Chapter 8 Alabama Seminar

Transcription

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Announcer:  Television, intensely disrespectful children, bickering, and conquering defiance. Mike answers more questions at the Alabama seminar.

Michael Pearl:  All right, another question.

Audience Member: . . . tell them to do something and then they don't do it. They turn around and slap you. What do you then do? You can't spank them or whatever, and they still slap you.

Michael:  All right. Did you hear her question? She said if you're keeping your sister's kids, say, and you tell them to do something and rather than obey, they slap you. What should you do? [laughter]

Michael:  First of all, you need to go to your sister, the parent. The parent's responsible first. "I'm not going to be slapped, and I'm not going to be treated with disrespect." Say that in front of the kids so they can hear you. Say, "If I'm going to keep them, I'm going to have to be permitted to discipline them. That means spanking them, as well. Do I have your permission to spank them when it’s needed?" And if she says no, you say "I'm sorry. I cannot keep your kids then." If she says yes, you say, "Children, did you hear what she said? She said that if you don't obey me, I can spank you." You will find that those children will probably straighten up immediately. They may test you one time. Deb was . . . this past week with all these kids we were keeping, the boy that's in the cast—he's in a body cast. He's hyperactive. He's the one I wrote the article about called, "All Tied Up," about the kid that tied my shoelaces together when I was wrestling with him.

Boy, he's pitiful now. He's in a body cast. His legs are spread like this with a body cast with a rod where he can't put them together. So he has to walk with one leg sticking out like this on a crutch, and it goes way up to here. It's kind of squashed his personality. You know what he does now since he's hyperactive? He lies on the floor. You see, he's got a bump on his cast and spins real fast like this around the room. If you get in the way, the cast knocks you down, knocks furniture around, dents up everything. You go and you see him spinning like this.

My wife put him to work. She gave him a rag. He puts it on his belly and goes around and cleans the floor like this, scrubbing the floor with his belly. My daughter, 15-year-old, said, "You've got to wash your dishes." He said, "I don't have to do what you say do. Do I?" he said to my wife.

I said, "Look at her. Is she bigger than you?" "Yeah." "You've got to do what she says then." That was the end of that. So a parent needs to give authority to a babysitter or a sibling that's older that's in charge and say, "Yes, whatever they say goes." When that authority is passed to you, then the child will respect it. Another question.
Audience Member:  I have four boys and they constantly bicker and fight.

Michael:  All right, he says he has four boys that constantly bicker and fight. Do I have any suggestions? The number one thing you want to look at when kids are bickering and fighting is boredom. If you were to take four preachers and put them in a room all day long, take away their books, take away their books and their telephones and their computers and put them in a room all day long and say, "Now, we're going to eat in a couple of hours. Y'all play together real good, okay?" I guarantee you by the middle of the afternoon they'd be fighting, if they lasted that long. Of course, if one was a Calvinist and an Armenian, you'd have trouble before you got the door shut. But if they were all on equal terms, you'd still have a big fight. I wouldn't want to spend a day in a confined area with my brothers and sisters and nothing to do. I don't ever want to be with nothing to do. And I don't want to be given something I've got to do I don't like to do, some boring task.

So give me something that's creative. Give me something that can exercise my mind. If it involves an interchange between the other persons, a game that stimulates us together, then that's all the better. If it involves a conversation or a debate of some sort, that's all the better. I can pass hours with a good debate over some prominent issue and never get bored.

So number one, make sure they're not bored. Give them something to do. If they do fight say, "Look, I can see you guys can't play together so I'm going to put you in four separate rooms," and give them a task. "Can I go play with him?" "No, you fight with him." "Can we go play together?" "No, you fight with him." "Can we?" "Okay, let's see if you can play and not fight together. Fighting will separate."

Make them bring self-discipline into their whole life. Get rid of the boredom, and then make them bring self-discipline. If they start using physical force, then we use it back. In other words, they never were allowed to hit each other. If they did, then Daddy did the hitting. All right? Another question, back here, the row right over here on the side, this man.

Audience Member:  My son is four and a half, an only child. We've got people who have meant well and told us, "Well, your problem is you just haven't conquered him." Well, he's strong-willed enough and defiant enough that I made a deal with my dad one time that I couldn't conquer him without putting him in the hospital, because he can be just that strong and just that defiant. Now as he's gotten older, he's gotten somewhat better. It would half the time be more consistent with him in terms of dealing with him, but it's still a problem. It's not going away. We haven't conquered it, and we're not sure what to do to conquer it.

