Old Fashioned Child Rearing Is Where It's At

A thirty-something homeschooling Mom decides to take an advanced college course in child development, thinking it would advance her understanding of children. Turns out, the class did nothing to advance her understanding of children, but she did come away with a better understanding of why so many of her friends and acquaintances are having such horrible discipline problems with their kids.

“The professor, a psychologist, began the class by telling us that the way I was raised was wrong, even abusive,” she told me, “and that I had to toss all the wonderful lessons of my wonderful upbringing in the trash and learn the new way.”

She quickly figured out that the only way she was going to make a decent grade in the course was to pretend that she agreed with the professor and hope he wasn’t a very good judge of people. She made a decent grade, in part because psychologists aren’t very good judges of people, generally. I can say that with authority because I am a psychologist and I was people-stupid until I came to grips with what my education had done to me and set about to recover.

They, psychologists and mental health professionals by other titles, don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to children, parenting, families, and people in general. And they refuse to admit it. Who else in my profession is saying what I say? Far as I can tell, no one. Even James Dobson and I disagree on most things. He believes in psychology and the myth of its healing powers. I do not. Furthermore, I fail to comprehend how a person with a solid biblical foundation can believe in psychology, especially if, like me, he is a psychologist and should understand it. Is Jim Dobson so enamored of his degree that he can’t see the evil that lurks behind the sheepskin?

About human beings, the Bible tells us one thing, psychology tells us something else entirely. The Bible says, for example, that high esteem for oneself is bad mojo. Psychology says bad mojo is good mojo. The Bible says that the gospel is sufficient to heal whatever ails you, mental or physical. Psychology says psychology is not just sufficient but absolutely necessary, along with drugs that have never reliably outperformed placebos in clinical trials (NONE OF THEM!) to heal whatever ails your mental state. How can a biblical worldview be reconciled with psychology when they obviously exist in a state of philosophical incompatibility? In a word: Can’t.

Do today’s parents raise children the way parents in the 1950s raised children? No. Today’s parents raise children according to bogus psychological theory. Their grandparents raised children according to biblical principle, tradition, and commonsense. Has child mental health improved since the 1950s? No, it is at least ten times worse. Does 1 and 1 make 2? Yes, unless one is a victim of public-school math, in which case 1 and 1 make whatever you need it to make to continue feeling special.

Psychology has not improved the lot of any group of American citizens except psychologists, who have successfully convinced most American citizens that they know what they’re doing when it comes to kids, parents, families, and humans in general. Because of their success at promoting the myth of psychology, psychologists generally make a lot of money. It is relevant to note that most of them are atheists and most of them vote a straight Democrat Party ticket. I want Jim Dobson to someday tell me exactly what he finds so wonderful about psychology.

Psychologists are con artists. A parent goes to a psychologist seeking advice concerning a child who is disobedient and unmotivated in school. The con artist, I mean, psychologist tells the parent that their child’s biochemistry is out of balance and that the imbalance is causing attention deficit disorder and oppositional defiant disorder and that the child requires a daily dose of medication that throws the chemistry of the human nervous system out of balance. The parent, thinking that people with capital letters after their names must know what they’re talking about and goes along with the con. Did the psychologist analyze a blood or serum sample from the child? No. Then how does he know the kid has a biochemical imbalance? Ponder that for a while. Why does the child’s “therapy” consist primarily of a prescription? Ah, so that when the kids behavior fails to improve, the psychologist can dodge responsibility by simply claiming that the medication must need adjusting. Does the child’s behavior and willingness to accept responsibility improve? Only during the five or so hours following a dose of the drug, at which point the drug wears off and the misbehaviors resurface. The drug creates an illusion, and an ephemeral one at that.

Most people who seek counsel from mental health professionals later testify that the counsel was of no help or made matters worse. Studies find that when people don’t know the educational level of their “therapists,” they rate people with only high school educations as highly, on average, as they rate people with Ph.Ds. in psychology. Ponder those two facts for a while.

If one sees ten medical docs about a certain physical problem, he is very likely to receive the same diagnosis ten times and the same recommendations for treatment ten times. If one sees ten psychologists about a certain personal problem, he is very likely to receive at least five different diagnoses and at least seven different treatment plans. In light of that, how in the world can one conclude anything other than “These people are clowns”?

And so my new friend tells me her college professor says that new parenting is a whole lot better than old fashioned child rearing. Like I said, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Don’t trust them as far as you can throw them. Practice distancing yourself from mental health professionals. Six feet? No, sixty yards. Don’t go near their offices unless your physician’s office is in the same complex. Psychologists are a pandemic. You don’t want to catch what they got.