No Greater Joy Ministries » Protecting Your Children

In the News

Debi Pearl — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:05:42 +0000

I did something to my man this past month, something I never believed possible: I put makeup on his nose. Yep, you heard me correctly. The news folks said he needed a little lipstick, but that is where he drew the line. You will never know how difficult it has been on the old boy … and he did it for you! This battle with the press reminds me of the days back in the early ‘80s when we were forced to meet the press over the homeschool issue. It was bad in those days; even the conservative Christians felt that anyone who homeschooled was rebellious. After all, a good Christian always obeys the powers that be, and in those days homeschooling was breaking the law. Really, at that point there was no law for or against homeschooling, only the law of truancy from the government-mandated public schools. Do you know that NOW your liberties are being threatened in a much greater way? There is a group of elitists that would like to take away the rights of the parent. They want to get in the home. They don’t believe you know how to raise your children. They lost the homeschooling battle, so they chose a new inroad—spanking, which they call “hitting.” It is a way they can take control of the family, and it is downright scary. Sweden passed laws against all forms of corporeal punishment 33 years ago, so it is the ideal laboratory in which to observe the consequences of abandoning traditional child-training methods. The generation raised on positive affirmation is now in their early thirties, and over 50% of the children are in some kind of therapy. Teen violence, crime, and antisocial behavior have risen 600%. In addition, parental violence against children has risen dramatically. Yet the law remains in place as people police-spy on each other and report any parents who would dare use any form of corporeal discipline upon their children. In accord with a UN mandate, 28 other countries have made it a crime to physically discipline children. Parents are placed in jail (and children are put into the government system) for practicing traditional child training. It is coming to the US. The question is when? Five years from now or twenty-five? I don’t know, but the media has chosen Mike and No Greater Joy as the representatives of traditional parenting, and they are coming at us with lying vengeance. Mike did two TV interviews last week and one on the radio. Tomorrow a crew is flying in from the East Coast to do their best to promote their socialist, progressive, anti-family agenda. So tomorrow, again, I will dot makeup over Mike’s old, spotty nose and he will stand on your behalf and fight the battle for parents to be free to raise their children in the admonition of the Lord. Pray for him. Your children need him to win this battle.

Be Careful Little Feet Where You Go

Debi Pearl — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:02:20 +0000

My friend Aaron told me that when he was about four years old his old grandpa offered him a taste of beer. His very conservative parents would have been horrified if they had known about it. Aaron said that one sip of beer made a permanent impression upon him. From that point on he knew that “Beer is yucky.” I had another friend who said that when he was about six years old his teenage cousin offered him a drag off his cigarette. The poor little boy spent the rest of the afternoon puking while his mean cousin laughed. The misery of a sick stomach and the mockery forever destroyed any mysterious appeal of smoking. It is interesting that it takes a lot of practice to learn to appreciate something as repulsive as smoking or the taste of beer, but when it finally takes root it quickly becomes a very compelling habit. In a natural sense, the young child doesn’t like either. It takes an effort to dull and kill the natural sense of taste and smell in order to want to indulge. I saw a classic example of this while on vacation. It was sin at the end of life’s road. While we were on vacation down at the coast we kept seeing an advertisement that read, “Best seafood bar ever for only $21.95.” Now that is a lot of money just to eat, but we only go on vacation occasionally and never get fresh seafood. We decided to try it out. Since we have four children we figured, or at least hoped, that like all good restaurants, this one would offer “free eats” for very young children and maybe half-price meals for the others. Even with a price break for the children it would still be an expensive meal, but a real treat. I guess I was thinking about all this when I read the advertisement because I didn’t notice that the restaurant was in a casino. Since we had already driven across the city to find this place, we decided to go ahead with our plans. Even though it was early in the day, which I thought would be before the normal hours of casino activities, I knew I needed to do a thorough job of explaining the evils of a casino to my children. So before entering I explained in great detail how people go to casinos thinking they are going to win free money but in the end they always lose money. It was really just paying to play some stupid games. I told them the casino business set up the machines so that everyone wins occasionally, which is just to keep them playing, but at the end of the day the machine has most of their money. I explained that wise people never indulge in such foolishness. All these things I had heard, although I had never actually been in a gambling establishment myself. This was going to be a learning event for all of us. What a surprise we had coming! We walked up the steps and entered the magnificent building. As the huge double-doors opened we could hear the clanging of the winner’s bell. The interior was dim, and at first all we could detect was a smoky atmosphere. And then there was the odor. As a rule children have very acute senses, so I knew my four children must be reeling. The odor was old, nasty, and certainly not conducive to paying $21.95 to eat. “But maybe the restaurant is isolated from all this,” I thought. As our eyes adjusted, we were able to see two long lines of slot machines on either side of the long walk we must take to reach the steps leading up to where the sign indicated we would find the restaurant. The sight before us was both horrifying and fascinating. We all stared at the decrepit people sitting hunched over each slot machine. It looked like some kind of a freak show. My first thought was of a Mad Magazine I saw as a kid. Every player had the appearance of having died and fossilized while sitting in front of the machine. Most were old, hard, whorish-looking women dressed in what they must have thought was sexy clothes, their thin orange hair making a fuzzy halo around their heads. I noticed a cigarette hanging from each of their thin, red, painted lips. Yikes! Was I in a nightmare? If I was, please someone wake me up! But it was real. There was little movement only for a brief moment when they pulled the lever down. As I stood watching I identified the odor. It was old flesh, diapers damp with pee, stale smoke, and hacking coughs bringing up cancerous smells. Surely this was just one step from hell. We, as a family, rushed the 100 feet through the row of slot machines. I figured the kids were holding their breaths, because I sure was. We raced up the steps, then stopped, totally dismayed. Before us was another long line of slot machines, each occupied with more dreadful figures, each momentarily coming alive, like they were using their last ounce of life, to yank the arm down. The awful odor was now mixed with the smell of cooking fish. Thankfully, through the smoky gloom we could see the lights of the restaurant. We rushed past the animated corpses as if there was salvation in the restaurant. The waiter looked discomforted to see the children. With his nose in the air he informed us there would be NO discount for children in this eating establishment. His words squeaked like an open gate, releasing us from our misguided intentions. We turned as one and almost ran down the first corridor of hell, down the steps, and then with our eyes focused on the double doors we fled to the light beyond. Once in the clean air and bright sunlight, we exhaled from our lungs the fumes of death and sucked in fresh air. Finally, breathing normally, we stood looking at each other in relief. We had escaped. My 8-year-old daughter spoke for us all: “Man, I would rather eat junk off the sidewalk than eat in that gross dungeon.” The whole visit was an exercise in the degradation of mankind. The people sitting there no longer noticed the foul odor; they had become accustomed to their eyes burning from the thick cloud of smoke, and their souls had long since lost consciousness of the ugliness around them. To the lost souls, sitting at the slot machines was thrilling; the possibility of winning gave them a fix I will never understand. Sin, time, and conditioning had stolen their dignity, had dulled their senses, and would soon take their souls. I will never need to caution my children against gambling or entering places of ill repute. One visit through the doors of hell had steeled their souls to hate that sort of degradation forever. God in his mercy helps me as I seek Him to raise my family to honor Him. We all learned a lesson that day: “Be careful, little feet, where you go.” —Debi Pearl, as told by Nathan Pearl

Organize and Manage

Michael Pearl — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:00:57 +0000

Eleven-month-old Suzie was hurrying across the store toward the big, swinging, automatic doors. Her Daddy saw the danger and called, “Suzie, come back here.” But the sound of his command lacked finality and expectancy which was confirmed by his immediate jumping up and racing to intercept the child before the doors swung open again. When Suzie heard his voice, she looked over her shoulder and picked up speed, running away in an almost stumbling, controlled fall, as if there were a wonderful prize at some finish line. I could see that she was thrilled with the chase. Daddy, too, was running and he caught her just before a customer on the outside stepped past the infra-red beam that would cause the 150-pound door to swing open like a giant child-swatter. Suzie just laughed and squirmed to get free. Mother looked a little distressed, and Daddy looked as if he were wishing he was back at work, bossing his employees who not only paid attention to his commands but even to his suggestions—at least the ones he keeps on the payroll. I have observed and engaged a sufficient number of parents, both in action and in conversation, to have made a very good guess about what this frustrated father was thinking. I’m certain he was proud of his patience and tenderness, knowing that he was not being overbearing or insensitive toward this child. His philosophy clearly is, “She’s a handful, but kids will be kids! Just love them, and in time they will turn out all right.” No doubt, he was solaced by the fact that in the best of times she responds to his commands. He has “faith” that such a sweet child will survive and eventually “grow into” obedience. I cautiously mentioned to him that he could actually train her to stop upon command, pointing out how much safer it would be if she obeyed instantly. He brushed it off with, “Oh, she is not being disobedient; we play games like that.” And then he made some comment about how he didn’t like to spank his children except in extreme situations. He didn’t really consider it to be disobedience in a child so young. He was a foolish young father, not yet having seen the final end of the seeds of self-will and rebellion he was sowing. I chose this example because there is nothing extreme about it; it is the kind of thing that happens often, and no one considers it much of a problem. I could speak of children constantly whining, occasionally screaming, kicking, demanding, and eventually striking their parents. Just go to Wal-Mart and you will see plenty of examples of untrained children and countless frustrated parents. There is no doubting that this young father was limited in his thinking. He saw only two options: either let her run and act at her discretion (up to the point of hurting herself or someone else), or do the unpleasant thing and spank her for disobeying. He didn’t understand the need for, or even the concept of and the simplicity of training. He reasoned that if he spanked her for every act of disobedience he would be spanking her excessively. He enjoyed fellowship with his little girl and felt that even if he rebuked her for not responding to voice commands he would be losing the congenial, fun spirit they shared. Like many parents, he has the best of motives, but experience has repeatedly demonstrated that good motives are no more productive in child training than in operating a computer. Many things can go wrong. Trusting that a child will somehow find the right way and do it without being constrained to do so must have been the source of this biblical passage “…a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15). Many parents bathe their children in a pool of indulgence and permissiveness, thinking it to be an expression of their deep love, assuming that children should be allowed a time of irresponsibility and unimpeded pleasure. - Michael Pearl

Functioning Community

Michael Pearl — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:40:02 +0000

No doubt about it: effectively training up children in this current society is the toughest job you’ll ever have.

