Ding Dong Parenting by Any Other Name Is Still Ding Dong

Some call it "grace-based parenting," some call it "gentle parenting," but no matter the name, it's the same-old, same-old ding dong that mental health types have been promoting for fifty years. In this case, it's not "ding dong, the witch is dead," it's "ding dong, the witch is still alive!"

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Transcript

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Got yourself children. They all be he's running while you pray they keep you up all night long on the radio show, because I Hello and welcome to because I said so I'm your host John Rosemond. This is the only podcast on the subject of parenting on the entire world wide web that's worth listening to, if I do say so myself. And I do say so myself. So a few years back, people began sending me emails asking my opinion, concerning what's called Grace based parenting, Grace based parenting. I looked into it superficially at first, but a superficial look, to be honest, was sufficient to conclude that although it masqueraded as biblical parenting so called Grace based parenting, you can't say that real fast 100 times without mangling it Grace based parenting was not founded on solid theological ground. Around the same time, a pastor, an older fellow around my age, told me he thought it was nothing more than a repackaging of touchy feely psychological parenting, which confirmed my impression. The promotional materials for the book and the program were, in my estimation, designed to appeal to women who let's face it, folks, men and women are different, and women tend to give lots of credence to their children's emotions. In other words, women tend to interpret their children's emotional output, assigning it meaning. And along those lines, Grace based parenting materials talk a lot about a child's so called, quote, inner needs, and quote, that sounds quasi psychological to me. And they promise that grace based parenting is going to endow a child with a set of four essential freedoms, to avoid to have the freedom to be different, and the freedom to be candid. Alright, so I think we're seeing what can happen when children are given the impression that they possess the freedom to be as different as they feel like being that there are no boundaries, to how much freedom to be different they enjoy. Folks, freedom is a wonderful state of being but authentic freedom requires self control. So until a child develops a good amount of self control, and rationality, a child's freedoms have to be limited by people who love the child unconditionally and know where and how to draw the line on such things as being different. mean let's face it, some expressions of being different, are not in a child's best interests and need to be nipped in the proverbial bud. I've told this story before, but it's a good example of what I'm talking about. My daughter Amy when she was four or five, one day announced out of the blue to my wife and I that she was a boy. She even told us what her new boy name was, I forget what it was but she had a new boy name. Without breaking rhythm, I simply said you can be a boy in your room Amy, but not in the rest of the house. You're Roma's, for pretending all you want. Besides, we already have a boy and we don't want another one. And that was the end of that. No big deal. No concern, no anxiety, no conversations simply. You can be a boy in your room. I tell parents all the time he you need to act like a sub hairier being like you've got it all together all the time. Because children do impulsive things emotionally and they do impulsive things cognitively, and you need to act at all times like nothing. And I mean, nothing they do or say throws you off balance. Why should it? Sometimes when I say that to a parent, he or she will something, say something back like, oh, gosh, John, I wish I could be that person. Come on. Don't give me that wine. You can be like that. There's no force stopping you from being like that. Your problem, dear parent, is you put your child on a pedestal. And that pedestal prevents you from seeing your child as brace yourself. The pedestal prevents you from seeing your child as an idiot. An idiot with lots of potential but an idiot nonetheless, I or II Yeah, you heard me correctly. I don't care how intelligent your child is. He or she is an idiot. He doesn't know what is in his best interest. He doesn't know how the real world works. He needs resolute guidance that should be provided with a firm loving hand. You had a child, it's time for you to grow up and accept the responsibility of being a superior being in someone else's life. superior beings don't scream and yell they're paragons of cool, calm and collected, like Carl, Carl, like Clark Gable and Gone With the Wind. Let me help you with this parenting thing, folks. Being a parent is a role that you play. Think of it that way. It's a role that you play. It's not who you are. It's a role. And you have to control the role. You have to manipulate the role you're an actor playing a part. If you over identify with the role, you lose control of it. Okay, so, back to Grace based parenting. Grace based parenting says you need to give your child freedom to be candid. I mean, come on, that's just insane. Have you ever been around a child who thinks he has complete freedom to be candid, right? You do not want your child to feel he or she has complete freedom to be candid. One of the problems with all too many kids these days is they obviously feel free to be all too candid. Especially when things don't go their way. When I was a child, I was sometimes told by my parents that I was to be seen but not heard. That simply meant that when adults were having a conversation I was to listen and not interrupt. The problem today is that parents let children interrupt. And furthermore, today's parents act like everything their children say is brilliant, that their kids