Mr. Pearl Responds To British Parliament’s Efforts to Stop Sales Of TTUAC

ITV News reports that Mr. Pearl is Delighted Over Calls to Ban His Parenting Book.

Mr Pearl told the radio station: “I was delighted to hear that Parliament might ban my book, if they do, I will immediately advertise it as ‘the book banned in the UK’ and…we will end up selling another 100,000 books directly to the UK.”

Now, to clarify, the book would only be banned on the Amazon.co.uk website. I have not heard anything about making it illegal to sell the book in the UK. However, if it is banned on a UK website, it is technically “banned in the UK,” at least in one small part of it. Therefore, he apparently does not feel that it would be misleading to promote the book at “banned in the UK.”

@ADadCalledSpen writes More On To Train Up A Child and has some questions. (Disclaimer: some language on that site)

How, can a book sell more if it’s banned from sale? How can you sell something that can’t be sold? That would be illegals[sic].


So, we see now that the book is not banned everywhere in the UK, only on Amazon.co.uk. Unless I’m confused, that does not stop direct sales of the book from No Greater Joy (Owned by the Pearls) and other small online book sellers. And even if the book should become illegal to sell in the UK, that would not stop Mr. Pearl from selling it because he answers to a Higher Authority. He is convinced that God wants him to sell the book. It is a ministry to him. He in convinced that his parenting advice produces happy and obedient children. In fact, it almost always does produce obedient children who appear to be happy. Due to the Stockholm Syndrome, many even grow up believing that they had a wonderfully happy childhood and use the training on their own children. So, Mr. Pearl sees any effort to thwart his efforts as persecution from the ungodly, which any Godly Christian should expect. *Le Sigh*  Even the efforts of Christians to explain to him why his teachings are dangerous have been met with condensing arrogance. He is entirely sure that he is right and everyone else is wrong.  I hope this helps explain the situation a bit better.

Screen Shot from Amazon.co.uk

Now, Amazon.co.uk has pulled the paperback version of To Train Up A Child but the Kindle version is still available.  Here is what you will find on their site. I also heard that most of their versions have been removed from their Danish site:

 

Also, I was not aware that the book is also available on iTunes.   It is only fair to  ask Apple to pull the title as well, as @ADadCalledSpen has done here.

By the way, here is the book on Google Books.  They do not offer an eBook but tell you where you can find it in print (not on Amazon) and shows the reviews from Goodreads, and Christianbook.com.  Most people who give the book good ratings do so because there is much good advice mixed in with the bad advice.  Some say that there is more good advice than bad.  The problem is that the bad advice is so very bad and mixing it in with good advice only makes it insidious and even more dangerous.  It is like oleander honey.  This is not a case where one can “swallow the meat and spit out the bones” because they are sharp fish bones which can easily choke someone.

While I’m at it, I would also like to dispel the myth that the book calls for hitting children with pipes and whips.  It does not. It calls for hitting children with a switch, belt or plastic plumbing supply line, which is flexible and whip-like. I mention this because when things we claim can be disproved, it casts doubt on everything we say.  Get the true quotes here.

Last but not least, here is MP Nadine Dorries on Adrian Goldberg’s radio show explaining why Amazon should stop selling To Train Up A Child.

