The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Tag: Discipline

  • Why Do Babies Cry?

    mother neglects baby

    You would think that most of us know the answer to the question, “Why do babies cry”? My partner and I were blessed to have six children, now ages 46, 44, 41, 36, 34, and 31. We heard a lot of crying back in the day. Most of our children cried for one of four reasons:

    • They needed their diapers changed (Polly used cloth diapers for all our children)
    • They were hungry (Polly nursed all six of our children, on demand)
    • They were sick or injured
    • They wanted attention

    When our babies cried, we fed them, changed them, took their temperatures, or picked them up. Yes, Momma, in particular, indulged her young ones. Babies need their mothers, and Polly was a first-rate mother. She had to be, since her husband was rarely home to help with domestic responsibilities. I regret this, but there’s nothing I can do about it other than make up for it with my grandchildren. As most grandparents learn, grandchildren are a do-over of sorts; an opportunity to do better now that we have maturity and wisdom.

    Years ago, our church took in a homeless couple who was expecting their first child. We provided them housing, food, and gasoline. All we asked is that the husband get a job and go to work every day. Sadly, he was unable to fulfill this responsibility, and they were asked to move.

    One day, I went to the church building where they were living and I heard their newborn boy screaming. I mean, not just crying, but screaming, as only a baby can. The child was beside himself. I asked them what was wrong with their baby. I got a shrug of the shoulders. The mother said, “He will wait. We are busy eating.” I angrily told them, “STOP eating, and pick up your child. It is evident he needs your attention.” I feared child neglect, so the next day I had a social worker come to the church and talk to them about their parental obligations and responsibilities.

    Why they treated their child this way was rooted in what they had been taught in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches:

    • Babies are enemies of God
    • Babies are broken sinners
    • Babies often cry because they want their own way
    • Babies often cry, not out of necessity, but because they want the undivided attention of their parents
    • Most crying is a result of sin, and not need

    IFB preachers teach parents to ignore their babies’ “rebellion” against God, ignoring them until they settle down and stop crying. And babies WILL eventually stop crying out of exhaustion, but is this really how children should be treated? I think not. I was a strict disciplinarian — especially with my three oldest children — but not when it came to babies. I believed then, and still do today, babies want and need the attention of their parents, especially their mothers. Fortunately, I married a hot, sexy woman who was also a wonderful mother.

    Sadly, this kind of thinking often leads to abuse. I knew parents who thrashed their babies/toddlers if they disobeyed, giving them “something to cry for.” Imagine taking a switch or wooden spoon to the tender skin of a eighteen-month-old toddler or swaddling them so tightly that they can’t move.

    Don’t tell me that some forms of religious expression don’t cause abuse. They do, especially in their fundamentalist forms. Are these parents “evil”? Not necessarily. I spanked (beat) our children because I believed God commanded me to do so. I was obligated to use a switch to beat the “rebellion” out of them. Were my children, at times, rebellious? Sure, but more often than not, they got spanked, not because of rebellion, but because they pissed me off or did stuff that normal kids did. It took me a long time to learn the difference between rebellion and “boys being boys.”

    Can you spoil a baby? I suppose it is possible to do so, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve concluded that while it is certainly possible to spoil older children, that’s not true when it comes to babies. They need our undivided attention, and if parents can’t give it to them, perhaps they reconsider having children. (I speak broadly. I know that life can give us all sorts of twists and turns that might affect our parenting abilities.)

    Were you taught similar things about babies? Did your parental skills/discipline evolve over the years? Did you see child abuse under the guise of discipline? Please share your experiences in the comment section.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Cult 101: Jack Hyles Teaches Parents How to Indoctrinate Their Babies

    jack hyles praying
    Jack Hyles Praying

    If you are unfamiliar with the late Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, please read The Legacy of Jack Hyles.

    Excerpt from How to Rear Infants:

    Children should be taught that God has given to them a preacher. That preacher is God’s man to lead them, to teach them, to preach to them, and to guide and instruct them concerning their lives. It is important for a family to have a man of God just like it is important to have a family doctor, a family dentist, etc. For that matter, it is even more important! The parents should never criticize God’s man but should train their children to love and respect him.