Their growing up is inevitable, but growing into righteous, emotionally stable, productive human beings is a miracle that requires extraordinary sacrifice, commitment, and wisdom on the part of parents. There was a time when there were small, close-knit communities composed of extended family and friends, where the church and school reflected and enforced Christian values, where children just naturally grew up to be stable and well-trained. No more. Those times are gone forever. Every government agency, form of entertainment, electronic device, and educational entity is now designed to mold children into the image of hedonistic heathens with self-gratification as the chief end of life. Trying to shield your children from exposure to evil is like trying to sandbag your house against the rising flood waters of the Mississippi River. You have to teach your children to swim against the rising onslaught of pollution and not swallow any of the putrid water in the process, because the world will definitely seep in on your children. I have now lived long enough to have observed the entire process and can document the results of various proffered solutions to the problem of raising up righteous, overcoming children. One panicky approach that has failed miserably is retreat and isolation. It illustrates a dilemma: children must be raised in a functioning community, but community is generally depraved. If we retreat and throw up barriers to the world, our community may become so small as to cause the children to feel trapped and deprived, resulting in their longingly looking beyond the artificial walls to the exciting world beyond. They must feel that all of their needs will be met within their community—spouse, home, work, entertainment, worship, entrepreneurship, individual expression, education, etc. I have observed too many isolated families produce angry, resentful children that flee into the arms of the world at the first opportunity. One of the outstanding marks of the family that isolates itself and criticizes those on the outside is that the children fail to get married. They will have eight children, half of them over 25, with several still living at home. The girls, more than the boys, get bypassed for marriage. The guys are prone to take flight and satisfy their hormonal urges, but the girls just wait and wait and wait for that miracle to happen—but the prospective grooms are just not shopping at their little boutique. Even when the girls venture out into the light of day where guys will see them, they are often bypassed. I have asked the young men why they are not interested in such a lovely, disciplined, hardworking young lady, and they just shrug and try to put their thought into words, and then I realize again that they have no thoughts regarding the young lady, no opinion, no interest—she just isn’t there. She lacks personality, vivaciousness, charm, attractiveness. She reflects the small, dull world in which she was cloistered. She is a nun fresh from the convent. I have observed that it is not altogether the isolation that causes rebellion in the boys and discontent in the girls as much as the attitude of the parents. When children are raised in remote areas, like on a horse ranch in Montana, or the outback of Alaska, they are not as likely to jump ship and reject their families. They do not take their family’s isolation to be self-imposed, as if their parents are deliberately depriving them of their due. They are more likely to be needed as working members of the unit, sharing the struggles and the joys of the family business. When these isolated kids come out of the mountains or off the farm to the big city, they may be a little awkward and ill at ease at first, but they are never dull. They possess confidence and poise in their body language and interest and curiosity in their eyes. They are likely to excite the interest of the opposite sex because they have a depth to them that the deliberately isolated do not have. Even as they may leave the old life behind and seek broader opportunities in the larger world, they are more likely to cherish their upbringing and appreciate their parents. The attitude difference between deliberately cloistered children and incidentally isolated children is the attitude conveyed by the parents. In a fenced-in home where the parents are paranoid about the world beyond and always criticizing those on the outside as a means of keeping them from accepting other influences, children grow up with small souls, and when they discover that outsiders are not so bad, their parents try to build the fences even higher, warning them against opening up to the evil without. The children, already suspicious of the world, grow bitter at their parents and find themselves alone and lonely in a world that has passed them by, or they plunge into a social circle with no skills to survive and are consumed by forces they do not understand. Again, the dilemma: do I isolate my children from the evil without and face the possibility of them becoming dysfunctional in the world and unfulfilled in love, or do I allow them to freely socialize and risk their developing a hedonistic perspective? I appreciate the complexity of the problem you face. There is a way to victory, even in this present world. Foremost, before you give attention to training and guiding your children, give them what they most need—parents who love each other and enjoy life together. Most parents who cloister their children are themselves unhappy and fearful. If you are not in harmony with your spouse, you will create insecurity. I know young people who say they do not want to be married because their parents’ marriage was so painful and contentious, but they do want sex. Lady, read Created to Be His Help Meet and believe it this time. Put it into practice. Mister, stop trying to rule your wife like she is your slave and start loving “her as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Delight in your spouse and your spouse will delight in you, and your children will delight in being a part of the family. After making the family a fun love factory, adopt the world without as your project. When you live in fear and are in retreat, you have stopped trying to convert the world to Christ and have forfeited the opportunity to make a difference. In short, you are fearful and selfish—not good ground to raise children. Instead of retreating, start meeting the needs of others. Give your children meaning by doing things outside the home that are meaningful. Touch the lives of those in need. Share the gospel with the lost. Then you need to join yourself and your family to a fellowship of believers that share your goals and perspective. Build community. This takes on different forms to different families, and I cannot tell you exactly how this should occur in your unique circumstances. But you must have a circle of daily acquaintances with whom you can share your life. Know for a certainty, when Christians form an intimate circle, there will always be a family that pushes their way into your life that will bring the world and all its ugliness into the inner sanctum. You must be vigilant as a parent and be prepared to hurt someone’s feelings, if necessary. It is one thing to take your children without the camp to minister to the needy, but is quite another to allow sin into the camp where your guard is down. So many parents have ruled over the damnation of their children through their forgiving hearts with the excuse, “Well, shouldn’t we minister to them, as well?” Ministry takes place when you put on the whole armour to stand against the wiles of the devil. Never allow your children to play with kids that were not raised in the Spirit as are yours. Think of the darkness in other children as ten times as powerful as the light in yours, and you will stand a better chance of them not being exposed to pornographic images or talk. You must create community that is protected and sanctified while ministering to the world without. Two or three families does not make a community. Arrange your job, the location of your residence, your church life, the schooling of your children, and your social engagements so as to maximize righteous community for your children. If you send your children to public or Christian school, you have relinquished all control and allowed them to form community without you. Their schoolmates are their community and will be the determining factor in their development. You have placed their souls in the hands of other children. In our church, every family homeschools. If someone came into the church whose children go to or have gone to public schools or church schools, their younger children would never be allowed into the inner social circle with our kids. There would be zero fraternization, even on the church grounds after meetings. We have built community and will not allow it to be corrupted. The stakes are too high. But we readily reach out to others and receive every stripe of sinner who repents toward God and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. Most parents don’t have the guts to form community and protect it. Before they will take a painful stand, they will sacrifice their children on the altar of social politeness. There is enough evil arising in the hearts of our own children; we do not need to accelerate the process by unguarded association with children that have been prematurely immersed in the Devil’s culture. Older kids—sixteen to seventeen years old—who have been to public school and have demonstrated true conversion and commitment to Christ may enjoy full acceptance by the other kids, for, by the time our young people get into their middle teens, most of them are quite capable of standing firm against temptation. More than ever, I encourage you to create community. Sacrifice everything, including your comfortable way of making a living, to create a wholesome context in which to raise your children. The greatest day of your life is the day you come home from a wedding with one fewer kid, knowing that you completed your task; you planted another godly family in this sin-cursed world. The greatest achievement in life is to “train up a child in the way he should go” so that “when he is old he will not depart from it.” Reread Jumping Ship. Give a copy to a friend in need. ☺

Family Government

Michael Pearl — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:35:43 +0000

Watching the news online, I heard Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, say:

“A stable family is the most basic form of government, because the first government any of us ever experiences is not the city council, not the state legislature or the congress; it’s Mother and Father setting the rules, creating the boundaries and borders for what is right and wrong, where we can go and cannot go, what we can do and can’t do; and if we don’t get it there then we have to wait for some other form of government to do it, maybe the schools, the city, the state, or even the federal government…” —Mike Huckabee, March 7, 2011, Fox News.com.

Mike Huckabee is absolutely right in saying that a family is “the most basic form of government,” or, at least, it should be. Children need to be governed, for they come into this world thinking only of themselves. They are innocent, indulgent liars, thieves, and tyrants, all needing to be governed, for they have the passions of a hedonistic hippie and the self-restraint of a pig, ready to receive all your love and return it with a selfish demand. Hey, I love kids. The more the merrier. But I have no delusion about the nature of their fallen humanity. “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies” (Psalm 58:3). If you don’t start your child anthropology here you will fail miserably in training up your children. Huckabee said, “…mother and father setting the rules, creating the boundaries and borders for what is right and wrong, where we can go and cannot go, what we can do and can’t do…” “Rules”, “boundaries”, “borders”, “can and can’t do”; that sounds like government. Borders and boundaries imply absolute limitations. All rule and authority is granted by God, and, with it, the power to elicit compliance by means of force, if necessary.

