses I was forced to endure.
This is the reality of how abuse bleeds out into our homes and how that ugliness of thought and energy becomes part of the normalcy that sadly, many, many "followers of God" have made as part of the everyday living in those homes. My thoughts and prayers go out to those kids, those wives, because inherently they know....
Inherently and down to the bones of their soul, they know they are being treated wrong. They are too scared to go to hell. Guys...I promise...you are not going to go to hell...
Spirit would never make it so that in any manner, violence is somehow something that is not reactive. Violence IS reactive. Time to respond rather than react...
I Love You All !
ROX
Rev. Roxanne Cottell (Reverend Roxie) can be reached via email by clicking this link.
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