Where is the "gentle Pearl"?

[nurturinglovely]

So - my friend forwarded something to me - i don't know where she got it from - about how one of the Pearl Girls was labled, "the gentle pearl". She is rejected and ridiculed by her family because she has commited to raise her kids w/out violence.


Anyone know who she is? Where? Does she have a website? Does she speak out? I would love to hear more of what she has to say! :think :shrug

[Wonder Woman]

I don't know about 'gentle' - I do know there was an article on their site about how Shoshanna trains 'without spanking'.

Read it a bit deeper, and she's doing what her dad does - calling repeated blows with a switch 'training swats'. :cry

[MarynMunchkins]

:hunh Dude, that's messed up. :(

[hsgbdmama]

:( It's semantics with them, but hitting all the same. :no2

[katiekind]

She is rejected and ridiculed by her family because she has commited to raise her kids w/out violence.

If this is true, then we can conclude it isn't Shoshanna, since they would all be familiar with the linguistic sleight of hand of "not spanking, just training -- with stinging licks from a switch".

Hmm. On a human level, if true, that must take courage, and I pray she will stand her ground.

[ArmsOfLove]

I recently had someone tell me about a Pearl dd who doesn't swat. I know nothing about her.

[forty-two]

I did a bit of research, and this is what I found:


According to the Pearls' website (http:// www . nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=meet-the-pearls), they have five children, three of which are girls (Rebekah, Shalom, and Shoshanna). This tallies with what they said in TTUAC - "raised five whineless children". According to Amazon, TTUAC was published in 1994, so if anything happened that was major enough to entirely deny the very existence of a sixth child, it must have been prior to that point. Personally, for all that I thoroughly disagree with their methods of child rearing, I do feel that family is very important to them and that they wouldn't deny the existence of one of their children to that extent.


Analyzing the three acknowledged daughters, I found the following:


*Rebekah: She was quoted in a Salon article about the Pearls methods of childrearing (http:// www . salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/05/25/the_pearls/index4.html) where she said that her parents did the right thing, that her memories of growing up are of pleasant times spent with her dad, and that she is who she is because her parents gave of themselves. In reference to her own methods of childrearing:
Does Anast [her married name] "train" her own three kids? Yes, though "98 percent of the time" she and her husband rely on the more "creative" penalties she remembers from her childhood. If they do spank, they use a "tiny little switch the size of a chopstick," she says. "It's a little swat on the back of the hand that says, 'Don't touch that,' or a swat on the back of the calf that says, 'Stop crying, buck up, be a happy girl.' It never breaks the skin or leaves a mark. It's not like 'going out to the barn for a beating.'"

Her husband also designed the Pearls' website. So probably not her.


*Shoshanna: Given her article has already been thoroughly dissected here, I'm not going to rehash it. Suffice it to say it is probably not her either.


*Shalom: This seems the most likely bet, although not to the extent that the email referenced in the OP said. In an article on the Pearls' site (http:// www . nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=52&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=261&tx_ttnews%5BbackPID%5D=3), Shalom says:
Everyone calls me the “soft-hearted Pearl”, and knowing this to be truth, I knew that I would have to train my children so well that I would not have to rely on spanking. Therefore I gave diligence to early training. [emphasis mine]
Despite what you might be thinking, the "early training" described was actually quite gentle, and didn't involve "training swats". Swats were only mentioned once, in what was otherwise a pretty gentle method of retraining kids to come while called - she even mentioned that spanking would be ineffective.

However, in addition to writing (gentle-ish) articles for their site, she and her husband help with the Pearls' seminars. So not exactly a wholesale rejection of her parents' methods, and certainly she is not disowned by them.


Still, in absence of a mythical sixth child who has been erased from the family prior to 1994, I would say she is the "gentle Pearl" in question.

[katiekind]

Thank you for your hard work in researching. You're a woman after my own heart! :giggle :hug

Seriously, though, it's great. I'd always rather take a little extra time to nail down what's verifiable. :thumbsup If the Pearl daughters looked here--and this is a public board--I'd like them to see that we tried to handle their situation with accuracy even if we don't agree on the value of their father's materials.