When Satan tries to separate children from Parents

I’m beginning this post addressing you wonderful young gals, but moms and all you friends of the younger gals (sisters, aunts, grandmas and friends), please read this too, and I will also address you near the end of this post. 

Satan has used an ancient method of separating parents from children (even adult children), and he did this near the very beginning of time.  By the third chapter of the book of Genesis, Satan drove a wedge between the perfect Adam and Eve and their perfect heavenly parent, God the Father.  Satan implied God was holding back blessings from Adam and Eve. They believed and betrayed God, their perfect father.  They broke his heart, but saddest of all, they lost paradise and were cursed with sin, sorrow and so much pain!  This is always Satan’s desire, to lie, steal and kill.  He never has our best interests in his mind but our destruction!

I don’t hear of Satan speaking directly to people anymore (but I have never talked to anyone who is part of the official Temple of Satan worship, a real and very scary place, so I can’t vouch for what they hear).  But I know Satan does use subtle methods to reach us today.  Sadly some of his resources are people who represent themselves as “experts in children.”  Whether they are teachers, social workers, counselors, church leaders, even medical staff, some of these people want to separate children from their healthy, loving parents (not cruel parents who beat up their children, expose them to illegal drugs or other abuses).  At first this may seem crazy.  Why would anyone want to take a child away from her loving, safe parents?  The people who do this may not even realize they are being inspired by evil, yet they are doing evil. 

I believe these people do this, because Satan knows that good parents are old enough to discern evil, and the parents can deflect the evil plans Satan has for the young people.  But the younger people, especially children, are more vulnerable and more easily tricked, or brainwashed, to believe the evil things Satan wants them to believe.  So these “experts in children,” end up doing things that either directly separate children (and young people) from their parents and those who care for them, or indirectly separate them by causing division.  Whether these people get the child totally away from her parents or cause the child to stop trusting her parents, the end result is the same.  The young person changes her allegiance, from the parents who truly love her, over to the person who wants to control her.  Again, many of these “experts” would never say they intend evil.  At the worst, they may admit they like having power over others and controlling other people’s lives.  But the end result is always harmful.  These people don’t even want you, as a young person, to think for yourself.  They want to do the thinking for you.  But by the time they have gained your trust and convinced you they know best, they have already created a neediness in you that causes you to feel you need them, need their wisdom, and cannot make intelligent decisions for yourself.

I wish I could say I have read vague stories about this, but instead I and my friends have experienced this.  I am glad to say most of our stories have ended in our discovering the bad intentions of the “expert,” and our children are safe.  I want to warn you, young gals, about these people, so you can be aware of their subtle methods.  Listen to your gut, and if you are a Christian, listen to the Holy Spirit in your heart.

The Bible tells young people to obey parents (when the children are still immature) and to always honor parents, when the children reach adulthood.  If you have parents who love you, you can talk to them.  With loving parents, you can express your feelings.  For example, I taught my daughters to think for themselves while keeping God in the center of their lives.  By the time my daughters were two and a half years old, they picked out their own clothes and dressed themselves, because they wanted to do so.  I have talked to them about dressing modestly, and we have had a few disagreements (ouch).  Yet today, they choose their own clothes and do dress modestly while still dressing in their own style.  I have told them the music they listen to influences their hearts.  Yet on their own they will turn off a song they consider dirty.  I am thankful they will listen with me to my Christian music, and they make decent choices.  I wish they preferred Christian music, exclusively, but I never force them to make that decision.

My daughters confide in me, because I do my best to not freak out, even if they bring up something a bit shocking.  I may tremble inside and later pray about it, but I listen to their concerns.  So far my daughters are living righteously, even though I give them quite a bit of freedom in their choices.  They will be teens this year, and I cannot tell them what to do forever, so I am gradually giving them more freedom (but limiting it if they abuse the freedom), so that when they turn 18, they will not be confused about making their first choices.  They make so many now, they are just adding on choices and freedom as they mature and prove responsible.

Yet, despite the way I am teaching my daughters to gradually become independent, there are those who want to cut in on my parenting, and the way my friends parent their girls.  This happened years ago when I confided in a woman who said she was a Christian, and an expert in children.  For safety sake, I will not say what her profession was.  During one of our talks, she abruptly told me to up-heave the way I live my life and radically change it to live the way she expected me to live.  She said I should do this for my children, despite the fact her ideas would have harmed my children.  I quickly stopped talking to her. 