    This can be done in many ways. One of the most important ways is to lead the child to pray for the preacher many times a day. Every time he bows his head to say grace or to say his “Now I lay me” prayers, he should pray for his preacher. He should get an early impression that one of the most important persons in the world is God’s man, his pastor.

    The nursery workers at First Baptist Church have little bibs made for the babies. On each bib is printed, “I love my Preacher.” This is very important.

    The child should feel that he has a friend in the pulpit and that that friend loves him and is very wise. The time will probably come when the parents will need the pastor in the rearing of the child. It often is true that a time comes when the only hope of saving the child is the pastor. If the parents have been critical of him or have a negative attitude toward him, the children will develop such an attitude and will not come to the pastor when they need him in a period of crisis…

    …When I was an infant my mother started a little ritual. Every night she would put me on her knee, hold her Bible in front of me and say, “Son, the Bible is the Word of God.” Then she would ask me to repeat after her those words. Three times she would do this. Then she would tell me that Jesus is the Son of God. I would have to repeat it after her. Again she would say it and again I would repeat it. A third time she would say it and a third time I would repeat it. She then told me that I should always believe those two great truths. Now I do not recall when she started it; I do know she started this practice long before I could comprehend what was going on, but as far back as I can remember I can see my mother teaching me that Jesus is God’s Son and that the Bible is God’s Word.

    She would then mention some kind of sin and warn me concerning its evil. One night she would take a whiskey ad. She would hold it up before me and say, “Whiskey – bad, bad, bad, bad! Whiskey – bad, bad!” Then I was required to say, “Whiskey – bad, bad!” She would then get a frown on her face, tear up the ad, throw it on the floor and stomp on it. She would shout, “WHISKEY – NO, NO! WHISKEY – BAD, BAD!”

    Mother was trying to associate bad words with whiskey. I do not know when she started this. I do know it was before I realized it, and the association between the words “whiskey” and “no” made a lasting impression on my mind and life…

    This excerpt illustrates the fact that indoctrination in cultic authoritarian sects and churches begins as soon as children are born.

    Jack Hyles was a pathological liar, known to exaggerate his pastoral feats. The stories told in this excerpt are likely exaggerations.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Michael Pearl Says Beating Two-Year-Olds is the Best Way to Get Them to Behave

    michael pearl
    Michael Pearl
    In the March/April 2017 edition of No Greater Joy, Michael Pearl gives advice to a mother who is frustrated with her toddler’s rebellious behavior. The mother wants to know the most effective way to turn her hellion into an angel. She describes her problem this way:

    My son is 2 years and 10 months. He is a bright, affectionate, patient, obedient child. Or at least he was until about 3–4 weeks ago. At that point he decided to start fighting me on EVERYTHING. Today I told him that he couldn’t wear his shoes upstairs (he never wears his shoes in the house, far less upstairs, and he was already wearing just socks) and he threw himself down on the stairs pouting. I told him to come talk to me, and when I picked him up he refused to look at me, and when I made him, he started screaming.

    Then I told him he needed to eat his carrots at lunchtime (vegetables have been our number one battle his entire life, but had been going great the last year or so), and he had a gigantic tantrum. He screamed and yelled and refused to do it. I gave him mild spankings, then he went back to the table and still refused. I told him he could go eat by himself and he told me no. So I gave him a good spanking and he laid across my lap screaming “NO! NO! I DON’T LIKE IT!!!!” continually, refusing to be quiet. Eventually he gave in, but he was still angry, not repentant.

    He will throw fits about the craziest things. Yesterday we went to the park, and my mom (who had played with him the whole time) asked if he had a good time. He definitely had, but decided to say “No!” I told him that wasn’t true and it wasn’t polite and he needed to say “Yes, thank you.” He refused and threw himself down on the ground and made me drag him to the car (although he stood up right quick when I accidentally drug him through dog poop). Once in the car he tried to fight me on getting buckled and then tried to hit me.

