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Book Review of To Train up a Child

To Train up a Child
Pro-Nomos avatar reviewed Twisted Reviews on + 23 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


Well, I've read this book several times and recommend the book. I think the ideas he conveys are true and will yield good fruit in the long run. I do not think he ever advocates child abuse. (despite the bleeding heart reviewers here who say otherwise) I grew up alongside many Amish and Mennonite children and consider many of them friends today. They, like me, were all spanked, and given treatment addressed in the book. The Amish are some of the happiest, hardest working, most generous, community minded, and caring people I've ever met. To slander this book is to slander the Amish community and the Mennonite community. You don't see the Amish or Mennonites shooting others EVER! (and if it starts it'll be the result of a change in parenting to modern methods prescribed by psychologizers.) But you do see children and adults from homes where they were spoiled, never or not spanked enough, never told "no" but to "stop", grow up to shoot their own parents and siblings and others.

The longest negative review of this book twists what M. Pearl seeks for children considering the alternatives. I would rather have this man as a father than about 99% of other fathers out there who abort their child, neglect their child, sexually abuse their child, divorce their child's mother, gamble away the family money, spend the family money on a shopping spree, fail to work, fail to supply, sleep around on their child's mother, and other true forms of abuse and worse. It take a lot of work to bring out the best and take out the worst in a young one.

A loving parent training a child to not rebel, to put away hatred and slander, and other wrongs is never abuse. In fact it is wrong to allow a child to do these things in the name of "care".

One must read the book with deep wisdom and understanding to look beyond the short sighted views of most 'pychologizers' and parents who follow them who sooth children without truly looking and dealing with the root issues. There have always been and will always be people who do not like what the Bible teaches about life. If one follows modern day preachers like Carl Rogers, Sig. Freud, Joel Olsteen and Robert Schuller who are written about in the book of Jude and other Bible books as false prophets then one will not have an accurate view of God, man, woman, or children.

I work in a prison for males ages 10-21. I also have a BS in Special Education, and a masters degree in psychology which I have rejected outright as the fallacy of modern man, his attempts to solve his own problems, which always have and always will end in continued failure. Modern man's ego (yes I'm an equal opportunity blamer: women TOO!), his arrogance, his false view of self, his failures, his boastful tongue, his blindness to reality, are the very summation of modern psychology and modern counseling.

Indeed there is parental abuse and terrible, grievous manifestations of it. Trust me I deal with the results of parental abuse each day of my life at my workplace. However some of you reviewers with your overdone sensitivities to the plight of everyone's child must be balanced with a concern for what is right and true. There is a balance to life and the pendulum has swung too far the other way with the lack of disciplining children. Dr. Spock's child rearing advice brought us the rebellious 60's, and what we've got now: school knifings and shootings, parent's drugging their children with meds, the state drugging children with meds, massive and rapidly increasing amounts sexual abuse of children by children, addictions to drugs and porn, and on and on. We've even got to the point where our leaders can't control themselves. Take a look at Congress; nothing more than the manifestations of the same out of control desires that exist in little children gone to pot.

*I state this is because too many parent's have neglected and abused their children by allowing them to do whatever they want, when they want and however they want.*

I've traveled all over the world and I've seen abuse first hand. (Cambodia for example) I've seen its results in the bodies of little boys and girls. What M. Pearl advocates is not even close to abuse. You are naive and cut off from reality if you think otherwise. Jesus commands us to love and he commands us to train up our children in the way they should go. Jesus even says he disciplines those he loves, while he lets those who want to go their own way do so. Do we love our children? (then we must discipline them with wisdom, with love, and with consistency)


King James Bible
"All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits." Certainly what these other reviewers have written are right in their own eyes. However, it makes no difference to a believer in God's Word what anyone says except God himself. Judge for yourself, should I listen to God or to some of the 100,000,000 opinions out there. Should I listen to you if you get mad, slander, threaten, tantrum, and scream aloud? Should I listen to you if you become extremely judgmental? The answer is no. I will listen to you when you align yourself with Him who is the Truth! Jesus Christ the Lord.

A few of many more verses in the Bible about discipline:

*The Bible is the very definition of Christianity not what some modern day preacher says it is.*


Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.


Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.


Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.


If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.