In his best-selling book, "The Strong-Willed Child," child-rearing author James Dobson describes how he abused his family's pet dachshund, Siggie:
"Please don't misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority.
"The greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn't realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain.
"At eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.
"On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater..."
..."When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"
"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me "reason" with Mr. Freud."...
... "What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!"...
... "But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. Just as surely as a dog will occasionally challenge the authority of his leaders, so will a little child -- only more so." (emphasis Dobson's)...
... Dobson's parenting style CREATES the sorts of problems for which he then claims to offer the only solution. He bullies children, and when they resist his oppressive, degrading treatment, he uses their "defiance" to further justify his behavior. He sees the family as "a heirarchy of strength" in which the one with the greatest physical might and the strongest will prevails. His books are full of military metaphors in which children "marshall their forces," and "launch" every "weapon" in their "arsenals," while parents are advised to "draw a line in the sand" and to "win and win decisively" whenever a child "sticks their big hairy toe over the line" because "the child has made it clear that he is looking for a fight and his parents would be wise not to disappoint him." In fact, it is Dobson himself who starts out looking for a fight by his dysfunctional need for total control, (even to the point of dictating precisely where and when his dog sleeps at night). Yet, whenever his children can't stand it anymore and mount a valiant, hopeless bid to resist his domestic tyranny, he blames it on the children...
... Dobson uses the same weapons which third world dictators utilize to break the wills of pro-democracy dissidents: pain and fear. The major difference is that when dictators torture and intimidate anyone who resists THEIR tyranny, THEY don't claim to be doing it for their victims' own good as an act of love. Dictators torture and intimidate because doing so meets THEIR needs. So does James Dobson.
