Abandoning ship

Michael Pearl, founder and director of No Greater Joy Ministries, has written about child training and family topics for many years. He has ministered to three generations, watching them grow from children to parents themselves. He and his wife Debi were pioneers in the homeschooling movement. But there is a disturbing trend emerging among some of the families who are trying to "get back to basics." They have unhappy and rebellious children who have jumped ship as soon as they thought they could survive without the family, some very young, even sixteen years old. Parents suffer and exclaim, "What did we do wrong? What can we do to prevent this from happening again to another of our children?" Michael addressed this issue in several articles published in 2006 in No Greater Joy magazine. The articles were so helpful and popular that Michael edited them, added more material, and wrote two additional chapters on topics that had not been covered before.