Growing Kids GODS Way? Are you sure?

a couple highlights from this very indepth article on the Cultic Characteristics of Growing Families International/Ezzos. I strongly encourage reading the whole article if you are involved/interested in this "ministry"/program. And now, from the people that brought you Babywise!

Note that the indispensable and exclusive role of the blood of Christ in removing the guilt of sin (Heb. 9:14, 22; 1 John 1:7) is not mentioned. Neither are parents instructed to teach their children that their guilty consciences can be absolved only by accepting Jesus as their Savior and then regularly confessing their sins to God (1 John 1:9). Surely the Ezzos do not believe chastisement is the price paid to remove the guilt of a child’s sin in the sight of God. It seems more than coincidental, however, that they failed to qualify such a potentially misleading assertion.

"repeatedly cited Matthew 27:46 — ‘…My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ — in support of their teaching that mothers should refuse to attend crying infants who have already been fed, changed, and had their basic needs met. ‘Praise God,’ writes Gary Ezzo on page 122 ofPreparation for Parenting, ‘that the Father did not intervene when His son cried out on the cross.’ We see no way to make such an application of this verse without completely disregarding its original context and purpose."^{30 they teach that maternal instinct is an unbiblical concept and therefore imply mothers should ignore any intuitive alarms they may hear when following the GFI program (e.g., to pick up their crying babies when the program would tell them to let the babies cry).}

While GFI takes Scripture out of context to prove that some of its teachings are from God, it does not shy away from according a similar divine status to other teachings that clearly have no biblical support whatsoever. On the one hand, GFI materials acknowledge that "God is silent on the topic of infant feeding"³⁸ and that "the Bible is not specific" on how to "produce a morally responsible child."³⁹ On the other hand, their infant care book is subtitled "God’s Order for your Baby’s Day" and their child-rearing book is titled "Growing Kids God’s Way." Contrary views — even those advanced by Christians — are labeled non-Christian.⁴⁰ The overriding tone of the books is dogmatic and authoritative. They are full of feeding, sleeping, and playtime schedules and rules and "non-negotiable mandates"⁴¹ for parents to follow. Issues that the Bible is silent on and that Christians generally consider matters of convenience or personal or cultural preference become matters of Christian morality: how well a child sleeps is discussed in terms of the parents’ spirituality;⁴² directing a pretoddler’s behavior in the high chair is called "moral training";⁴³ an appendix in Growing Kids God’s Way teaches that a child’s behavior at the table is "an extension of Christian character."⁴⁴

the Ezzos have said there is "no basis"⁴⁹ for the concerns and have dismissed them as "unsubstantiated hearsay."⁵⁰ The infant program they developed warns parents of the dangers of demand feeding,⁵¹ the infant feeding practice strongly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.⁵² GFI describes the research supporting putting infants to sleep on their backs as "not conclusive, and the method of gathering supportive data questionable"⁵³ — despite the fact there has been no less than a 30 percent drop in the number of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) deaths in the United States since the "Back to Sleep" campaign began.⁵⁴

The Ezzos describe themselves as "professionals"⁵⁵ and have said they are replacing others as the "authority" on child-rearing.⁵⁶ Yet they lack much of the background experience and education found in many of the very critics they are dismissing.⁵⁷ They have claimed to have a "network" of "hundreds of pediatricians" who provide them with "expert medical advice,"⁵⁸ but they have refused to provide the list when asked.⁵⁹ There is not one Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant on staff, though the materials give explicit breast-feeding instruction. These paradoxes may exist partly because of the Ezzos’ apparent lack of any true accountability to either church elders or a board of directors⁶⁰ and also because they actively discourage questioning both inside and outside the GFI system.

the book also instructs that even a two-week-old baby who falls asleep during the middle of a feeding and wakes up hungry two hours later should not be fed: "Babies learn very quickly the laws of natural consequences. If he does not eat at one feeding, then make him wait until the next one….Do not feed him between routine mealtimes."¹⁰¹ Lactation experts disagree. Pediatrician Marianne Neifert, author of the "Dr. Mom" parenting books, says, "Some babies…could handle the schedule. But a small baby with a mother who’s got a marginal milk supply.…Those babies could be put in jeopardy on a schedule."¹⁰² Lactation experts cite research explaining why such a schedule works for some babies, but not for others.¹⁰³