They Saved Dr. Spock's Brain!
Are a couple generations of full-grown juvenile delinquents and society on the verge of mass insanity putting the final nail in the coffin of the liberal approach to how we raise our children?
(Note: You may wonder if Gene Kaye isn’t just engaging in hysterical hyperbole with this. As you read through it, please keep in mind we now live in a world in which the news we get includes that of a 6-yr-old boy stabbing his 2-yr-old brother to death…)
Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation—a 1962, 20th-Century Fox production starring James Stewart and Maureen O’Hara (think Summer Rental with John Candy, and replace Candy with the button-down, wing-tipped, cardigan-wearing Stewart of the 1960’s)—is about how three generations of one family get stuck in a summer rental, and all the wacky adventures they have.
We start out seeing Stewart and his wife: the ideal happily-married couple, with their heads all together, their relationship solid and their ideas on child rearing classical and effective for bringing up good children into good, productive adulthood.
Their children are the second generation: heads already filled with the psychobabble of Dr. Spock, who’ve been conditioned by pop psychology pap to be ‘liberal’ with their own children in their upbringing, as well as generally in their own lives.
Their relationships, in contrast to those of their parents, are all rocky, dysfunctional and falling apart.
And then there are their children, the grandchildren, who are unruly, undisciplined, wild monsters.
It was the picture painted by watching all that that made me think how we can have the best parents with the best intentions and the best methods for raising children successfully (most of which comes down from timeless Biblical formulas in the first place); and yet, the offspring can still turn out all messed up because of what external influences can do to literally and figuratively steal their children’s spirits away from the influence of their loving parents, and have them follow the specious vagaries of the liberal, permissive, laissez-faire attitude presented to society as a ‘more enlightened’ and, therefore, ‘more correct’ way of raising children.
And you’re all stupid and backward if you don’t follow it, and so will your kids be if you don’t get out of the way and let Dr. Spock, Howdy Doody and The Happy Hooker raise them.
For those who don’t know, Dr. Benjamin Spock was a pediatrician, child pop psychologist and radicalized, extreme leftist activist, popular in America throughout the 1950’s-1970’s, who was one of (if not the), chief architects of what’s come to be known as the liberal philosophy of child rearing, and whose writings on the subject were treated as gospel by the naive liberal parents of those decades.
This time was also the beginning of the conditioning that encouraged whole generations of parents to believe they were too stupid to know how to raise their own children, and so they were convinced it was best to let ‘experts’ like Dr. Spock raise them, while parents simply stand by and watch and pat themselves on the back for being sufficiently ‘enlightened’ and ‘progressive’ to care enough about their children to let strangers who don’t know anything about them, tell them how to raise them.
We can see the result of six decades of entertainers and entertainment, schools, governments, sex maniacs and criminals teaching our children the ‘liberal philosophy’ on what life’s all about, what’s right and wrong, and how to live.
After 60 years of this campaign to ‘liberalize’ conventional wisdom on child rearing, we’re at a place right now where literal anti-social, rebellious, disobedient criminals, prostitutes and the sexually insane are teaching our children in schools and through culture to be little more than anti-social, rebellious, disobedient criminals, prostitutes and sexually insane, as the substance of their education and upbringing; as local governments are breaking up public school and city council meetings and arresting parents objecting to the depravities in which their children are being indoctrinated, and national administrations smear all ‘recalcitrant’ parents as ‘domestic terrorists;’ all while seriously contending that parents have no right to influence the upbringing of their own children, anyway.
Because parents are too stupid to know what’s best for their own children, and their children belong to the government, don’cha know?
That’s where we’re at after 60 years of them saving Dr. Spock’s Brain and convincing countless millions of parents to let it do all their thinking for them.
“Summertime Blues” vs. The Lords of Discipline
However, there may be a glimmer of hope on the horizon, as a recent article from Revolver News seems to suggest.
According to the article, the Gallup people did a detailed survey of parents on child rearing, and the overwhelming results are an empirical refutation—on top of all the evidence we see before our eyes in the unnatural childhood and teen dysfunction and distress of epidemic proportions—of the very kind of liberal philosophy on child rearing we’re talking about here.