Romans 13:1–5
1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

The real world into which children are growing and will eventually function is controlled by absolute rules that carry penalties for infractions. If parents fail to instill responsibility in their children, as young adults they will eventually come up against the hard, unrelenting facts of life. The IRS is not permissive like most parents are. Judges are known to “throw the book” at those who break the rules. Policemen will give you a free ride to a free cell if you smart-mouth them. If you get violent, they may have mercy and knock you senseless with a taser, or they may be having a bad day and just shoot you 21 times. But be sure of one thing: if you were brought up to talk back and rebel against authority, the cops and judges will hit you like a concrete wall at 100 miles per hour. I visit many men in prison who came from homes where there were no Daddy judges or Mama cops. They learned the rules the hard way. Some of them are looking forward to putting their new perspectives in practice twenty years from now when they get out—if they live that long. During the eighteen years I have been going to one specific prison, I have watched the visiting mothers and fathers grow old as they come visit their sons weekly or monthly. Some have become too old or sickly to make the trip, others have died, their spouses now coming alone. Their sons are still there in their small cells, learning that “for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” I often wonder if those visiting parents know where they went wrong. Do they blame themselves? Do they know they failed? Most of the men were never spanked for their misdeeds as youths. A few were abused. But most were just neglected or raised by the public schools and public churches. They got away with anything until the day the men with the badges and the guns showed up. The family must emulate all aspects of government if the children are to grow up with the skill sets and sense of responsibility that are necessary to be successful in life. If parents allow their children to live in a permissive environment, the children develop a complete misunderstanding of the rules by which they must eventually play the game of life. Foremost, parents must communicate that all actions have consequences, that each individual sows and reaps accordingly, that our rights and liberties are a gift from God that must be used according to the rules of honesty, benevolence, and justice. God gives the liberty; government guarantees the free exercise of it, and each individual is responsible to make the most of his gifts and opportunities. It is your choice. You can be poor or rich, educated or not, of good reputation or not, addicted to substance or the master of your body, married to a worthy spouse or caught in the mire of your lustful decisions. You can eat well or go hungry, have a fine house or live in a roach hotel. It is up to you. You make your bed and then lie in it. Some politicians try to change the rules and eliminate negative consequences. They want to guarantee positive results to all. This is done by taking one man’s success and forcibly transferring it to supplement another man’s failure. If you raise your children in such a socialistic fashion you will end up with takers instead of makers. Your children are equipped with indicators as to how you have raised them. If you have been too permissive and socialistic in your approach, your children will be demanding and unthankful. They expect to have bargaining rights, guaranteed wages, tenure, and more. At first they expect toys, then clothes, and finally a car. They expect you to guarantee their happiness by providing for them. They will ignore the rules when it suits them and lie when necessary to get their own way. This is sure and certain testimony that you have not been faithful in representing the reality of Divine and human government. They were raised in an indulgent paradise rather than in a kingdom of responsibility and duty. You may think me hard, but no kids had more fun than did mine. They were all relaxed and at ease, confident in love and secure in the little kingdom in which they were raised. They knew the rules and suffered the consequences when they failed to comply—which was not very often. They all grew up mindful of responsibility, expressing thankfulness and joy. Today they are all successful in marriage, life, and parenting. Good parenting, like good government, is consistent, never arbitrary, always predictable, subject to the eternal rules of justice. It provides liberty while constraining vice. Those who live in harmony with the rules are not even conscious that they are governed. They feel at complete liberty, unafraid and secure in their citizenship. I am speaking ideally, not reflecting the reality of today’s degenerate republic. But parents in America still have the opportunity to raise their children in ideal circumstances, regardless of what the political climate might be. Mike Huckabee said, “… if we don’t get it there then we have to wait for some other form of government to do it…” If we don’t train up our children in the rule of law, train them to be self-governed, self disciplined, then we defer their souls to other forms of government that will not have the patience we do, where breaking the rules will not result in just a spanking but in poverty, addiction, despair, or even imprisonment. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Introducing a Powerful New Children’s Book from Debi Pearl

Debi Pearl — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:20:06 +0000

A child predator loses his power when he loses his cover. Samuel Learns To Yell & Tell was written to teach children and parents this critical fact. If all children knew that they would be heard and protected when they yelled and told, it would stop most predators from child hunting. Your children need to know they can come to you at any time and any place, and that you are ready to listen and take action to protect them. They will not understand this naturally; it is your responsibility as a parent to regularly and effectively communicate this message.

The predator is most likely your friend or relative.

Of the reported sexual assaults on children, 90 percent are done by friends or family, and most violations never come to light. Predators are aware that parents are naïve. Predators know parents are thrilled to get a sitter so they can spend time together. He is there waiting for the opportunity you give him. Five years ago, one in four children were molested. The number is growing. As child porn grows rampant, so do the number of young boys and men who are lusting after small children. I remember when the only porn was in a few nasty run-down hovels in the lower part of a big city. Church people prayed for the places to close. Now men rush home from church and indulge on the web. In the last ten years the internet has catapulted us into Sodom and Gomorrah.

A parent must be sacrificial.

Don’t take the easy way out. Only leave your children with people that you are positive are walking in truth and are not planning on having company while your child is visiting. Just to be safe, go to several people who have known the family the longest and ask plainly, “Can you think of any reason why my child should not stay with this person?” Even if you think their answer is crazy, heed it. Better safe than forever sorry.

Seek Wisdom

God promises wisdom to those who ask. This priceless gift is easy to receive. In this evil generation your children need wise parents to safeguard them. So ask for wisdom; ask and ask again and keep receiving more and more.

Every Word and Deed Known

Most child molesters live out their lives in peace and success. No one ever tells on them, so no one ever knows except the silent broken trail of victims they leave behind. They feel safe because, for all the children they have violated, not one person has ever spoken out. Someday there will surely be a day of judgment, when every perverse deed will be revealed, and they will face the terror of an angry God. I will be there watching, and I will rejoice “when their calamity cometh.”

Alerted and Armed

Until that blessed day, read Yell & Tell books to your children. Talk about what you learn. Ask questions. Watch for signs of fear or anxiety in your child concerning any friends or family. Our children are given to us to protect and nurture. Tell your children every day, “I love you and want to keep you safe, so always, always tell me anything that needs to be told. I will always, always listen.” Isaiah 28:10: “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little...” James 1:5: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Matthew 18:6: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Official Press Release

The Statistics on Children's Sexual Abuse are Shocking—Debi Pearl's New Book Yell and Tell Provides Solutions (PRWeb)

Avoiding Vacuums

Michael Pearl — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 11:00:06 +0000

