#to train up a child

[imsorryimlate]

the terror, 1x04 "punished, as a boy", 1x06 "a mercy" // to train up a child – michael and debi pearl

[mothofmany]

tw ramcoa

To Train Up a Child is TBMC

To Train Up a Child is TBMC

To Train Up a Child is TBMC

To Train Up a Child is TBMC

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

every time I'm reminded that to train up a child is a book that exists I want to give every kid who was traumatized because of it a million dollars and a big hug and I kind of also want to skin Michael and Debi Pearl alive

[andersunmenschlich]

Memories

They ambush me sometimes.

I remember the stripes. Deep purple at the centers, brighter towards the edges, and at last a glowing red. I remember how they hurt, how they burned like fire when touched.

Sometimes the center of a stripe would be red, too. That happens when there's no more skin there.

I remember the terror.

You had to relax.

You'd hear the whistling sound, and then the blow would fall, and you can't help but tense up then, you can't, it's automatic—just something the body does on its own—but you have to relax quick, because there's the whistle again, as fast as a hand can rise and fall, and the pain's coming back. If you don't relax, it'll hurt worse. If your muscles are tense, they'll be shredded a little bit. Pieces of them can get in your bloodstream, make it to your heart, kill you. Kids have died that way.

You have to relax.

I got real good at it. It's a skill, being able to let go of the tension a split second after pain like someone's pressed a hot brand to your backside, but I could do it.

They used to use paint mixing sticks.

You know those cheap wooden ones you used to be able to get for free at Home Depot?

But they broke them on me too many times, and those got splintery when they busted—might leave scars. You never want to leave permanent marks on a kid. Never know what trouble that could cause you, in this sinful, secular world.

I was five, I think, when they switched to those thin little black rods. Some kind of plastic, I think, about the width of a pencil.

Mom sharpened the ends of them in a pencil sharpener.

Nasty, whippy little things. They bit deep, but ate skin away real slow. No permanent marks. The impermanent ones were real colorful, though.

"Take off your pants," they'd say, and you'd do it, shaking and trying not to cry, but it's hard when you're only five and you're so, so scared. "Bend over," they'd say, and you would. No point in running. They'd only catch you and beat you more, harder.

They'd count it out. Each stroke.

You couldn't scream. If you did, they'd add more. Screaming is defiance. It's bad. You're bad—even worse than you already are—if you scream.

At first you can't help it. You're so scared, and it hurts so much. But you learn.

I can be real quiet when I'm hurting.

I learned early.

You gasp, and you shake, and you feel like you're being cut and burned at the same time, and you feel your body tense up like every muscle in you wants to pull in where it can't be got at, but there's nothing you can do and you can't get away, and there's water in your eyes so you can't see, everything's blurry, and you can't stop shaking but you have to relax! relax! and you can hear the rod coming back down and all the noise you're allowed to make is a terrified whimper, and they're counting, they're counting, it has to stop soon, just don't cry out and it has to stop soon.

Every day, as far back as I can remember.

And then they stop, and they turn you around all tender but stern and ask if you know what you did wrong—and you'd better get this question right! Usually they'll have told you at the beginning, but not always... and you can't always remember after all that.

I'm good at noticing what's made someone mad, now, and remembering it.

And you say you're sorry, and that you were wrong, you were bad, and you won't do it again. You promise. You mean it. You'd do (or not do) anything.

The pain isn't over.

It'll hurt for days after, even if they don't whip you again.

You say thank you.

It's what they want, what they demand. "Thank you for disciplining me, thank you for loving me enough to hurt me so badly I'll be scared of you forever, thank you for teaching me to be a better person, for beating me into being something your god likes, someone he won't burn forever."

And you hug them. You kiss them. You tell them you love them.

You make them believe it.

Lies are a sin.

If they know you've lied, they'll beat you again.

So you hug them, and you kiss them, and you say thank you and I love you, and they smile and hug you back and tell you they love you too, and having to do this hurts them more than it does you.

You can't sit down for a while after.

It hurts too much.

[delcat177]

There's an interesting hinge on the last bit, which is they're fine examples for restriction, but are also critical titles to be aware of, read, and understood, so that you can be aware of and understand fanatics.

I say that as a sometimes-librarian, in the facet of "Mein Kampf is good to have around because it's part of history, shines a light on the worst of us, and people are curious, plus it's objectively bad and undermines fascist arguments". It's a hot button and understandably so, but the going logic in libraries has been for many, many years to have it available, and I think that's a prudent choice for that case.