    He never used to hit me, but in the last week it is like his tantrums are not effective so he is trying more intense techniques. He refuses to answer me when I talk to him if he doesn’t feel like it. Any time I ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do, he throws himself on the floor either in a pouty lump (which to me is a quiet tantrum) or in a full-on screaming tantrum.

    The mother has tried to beat her son into submission, but her assaults have proven ineffective. Here’s what she has tried so far:

    I can spank him for ten minutes and he is still screaming angrily at me to stop. Today my HAND has a broken blood vessel. I know you suggest a plumber’s pipe, but my husband bought one that was way too big so I hate to use it, and end up using my hand most of the time.

    ….

    I want to clarify, I don’t spank him nonstop for ten minutes straight. I spank him a few times, tell him to stop screaming, wait ten to thirty seconds, and if he isn’t trying to obey I spank him a few more times, and so on. I give him a swat every time he screams no (or something similar) at me. But I’m not whaling on him for ten minutes, it just takes a ten-minute block of time sometimes for him to submit.

    Pearl begins by correcting the woman about using a plumber’s pipe to encourage her child in the Lord. Evidently, the woman’s husband bought a rigid PVC pipe, and not the quarter inch supply line Pearl recommends:

    I have never suggested a plumber’s pipe be used to spank a child. That was the fabrication of a sodomite reporter for Salon magazine, picked up and quoted by The New York Times and repeated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, another anti-Christian sodomite, and repeated again by Dr. Drew, the BBC, and two dozen other media outlets. In my book To Train Up a Child, I wrote of how I saw an Amish woman wearing a ¼-inch plastic plumber’s supply line around her neck on a string to be ready at hand when needed. It is flexible and will roll up in your pocket or purse. It is not PVC and it is not a pipe. I suggest any small instrument that is light and will not cause damage to tissue—like a kitchen utensil: spatula, wooden spoon, ¼-inch dowel rod, etc., but not your hand.

    Pearl goes on to restate what he calls Biblical child training principles:

    For the sake of our readers, especially those who are new to our material, I will briefly state the concept of traditional, common-sense child training. Children, like adults, are complex souls of conflicting drives and emotions. They [infants] come into the world with all of the passion and lust but with none of the wisdom or self-control. To say it another way, small children have a gas pedal but no steering wheel and no will to apply the brakes. Infants, toddlers, and small children require steering and restraint. Parents must apply the brakes from time to time whether the children like it or not. Children must be made to submit to the oversight of caretakers, for “a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15b).

    When children are a little older (4 or 5) they are more responsive to being guided through reason and modeled behavior, but when they are two or three years old, reason is about as useful as a set of encyclopedias. Furthermore, good modeling goes unnoticed by a 2-year-old, whereas bad modeling seems to be very contagious at any age, more so when they are very young. A 2-year-old will pick up a lousy attitude like a cold in a toy store.

    All psychologists and so-called “child rearing experts” agree that parents and caretakers must set boundaries, or “limits” as they sometimes call them. They also agree that parents must “enforce” those boundaries. One psychologist says, “If you don’t set and stick to clear limits, your kids will push and push until they get their way.” But the professionals don’t offer any definitive means that parents can employ to “enforce” limits. “Time outs,” where children are sent into isolation for a period of time, are not enforcement; they are abdication of authority to the attrition of time. The entire Bible verse quoted above is: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15).

    Pearl spends a good bit of time analyzing the woman’s plight, looking for unstated reasons for the child’s aberrant behavior. Pearl puts much of the blame back on the mother and her inconsistent child-rearing methods. If she is consistent, Pearl says, then beating the child with the rod of correction will effectively end the child’s rebellion. He goes on to remind the woman that “the principle is that you as the lawgiver must win all contests of will. You must be the chief potentate and he the obedient servant to the rule of law.”

    Michael Pearl continues to preach the gospel of ritualized child abuse. His materials are widely read in some Evangelical circles, generating $1.5 million in annual sales.  I pastored numerous families over the years who thought Pearl’s book, To Train Up a Child, was the go-to text for parents wanting to practice Biblical child training.  The good news is that Pearl’s sphere of influence is shrinking. Some Evangelical parents now realize that beating their children into submission is child abuse, and that there are other, more effective ways to discipline their children.