Question: “What conversations can we have with our 9-year-old daughter and our 11-year-old son to inoculate them from the sexual perversions they will come across in the church, etc.?” Question: “How do I protect my children from sexual temptation?” “Inoculate them”? Impossible. “Protect them from temptation”? Only to a degree. Equipping them to endure temptation is the only effective recourse. The infallible Word of God tells us that God will not put more temptation on us than we are able to bear. That must mean either that God regulates us, by means of teaching and grace, in proportion to the level of temptation we will encounter, or that he places a governor on the temptation to prevent it from exceeding our abilities to resist—or both. Either way, it is clear that our Heavenly Father manages our exposure and resistance to temptation. Shouldn’t you do the same for your child? Most of us attack the temptation, leaving the child in a vacuum of innocence, not realizing the need to equip the child to be an overcomer, even in our absence, in the face of great temptation. Do not put your children in a place where temptation becomes more than they can bear. And do not expect a once-a-year talk on sex to “inoculate” them against temptation. Neither should you rest in the security system you designed to stop temptation from getting to them. You cannot just teach—you must actually prepare them to resist temptation in your absence. Negative rules and warnings and threats are necessary but not sufficient. Read and reread the following statement: You must meet all the social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs of your children before they are tempted. It is dangerous to allow a child who needs affirmation of his worth to be tempted. The temptation may offer fulfillment of that need. You cannot let a child face temptation who feels the need for companionship and approval. You cannot let a child face temptation who feels intellectually deprived of a rudimentary knowledge of sex. He will receive information from anyone who offers it. You cannot let a vacuum of companionship and approval develop in your children’s lives. If you do, they will be willing at the first opportunity to lower their standards to gain the approval and acceptance necessary to be part of a social order. Further, if they don’t have good friends who are good, they will make good friends of the bad boys and girls that enter their circle of acquaintances. I have noticed in our own church, when visitors come with their young teenage kids, the discontent and rebellious among them will always locate one particular teenager among our own who is equally unhappy. A kid exuding darkness will walk into a room, survey it, and immediately be drawn to like spirits. It will happen every time. In five minutes you will see them standing off on their own, talking quietly. Either kid would be angry if you tried to monitor his social life, for they can only find kinship in unapproved darkness. Parents of such children cannot redeem them apart from a complete Holy Ghost revival. There may be a shade of darkness in the soul of your child. If so, do not make the mistake of thinking that by “cracking down” or by teaching them about sex you are going to cure the problem. It is a soul problem, and it cannot be met with religion or law. The church is not the answer. Your own soul—the soul of the family—is the only cure. When the child’s vacuums are filled with fruit and flowers, they will not journey through the thorns and thistles seeking beauty. Don’t put them in the place where they are under the influence of questionable kids that are older than they, or kids with stronger, more dominant personalities. Understand, they have a need to belong, to fit in, to not be the lonely oddball. If their self-image is fed and sustained at home, children can go outside the family into a negative environment and not be troubled by being the outsider, at odds with the tone and flow of the conversation and activities. They can leave the mountaintop of moral nurturing and walk through the valley of stupidity and shame, resisting its appeals, because all their human needs for socializing and acceptance have been met on the mountaintop to which they know they will soon return. But if you take a kid who is a vacuum of unfulfilled human needs into the place of corruption, he will find satisfaction holding hands with the devil. Every kid will give his heart to someone. If not to you—to the family—then whom? It is just a matter of time and opportunity. Kids who are unfulfilled attract their opposites like magnets. There are children who have experimented with evil and have yielded to its lure. The excitement and power it offers has filled them with captivating experiences and stimulating “secrets.” They have a compulsion to seek out the most vulnerable, hungry souls, enchanting them with tales of their journey down forbidden paths. It is the original temptation, the lure of obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, to go where you are not supposed to and discover the things so exciting and stimulating that one feels empowered by the very knowledge of it. The vulnerable children are flattered by the attention and confidence of their new—bigger and cooler—mentor. Now they have a “true friend” who values them enough to let them in on the “secrets” that can make them like the gods, “knowing good and evil.” The fallen innocent will defend their choice with, “Well, my parents never understood me or cared.” After a verbal introduction into the intoxicating experience of sexual experimentation has stirred their curiosity and lust, they will then seek a time and place to journey down the dark path of personal experience. It may be the path to the upstairs bedroom, or the kids’ “play house” in the back yard. It may be in the garage of a friend or in the woods or empty lots, but be sure, when kids want to skulk away to a dark corner to drink from the devil’s cup, they will find opportunities where you are sure none exist. If they are determined, there is no such thing as protecting them. You cannot build enough fences without; you must build fences within. How do we meet all those needs before they are met by the dark side? Every family is different, yet sweet balance always looks the same—a family that has fun together, sharing common goals, sharing a vision that gives great hope for the future. This family is part of a community of like-minded believers who provide all the social needs of the children; they are well-instructed and delight themselves in God; and they are engaged in life, creating, learning, and growing together. In short, their favorite people in all the world are members of their own family. But each family is different in that we are all at different starting points, on either end of a pendulum. Some families are too legalistic and religious while others are too irreverent and secular. Some families are too busy seeking worldly success while others live in the doldrums of apathy and inactivity. Some families are filled with “christian psychology,” practicing “positive affirmation” until their kids think words have no meaning; others talk down to the kids, thinking they are preventing them from becoming prideful, or they think negative criticism will correct negative behavior. I don’t know where your family is or how it got there. Maybe you don’t either. So start over. Love God until you sing praise to him in your dreams. Love your wife or husband until they giggle in the presence of the kids. Love your church (the people) to the point of sacrificing for the needy. Love sinners to the point that you pray for them and share the gospel with them. Love your children so much that you smile every time you look at them. End negative speech about everybody and everything except sin and the devil. Make yourself and your family healthy with good eating and exercise. Experience the excitement of learning and growing with your children. Learn anything useful and do anything productive. Make money, make music, make a garden, make everybody laugh. Through a variety of experiences, let each child discover his own interests and then excitedly aid him in pursuing his goals. Above all, do what God did to equip us: teach Bible stories. God tells us that all the stories of the Bible, Old and New Testament, are given as an example for our learning. These stories impart knowledge, wisdom, fear of walking in sin, judgment, and appreciation for righteousness and God’s sweet blessings. The very knowledge your children gain will give them understanding regarding the deceitfulness of sin and the blessings of obedience. These old stories are there not only to teach our minds, but also to mold our hearts. The child who is not personally acquainted with many Bible stories is handicapped in overcoming evil. I am talking about Bible stories, not applications, not principles, not sweet little examples you come up with; plain old Bible stories. Have your children study and teach Bible stories. Discuss sin and righteousness and memorize the words of God found in the King James Bible, forming a worldview from which they will never depart. Then make sure that the family moves in a social circle that provides a variety of potential spouses. When thirteen- and fourteen-year-old kids can fix their dreams upon a potential spouse—even if the object of their admiration changes monthly—they will live so as to be accepted by those people they admire and whose approval they must have in order to be considered a worthy spouse. If you would like to hear more on this subject, I have placed online, free of charge, a message I recently delivered to the church. Go to http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/audio/sex-education-for-children/ to download this recording. Feel free to copy the message and distribute it to others. If you do not have online capabilities you can purchase a CD through our store. Also, watch for my wife’s newest book for children, Yell and Tell: A Warning for Children Against Sexual Predators. It is a simple rhyme and rhythm of a mother teaching her son how to respond if and when he is approached sexually by another child or even an adult family friend. It will be an invaluable tool. We plan to have the book ready by November 1, 2010. I can’t thank you enough for this article. As a survivor of child abuse and neglect, I’m amazed at how “free” and trusting people can be with their children (my father molested every single kid that came to sleep over). Six years ago I begged my sister not to allow my father in the house after being released from prison, but unfortunately she choose to let him live with them and recently found out that one of her daughters was molested. She knew he had molested me and at least 15 more children, but she chose to ignore the evidence and trust him. She reasoned that he would never hurt a grandchild. The hardest part [for us] as parents who tended to be naive, was discovering the evil that occurred when we thought we were protecting our children. We learned the hard way that few people could be trusted as caregivers in our absence. I am glad we trained our children from young ages that there were private areas of their bodies that no one should view or touch. It was the areas their underwear covered or anywhere else they felt was private. They were likewise not to view or touch other people’s private areas. When a sitter violated a private area our son was quick to tell us. We had left with plans, but when we got to our nearby destination I told my husband I had a bad feeling and asked to go back home. We arrived and sensed something wrong. Our son came to us and told us what happened. He said he was worried about getting the person in trouble. We reassured him that the adult was wrong and had no right to secrets. Unfortunately, we learned that taking in an unwanted seven-year-old niece to raise had damaging, lasting effects on our other children. We were unaware of the evil done to her at young ages. It came out in her actions to our youngest son, a four-year-old. The hardest part of this kind of evil is the sneakiness that is perfected by the one carrying on the action. Who would expect a throw-away child to even know about the things she did or asked our young son to do? I also learned I should have accompanied my daughter even on an afternoon play visit to the Christian family next door. In my absence a grandfather took liberties. When I learned that this man babysat the children frequently, we reported it. Evil things were brought into our home both by our niece and later by a boy. One youth we were asked to supervise for a weekend was briefly left alone with our daughter when her brothers left the room. He took advantage of the brief minute to expose himself. She immediately told us, and we questioned the boy. He admitted his action and implicated his father from our church. The boy said his dad did the same and more to his sister and that was why his mom left with his sister. Yikes! Without our presence we also have no way of knowing if another child is experimenting with same gender play. In a very young child I handled it as you suggested. In an older child, protection is the only way. Our daughter reported a church friend’s attempts to introduce her to lesbian acts during a sleepover. The girl was only 12 years old! That eliminated sleepovers. Thank you, Mr. Pearl, for writing this article. I was a girl who “walked [through] the valley of the shadow of shame” and experienced the heartbreak of having parents turn their backs in anger and disgust. It took a pregnancy and almost a marriage to bring us together as a family again. Now we are fighting to save my little daughter from the sexual addict that is her father. PLEASE, parents who are reading this, heed Mr. Pearl’s instruction so that you may avoid tragedy. I thank God for His grace. I am the “piece of trash that God lifted from the ground and holds to His heart.” —A Mom Thank you for your article. I have a step-son who is 11 who was caught doing stuff with my little girls. I had five little girls at the time and was due to have another any day. In fact, I had been in labor when it all happened, which distracted me long enough for this to happen. (Believe me, the weight of protecting and raising so many girls hit me hard at that moment.) He had been exposed to porn and had been exploring on my little girls. He is here, he is mine, but not mine biologically, but what is my husband’s is mine....he has been repentant, but I don’t trust him fully anymore. He has taken out his anger about the situation on my girls. Like they were his temptation and I know they still are that, a temptation, though he doesn’t wish to go there again. My oldest involved was 6. You have mentioned how to deal with many things, little kids and older ones. But what about when it’s older ones with little ones? I don’t want to shun the boy so he gets ahead down a wrong path, and am lost at how to help my girls because they were exposed to more than the usual “exploring”. If I boot him out, his chances are next to none elsewhere, nor will my husband allow it. There’s not really anywhere to “send” him either. Here is all he’s got. I tried the thing with my girls of letting the curiosity just go, but their curiosity has been sparked in more than the usual, and it seems to be harder for them to dump. I’m not looking to sign any of the kids’ passes into hell in any sense. —A Stepmom What sound advice. I still think of my childhood from time to time with sadness. When I was little, my girl cousin and I apparently had been caught touching each other...something I don’t even remember, but when I was older my father brought it up to me in a moment of anger, with such disgust that it really did damage to the way I viewed myself, as well as my relationship with my father. I had also been molested at the age of ten by a family friend. The combination of the two incidents wore away at my self-respect. When I was 15, I sinned gravely. I attended a church camp and fell head over heels for one of the young directors. After two months of being hard to get, I let myself fall prey to his charms, and we had a sexual encounter. Several months later, my guilt was so great that I confessed everything to my parents and told them I wanted to start right. It was the worst mistake I could have made, and I wish I had never told them. Their response was so heart-breaking. They told me it was too late to start right. My father never, ever fully forgave me. There were times I think he tried, but he never let it go. In moments of anger, he would throw it, and anything else he could, in my face. One time he threw a book at me and it hit my glasses and broke them. Any time he saw me within ten feet of another boy, he would accuse me of flirting or being inappropriate, reminding me that I could not be trusted after what I had done. When I was 17, my good friend went to the military. He and I wrote letters to each other, which I found out from my dad (in another of his angry moments) that he had been reading behind my back, and didn’t understand how I could have a sweetheart behind his back, and called me a “whore.” When I turned 18, I left my parents’ home. I just packed three suitcases, took out all of my savings and bought a plane ticket to California, where I met up with my military friend. We lived together for three years, two of which were spent in fornication. I thought, what did it matter, I was a whore anyway. Two years ago, we both came back to the Lord. He really got hold of us. We got married and are now expecting our first child. Parents, know this: I would most likely never have “jumped ship” if I had only been forgiven and loved by my parents. At 15, I had a heart that desperately wanted to follow God from that point on. However, when my parents didn’t forgive me, I felt that God would not forgive me either. I know that is not Biblical, as our Lord forgives us with certainty, however a 15-year-old girl’s broken heart does not see herself through God’s eyes, but through a “glass darkly.” How I wish my parents had responded with God’s love and justice, instead of anger and disdain. Even now, I have very little relationship with any of my family. It took many years for me to understand that the floodgates of God’s forgiveness and mercy were already opened up to me the day His Son died for my sins. Parents, please heed Bro. Pearl’s advice. Do not try to be more holy than God. His mercy is the height of holiness. Don’t give up on your children, just as He did not give up on you. I was actually going to write you at one time and ask if you would address this subject. I am one of 14 children, and my father and two of my brothers molested me; my father also molested another sister. One of the brothers lured me, by fear, to allow a neighbor boy to do certain things. The molestation stopped at around the age of 12, thankfully. But as a Christian now, I still have to occasionally fight off bizarre sexual thoughts that want to come in. It affects you for the rest of your life. My father did, as an older man, call me when I grew up and with tears asked for forgiveness. This was only because another sister found out about it and confronted him. When I asked him why he did it, you know what he said? He said it was because my mother did not give him ‘affection’, and that I was a very affectionate child. How sad and sick. Being molested myself, I was very leery of anyone “babysitting” my kids. My husband and I never allowed sleepovers. We never allowed other children to play in the room with them alone. I never allowed even my own two children to play in the room together without the door wide open and me in the next room. Last but not least, I prayed diligently for years that the Lord would protect them from ever being molested. I believed that if I prayed this diligently, that it was according to His will and I would have the request I ask of Him. That is not what happened. A few years back, because of certain circumstances, my husband and I took in a boy the same age as our son and...you guessed it...even with all my ‘safeguards’ in place, this 11-year-old boy—who was raised in an ungodly home—told my kids very sordid graphic details about sex, all in a ‘funny’ way. That was his thing. To make it funny. And to my horror, they began to laugh and go along with it. Then one day, he went up behind my younger child and tried to simulate the marital act upon the backside. This was in the next room to me! No doors even closed, and within my earshot. Later my children even told me that he would talk about sordid things even in the car with me driving. I was right there! I have fasted and prayed that the Lord would remove this child permanently from our home, and my husband has agreed that if the Lord provides another open door, he will have him leave. Please, please, Mr. Pearl (and staff), pray that the Lord opens the door for him to go live with his other relatives! As you know, adoption has become very popular in the church, among popular ministries, and there are so many Christians adopting older, international children, and often damaged children, and then suffering great heartbreak. They are confused, as they believed they were doing God’s will, obeying the Bible to care for orphans, etc....and this is happening. Yet, because of the nature of the subject, they are suffering silently, and confused. Any advice would be appreciated. —A Mom MICHAEL ANSWERS: Right here in our own community a family adopted three children from Liberia. We warned them, but they were so caught up with good feelings about how they were sacrificing their lives to save poor starving children from orphanages that they danced their way into tragedy. They have several children younger than the three adopted kids, who, unknowing to them, were well-versed in all the dark arts of eroticism and ghastly perversion. We have received many letters from families who have adopted children from overseas, quite a few from Liberia, and nearly every one of them—if not all—told sad stories of the fall of their natural children into sexual deviance. I will say this again. Never adopt children even close to the age of your own. You should be past child-bearing age, and your children should be at least 10 to 15 years older than the adopted kids. I don’t think there is any such thing as an orphanage-raised child who has not been a participant in sexual perversion. If you are older and your kids are grown, it is a wonderful, full-time ministry to adopt foreign kids. You will experience heartache, possibly failure, but you may just save a soul from sure destruction. But if there is failure, at least your kids will not go down with them. A foster mom’s dilemma. We had a foster daughter this year, and she had been molested. We had no idea, and she acted out with one of my sons. I had so much guilt, as I know that you say, “Always watch your children.” I had failed in my role as a guardian, and I was sick at heart. —A Mom MICHAEL RESPONDS: It is impossible to watch thoroughly enough to prevent two kids from finding time alone. Your mistake was having the girl in the house with your children. Foster parenting is for people whose children are grown or for families with older children who take in the very young.