6 Comments

  1. Mae on December 7, 2013 at 8:27 pm

    My parents raised me with influences of TTUAC. I know they did it all thinking they should because they did love me. They weren’t hardcore followers of the material, in that they only used their hands to strike, and I don’t think they participated in all of the young-child “training” the book outlines. But I remember clearly the (few) incidents I can remember being spanked, a key factor was that the spanking would NOT stop until we (my brother and I) had stopped squirming, trying to get away, crying, sniffling, etc. We would have to submit completely before we could get away. I can remember one time my mother cried and told me she had to do it this way because she loved me, and it hurt her more than it hurt me. I didn’t believe her. How could I? When we got older, our parents moved on to more creative punishments (Once my mom found out I had figured out how sex worked by reading my journal. She made me paper shred the whole thing. I was 11. Once I lost the door to my room and my “right to privacy” because I didn’t clean it well enough. I was 16. Again, they are not the kind of parents anybody would call abusers, exactly. They honestly thought these were the right, loving decisions. They are the deceived, fooled into abuse by liars. And they still don’t realize.)
    I used to be a very vibrant personality, full of ideas, full of motivation and energy and words and curiosity. I still have some of those things locked up inside myself, but I don’t let them out much anymore. So much of who I am has been vacuum packed into the back corner of my soul, “trained” to keep to itself in case it offends an authority. In every job I take, I find myself ducking to every authority and constantly worrying what they think of me. I am an independent mind with strong opinions and so many fantastic unique capabilities/ideas but if you introduce an authority figure, I become whatever I think they want me to be and I lose myself completely. Right now it has be terrified of taking another job. I want to try to keep myself in my next job, and I’m afraid of failing.
    Which brings me to something else – I am currently in counseling for an anxiety disorder, and I show signs of mild OCD. I do believe the part of me that holds everything to a standard of Perfection comes from the discipline methods my parents used.
    And seriously. My experience is so incredibly tame compared to so many of the stories that you will read of survivors of Pearl methods. And yet, I still have lasting heart-wounds and brain-wounds that may follow me my entire life. Even those parents who avoid the most toxic points of the book can cause irreparable damage to their children.

    Thank you for the endeavors on this site. It is greatly appreciated.

    • Hermana Linda on December 7, 2013 at 9:29 pm

      Thank you for sharing that. I am thankful that God can use me in this small way. <3

  2. Christine on November 19, 2013 at 7:38 am

    Also look at the listing of library availability and consider telling the librarian of any university or local library that has the book in their shelves that you think it ought to be removed. http://www.worldcat.org/title/to-train-up-a-child/oclc/227980400

  3. Zooey on November 13, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    Noelle, I have to agree with Linda: You were not raised according to this book.
    Your parents were loving & caring of you, although they did use corporal punishment. Therefore, when you read TTUAC, you read it through the filter of a person who has not experienced the horrific abuse that is being done to children who closely follow the Pearls’ teachings.
    A person who was so raised (& I know any number of such people), would never, ever call their parents “gentle”. Indeed, most of these folks have NO relationship with their folks, because they do not want to expose themselves to the toxicity that these parents still exude.

  4. Noelle on November 11, 2013 at 8:12 am

    I grew up with parents that really loved me. They spanked me when I disobeyed them and I really appreciate the fact that they did. They were really gentle about it – I didn’t get spanked very often and it never hurt very badly. Other methods of discipline like going to my room or time out didn’t help me see that what I’d done to disobey was wrong in the same way a spanking did. The message wasn’t that they were all powerful and I had to obey – it was that I had done something dangerous and needed to realize that for my own safety. They carefully explained me to as a tiny kid and over and over again that they loved me and that it was their job to keep me safe and teach me how to behave, and that was why I had to learn to trust them and obey them.

    You said that “many even grow up believing that they had a wonderfully happy childhood”, and I guess you’d say I am one of them. My family never read this book, but I did read it as a adult. I am in my thirties now. I’m not sure how I could convince you that I am not delusional and I really am grateful for the spankings I had as a kid, but I wish that I could.

    • Hermana Linda on November 11, 2013 at 2:28 pm

      It does not sound to me like your parents raised you in accordance to this book so my statement was not directed to you. However, it sounds like you read that book and approve of its teachings. I might point out that in many minds, that fact alone shows that the spankings you received have harmed you, but I would not be so tactless as to point that out. Many people read that book and kind of gloss over the harsh statements therein because of the sugar-coating they are given. Have you read the statements in question here? If you do, you will probably deny that they are even in the book so here is a link to the book.

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