I also say that as an exvangelical who leans on the side of book burning for the singular title To Train Up a Child--lean, but come back, because it's horrible to read, but it helps me understand depths of religious trauma that I was able to bypass, which gives me the full picture of religious trauma, not just my own. Like Mein Kampf, it is also just. *Tremendously* evident to anyone not already entrenched in Gothardism that these people are full-blown whackadoodle and should be hung by the neck until sorry...

...or it *should* be, but can it be trusted to be understood?

I know we're talking about conservatives, but the really unifying and worrying thing we have going on right now is the death of media literacy. If honest to God *editors* are looking at Lolita and going "This is a book written to glorify pedophilia and should be burned", if the people in charge are missing the point that hard, we are in some deep shit.

I could go all the way out and say the Bible is available absolutely everywhere, to the point that you're encouraged to steal them from hotel rooms if your name or Biblical name is Gideon, and that it has supported white supremacy against its will for many, many years, but I don't want to sound pretentious, and it's not the Bible's fault. Nobody I knew in The Cults wanted to read it in context, they just used deliberate (or, in the sad cases, completely unaware and righteous) cherry-picking and "interpretation" to support hateful beliefs they already had. It's a hell of a lot of weight to put on a book so old they used to have to write it on dead sheeps.

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

[diabolicflame93]

Obedience / To Train Up a Child

Obedience, Emotional Control, To Train Up a Child, Gary Ezzo, Michael Pearl, and Shiny Happy People.

So many content warnings here. To Train Up a Child, child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, IBLP, and spiritual abuse. 1 I have some thoughts after finishing “Shiny Happy People” and “Counting the Cost.” The first is that the “shocking cult” of IBLP seems eerily similar to my own childhood. Sure, we didn’t have a strict dress code like the Duggars or other IBLP families. But much of the…

[airasilver]

I know my church used the book, I swear they did, not as bad as her parents did BUT I have a question.

If people are against book burning/publishing/showing some of the books around to children/people, why do they want this book gone?

I’m sorry but this is, to me, against what people say if they burn/get rid of this book.

I do agree that this book needs to be gone. I am wondering though…

[demaparbat-hp]

Izumi (steambaby) sketches.

[elodieunderglass]

Accidentally found this picture of a serious child sabering champagne and now can never know peace again

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

M'lady, doth this harlot bother thee?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[dollarstoreartsupplies]

okay so steph is definitely a music purist?

we can all agree on that right? like she's a 'said she was born in the wrong generation in middle school' fleetwood mac, david bowie, the mamas & the papas, niche modern indie artists and also chappell roan kind of music listener. obviously. but.... i dont think we've really considered pete's music taste?

pete, who is a science, left-brained kind of kid, so he probably does not actively go out to look for music and is instead just provided music by the people around him?

pete whose older brother is theodore spankoffski and so his earliest and most fond and nostalgic music influences from his childhood would have come directly from ted's cd collection???

basically what im saying is peter spankoffski has the most trashy, early 00's ke$ha, black eyed peas my humps era, all american rejects ass music taste in the world

that boy had bowling for soup's 1985 memorized at age four, his guilty pleasure music is hollywood undead's everywhere i go, ted did his first decent person move in years when pete came out as trans as a kid and stopped listening to grow a pear by ke$ha and pete forcibly made him play it because it's a bop

and then his only friends are a weeb and a theatre kid.

steph gives him the aux cord on a date to be nice, as a sign of trust, and is blasted in the face with the most uncurated mess of j-pop, sondheim, weezer, and like... owl city's fireflies and that's just a fact

[antianakin]

I hope this doesn't come off as a knock on the Jedi - because that's sure as hell not my intention - but I do sometimes wonder what could convince a parent to hand their young child over to them. Like, I get that the number of Jedi is miniscule compared to the expected population of the galaxy, and this whole ask is likely just the result of my modern, western, nuclear family-based upbringing. But there are times when I can barely see such a thing happening at all. I mean, if you're a Jedi Seeker, what the hell are you supposed to say to get a mother to willingly give you her infant child?

Again, I do hope this doesn't come off as a knock on the Jedi and their methods.

Maybe consider that the Jedi never seem to be actively going out there trying to convince people into giving up their children. They primarily seem to discover children on their own or who are in bad situations, or the parents call THEM of their own volition and the Jedi simply respond to the call.