It looks like there are enough parents finally waking up to the dangers of the insanity our children are by now deliberately and openly being conditioned to embrace, and by whom, and why; and are doing something about it.
Worthy of noting from the piece:
“Teens in America are in distress, and the numbers don’t lie. It’s clear that American children are being heavily influenced by radical progressive marketing, leading them to make dangerous life decisions that fuel confusion, mental illness, and anxiety...
“The most important factor in the mental health of adolescent children is the quality of the relationship with their caregivers. This, in turn, is strongly related to parenting practices—with the best results coming from warm, responsive, and rule-bound, disciplined parenting... (emphasis added)
“Conservative and very conservative parents are the most likely to adopt the parenting practices associated with adolescent mental health. They are the most likely to effectively discipline their children, while also displaying affection and responding to their needs. Liberal parents score the lowest, even worse than very liberal parents, largely because they are the least likely to successfully discipline their children. By contrast, conservative parents enjoy higher quality relationships with their children, characterized by fewer arguments, more warmth, and a stronger bond, according to both parent and child reporting...
“...[T]he late Stanford University psychologist, Eleanor Maccoby, her colleagues, and students found that children raised by responsive, but limit-setting parents have the best outcomes. They described this style of parenting as “authoritative”—and distinguished it from permissive and authoritarian forms of parenting, which were not as successful. Children raised in authoritative homes are more likely to exhibit self-control, social competence, success in school, compliance with rules and reasonable social norms, and even exhibit more confidence and creativity...”
The rest of the piece goes on to describe how liberal parenting drives kids into self-destructive behaviors as a response to a lack of guidance and enforcement of discipline; leading to the conclusion that liberal parents, because of the complete failure of the liberal philosophy on child-rearing upon which they swear as gospel—in which permissiveness disguised as enlightenment is substituted for authoritative guidance and correction—are incapable, mentally and emotionally, of caring for their children and disciplining them for their own good.
The article concludes with what faithful and obedient keepers of God’s word have known and practiced for millennia: that the key to successful child rearing lies in the balance between loving, caring, compassionate nurturing, guidance and facilitation; and the need for authoritative example and a disciplined regimen to cultivate in children responsibility, a correct sense of right and wrong, and respect for the authority and wisdom of both God and parents.
The Word from God’s Word
It doesn’t take God’s word, a theologian or child psychology experts to tell most of us that such a balanced approach to child rearing is the best way of guaranteeing our children grow and develop into their full spiritually faithful and materially responsible maturity.
All loving nurturing and no discipline or correction, or all discipline and correction and no loving nurturing—although they each cause problems from diametrically opposed extremes—curiously end up with the same result: pushing our children away from us, away from God, away from maturity and responsibility, and into the sinful, disobedient, rebellious attitudes and behaviors associated with wickedness.
All permissiveness with no discipline teaches them they can be as bad as they want because nothing bad’s going to happen to them as a result, and gives them that attitude about everything in life.
On the flip side, all discipline and no loving nurturing causes children to resent parents, God, all authority, as only cruel, punishing and limiting, and forces them away from parents, away from God, away from maturity and responsibility and into the sinful attitudes and behaviors associated with wickedness as an act of rebellion against what they perceive to be oppressive authority unfairly applied.
Which is why the presence of both elements in the way we raise our children into adulthood is so important, and why its balance is as well. In order for children to respect and obey parental authority, it has to be, first of all, legitimate; meaning, it has to be fairly applied in such a way that the child recognizes it’s being loved, cared for, led and guided as well as being disciplined from time to time; while also being backed up with the authoritative example of mature and responsible behavior of the parents, to give their authority the validity that supports its power and influence.
Children need good authority to guide them, but they have to be taught to obey it. They don’t have either the cognitive abilities or the rational minds to be able to appropriate understanding simply on the basis of things being explained to them. They have to learn by experiencing in order for the lessons to make a lasting impact they can remember.
So simply telling them they have to obey isn’t going to do it when they can’t fully reason out in their minds why they have to, while at the same time being irresistibly tempted by so much around them, not to. They have to be shown why they have to; and the only way they can be shown why they have to obey is to be shown what happens to them if they don’t; and only then have it lovingly explained to them why.
