Children Are Wet Cement

  

Let's get one thing clear right out the gate, children are NOT cement. You can't walk on them, you can't take a sledgehammer to them and you can't ride your bike on them. And if you DO any of those things, you are a horrible fucking person. But I think I get the gist of the metapahor that Miss Ortlund is going for here. Cement is a rather malleable material that can be molded into something...

..except it's not. See, the issue with cement is that it can only take one form. Once it dries in that form, it's stuck in that form. So for this to be a metaphor on how to shape your children, it's a pretty fucking shitty one because if you screw up and you make your child an asshole, then guess what, they're likely gonna stay an asshole, because that's what cement does, it stays in whatever shape you put it in. FOREVER.

Even still, her heart's in the right place, I guess. She wants to help you raise healthy children. Except the issue with this is that there's no proper child rearing technique (other than, ya know, NOT hitting them with sledgehammers like I said before) and what works for one parent doesn't work for every parent. But perhaps it's not so much about shaping them as it is influencing them to shape themselves. I mean the tagline on the front cover reads "make the right impression in their life", which to me insinuates that hey, you want your kid to NOT be a dickhead? Maybe don't be a dickhead around them. Kids are impressionable and often will pick up extremely bad habits from their parents, and if you hit them with sledgehammers, they'll likely hit their own children with sledgehammers.

I feel like I should point out now that this blog in no way endorses hitting children with sledgehammers. That is a horrible fucking thing to do, and you should be ashamed for laughing at it just as much as I am for having to write it. Congratulations, we're both terrible.

But the back of the book gives us a bit more to go on, thanks to the blurb they've provided right underneath her stock author portrait that looks like it could've been pulled off any murder mystery novel from the late 80s. Seriously, I hope at one point in the future, authors just start using selfies as their portraits, because anything else just feels downright informal.

Now, I know that I said the back of the book with the blurb gives us more to go on, but in actuality, it's not really so much a blurb as it is a quote, and we're not even sure it's a quote from her because there's no name next to it (so therefore I'm assuming its hers, as why would you put your own name next to your own quote on your own book? You only credit other peoples quotes), and then beneath that, we get a good ol' fashioned quote about the bible.

Let's examine both of these shall we?

Why is it important to affirm a child? Because a child who is truly accepted by his parents can grow up learning to accept himself. He'll be able to admit his own failures and weaknesses. He'll be able to forget himself and love others.

Now, I don't know if that last part was supposed to say FORGIVE himself and not FORGET himself, because I've dissociated and forgetting yourself is actually quite terrifying, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But perhaps what she means is that they can change and forget who they used to be if they didn't like that version of themselves, but...even then, that's kind of a shitty way to look at it. I mean, to forget yourself is simply to ignore who you used to be, but to forgive yourself is to acknowledge how bad you were and be proud you've improved, right? So maybe it's a typo, or maybe it's just shitty advice. I can't tell. Other than that, however, the rest of the quote, sans the random ellipses, is fairly okay and on point. Children should be accepted by their parents, definitely, and be able to admit they have failures and weaknesses, definitely, but I also think children are only capable of doing that if they see their own parents do it too. So, let's move onto the second part, everyones favorite New York Times Fictional Bestseller, The Bible!

See yourself as God sees you: a little child of eternity, moldable and pliable. Surrender yourself totally under his hands. Let there be no more masking, posturing, faking on your part and thus the generations meet each others needs, and revival and renewal become your constant ever fresh way of life.

Now, besides the fact that moldable isn't really a word, but we'll let that slide because, let's face it, the people who wrote the bible weren't the most practical of beings when it came to language, or ethics, or anything really, what actually bothers me about this passage is that it directly fucking contradicts the passage that came before it. So who are we supposed to emulate, if we're children? Because one says that we need to be accepted by our parents, but the second says that we need to give ourselves to god, so is this book for Jesus? Did she write this as a book to raise Jesus? Because he's the supposed son of God, and this is a child rearing book. You can't tell a child to obey both figures, because one is the set of people who birthed them and the other is some random guy we think may possibly exist in the sky.

Also, this passage is fucked up because its wording insinuates that your faults and weaknesses, which the prior passage says you can admit and grow from, aren't even YOUR FUCKING FAULT. This insinuates they're simply the fault of God. That God made you this fucked up, and now it's up to you to fucking fix it, because let's be honest, your parents sure as hell ain't gonna fix it. Now I know that this entire post comes across rather...non-christian...but that's probably for a few reasons. The first being that I am not a christian, and the second reason, the more actual of the two, is because while I don't necessarily have anything against religion if you only use it to better yourself, I DO have something against religion if you only use it to better yourself without first acknowledging how shitty you were to begin with, and that's what this bible passage is telling us.

It's not OUR fault we're fucked up, and yeah, we CAN change, but, like, it might be hard? Cause we're cement? And cement isn't actually all that malleable, as I said at the start of this entire hot mess. There's a lot to take away from this book, and none of it's really good. While, I will admit, its probably got the best of intentions, as raising a child is not super easy for everyone and sometimes people need books to help them, I think there's probably better books out there besides "your child is shitty and it's gods fault, so throw them in a cement mixer."

Actually, if that were the title of this book, that'd be great and I'd read that, because I'd wanna know how that situation came to be. What had this child done that was so terrible that his parents were forced to throw them into a cement mixer, and were they acting on Gods will? Maybe I'll write this book, this is a million dollar idea.

Anyway, I guess that's it for this hour of "fuck children and also fuck god", so I'll see you folks back here next time for a whole different bad book cover! Have fun, and remember, if you do something bad, it isn't your fault, and you don't have to acknowledge it. That's just the way God made you. Accept your shittiness and move on.