beneath the stains of time the feelings disappear

it's ezzo week at tulip girl. so, as much as i hate to, here's my two hundred dollars worth.

certainly, from the beginning, all parents are, at the very least, a little bit selfish. the human desire to have children, bringing to a man and a woman a certain immortality with the birth of "a tender heir." possibly, these are the first selfish glimmerings in the hearts of ecstatic parents welcoming new, colorful, life into their own graying lives.

after this, parental selfishness manifests itself as, perhaps, the need for love and the need to be needed by someone other than ourselves. i remember worrying that henry wouldn't love me when he was born, mostly that he would be indifferent. hormonal worries, no doubt, emotions that sometimes manifested themselves as worry, others as the necessity for hot french fries. so completely ridiculous were these apprehensions! to this day i am the favorite person on henry's planet, and jude's to boot, a title that is often worn wearily but one that i would not relinquish without a really good fight.

and after these -- the need for legacy, the need for love and appreciation -- these make way for something darker, something precarious and sometimes scary. the need for control. certainly history screams of nefarious examples of selfish parents seeking their own advancement through the production of Offspring. and who will soon forget the angry king lear as his favorite daughter fails to flatter his need for Love? "better thou, hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better," the rash man had the gall to say! terrible as such things can be, i think that truly, i am the most fearful of being obsessed with the need to perfectly control my children.

i do want them to respect me as mama. i want them to know that ernie and i are the leaders, that we will lead the team in the best direction it should take. we are in charge and they must know that we mean what we say. if our household is in chaos then something must be done, the leaders must have things under control. but i refuse to succumb to the selfishness of being a controlling parent.



i'm not talking about doing things "decently and in order," of course. when i say "controlling" i really mean "manipulative." i'm talking about those parenting "experts" (and others) who promote the needs and wants of the parent over the needs and wants of the child.

one such sorry example of an "expert" is the horrible, nay, the odious gary ezzo. the man has as much business claiming that his dangerously strict baby feeding schedules, his weird and distorted views of sex, and his punitive, developmentally inappropriate, and borderline abusive discipline methods are "God's Way" to parent as thomas kinkade has rights to laud himself as the "painter of light."

the darkest aspect of the teachings of ezzo and the like is not in the abandonment of babies and small children to cry themselves to sleep, not in the slapping of infants and toddlers for acting on God-given curiosity, heinous as i believe those abuses of power to be. these are only glimmers of the scariest thing of all, the obsession with having control. the need to look the part of the perfect Christian parent, to never be embarrassed by a disruptive toddler, a goofy looking teenager. the need to have every moment a picture of perfection, with children who do not express any emotion other than smiling compliance at every command, the family climate set at a breezy sixty eight degrees year 'round.

establishing this kind of perfection can only be done through instilling a strong fear of the parents in the hearts of the children. "if they fear you, you will have control."

perhaps gary ezzo, michael and debi pearl, richard fugate, and [insert your favorite manipulative and ridiculous parenting guru here] the rest of them promote the "poisonous pedagogy," the manipulation of children through fear and brute force while rationalizing that it is for the child's "own good," hitler-style, but certainly Christ does not.

does Christ demand perfection of me? no! my only perfection comes from Christ alone, not from orchestrating a perfectly regimented lifestyle. why would i expect more of my child than Christ expects from me?

does Christ taunt me with sin and then slap me down and manipulate me and punish me every time i disobey? no! he covers me with grace and mercy for every minute of my life. when the King has forgiven my debt of "twenty years' wages", why would i in turn expect my child to pay to me the debt of "one day's wage?" (matthew 18:21-35)

does God answer me when i cry out to him, my father? yes! there is comfort and healing found in Christ. why would i then not answer the cries of my infant?

why would i not do everything i could to parent my child in the way God parents me?

so, there. my slightly unsolicited tribute to tulip girl's ezzo week. unselfishly do your research, you owe it to your children. you can start here, but be sure to check out tulip girl's terrific mountain of ezzo research.