Parental Disdain: Revealing the Hidden Ugliness In Our Hearts

I warn you now. This article ain’t pretty. But how can it be, examining parental disdain for children that encompasses child hatred from gross sexual and physical abuse to cruel and even subtle mental and emotional abuse? The only way depths of sin can be extracted and discarded is if we identify and search for it, looking externally and internally. The ugliness of this wicked world and, sometimes and in some ways, in our homes, challenges us to look at the ugliness in our own hearts.

I cried like a baby when I heard the news: a 10-year-old girl weighed just 32 pounds, emaciated and malnourished, starved by the hands of her mother who locked the child in a closet where the child slept and relieved herself. Undoubtedly, the child experienced more than physical starvation, longing for her mother’s love, hoping someone would relieve her from pain and shame and confusion and wondering why this someone wasn’t her mother, why her mother was the one to do this to her. Even as I write I cry when I think of her; the 3 and 4 year old whose mother left them home alone so she could go party; the 4-year-old stepson of gospel singer James Fortune who Fortune scalded in a bathtub; and the victims of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach found guilty on 43 of 45 counts of sodomy and rape of young men entrusted to his care. All this, and the thought that Sandusky is apparently guilty of many more abuses, including sexually molesting his own son, has had me sad and contemplative for days.

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Chastisement Gone Too Far

I told you about the time I wanted to punch Josh and the time I wanted to cuss him out and the time of the showdown. I have had my mommy moments when I have wanted to take my kids out of the world that I brought them into. But how does the discipline moment for the Christian get to the point where the police are involved, not because someone in a public bathroom witnessed, disagreed with your methods and called the police, but your own child called them to your house?

By now you have heard this is what happened to Creflo Dollar, the megachurch pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, GA. News reports say Dollar and his 15-year-old daughter argued because he said she couldn’t go to a party. At some point the verbal sparring got physical, with Dollar allegedly choking, slapping, punching, and hitting his daughter with a shoe, though he denies punching his daughter.

Dollar says he was just trying to restrain her after she hit him. According to the incident report, Alexandria Dollar, 19, sister of the 15 year old, says her father "put both hands around her sister's neck and choked her for about five seconds." She also alleges that her dad grabbed her sister by the shoulders and slapped her in the face. And the 15 year old on the 911 call says the reported incident was "not the first time." Dollar was arrested, taken to Fayette County Jail and released on $5,000 bond. He faces misdemeanor charges of simple battery and cruelty to children.

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Biblical Survival Tips for Persecuted Parents

 One of my relatives has had a lot to say about a lot of my business. She has told me how I should interact with my husband, particularly what I withhold from him (physically, emotionally, information-wise and financially), how I should care for my recovering mother, and how I should parent my children. I would not mind hearing what she has to say if she were being reasonable, if she were giving me practical and godly advice because she saw I lacked wisdom.

No, she just believes that her opinions have merit because “the good Lord has let me live on this earth longer than you.” But her biggest issue is that my husband and I decided to home educate our children. I know homeschooling isn’t novel and parents are opting to educate their children in a number of ways, but to this 70-plus year-old woman, homeschooling is foreign and has no place in our family.

“He’s going to miss the most important day of his life, his first day of kindergarten,” she said after my oldest turned 5.

“Why do you want to do that, Rhonda?” she said another time.

“How is he going to have friends, Rhonda?” she wanted to know.

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