When the Worst Happens

Michael Pearl — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:00:21 +0000

WARNING to parents! Mature subject matter. Some of the topics in this article are not appropriate for children.

Woe is the day when a good friend rages, “My little girl said that your son...” Or worse, you walk in on your boys and a neighbor kid in a state of undress, experimenting with their bodies. The horrors of discovering that your young teenage boy is addicted to the worst kinds of pornography, or catching your girls trading lurid notes with other girls or boys! I could go on and speak of the things you may discover about your sons or daughters at various ages, beginning at three or four years of age, but “it is a shame to even speak of those things done of them in secret.” We get the ugly letters. Parents are shocked, angered, and then brokenhearted and finally despondent. In one very rigid family the parents discovered their teenage boys and girls were engaged in immorality, and the parents were so demoralized that they turned back to their pre-church, pre-homeschool days of drinking, smoking, and bar hopping. The whole family went to hell. But one of the girls, after several years of marriage, experienced the new birth through faith in Jesus Christ, and it is she who wrote their story, now dismayed for her wayward parents. There is no safe place. You cannot move to heaven. Even our little church and tight community discovers untoward behavior among some of the children from time to time. The Amish and Mennonite community has its share of horse dung now and then. You can isolate your children from all outside influences, yet they will discover and cultivate the lord of the flies lurking in their own flesh. Most kids have had some sort of sexual contact before they reach puberty. We parents expect the best of our children. We train them to do what is right and protect them from evil influences. We are concerned when we see moral tragedies all around us, awful failures, kids taking the short road to hell. We know something like that could never happen to our children, for we are Christians and our kids are brought up to know right from wrong. Yes, we should have the highest of expectations, but if the unexpected happens and the devil dumps on our doorstep, do we know how to respond? Sometimes our parental response to a child’s divergence into the profoundly ugly is the deciding factor as to whether it is a one-time curiosity or a permanent turn down the road to perdition. We hear too many stories from shocked and horrified parents. “How could this happen? I didn’t believe my son was capable of this. We did everything right.” And it’s true. You can do everything right and your children can still end up exposed to the sins of Sodom, the adultery of David and the fornication of Samson. The question is, have you gone beyond just “raising them right” to taking proactive steps to arm them against the day of dark temptation?

Innocence is no hedge

I am amazed at parents’ belief that they and their children are somehow immune to the depravity of the human race, that good is the default position in their family. If I didn’t have a Holy Bible, I would definitely believe in a sinful nature. Observable phenomena are indisputable. Universal depravity is more certain than taxes or death. Yet by the grace of God, through his Word and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be overcomers in this world, and we can train up our children in the way they should go so they will not depart from it, but such is the supernatural exception, common to those who fear God, not the status quo. Children are not born with our values. They do not come into the world good. They come innocent. And innocence is a two-way street, with no signs—only desire. Just as innocence provides no propensity to evil, it provides no protection from the false promises of the fun of experimentation. All options are equal in the mind of a child who has not yet come to a full knowledge of good and evil, something that comes to complete fruition by at least age 19. That which is morally obvious to us adults is—to a child—nothing more than two flavors. Why should one be eaten and the other shunned? They know not. So they taste all that is available until they develop a taste one way or the other. Eve couldn’t discern any difference between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that led to death and the tree that would perpetuate life. She didn’t possess the experience and maturity to differentiate—as is the case with all children. But innocence is no hedge against the consequences inherent in any departure from the holy and pure. The surprise and shock experienced by parents stems from children’s ability to originally conceive sin. Not all sins are copycats; not all spring from temptations without. Where children are concerned, there are many original sins. The natural appetites of flesh and mind are sufficient to account for the sins of youth. “A child left to himself will bring his mother to shame”, but even a child well-guarded and properly instructed will, like Eve, be tempted to taste the forbidden fruit, knowing not that a flaming sword will part them from their garden of innocence.