are fonts of wisdom. And so their kids feel like they have freedom to be candid. And sure enough, they get candid. When is the last time you heard a parent tell a child that he's just plain wrong about something. You can say that to a child and not put the child down. You can say something along the lines of well scientists have determined otherwise. Or, well, the Bible has this to say about that. Children need to know that they're not the final word on the subject, whatever the subject is. They need to pay attention to adults and they need to listen to adults and they won't if adults don't act like they're worthy of being paid attention to and listen to. So I was giving a talk to a group of mothers in which I said my usual stuff such as children need unconditional love. Because of their sin natures a parent's love for a child must be unconditional. Him must reflect compassion for the fact that the child comes into the world already a slave to his or her second nature. And I also said as I always do, that unconditional love has to be balanced. By unequivocal authority. The children need firm authority as much as they need unconditional love. And I gave examples what firm authority looks like and sounds like people Because as regular readers and listeners of mine already know this, the discipline of a child is 90% of matter of presentation. It's mostly a matter of the child's perception of the adult has a calm composed authority figure who radiates 100% confidence and the legitimacy of his or her leadership of the child. So I told this particular group that parents should communicate to their children, not so much in words as in their manner, that they know what they're doing and do not need to consult with them their kids to know what to do, for example, that they do not need to consult with their kids to know what food to feed them at dinnertime, or at any other time for that matter. Furthermore, I said the calm composed authority figure does not really care what his or her kids think or feel about the decisions they make. The Bible tells us that Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child, that's proverbs 2215. And that it's the job of parents to exercise authority such that the foolishness imprisoned in a child's heart is eventually driven from it. By the way, the term rod in that context does not mean a spanking, it's very unfortunate that there's so many Christian influencers that stand behind that particular misinterpretation. The term rod and 2215 is a metaphor for parent authority that images God's authority, because parents are supposed to be God's imagers to their kids. Their their children's first representations of God's unconditional love, an unequivocal all encompassing authority authority. So I said, it's essential that parents do not do not allow themselves to be knocked off balance are off track by their children's emotional displays. Children are soap opera factories, they're driven by emotion. Until those emotions are brought under control, and a child's emotions are dangerous to himself and to others. If you and adult yield to a child's emotions, the child will not learn to control them. And is likely to grow up to be an adult who's driven by emotion. We all know people who follow fit that description are irrational, and they're all also often dangerous. So this flew all over one of the mothers in attendance. During the q&a, she began arguing with me or I should say she tried to start an argument with me, I'm too experienced fall for that. So I just let her rant. She said that she practices you guessed it, Grace based parenting. She was upset because in her estimation, my parenting philosophy does not reflect grace, and forgiveness and compassion. She said that if she was to follow my examples with her kids, her kids would be confused, even frightened. Mind you, she's never tested that hypothesis. And further, mind you none of my examples involve yelling or threats, simply firm, unequivocal direction. As in, it's time for you to pick up these toys, put them where they belong, said not from that silly squat that moms and some dads think they have to get down into and they talk to their kids but from a fully upright and therefore authoritative position. So I simply said that the fact that a child might react negatively to a parent's behavior decisions is no indication that the parent acted wrongly. But you see, this is precisely what most moms today think. They think that if something they do or say upsets their kids that they've done or said the wrong thing. In fact, they think the foolishness that often comes from their children's hearts. Isn't foolish at all, that it's legitimate and carries some important message they need to decode. So when it was obvious that she wasn't going to let up, I went on to someone else. But the mother in question wasn't going to let up and other after the the presentation, she came up to the book sales table and wanted to resume the exchange. And that's when things got interesting. She's read the book, Grace based parenting by Tim Campbell. And she's been through a grace based parenting indoctrination program. That's what I'm going to call it indoctrination. She accused me of promoting a parenting style that was Old Testament. She said Jesus came to change all that. The Old Testament God, she said, was a different God than Jesus, the Old Testament, God was angry. And he smoked people, and even whole whole cities when he was angry. Jesus, on the other hand was different. He was full of grace, forgiveness. And that's the parent she wants to be. She wants to be a Jesus parent. Wow. I mean, wow. I simply said to her that she needs to read her Bible more carefully. Thankfully, some of the other mothers that were standing around, echoed my advice, telling her that she obviously had a very wrong understanding of the quote, Old Testament and quote God, that for one thing, Jesus and what she referred to as the Old Testament