{"id":19653,"date":"2014-10-09T08:45:43","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T15:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=19653"},"modified":"2014-10-09T08:45:43","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T15:45:43","slug":"james-dobson-bully-your-pet-hit-your-kid-make-them-obey-you-and-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/james-dobson-bully-your-pet-hit-your-kid-make-them-obey-you-and-god\/","title":{"rendered":"James Dobson: Bully Your Pet, Hit Your Kid, Make Them Obey You–And God"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Recent<\/a>
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson today<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Note: James Dobson died on August 21, 2025, at the age of 89.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Chapter One of his 1978 book, The Strong-Willed Child<\/em>, James Dobson beats the crap out of his dog.<\/p>\n

I was hoping to avoid that word crap. It’s a generational thing with me. But nothing else quite describes what transpired between the evangelical Christian psychologist and his pet dog one evening years ago as bedtime approached\u00a0 in the Dobson household.<\/p>\n

Dobson wanted his dog\u2014a dachshund named Sigmund Freud\u2014to get into his overnight enclosure in the family room. Siggie didn\u2019t want to go; he growled and bared his teeth at his master.<\/p>\n

(Why would a dog snarl at its master? I wondered.)<\/p>\n

Dobson went for his belt.<\/p>\n

(That might explain things.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI had seen this defiant mood before,\u201d Dobson, a licensed psychologist, wrote in The Strong-Willed Child<\/em>, \u201cand knew there was only one way to deal with it. The only<\/em> 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 \u2018reason\u2019 with Mr. Freud.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Dobson gave Mr. Freud a firm swat across the rear end, the dog tried to bite the belt. \u201cI hit him again and he tried to bite me<\/em> . . . That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged<\/p>\n

\"Head<\/a>
James Dobson, from the cover of the 1985 paperback edition of The Strong-Willed Child<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally Siggie backed himself into a corner and snarled at the belt-wielding child psychologist. It was to be the little dog\u2019s last stand. \u201cI eventually got him to bed,\u201d Dobson writes, \u201cbut only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!\u201d<\/p>\n

The next night when Dobson ordered the family pet into his nighttime enclosure, Mr. Freud went \u201cin perfect submission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two-hundred-pound man with belt wins. Twelve-pound dog loses.<\/p>\n

And that is as it should be, according to Dobson\u2019s lights. For just as a dog will challenge authority, so too will a small child–\u201conly more so.\u201d Whenever a child resists authority, some physical pain–a swat or lash with a switch or a belt\u2014is in order.<\/p>\n

The entire human race, you see, is afflicted with a tendency toward willful behavior, Dobson says. Adam and Eve had it. You and I have it. Our children have it.<\/p>\n

Which puts our children\u2019s very souls at risk. The child who fails to submit to his parents \u201cleadership\u201d will surely fail to yield to God\u2019s formidable will as an adult, Dobson reasons.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake, he tells his readers, God possesses \u201cmajestic authority.\u201d God is in charge of the universe, and as such, God, the supreme Lord, requires obedience<\/em> from his children. Those who do not submit to him will learn to their eternal horror that \u201cthe wages of sin is death.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that is why parents have to spank their children, or hit them with a switch or belt. For the sake of their eternal salvation, children must be brought under parental and, later, divine authority. To that end, Dobson insists, \u201cmost<\/em> of them need to be spanked now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve owned two copies of The Strong-Willed Child<\/em> over the years. One, a copy of the 1985 trade paperback edition, sits on my desk right now. I ordered it online the other day to make sure I remembered the dog beating incident correctly. I had.<\/p>\n

The first copy of The Strong-Willed Child<\/em> found its way into our house back in the 1980s when my children were small. As a new parent, I was eager to learn everything I could from the experts, and Dobson\u2019s book was a big seller at the time. As I read Chapter One, however, I was stunned by the spectacle of a man\u2014a psychologist\u2014beating his dog into submission.<\/p>\n

I was just as appalled, then and now, at this popular writer\u2019s understanding of the nature of God. The man\u2019s overarching goal in rearing his children\u2014and helping you to rear yours\u2014is to make sure that as adults they submit to God. Using a switch or a belt on a child is part and parcel of Dobson\u2019s theology.<\/p>\n

Of course, there was no way I was going to spank, whip, or use a belt to terrify my little son or daughter into submission to an all-powerful (and purportedly loving) God who sends\u00a0 the disobedient off to hell.<\/p>\n

So I stopped reading and put Dobson\u2019s book on a shelf. I eyed it uneasily for some time, then got rid of it. It probably wound up in the garbage, which is where my second copy of The Strong-Willed Child<\/em> will probably go.<\/p>\n

(Readers who think it\u2019s not OK to destroy a book that you own are referred to my essay “Do Books Have Rights? This One Didn’t. I Threw It in the Trash.”<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>
Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dobson began writing his childrearing books back in the 1970s. Around that same time he also founded the socially and politically powerful–and very conservative–Christian media ministry Focus on the Family.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think that, in the three-plus decades since, Dobson would have toned down his opinions on corporal punishment. He hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

At last month\u2019s meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association in Decatur, Georgia, an unrepentant Dobson\u2019s PR people screened a video of a child-rearing talk Dobson gave in the early days of Focus on the Family.<\/p>\n

The video shows Dobson cheerfully describing what to do when your toddler disobeys. You hook the defiant behavior with consequences, he says. And you do that by making use of a conveniently located muscle, the trapezius.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou squeeze that little muscle,\u201d he tells his live audience, and \u201che goes down to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience laughs.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not kidding. The audience laughs. Hear the audio of James Dobson for yourself on the Religion Newswriters Association website.<\/p>\n

The clip from the decades-old video was being shown at the conference as a promotion for Dobson\u2019s latest book–Your Legacy: The Greatest Gift<\/em>, which is all about passing on the Dobson values to the next generation and the generation after that. And the one after that.<\/p>\n

To be fair to Dobson, I want to point out that there\u2019s a lot of wisdom in The Strong-Willed Child<\/em>. Everything a parent does should be done with love, he urges. That feels right to me.<\/p>\n

And so does this advice: \u201cUltimately, the key to competent parenthood is in being able to get behind the eyes of your child, seeing what he sees and feeling what he feels. When he is lonely, he needs your company. When he is defiant, he needs your help in controlling his impulses. When he is afraid, he needs the security of your embrace . . . \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGet behind the eyes of your child.\u201d<\/em> What a beautiful, helpful image for young parents to keep in mind.<\/p>\n

Dobson is a smart man and an engaging storyteller. Too bad he thinks that heaven is so tough to get into that it requires him to wield a belt on his dog\u2014and his kids.<\/p>\n

Normally I pass along the publication information of the books I write about. But I can’t recommend books by James Dobson. They aren’t good for your children, or you for that matter.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

If this story caught your attention, you might enjoy reading my book “Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

For more about my own rocky spiritual journey go to\u00a0“The Writing Room: To Niche or Not to Niche.”<\/a> <\/em>\u00a0 You might also like\u00a0 “Beauty, What to Do About It.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Recent<\/a><\/p>\n

In his 1978 parenting book, “The Strong-Willed Child,” James Dobson says disobedient childen, like dogs, must be spanked into submission to parents and God. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[134,135,34,21,1331,1332,55,1152,1333,1334,91,484,1335],"class_list":["post-19653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-books","tag-christianity","tag-dont-miss","tag-god","tag-hell","tag-james-dobson","tag-family-stories","tag-parenting","tag-psychology","tag-religioius-right","tag-religion-and-spirituality","tag-rna","tag-spanking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}