Michael:  Okay, he says he's got a four-and-a-half-year-old son that's an only child. He says he's strong-willed and that he shows rebellion. I guess, maybe tends toward violence?

Audience Member:  It can, yeah.

Michael:  He wants to know how he can conquer it. Let me just say this, if I had the child in my home I know I could conquer it. I say that to say that it's not impossible. When a parent tells me that, like yourself, I see a lot of difficulty for you to conquer it, simply because you've already got a reputation in your home of being beaten by this thing. He beats you time after time. He wins.

Audience Member:  I'm not denying that. That's why I'm here.

Michael:  What I'm telling you is, that's the difficulty you face, is that he's beat you over and over again. If I had him, I could put fear in him the first day. I would always deny any indulgence. In other words, if I said do something, or don't do something, and he threw a fit, I would always make sure . . . I wouldn't spank on him at first. I wouldn't beat on him. I'd make sure that he never got the indulgence. I would ignore, absolutely, that fit, and not be moved. Not become angry myself. If I got angry, he wins. If I don't get angry, if I just look at him  . . . and we've done that. We've had kids in our house, that we would keep, that would start throwing this crazy, screaming, squalling, "You can't do that to me. You can't do that. I'll tell my mama. You can't mistreat me. I want that."

We just look at them and start laughing. Everybody gathers around and says, "Isn't that funny? Look at him. He's throwing a fit. That's just like a little one. How old is he?"

"I think he's four and a half."

"That's amazing."

"Are you done there? What's he want?"

"Well, he said he wants an apple. He wants it right now."

"He does? It's this the apple he wants? [bites apple] I'll tell you one thing. One thing he's not going to get today is apples. You want an apple? He don't get an apple. We're not going to give this kid an apple. He'll never eat an apple in our house. You don't get apples when you throw fits."

We just sit there and look at him. Then we go on off and do what we were doing, and ignore him. As soon as you get out of the room, he'll quit. An hour later, he'll try it on something else. We'll say, "Look at him. I tell you what, he's kind of noisy. Drag him in the bedroom there and shut the door. We won't have to hear him." Drag him in the bedroom and shut the door. He'll scream even louder trying to get us to hear him, and get upset.

What's amazing him is that we're not mad. What's amazing him is that our heart's not broken. What's amazing him is that we're treating him like an imbecile rather than a like serious problem. You follow what I'm saying? We're not moved, either to anger or tears, over this thing. What we are moved to is never give him what he wants.

After I get his confidence, it would take me a couple days, if I was keeping the kid. After I got his confidence, then when he starts throwing a fit . . . now, I know that I'm not going to be able to spank him out of the fit. I'm not going to be able to spank him long enough for him to stop. I know that part of his defiance is to be defiant of any punishment or discipline.

What I'm going to do is reinforce my word and my will. Remember I said, "The first rule is win. The second rule is be perceived to win." In being perceived to win, I'm not going to raise the stakes to the point where you have to stop throwing the fit. The only point I'm going to make is, "Here's my switch. Any time you throw a fit, you'll get five licks." I'm not going to try to stop the fit, because if I do and he wins, then I'm in trouble.

While he's throwing a fit, I'm going to give him five real hard licks. Then I’ll put my switch up and I'm going to say, "Now go in there. I don't want to hear you. You're making too much noise." Ignore that fit and make sure he doesn't get what he wants.

If you are thorough and consistent, not only when he throws a fit—but you have to be consistent in those areas where he moves you to follow his will through any other slur or begging or whining or demanding—what you have got to do, your job is to convince him that you're a different person, that your wife is a different person, that the family is different, that your rules are different, the parameters are different, that you will not accept this any longer and you'll not respond the way you used to.

Because he's benefiting somehow out of this fit. He is gaining some ground. He is getting his will in some way, if it's nothing more than expressing, as a rebel expresses his hostility by blowing something up, that's a gain to him. He's gotten attention. He's made you react.

When you stop reacting, when he blows stuff up himself and you just say, "It's your problem, kid. It doesn't bother me a bit. Just get out of here. I don't want to hear it. Here are your five licks for it. Come back when you're sane." If you start treating him that way, he's going to find it's not profitable.