As my daughters have grown, they have had their own, individual relationships with adults in their lives, from Christians (AWANA Bible club leaders, Sunday School teachers, VBS leaders) to adults in secular settings, from the YMCA to art, music and dance classes.  I have been comfortable with my daughters taking these classes with these adults and never worried about them talking to these adults privately.  As a result, one day when a woman who called herself a Christian and who was credentialed to be an expert in children asked to have a private talk with my daughters, I agreed. 

The talk was lengthy and we had to go, so we hurried to our car.  But in the car, my daughters told me they never wanted to talk to the woman again.  She had asked prying, private questions.  When she could not find any fault with me, their mom, she began to make petty insults about me and even said I was a bad mom.  The girls told me the insults, and I was dismayed.  Who cares if my car has 4 doors instead of 2, or how many bedrooms my house has, or if I wear lace up shoes or Velcro.  The insults were so petty, I was appalled the woman told my girls I was a bad parent over these insults.  But instead of saying that to my girls, I asked my girls what they thought.  They said they were happy with our lives.  I was still so shaken, I called up a professional who was also in the same field and asked her the questions the woman had asked my daughters.  The professional said there was no problem at all and that there are a few “professionals” in that field who do these controlling and totally wrong things.   I actually doubted myself for a whole weekend, because this woman called herself a Christian, and had such great credentials but then said such bad things about me to my daughters.  Yet the scariest part is that the woman told my daughters to not tell me anything she had asked or told them.  She said they were to keep their talk between the three of them. I am so glad my daughters trusted me enough to tell me what the woman had asked and also said. 

But not all moms enjoy this kind of trust with their children.  And as such, I want to encourage you, young gals, to ask God to help you have this close relationship with your mom. I will talk more about this later in this post, so please stay with me.  Also, there are obviously safe secrets gals can keep from their moms. If you know about someone’s surprise birthday plans, or if you know a friend who has a family member with problems in school or some other issues where your mom does not need to know them, naturally you keep those secrets.

But when it comes to physical, emotional and spiritual safety, my daughters come to me, and I pray you can go to your mom or another safe older woman.  For example, one time my daughters’ friend was texting a stranger.  The man had even asked this girl about sex!  My daughters told me, and I quickly called the mom.  One of the girl’s parents came over and brought the daughter home, and they had a long talk about the dangers of strangers on the internet.  My daughters did not lose the friendship over this matter either.  The friend eventually was glad she had been caught.  Even if they lost the friendship over this, they would have saved their friend’s life.

When I still went to the gym, a mom there told me her daughter came home from school one day and demanded the mom divorce her husband, the girl’s dad.  The mom was amazingly calm, and she began to ask her daughter questions about her relationship with her dad.  After being reassured this was not the issue (he was a gentle and loving dad) she asked if the girl’s brother needed to go too.  “Yes, we don’t need a man in the house,” the daughter said.  Again, this mom kept her cool and continued open communication with her daughter, and her husband.  After some sleuthing, the mom discovered the source of the daughter’s comments.  There was a teacher who was a man hater, and she was in this girl’s life.  Again, I am totally against any man abusing a woman.  But to hate all men is the wrong way to handle the reality that some men are abusive.  Eventually the daughter also realized she loved her dad and did not want him or her brother to leave the family.

But if the daughter had not had such a close relationship with her mom, if she had not had the courage to tell her mom what she thought, what would have the young daughter done?  Over time would she have come to hate her dad and brother?

Another friend was shocked to find Child Protective Services knocking at her door.  The complaint was that the parents defied medical orders and had denied the daughter a life saving medicine she had taken all her life or at least this was according to the “expert in children” who had filed the report.  The CPS checked out the family and discovered the “decision of what medicine” had been about what kind of laxative the Gastroenterologist and the mom felt the daughter needed.  Only a few months prior, the child had severe constipation which had been relieved and now managed with saline laxatives. The GI doc and loving mom had decided the girl was stable and able to switch to a fiber laxative.  Obviously the CPS staff were furious someone had lied to them and wasted their time bothering a loving and very kind family.   The mom discovered the culprit.  A teacher hated this mom and disliked the way the mom was involved in her daughter’s life.  The teacher wanted to get the girl away from her parents or at the least, to get the daughter to think the way this teacher thought (a very different way of thinking and life style from the family’s beliefs).  The teacher did not succeed on either front.  Yet this teacher thought she should be involved in the girls’ life, to the exclusion of the parents.