Proverbs 22:6 reads: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” Because if they don’t learn obedience at an early enough age, then they’ll grow up thinking they can get away with anything, since nothing ever happens to them to teach them otherwise.
Because as children, we’re naturally inclined by the sinful nature with which we’re all born, to be drawn to what’s wrong much more readily than by what’s right.
Unless we’re taught differently.
Like Proverbs 22:15 says: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far away.” Proverbs 29:15 continues the thread: “A rod and a reprimand impart wisdom, but a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother.” Proverbs 13:24 keeps it going: “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.” Proverbs 23:13-14 adds: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death.”
Teach children that doing wrong, especially consciously and enthusiastically, results in swift and painful consequences, do it regularly, with authority and balanced out with loving nurturing and compassion otherwise; apply it fairly and gently and not savagely or out of control; and they’ll be weaned off willfully doing wrong pretty quickly and for good.
Balance and restraint are the key in applying effective discipline and correction to children for the best results. Parents have to be firm enough to make sure the lessons stick, but not so painfully as to cause physical, emotional or mental harm or resentment in their children that can ultimately lead to hatred of parents and of the God whose authority backs them up:
Ephesians 6:4:
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
Colossians 3:21:
“Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.”
And all that’s just the earthly reflection of exactly how the Lord treats his own children; which is the example by which we learn how to do it with ours.
In Deuteronomy 8:5, we learn: “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” The Lord Yeshua himself backs up Moses in Revelation 3:19: “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” And Proverbs 3:12 completes the trifecta: “...[T]he Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”
So it’s not ‘cruelty’ or ‘oppression,’ as the liberal approach claims, that discipline and correction represent; but the kind of love that risks temporary disruption of the peaceful relationship with our children in order to deliver to them the harsh lessons they need to learn for their own ultimate good, that only a loving parent can lovingly deliver. Just as God does with us, and just as we’re guided by his word to do with our own children according to his example.
Hebrews 12:9-11 tell us:
“Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
That’s one of the most powerful endorsements we can get for the application of discipline and correction in the way we raise our children into adulthood: because learning to obey our parents as their children is the process by which we learn to obey God as his.
One final thought in support of mindfully applied discipline and correction as part of child rearing, comes from Proverbs 29:17, which says: “Discipline your children, and they will give you peace; they will bring you the delights you desire.”
So it’s not all and simply for the good of our children that we discipline and correct them, even though it is primarily. We discipline and correct them so they’ll be grounded and well-rounded enough with a good enough attitude and behavior as to cause us as little aggravation, worry and trouble as possible.
Like the Revolver article alludes, parents who combine authoritative discipline with loving nurturing and guidance, enjoy the happiest and most trouble-free, life-long relationships with their children, and their children grow up to be the most well-rounded and well-adjusted, rational and mature adults.
What do liberal parents who raise their children (or rather, don’t raise their children), mostly have to deal with? Other than stress, constant friction, rebelliousness, disrespect, exploitation by their own kids; the headaches associated with disobedient and reckless behavior; bailing their kids out of jail; having to come to the principal’s office four times a month?
Or, degenerating themselves into a like depravity fast on the heels of their children, just so they can dismiss the filthy behavior of their children as well as their own failure in doing right by them?
There’s a reason God’s fourth commandment in Exodus 20:12 is the only one that comes with a rider attached to it: “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
So that’s why obedience and why it needs to be taught to our children: not because of making them knuckle under to an oppressive or exploitative authority; but to guide them successfully through life and prevent them from being lured astray into everything that leads to the death that we as children can’t understand without somebody who loves us enough to steer us away from it.
And that’s exactly why that last nail on the coffin of the liberal philosophy on child rearing—that aggressively eschews and condemns any exercise of any parental authority over children—needs to be hammered in already and the whole thing just lowered into the ground and buried for good.
So that no more 2-yr-old boys stabbed to death by their 6-yr-old brothers will ever have to be again.
(Photo Credits: © 1973 Universal Television; © 1968 Gold Key Entertainment; WallpaperAccess.com)
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