The second thing I’d do is let him play with kids two and three years older than him that are bullies and never defend him, never protect him. When he comes and says, " Mamma, they mistreated me," you say, "That's a blessing, isn't it?" I guarantee you, they'll do something you can't do.

On a couple of occasions, when one of my boys got haughty, I would find some bully for them to play with and let them get whipped on. It did wonders for them. It's kind of hard on Mother, but I explained it to her. They need it. And it did wonders. It really does. It helps humble them down.

I'll never forget when my son, my older boy . . . I tell you about how strong he is . . . when he was about 16 years old, he was way above his peers in athletic abilities and stuff. He didn't play professional sports, but when it came to swinging on a rope with one hand and doing a couple of flips he was good, and going hunting and what.

So he thought he was the best in the world. We come from a small community, didn't know a lot of people. He went to camp. Well, he came home humble. They beat him in the swimming contest. They beat him in the running contest. He came in second. He came in third, but he never did come in first in anything. Had some black boys there that could outrun him and leave him standing there in a cloud of dust.

He came home, and a couple of them had bullied him, kind of beat up on him. Boy was he a new fellow. I just loved it. It did great things for his personality. It's good to get them out of there, especially where it's an only child. Get them out of their little closed environment where they've created the pattern that they can respond in and get them where other people don't respond with reserve and control like you do, where other kids won't take that, where they'll laugh at it. They'll stand around and just laugh, ridicule him for acting that way. It will make a difference.

Another question. We have one more and then we'll have to stop.

Audience Member:  You mentioned a little bit today about television and videos, but what are your thoughts as far as raising your children and letting them watch television?

Michael:  Okay. He asked me what are our thoughts about television, videos, and about raising kids. Now, I know that there are some good things on these satellite . . . like the History Channel. My mother-in-law has a TV with a satellite, and it's got the History Channel. Not every time I get a chance, but often, I like to watch the History Channel. I love to watch about the Holocaust. They had one this past week on the Egyptians, and we went and saw the one Monday night about the Mexicans, about the early Aztec Indians.

I like to get my kids involved in seeing something like that, but what I don't want them to see is the commercials. If I'm watching something like that at my mother‑in‑law's house, then I keep the remote. I put it on a news channel or a channel that has alligators on it and how they lay their eggs or something. As soon as a commercial comes on, I switch over and watch the alligators lay eggs, and then we go back to the History Channel. Then we watch the alligators lay eggs and we go back to the History Channel, and then we watch the mating aardvarks and we go back. We stay away from the commercials.

I don't want to raise kids on videos. I don't want them to get bored in the evening and send them to watch a good Christian video or a cartoon or some Hollywood neutral-type thing because none of that stuff is neutral. It's all communicating something. Furthermore, I don't want them to be emotionally dependent on brainless entertainment. I want them to spend their evenings writing or reading.

Boredom is the threshold of creativity. Boredom is the first step to creativity. You've got to have boredom, and then you've got to be presented with an opportunity to involve yourself in some creative activity like taking a pencil and a piece of paper and either write a poem, write a letter, write your thoughts, or draw a picture.

My daughter, the younger one, sits around drawing all the time. I went and bought her fifty dollars' worth of anatomy books because she likes drawing so much. She sits around drawing all the time. The other one likes to read and has started writing all the time. Rebekah used to do music and write poetry.

If you raise kids on videos, even good ones, and by raise them, I mean give them videos every night for an hour or two, just one or two hours every night . . . if you do that, they're not going to be involved in music, in art, and creative stuff. It's going to destroy it because they're going to learn the way you deal with boredom is you kick your mind out of gear, and you let somebody entertain you. That's not a healthy thing, even discounting the garbage, the violence, the sex you have on it.

Regular TV is absolutely out. Regular TV with its blow-them-up, burn-them-up, and all that stuff. That's absolutely out. That's raising them on devil's stuff there, and you just as well send them to hell for the weekend or out to San Francisco as to let them watch television because that's pumping San Francisco and Miami, Florida, and Dallas, Texas, the filthy, dirty spots of all those places, right into your kid's mind, so I absolutely see the destructiveness of commercial television like that.

Unless it's educational or edifying—that's the key word—if it's edifying, if you can say come on in, Jesus, we're going to watch this. I want you to see this. This is good. It's going to be a blessing to us. If you can't do that, then you ought not to watch it.

That's all. Time's up. We got to go eat.

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Announcer:  As always, we hope you are blessed by what you have heard today. And again, remember to check out our great weekly online specials.