The former governor of Virginia actually said parents should not know what their children are being taught—should not be involved in any part of the curriculum!  So we know this kind of belief goes on even at the highest levels.

As a result, I want to warn you young gals, to love and listen to your parents.  If there is any strife in your relationship, be careful about who you tell this to.  Please ask God to guide you, and find a safe person you can talk to about this.  Listen to your heart and if this person feels unsafe, get away from him or her.  But if you can find someone who can help you talk to your parents and to help you work on a better relationship, please do so. I had a neighbor (we will call her Cindy, not her real name), and she confided in me about her father’s anger and severe disrespect. Since I am also a female, I knew the dad would never listen to me, but as I quizzed this darling girl, we realized she had a safe, kind and respectful Sunday School teacher.  I urged Cindy to go slowly and test the teacher to make sure he was trustworthy.  As Cindy shared with the teacher, he showed respect and concern.  Eventually Cindy told her teacher all of her concerns. The teacher arranged a meeting with the dad and Cindy.  The dad respected the teacher, and he apologized to his daughter.  While their relationship was never super warm and huggy, the dad did repent and began to show his daughter much more respect. 

Eventually Cindy found an excellent career, met a wonderful man, and they now have an adorable daughter.  But at one point, Cindy was suicidal about her dad.   I was the first of two safe people in whom Cindy could confide.  But I want to urge you gals, go slowly, the way Cindy did. If you feel any disrespect or any trouble, back away from the adult you are confiding in.  Only open your heart if the person is safe. And if he or she is, this adult may be able to help you and your parent to improve or even heal your parent-daughter relationship.

There truly are good experts in children who love you and want to support you and your relationship with your parents.  Yet, sadly, some “experts in children” only want to control you, dictate your life and pull you away from loving parents.  When you get a bad feeling in your gut (a Holy Spirit warning), listen to that warning.  Talk to your parents and trusted adults and get away from any adult who seems to be leading you in a wrong direction, even if at times you are mad at your parents.  Some of these people seek out frustrated young people, urge them to tell them about all of the anger they feel towards this parent, and then the adult stirs up more anger and even hatred and turns what may have begun as an innocent tiff into a full separation of a child and parent.

And now to the moms, older sisters and other mature women, I urge you to listen to your gut too.  The Holy Spirit warns us.  I initially trusted those two women I earlier mentioned, because of their claim to being Christians and their credentials as experts in children.  I had some sense of something wrong, but I over ruled my gut (the Holy Spirit warning me) until the words of these two women were so Biblically wrong and emotionally unhealthy, I could not speak to them again.  Over time both of these women proved their ulterior motives, as did the teachers who tried to pull my two friends’ daughters away from them.

Many of these people do not realize the devil is leading them to control other people’s lives by separating them from loving parents.  Yet this is an ancient evil that Satan did with the first people to ever exist.  Satan knew that if he could pull Adam and Eve away from their perfect parent (the Lord), he could cause them intense harm.  Humans have suffered the pain of our sins and separation from our perfect heavenly father ever since. Yet God, in his tender mercies, allowed his own son to choose to die for our sins. Jesus did this willingly for us, not by force.  So we have to be aware of the teachers, doctors, nurses, counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and others listed as “child experts,” who may mean our children harm.  I have met far more good experts in children than bad ones.  We should never live in fear of these people, as most of them truly want to respect the child-parent bond.  But some of them are blinded by the evil of Satan, and they come, not to enrich life, but to rob, steal and kill (in this case, “kill” the parent-child bond), the way Satan does.  Even if they cannot find legitimate problems, they will try to create problems or drive wedges between us and our daughters.

I did have some misgivings about those two women, and eventually I discovered their insincerity.  I let my “respectful side” (that believed I needed to “respect” the credentials of these “experts”) over ride my God-given mother’s instinct.  I trusted those women only briefly.  But how horrible it would have been if I had continued to over ride my caution.

Never trust someone’s credentials, no matter how many more years of education they have than you.  When you have the Holy Spirit living in you, you have way more years of wisdom in you, because the Holy Spirit has been around for an eternity. With the Holy Spirit’s guidance, you are wiser than any God hating (or God disrespecting) person!  You have every right to pull your daughter away from any bad influence, even if it is a teacher, doctor or other “expert.”  You know you love you daughter, and she likely knows it too.  You can truly trust your God-given mother’s instincts.