God, are not two different persons that are the same person Jesus said. So Jesus said, Father and I are one. Mushy the mom in question said that the only time Jesus ever got angry, was when he turned over the money changers tables in the temple. Oh, wrong again. There are plenty of examples in the Gospels of Jesus becoming angry. But he controlled his anger. He focused it even when he was turning over the money changers tables, his anger was controlled. Okay, so this woman has been indoctrinated in grace based parenting and this is what that indoctrination has led her to believe. It's led her to believe things that aren't true. And as a consequence, her parenting is based not on biblical truth, but on biblical distortion. She told everyone that her three kids are all sweet and well behaved. Okay, well, the problem is that today's moms do not as rules see their kids with a good degree of objectivity. The other problem is that if you cater to your children enough, if you cater, in other words to sin, natures, then their sin natures will cooperate for a while anyway. All I could think was Lady, the day of your wake up call is coming. Anyway. I'm fairly certain that if the developers of grace based parenting heard the story, they would protest that the mother in question had gotten a wrong impression of what grace based parenting is all about and given me a wrong impression. Well, the problem is, I've heard similar stuff from other moms who experienced the grace based parenting indoctrination process. I've heard the same stuff about the Old Testament God versus Jesus. And how Jesus has replaced the Old Testament God, I mean, that is laughable. But the problem is there lies and in short, the mom in question wasn't a one off. The bottom line folks, Grace based parenting isn't biblical. It's an example of what I call biblical progressivism. Taking God's word and making it into something it's not. But something nonetheless, the tickles the modern ear, in this case, the ears of women, who are by nature inclined where their children are and are concerned toward giving indiscriminate credence to their children's feeling. The fact that grace based parenting obviously devalues the so called Old Testament, God also flies in the face of the fact that All of God's instructions to parents concerning how he wants them to raise his kids. His children are found in the Old Testament. In that regard, the New Testament authors do nothing but stress the importance of what God has already said. Folks, there is but one proper way to raise a child. It's not the grace based parenting way. It's not the John Rosemond way. It's God's way. And he parenting philosophy that re interprets God's way is not God's way. Refer the listener to Colossians two eight where Paul warns against being taken captive by deceitful philosophies that depend not on Christ, the Word made flesh, but on man's own thinking. I will also refer the listener to Proverbs three, five and six if you want your parenting path to be straight. Then trust in the Lord with all your heart and depend not on your own or anyone else's understandings. And that's the Old Testament by the way. Grace based parenting has its secular equivalent. Interestingly enough, it's called gentle parenting. I tried to say that with a gentle voice. It's called Chapter Chapter gentle parenting parents. Gentle parenting is the current rage in Hollywood. And among liberals in general, it's full of dingdong advice like follow your child and let your child do the deed jus, which are nothing but rephrasing to the same old same old dingdong advice that's been emanating from the Mental Health mainstream, which has encompasses probably 98% of mental health professionals in America in my estimation, and has encompassed that many since the late 1960s. When California psychologist and best selling author Thomas Gordon claimed the children. This is what he said. Thomas Gordon, the best selling parenting author of the 1970s claimed that children knew what was in their best interests. To which I say if children know what's in their best interests, they don't need parents. They need servants who will follow their instructions, which all too many parents have become, by the way, look good people. Let's get it straight. Children come into the world program not to be nice people. They come into the world program to be tyrants. The young child believes you can see this belief being reflected in the stereotypical behavior of the toddler the terrible tyrannical two year old. The young child believes that what he wants he deserves to have and because he deserves whatever it is the ends justify the means. God keeps human beings small for much longer than he does concerning animals species because young children are capable at the drop of the proverbial hat of becoming homicidal maniacs, turning on their parents and other people like homicidal maniacs. I mean, just imagine if a two year old was fully grown and imagine that fully grown two year old human being throwing a tantrum because you won't give him something he wants. Can you just imagine what a fully grown I mean, like, you know, six foot tall 180 pound two year old would do to you if you ever said no to him. A two year old tantrum folks, it's a case of attempted murder. And parents are told by people with capital letters after their names to let their children lead them to follow their children to listen carefully to their children. To give them what they want and negotiate with them respect their feelings. Oh yeah. And dang dong hogwash of that nature. I mean, folks, that's just crazy. And crazy is not good for children. at all. I'm John Roseman. And this has been yet another exciting episode because I said so the only parenting podcast on the entire world wide web that's worth the time spent listening to it. Thanks for joining me if you feel it was worthwhile, tell your friends. Spread the word. And keep on rockin in the free world