Reverse trend

I have noticed a trend down through the years. Some parents are suspicious and distrusting of the flesh of their children and of the human race in general. They know their teen boys are going to, at the very least, take a mind trip down the road of immorality. These discerning parents know their young sons are going to come in contact with queer bait boys and grabbing girls. They are wisely suspicious of the preacher’s sons, the choir director’s girls, the old man teaching Sunday school, and the woman giving piano lessons. Then there are those parents who seem to trust everybody in the church and anyone who maintains a respectable lifestyle and has a good reputation. They act as if evil comes with a devil suit and a sign. They allow their children to run in a herd with other kids and believe evil resides on the other side of the tracks only. If experience had not taught me something different, I would believe that parents who expect evil and take extra steps to guard their children are the ones who had rough pasts, and that parents who are naively trusting that their kids “would never do anything like that” are the innocent ones who have never seen true evil up close. Surprisingly, not so. Often parents who have come from the dark side of the tracks think they left evil behind and that their children could not possibly get involved in the things they experienced in the sick and seedy world of their pasts. Those of us who were brought up in the church and protected from societal evil can examine our own hearts and know that innocence is no haven against imaginations of the flesh.

Two-to six-year-olds

What do you do if you suddenly discover you have a child that has been dancing with the devil? This is the most important thing I will say to you, so listen carefully: When the worst happens, do not assume it is all over. Do not go into mourning. Do not persecute the child. Don’t give up. Know that there is yet plenty of hope. I am not merely telling you to keep a positive attitude like the doctor might tell you to do after informing you that you have brain cancer. Hear me now. Statistically-speaking, a young child who engages in shameful behavior is not by any means destined to be a pervert. Now think back to when you were a child. Did you ever get alone with a cousin or sibling and discuss the intimacies of what mommies and daddies do in private? Do you ever remember out of curiosity examining a member of the same or opposite sex? Did you ever view pornography? Did it make a pervert out of you? Did it totally destroy your life? A small percentage will say it was the first step to a downward road. For most it was just a passing discovery. I am not minimizing the seriousness of childhood participation in aberrant behavior, but I would like to minimize your emotional response, to prevent you from reacting in a way that is going to leave horrible scars where there would otherwise be quick healing, or maybe no wound at all.

According to age and need

Our response should be measured according to the needs and age of the child. The key is to discern the heart of the child. Children under five may see their parents or someone on television making love. Be sure, like everything else the world offers, they are going to try kissing or fondling any other boy or girl, sibling or friend, just to see why adults find such delight in it. When they find it to be quite boring, they will give up the idea and try a different flavor of ice cream. Unless they are led on by older children who do find excitement and stimulation, the little ones will not be harmed by curious investigation of their bodies or of others their age. Their exploration is certainly not desirable and may be a warning flag, but it does not mean you have a sexually active four-year-old. If you should catch your very young children in this kind of unseemly behavior, do not blow your lid and go ballistic. First, without any show of emotion (difficult, I know,) evaluate the scene. Do they display guilt at being discovered thus? If not, then just say, “Put your clothes back on and stop that. That is what mamas and daddies do, not children.” Show a normal amount of irritation or mild anger as you would at a common infraction of the rules. Then make a show of forgetting it. But don’t forget it; keep an eye on them and make sure that is the end of it. You don’t want to attach guilt or shame to something they will otherwise forget for lack of significance. Don’t make more of the event than they made of it. Then in your regular Bible story time with them, teach the law of God concerning adultery, incest, fornication, etc., but at an appropriate level to their age and understanding. Now what if the young children respond with strong guilt or shame? Make sure it is not just a reflection of the shock and shame on your face. If it is a true reflection of their souls, chances are this is not the first time and they are deriving some kind of illicit pleasure out of the event. They are knowingly violating their consciences. You have a sinner in the house. It is yet important to remain calm and in control. You need to separate the kids and talk to each one individually. As much as it pains you, get the whole story. It is now important to express controlled shame and disgust at their deeds, but not so intensely as to cause them to clam up. They need to see your sadness, your tears, your grief, but this will pass, so allow them space for repentance. Don’t create an atmosphere that will prevent them from feeling loved and forgiven. I have suggested that if the small child seems to be doing nothing more than experimenting out of curiosity, don’t highlight the moment by making a big deal out of it, and wait until later to teach them about Sodom and Gomorrah and the sin and judgment of King David. But if there is great guilt and shame, if this is a secret sin to the child, the time to teach is right now. Again, stay calm and in control. They have a spanking coming. If there are children involved who are not your own, and you feel the other parents will share your approach to discipline, and they are immediately available, they should be called to participate in the “court proceedings.” If you feel the other parents are not going to sympathize with your approach, separate out any that are not your own children and then deal with your kids alone. After briefly defining their transgression and telling them the evil of their deeds, with all of your children that were involved present, spank them soundly. If you are not in control of your emotions, save the spanking until you are. Do no harm to the child. That would be counterproductive. They need to see a dignified judge passing sentence, not an out of control personal response of violence. If they are expecting a spanking, by getting it out of the way, they will be more focused on what you have to say. Now sit them down for a serious Bible study on their sin and the consequences. If there are other children in the house who are aware of the foul deed, and are old enough to benefit from the teaching, they should sit in on the session, as well. As you teach, it will be appropriate to continue to express limited grief and sadness. More is caught than taught. You should have already been teaching these things to your kids in your regular Bible story lessons, but, if not, now is the time. For those who feel completely inept at teaching, I suggest the Sex Education for Children audio message that instructs kids in Biblical prohibitions against sexual sins. As a preventive measure, Deb and I addressed the subject to our children at least once a year, and from time to time they heard instruction and warning in sermons and adult Bible classes. All the children, of any age, sat in on the teaching.

Seven- to twelve-year-olds

Even where it concerns older children, all is not lost. There will be better days. Do you remember the story we have told of the beautiful homeschooled girl, lying in an uninsulated one-room shack with no water, electricity, or heat, delivering the baby of an empty-headed boyfriend? Deb, my wife, functioned as her midwife and then brought her and the child into our home to recover. The offended and insulted parents had shunned her to hide their own shame and protect the rest of the children from her bad influence. But her life got even worse after she married the father of her child and he took her to live in his father’s house. It wasn’t long before she discovered dark deeds involving a stepmother and trade-ups made in the night, things I cannot describe without being vulgar beyond bounds accepted in state prisons. She took her baby and fled to where even we could not locate her. The parents were brokenhearted to the point of treating her as if she were never born. It took about two years for her to surface. Today, fifteen years later, she is happily married to a fine man and has several more children by him. She is still a lovely person and no one would ever know that she walked the valley of the shadow of shame. I do not know how she now relates to her parents, but I wonder if they wish they had acted with a little more grace and hope. I have seen too many parents deal with a crisis like this by taking on a permanent state of sadness and rejection. They end up destroying the rest of the family and drive them all out of the home early. Teenagers can be amazingly volatile and foolish. They can scream they hate you and never want to see you again, disappear out of your life seemingly forever, and, one year later, be sitting at your kitchen table chatting like nothing ever happened. When they are thirty-five years old, married and with several kids, they will shake their heads in embarrassment at their foolish years. The question is, will you still be a part of their lives, or will you have responded with such anger and criticism that they chose to live without you? So what does it mean and how should you handle it when a seven- to twelve-year-old diverges into some form of sexual curiosity or activity? The age brackets I discuss are not rigid. You must understand the principle and adjust to the needs of your child. First, know that at this age it has the possibility of being serious. You must get all the facts first. If you immediately show great anger, they will likely clam up on you. Try to appear calm and objective as you ask questions. If it takes an hour to wear them down to telling all, then stay with it until you are confident you have gotten all the details. “Has this been going on for a long time? When and with whom did it start? What other expressions have you indulged in? Why do you do it? What has influenced you to do this—television, videos, computer, a peek at mommy and daddy, seeing someone else, viewing pornography in a magazine, contact with an adult?” Then ask them how they feel about what they were doing in secret. You want to discover how deeply they are violating their consciences. If you have not exposed your children to teaching against sexual promiscuousness, and have not taught them Bible stories that warn against such, then they may consider it not much more than stealing a cookie. If you determine this to be the case, it does not lessen the ramifications of the events, but it does modify the way you respond. Now is the time to show grief and sadness while you teach and instruct them against such practices. Commence a daily Bible study in which you teach the stories of God’s displeasure and judgment against sexual sins. Teach on sexual sins every day for about two weeks and then leave the subject and teach the greatness of God and his goodness and mercy and forgiveness. Teach the book of John or Mark, story by story all the way through. Teach the Psalms and especially Proverbs. As you come to the subject in Scripture, teach against sexual promiscuousness at least once a month. If, before the events, your children have been well-taught about the sinfulness of their deeds and they have indulged anyway, the problem is much more serious. They do not fear God and do not believe his Word. Ask yourself why and remedy that problem in the future. Willful sinners, of any age, who turn away from their consciences, are on the road to addiction and perdition. You need to bring the Biblical truth to bear in such a way that they fear to walk the dark path. In your teaching time, recount the horrors of hell and eternal suffering. Children who have violated their consciences will need to be soundly spanked after they have understood the awfulness of their sin. Their souls need the release that judgment brings. This will be one of those rare times when you give them more licks, distributed over a wider area so as not to bruise or damage the skin. They need to know this is an especially dark deed deserving of special judgment.

How should you respond when post puberty children engage in sexual conduct?

