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Old 11-09-2005, 08:40 PM   #10
heartofjoy
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Default Re: The Pearl's "Good stuff"

Along a different train of thought.....

Something else that struck me today while I was reading Easy to Love, Difficult to Dicipline. The Pearl's website and articles (I am unfamiliar with their books) always feature disfunctional families who are at their wits end contrasted with a picture of their perfect family. I get the impression, reading their stuff, that their family is so great, so perfect, so Godly. Then when my own family fails to live up to that standard, I feel like a failure and I am angry at the people in my life that don't measure up--me, my kids, my dh. Becky Bailey, on the other hand, uses examples of her own mistakes and how she learned from them. She doesn't give you any rosy pictures of what a good family should look like....well, if she does, it's not in the context of perfection and perfect obedience. And everything comes back to MY behavior, not my kids. So following her discipline strategies leaves me feeling good about my kids, and even myself.

This really struck me from Chapter 2, pg 40:

Quote:
We see the world not as it is, but through a lens of our judgments about how we think it should be. This lens alters everything we see. When your children's school or your spouse fails to meet your expectations, you become upset because the world did not work as you thought it should.
Amazing as it may seem, this is the same reason a toddler throws a fit when you take away the markers she is using to color the living room walls. To the toddler, coloring is what should happen. To you, drawing on walls is something that should not happen. So you both become upset, overcome by the feeling of being powerless to run the world according to your plan. (emphasis mine)
I think this is so true. We set ourselves up to fail by having expectations of what the world should be. How many women are in miserable marriages because they think their dh should be romantic or help around the house or whatever else they read in a romance novel or saw on tv or saw their father do? The Pearl's answer is to use physical pain to produce behaviors that line up with what they think their world should be. When someone tries to use their training, and they don't get the results that the Pearls write about, then they are "overcome by the feeling of being powerless to run the world according to [their] plan." At least that's what happened to me. (I wasn't a Pearl follower or anything, but I tried the spank-for-every-offense method.) But GBD has taught me to let go of trying to control everything. I have to let go of my expectations of what my life should be and instead see it for what it is. I don't have compliant, easygoing children. God gave me firecrackers! I can choose to view that as exciting rather than exhausting. It's a choice I have to make moment to moment. My own emotional state is in a much healthier place with GBD than with the Pearl's. I think it all boils down to learning to control myself rather than learning how to control my children.
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