Christian Upbringing

DMS 455

Koebel

Christian Upbringing

The forum that drew the most attention to me was that of Robert Knox Dentan. He spoke about the thoughts of Christian parents on the punishment of their children. Most of the opinion was straight from Michael and Debi Pearl. The reason that I feel this forum was so strong is because of the fact that it is a form of torture that goes on in households here in this country every single day. The lack of knowledge about the situation is what is surprisingly scary to me and I feel that this problem should be out in the open to more U.S. citizens.

As mentioned in the discussion after the forum, the majority of students feel that the punishment that they received as a child was minor and had a positive impact on their lives. Which I certainly agree it can have a positive impact on a person’s life if used in a certain matter and not abused. When I say abused, I mean overused in the way that Mr. Dentan explained in the forum. It is certainly a problem when it is found that Christian parents have a

Step-by-step guide to how they are going to physically discipline their children the way that Michael and Debi Pearl were exemplifying. I feel that the fact that you can purchase instruments of any kind to discipline your children is definitely not right and should be banned from happening. Robert pointed out in the forum that a certain number of children die each month due to child abuse. I cannot recall the exact amount but it was strikingly high. He also stated that the best way to prevent the act of child abuse is to never hit your child in any way form or fashion.

I took some time to talk to some of my basketball teammates of mine about the idea of child abuse. I asked them what their situations at home were like and how their parents dealt with punishing them directly. I also asked them if they thought that even though they felt their parents were disciplining them, do they feel that it is a violation of their human rights. Out of the five people that I asked, none of them were aware that it was a violation of their human rights. Just like Robert Dentan put it in the forum, just because a child is to young to be aware does not mean it is not a violation. The person is still a human being regardless of how old they are. One

teammate told me he knew a person that was “disciplined pretty tough” at home and it had a severely bad impact on his life and interaction with others. The person became violent and eventually went to jail for physically abusing his girlfriend. In that case, it left a horrible impact on the person and maybe they felt it was okay to abuse a close person. On the other hand, I talked to a teammate that was disciplined rather tough from his father as a child. He explained to me that by his dad doing this, he felt as though he had more respect for the people around him and was more discipline to make the right decisions in life. He may not have agreed with him during the situation, but he was thankful it did happen before he got older.

These are just a very small portion of the people that go through abuse in society today. I myself have parents