I know you understand this is a different matter altogether. Girls do not just grow into sexual interest and passion. They must be conditioned to it by some outside influence. But boys develop sexual passion by just going through puberty. No one need tell them anything. It is their destiny. Parents and the church must prepare boys for the transformation and temptation their hormones will bring. If a boy just follows his drives, he will become a predator and quickly develop into a deviant. Passion, fire, aggression, and violence are in the members of all fourteen-year-old boys. Only though self-restraint and discipline can a young man contain his passions and wait his turn to “possess his vessel in sanctification and honor”. I know of only two things that can constrain a young man—the morals and restraints of community, and the Word of God. All that we said concerning your response to a pre-puberty child is true here, but there is an important added element: you are now dealing with an adult—in various degrees, depending on age and maturity. The only restraint will be self-restraint. The kid must repent, change his mind about his actions and choose to suffer the pains of temptation in self-denial. Only by the power of the gospel in his life will this happen. Once the flower blooms there is no putting it back in the bud. The trick is to now keep it in the flower stage until it can be taken to a wedding.

How should we relate to children other than our own?

Once, a parent came to my wife shocked and upset. Her five-year-old son came to her telling how another boy, eight years old, had cornered him in an aggressive manner and demanded to see his “PP.” The five-year-old was afraid of the older boy but refused to expose himself. Good training! The mother acted as if she had just lost her innocence. “How could this happen among good Christian families?” Probably because they are sons of Adam, made of flesh. If you think otherwise you are naive at best. Now how should this mother and father relate to the family with the PP-peeking pervert? The short answer is, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple” (Romans 16:17–18). Look at the wording, “mark them.” Put a mark on them so you and everyone else can “avoid” them. As far as your children are concerned, the offender is as taboo as a rattlesnake. The offender will probably grow up to be normal, but know that he is part of the pool that will produce the small percentage of perverts that decorate the walls of post offices and occupy the cells of prisons. You should have compassion for the offender, and if you are in a position to minister to him, do so, but your first duty is to protect your children from rattlesnakes by never allowing them in the same yard together. That is not to say that you take your children and go home if the offender’s family ends up at the same gathering as yours, but it does mean that by all means you quietly and inoffensively take whatever steps are necessary to keep your children from ever spending five seconds alone in his presence. By alone I mean standing and talking within sight but out of hearing. We want to be balanced and compassionate. What if you are the parent of the offender? Would you want others to just throw your son away? Would you want the church and community to publicly mark him as a pervert? Of course not. Then do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You have two separate responsibilities. You must first assure the protection and sanctity of your son, and then you must do what you can to save the offender from his untoward behavior. Keep in mind that the offender will most likely grow up to be quite normal. It could have been just a moment of curiosity. We do not want to publicly destroy the young boy or girl and thereby force them into a life of isolation and anger. On the other hand, even if the event (and possibly several others like it) does not cause the boy to grow up to be a pervert or a predator, know that his possibly passing display of voyeurism or curious moment of exploration could have much more negative consequences on those whom he infects. He might grow up to be normal while he leaves behind weaker souls who grow up to hang out in the men’s rooms at interstate rest stops. We must be protectors first and healers second—but never persecutors.

Repeat offenders

If a nine-year-old is a repeat offender and has on more than one occasion tried to see the private members of another boy or girl, it is obvious that he has a chronic problem. Mark him to your children, by discussing the evil of his ways. Let your children see an attitude of disgust on the one hand and compassion and pity on the other. During your family worship time and in your bedtime prayers, pray for the offender’s lost soul. Never allow your children to play with or even talk to the child. It won’t do any good to change churches. Kids everywhere are offenders. Where you are now, at the very least, you have identified one offender. There are others in the same group—in any group, without exception. Deb spotted two post-puberty Amish girls in the creek feeling each other. When she confronted them they confessed that several of the girls carried on in such a manner in the two-stall privy at the one-room schoolhouse. When Deb had them confess to their parents, the parents were so uncomfortable discussing it that they dismissed her and buried the whole thing with silence. The girls appear to have grown up to be “normal,” except one.

Pretend it never happened

Many parents will pretend it never happened, or if it did happen it doesn’t mean anything. Once, in our own church service, a visiting girl who is homeschooled but attends a public church passed a note to one of our girls who has been known to offend. The note said...I can’t tell you what it said, but it had the strongest of lesbian content. The parents brushed it off with a smile and the remark, “Oh, you know, kids will be kids.” Yeah, and kids will be little Sodomites and fornicators as well. Remember, children died in Sodom and Gomorrah just like the adults. And when God sent Israel to possess wicked Canaan, he told them to kill every man, woman, and child. Yes, they could not adopt one of the beautiful little two-year-old girls, for the whole nation was conditioned to great immorality and infected with disease.

Judge and Jury

Do not become a persecutor of the offenders. Don’t act vindictively. Don’t despise the parents. Put yourself in their place. You could be there three years from now. Have compassion. Be sympathetic. By all means, protect your children, but don’t give your own kids cause to see you as hostile. You may generate sympathy for the offender and render yourself dislikeable in the eyes of your own kids.

Fourteen to eighteen-year-olds

There are two kinds of teenage offenses—consensual and predatory. Our response should reflect that difference. Predators should be reported to the law and incarcerated. It will be the end of their moral life, for they will be placed in a government institution with other perverts where they will prey on one another and learn all the foul arts of Sodom. It is sad, but under Mosaic law they would have been stoned to death. If you have teenagers that descend into the dark pit of sexual promiscuousness, it is too late to parent them into a course correction. When the member gets out of the pants it cannot be put back in except by the crucifying power of the Holy Spirit. (See my series, Sin No More.) Your job will be to manage them in a manner that minimizes the impact of their sin upon the rest of the family and upon others with whom they come in contact. If they are cooperative and repentant, thank God and show mercy and forgiveness. Offer support and try to normalize the relationship. If you become aware your child is involved in consensual sexual activity with a child about the same age, you must view both of them as equally guilty even though one of them may have been initially the experienced predator. There are too many variations for me to cover all the possibilities.

Extremes

My readers come in a variety of extremes. I know that it is impossible to communicate clearly with all of you. Some are so “compassionate” and afraid to offend that they will believe the best, cover sins with silence, and ignorantly act as if all is well, giving evil the cloak it needs to continue its insidious, undetected infestation. Other of my readers are “fearless defenders of the truth” who pride themselves in their stand for righteousness. They will recklessly condemn the guilty and mark in bright red the offenders, hounding them with condemnation until they are driven out of the company of “decent folks.” I would have to speak in the extreme, one way or the other, to reach the radical left and right on this or any issue. I am sad to confess that most of my readers will only remember those words that enforce their already preconditioned perspectives. The compassionate will avoid judgment and the judgmental will refuse to show compassion, as has been their manner all along.

Conflicted

I must confess that I am conflicted. Part of me would like to mark all the sinning children, separate our families, and shun the offenders altogether. But there is another part of me that wants to redeem the sinning children and weep with parents who must deal with these issues. One of the things that gives me hope is my many years of experience. God is merciful and longsuffering, and I have seen him forgive people I wouldn’t have buried with my dead dog. I have observed as God lifts a piece of trash from the ground and holds it to his heart. As I watch in awe, it turns into a lovely son or daughter of God. The useless is united with heaven itself, and he is not ashamed to call them brethren. I don’t want to get to heaven and find God hugging something I threw away. So, I say again, first protect your children, and then reach out in compassion to lost souls of any age. Secure the safety of your family and then become missionaries to an evil world. Just because the devil is clutching something, don’t fear to reach for it with a hand of mercy and a heart of grace. The blood of Jesus Christ covers a multitude of sin. (See my teaching from the book of Hebrews.) “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6: 11).

Help Me Help You

There is so much I didn’t say and couldn’t cover in the space allowed. I am no expert on the subject. I am not a counselor on sexual matters. I would be glad to leave this subject to those more qualified, but there is a vacuum I have tried to fill. I welcome your input. It may well be that I am blind to some of the issues or have overlooked good solutions. As you share your perspectives I will learn from you and take that into consideration when addressing this subject in the future. For more information on how to talk to your kids about Biblical prohibitions against sexual sins, get Michael Pearl's audio message called Sex Education for Children, available at the NGJ Web Store.

Building On Rock

Shalom (Pearl) Brand — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:20:04 +0000