You can also look at TPM and the way Qui-Gon handles it with Shmi. Now obviously Shmi and Anakin are in a somewhat different situation than most, given that they're both slaves, which would probably make Shmi's reaction to the offer different than those of regular parents, but Qui-Gon treats her as an equal to himself and as an authority regarding Anakin. He respects that authority by speaking to SHMI before he speaks to Anakin, by asking Shmi different questions about Anakin's past and his powers. And it's Shmi who picks up on what Qui-Gon is carefully NOT saying and asks if Anakin could become a Jedi. And that question lets Qui-Gon know that Shmi isn't against the offer being made to Anakin, so when he makes it official, he speaks to ANAKIN directly. But even after that, he still seems to respect Shmi's authority and her place in Anakin's life when Anakin turns to her more than once.

Shmi seems to primarily just want a better life for Anakin. Even without the slavery situation, she seems to recognize that Anakin's abilities mean that he has the opportunity for a specific career path if he wants it and she chooses to give him that opportunity because she never wants to hold him back. She recognizes that it would be cruel to deny him the opportunity simply to keep him with her.

So it's possible some parents probably view it the same way, that they're giving their child the opportunity for a better life than the one they can offer themselves.

Other parents, like Ahsoka's, seem to view being a Jedi as something of an honor. Even though they CAN give Ahsoka a good life, they recognize that Ahsoka has perhaps a greater destiny that they shouldn't stand in the way of and are HAPPY when Ahsoka shows signs of Force sensitivity. It's not just an honor for Ahsoka, it's an honor for her family and the entire village that she has the opportunity to become a Jedi. The other thing to take into account with this scenario is that the Jedi are sort-of seen as following a call to destiny of sorts, and there appear to be communities who understand that better than most, which means they're likely more inclined to let their child follow that call if the signs make themselves apparent. Groups with their own Force sects (like Lasat, Kel Dor, Chalacatans, etc) might be some of the ones more likely to understand this, which is why we see some of them with multiple family members in the Order at the same time.

These seem to be the most likely options for why a parent might give their child to the Jedi even if they love the child and would otherwise want to keep and raise them. There are also likely some parents who simply don't WANT a Force sensitive child for whatever reason, or parents who just take the first opportunity to offload an unwanted child when it presents itself. Not every parent is a good one, obviously.

I've seen some people argue that Force sensitivity might be something very difficult for a non-Force sensitive parent to deal with, and so they give the child away because they ultimately decide that they cannot appropriately raise a child with powers they cannot control. I don't really buy into this one because neither Luke nor Leia are raised by Force sensitive parents and there doesn't seem to be any issues with control there that we ever see or hear about. But it's POSSIBLE a parent might believe that they couldn't manage a child with Jedi powers and give them up on that assumption, even if it isn't true.

So, yeah, there could be any number of reasons a parent might choose to give their child to the Jedi, even if they love the child and would otherwise want to raise them. It isn't a choice that's going to be for everyone, obviously, and the Jedi have an entire list of people who have either said no or maybe/not yet that they keep in the Temple as a record. So some parents DO say no and choose to raise their children on their own even if the opportunity to give their child to the Jedi is made available to them. Or they simply need time to make the decision or want a little extra time WITH the child before giving them to the Jedi even if they know that that's ultimately what they're going to do.

I don't think the Jedi ever say anything to "get" a parent to give up a child they love. That's never their goal. Qui-Gon talks to Shmi about what Anakin's powers are and how they work, he tells her what her options are, and then leaves the rest of it up to her. All he does is give her more information to work with and an opportunity to act on it if she so desires. That's it. I can't imagine any other Jedi doing any more than that unless the situation between the parent and the child was particularly dangerous somehow and even then, I imagine there are lines they'd try not to cross. The whole episode where we see Cad Bane pretending to be a Jedi in order to convince the parents to give up their children shows us that the parents really DON'T expect the Jedi to do this kind of thing and feel perfectly entitled to say no when it happens.

It's not a choice every parent is going to make, and that's fine. It's not a choice that everyone even needs to UNDERSTAND, necessarily. Different people are going to have different ideas of what's best for their child and how to go about providing that. One parent might feel like giving their child away IS the best thing they can do for their child, even if they could give that child a wonderful life. Another parent might feel like that's the worst thing they could do to their child, even if their situation isn't ideal. These parents are likely to never understand the decision the other one made, but they're making decisions out of the same desire to protect and care for their child. Both are entirely valid choices and there isn't necessarily a right or wrong choice in this situation and that's what the Jedi would understand. All they're there to do is offer information and the opportunity to both parent and child, nothing more, nothing less. What the parent (and the child if they're old enough) does with that is entirely up to them.

[bitter-panacea]

Tough love