I have told my husband more than once that I hope the Lord will come back before my children reach teen years, so that I will not lose any of them to the world. Then yesterday, I realized my perspective had changed and I told him, “I have no fear of losing my children.” In shock, he asked me what had changed my mind. Smiling, I told him, “Because they will see the same thing in my marriage that I saw in my parents’— LOVE.” Now, I am not talking about just mushy or passionate love; I am talking about real love all the way down to the bottom of the soul, the very foundation of love. When you see it, you say, “That is what I want.” I think I can speak for all my brothers and sisters in saying that the one thing that gave substance to what my parents taught was their example of love for each other. When it came time to find a mate, there was never a time that any of us kids did not go to them for advice. We never had any desire to go out and date and give our purity away, for we knew there was a better reward and a better future if we kept ourselves pure. Why waste our life on cheap thrills when there were so many blessings and rewards by keeping ourselves pure? We knew and saw the consequences of sin by hearing our friends talk about how their parents were always fighting and how much they just wanted to get out of the house. I was sad to leave home, and I still love to go for visits and take my own children there. That is what I want, and it is how I want my children to feel one day toward me. I want their foundation to be strong. Before I met my husband, Justin, he felt the same as I did, so when everyone around him was busy dating, he waited for the right time. He waited for ME! His parents were saved right before he was born and raised him to love the Lord. They told him how sin hurt their lives and that he could have something better if he kept himself pure. I want all you young people to know, I have learned from my experience that there is nothing more beautiful in this life than to stand before God and your family on your wedding day and kiss for the first time. Some of you are saying to yourself, “That is ridiculous; a kiss is just a kiss.” No, it is more, it is the beginning of a road that should be shared with just one person during their natural lives. You might say, “Shalom, you are just naive and don’t know what you are talking about.” If that be so, then thank God for it, for now I have a wonderful marriage, and one day I expect to have my girls stand beside me and wash dishes and think that there is no place better than being there with Mom talking and cleaning house together. For those of you who are married and are having a rough time, get my mom’s book, Created to be His Help Meet. It will not only make your marriage better, it will save you from a lot of heartache. Especially when your children are teens and they decide that the only way to get away from you is to move in with some guy or girl whom they think loves them more than you do. There comes a time when parents must let go of their children, for the child has become an adult, accountable before God for the choices he or she makes. You must let them choose based on the foundation you have laid for the past eighteen to twenty years. When they step out from under your wing, if they do not respect you, no amount of pressure and nagging will make up for the poor foundation. How can we as parents look at our grown daughter as though she is still fifteen? If our training is not bearing fruit when she is eighteen, we must assume the blame, since we laid the foundation. Respect I realize that the love my parents demonstrated engendered respect from us kids. Even as I write this, I see things I can do to ensure that my three-year-old will continue to respect me when she gets to be a teenager. I must listen with respect to her three-year-old ramblings. Just a few days ago, when she was sick and asked me for candy, I told her no, and then explained in a very grown up way what sugar does to your body when you’re sick. She listened intently. One hour later, having forgotten our conversation, she again asked for candy. I answered her by smiling and asking her what she thought she should do. She smiled back and told me that sugar was bad for her and that I should not give her any. I praised her for choosing wisely. Then when Daddy came home, we told him about her wise decision. I was showing her respect and training her to choose to listen to what Daddy and Mama have to say. Later in life, she will choose to listen to our counsel and wait for the right man. I believe that when that time comes and we send her off to follow her dreams, we will be able to trust her to take responsibility and choose wisely. I worked at an orphanage before I got married. They put me in charge of two boys 9 and 13 years old. I was to be their “Mom”, seeing to it that they obeyed the many rules. The thirteen-year-old had the street smarts of a sixteen-year-old and was very angry toward authority, especially his former female leaders who tried to tell him what to do. He was mad at me before we even met, just because I filled the position of the demanding houseparent. The first thing I did was sit down with him and tell him that from now on, he was to be as much in charge of the 9-year-old as I was, that I expected him to be a man and act like one, that he was too old for me to baby-sit, and that I would need his help to teach and keep an eye on the 9-year-old who was below his age level in schooling. He continued to express angry resentment for about two months, but when he realized that I was going to continue to give him the respect he FELT he deserved, he began to reciprocate in kind. He started doing very well in school and taking responsibility for the younger boy. He started honoring me as his authority. He knew the rules much better than I, for he had been there most of his life. When I befriended him and just backed off emotionally, letting him take responsibility for his actions, there came a point when he did not want to let me down. There were times when in youthful exuberance he failed and had to face the predefined consequences. Respect is the key. Listen to your children. They are human beings, with all the drives and responses of an adult—only more volatile and less logical. Sharing responsibility While growing up, we always worked as a team to maintain the home front and to put food on the table. We learned responsibility by being made responsible. We never felt as though work was an unwelcomed exception to life; it was life itself. The tomatoes we planted, weeded, watered, picked, packed, and sold were a necessary part of living. We did not just play and watch our dad do all the work. Yes, we played and had more fun than most kids I know of. We would all work together, and then we would play together, Dad right in the middle of everything, cheering us on to be the best at our antics, whether dropping into the water from a rope swing or trying to catch a chicken. I have modeled my home after my life experiences, and just as it worked for my parents, it is working for me. Gracie knows she is a huge part of this family. Just a few days ago, as Justin and I were having a serious discussion on the need to get more work and increase our income, Gracie chimed in, “Daddy I will help you in the shop to make money.” Last night as Gracie was getting ready for bed, Justin came in from the shop to tell us that he would have to work for a while longer to finish a job. Gracie, with great concern, asked him if he needed her help. He tried not laugh, but sincerely thanked her for offering and told her that she could best help by assisting Mom in putting Laila to bed. She gave him a great big smile and set to the task of helping prepare her little sister for bed. Whatever affects us affects her, and she knows that she is an integral part of this family. I have sadly watched as parents try to prop up their ever-tilting, sliding and crumbling homes on foundations that will never sustain an enduring structure. Their teenagers begin to fall like stone chimneys built on sand. Against their parents’ most earnest pleadings or loud ravings, the kids flee the crumbling structure. They run off prematurely to try to build their own home, hoping for something better, but they carry the example with them, and they, too, build on sand, repeating another generation of foundationless homes. Not I, for one, because by God’s grace I am daily laying the stones of love and respect deep and wide. My home will be strong like the one in which I was raised. I am filled with hope and expectation, not fear or dread. I am not yet skilled in many areas, I have much to learn, and yes, life might throw me some surprises. But what I don’t know is not nearly as important as knowing that I am building a foundation that will sustain my children in any storm that may come. I hope that my sharing these thoughts with you about this vital issue will encourage you to give your kids the foundation they will need to face their uncertain world. Many thanks to the Feistal family for submitting the pictures used in this article.

Becoming a Bear

Gabriel Pearl — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:20:46 +0000

I go spear fishing in the ocean at night with just a flashlight and a spear gun, in 50 feet of water infested with prowling sharks. Not much bothers me. But one thing scares me. There is one critter I really respect: bears. Bears have it all. They are fast runners, much faster than the fastest man. With their quick paws, they can snatch fish and seal from the water. Tropical bears climb trees to drag monkeys from their safe perch. They don’t even think twice about digging into an angry bee- hive. I guess you could say they have us humans beat in every physical respect. And, if you think that’s bad, it’s not even the worst; they have a temper that far exceeds their physical strength, which you will experience just trying to get close to one of their young. Afterwards, you will hear people say things like, “Poor guy, wonder if he even saw it coming?” and “How long did you say it took the bear to do that to him? Terrible shame. He was a good guy”. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. The bear is a predator—never to be trusted. Even in today’s society, there are more predators than ever. You don’t know who you can trust. You eat lunch with somebody at work for years, just to find out he abuses his daughters and their friends. It’s very sad. God will rise up in judgment someday, and he will be strong, harsh, and completely righteous in his vengeance. Until that time, it’s our job as parents to raise our kids to have a fair chance at life, not one of shame and remorse brought on by a moment of gratification for some lowlife you thought you could trust. This past winter I was sitting up in my tree stand, deer hunting. It was a beautiful afternoon. Everything was perfect, wind, moon phase, temperature. Suddenly, from around the edge of the hill a deer came running. In one smooth motion I brought my gun up and flipped the safety off. The closer the deer got, the more I realized it was just a fawn. Some hunters would be bummed at this point, but I was stoked, because there is only one reason a fawn runs—coyote. I stayed paused and excited. Sure enough, the predator came running about a hundred yards back. Needless to say, it never knew what hit it. One second it’s trying to get an easy meal off of a baby that got separated from its mother; the next moment, it’s as dead as a tanned hide hanging on the wall. I like harvesting deer. They are good to eat. But I LOVE killing coyotes. They deserve it. They are cowards, picking on the small and weak. When I was 11 years old, I went on a mule ride with my grandparents. It was a weekend of true hillbilly fun, riding miles in the summer heat all day long with a bunch of tobacco chewing, overall-wearing, heehaw looking good ‘ole boys. It was a great time. The second day, I met this older gentleman, about 55 years old. He spoke well, was clean cut, and was better dressed than the rest of the bunch. He seemed to know my family and talked about my mom. He was definitely a good man. He said there was a nice trail around the lake that we could walk around first thing in the morning, and that we would see lots of snakes or turtles. That was all I needed to know. The next morning at daylight he tapped on my tent. I was up in a second and ready to go. It took about an hour and a half to walk around the lake. We had a great time, but I only saw one snake. When I got home, I told my parents how much fun we had riding mules, catching perch, walking around the lake. “Walking around the lake?” they asked. “Yeah, I met this really nice old guy. We walked around the lake. It’s ok, he knows you. His name is so and so.” Their faces turned ash grey. I knew it was serious. They said he was a pedophile from way back. Other kids had charged him, but nothing had ever stuck, and they had not seen him in years. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I pondered back to that time at the mule ride and the gravity of the situation. Was I not his type? I doubt it. I was just a “cub”, and he was a seasoned coyote. So why did I go unscathed? It’s pretty clear to me now. It’s because I was a cub, and not a fawn. Sure, the cub might have wandered away from the den for the weekend, but the coyote knew there was not a tree too high, nor water too deep, and no way to outrun the wrath of the bear—my parents. Their reputations were known abroad, and the coyote knew that to mess with this cub was a sure way to lose what he loved most—and I don’t mean his freedom. Some of you have fawns for children, and some of you have cubs. There is a big difference between the two in the mind of a coyote. Fawns are easy prey, and there are no consequences to the coyote if he eats one. But mama bear will have no mercy for the creature that dares to mess with her cub. If you are a parent in today’s world, it’s your responsibility to be bearish about your children. People need to know, and coyotes need to know: If you mess with my cub, you get the full bear treatment. - Gabe,