Jill Duggar Trains Baby Israel On A Blanket With A Marker

Jill Duggar recently shared a cute video of herself and her husband, Derick Dillard, training their son to crawl. The video seems completely harmless, but because baby Israel’s crawling lesson takes place on a blanket, some critics of the Duggar family are worried, and Jill and her husband might be using a controversial baby training method known as “blanket training.”

According to People, Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard updated their fans on Israel’s latest milestones by sharing two videos of the little boy on the Dillard Family website. One video shows the 7-month-old tot pulling himself up and standing while he holds on to the side of the couch. Derick swoops in to catch the unsteady baby when it looks like he’s about to fall.

In the second video, Israel is shown crawling across a blanket to retrieve a very special treat: a big, fat, juicy marker. Jill Duggar shows the prize to Israel before placing it on the opposite side of the blanket, and the eager little boy crawls past a small pile of toys to reach the marker while Jill encourages him. Jill Duggar informs viewers that it’s the second time she’s seen Israel crawl, and the first time he’s done so without doing the “dragging crawl thing.” Once Israel reaches the marker, he celebrates by sticking in the writing instrument in his mouth, and Jill and Derick let him have a good chew.

Even though the video looks completely harmless, some Duggar critics are worried that Jill and Derick have started blanket training baby “Choo Choo” (the parents’ nickname for Israel).

“Cute little guy! Looks just like his mommy. Can’t help but wonder what happens if he crawls off that blanket, though,” Marjorie Downey wrote on the Duggar Family News: Life Is Not All Pickles And Hairspray Facebook page. The page moderator warned that she was deleting nasty comments about the possibility of Jill Duggar blanket training Israel, but left a few of the less critical comments up.

“Sadly the word blanket, when in relation to any of them, will always make us think the worst,” Suzy K. Reynolds wrote.

According to Gawker, Michelle Duggar once admitted that she used the blanket training method on at least some of her 19 children. It’s a negative reinforcement method described in Michael and Debi Pearl’s controversial child-rearing manual, How To Train Up a Child, and it involves placing a baby on a blanket and smacking him with a flexible ruler if he tries to crawl off of the blanket. Eventually, the baby will give up on crawling off of the blanket because he’ll be too afraid of getting hit again. However, the Duggar Family Blog claims that Michelle’s form of blanket training doesn’t involve using a ruler — she simply “teaches” her children to sit quietly on a blanket for long periods of time while they play with a toy.

ChicagoNow shared an anecdote from someone who was once a member of a forum called Christian Moms Of Many Blessings, and this person tells a very different story about Michelle Duggar’s blanket training method. Jill Duggar’s mother allegedly did a guest chat on the forum many years ago, and she advocated for using flexible rulers while blanket training. She also told moms to try to lure their children off of blankets using toys before swatting them. Michelle’s references to the rulers were reportedly later deleted from the forum.

There’s further evidence that Jill Duggar and her siblings grew up in a household where corporal punishment was practiced. In police reports obtained by In Touch Weekly, one of Josh Duggar’s sexual molestation victims — four of whom were his younger sisters — told police officers that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar had “a rod” and that they used it to spank all of their children.

Even though Jill Duggar’s parents believe (or used to believe) in corporal punishment, this doesn’t mean that Jill and Derick Dillard will use the exact same child-rearing methods to raise Israel. Commenters on the Pickles and Hairspray Facebook page are usually very critical of the Duggars, but most of them seem to agree that the video of Israel crawling on a blanket doesn’t show Jill and Derick doing anything wrong.

“I actually know what blanket training is and there is no evidence to support the fact that Jill is using it,” Shelby Miller wrote. “The fact she has him on a blanket doesn’t mean she (sic) blanket training and the floor underneath is exactly why she has the blanket on the floor. Children who live in tiled floor houses still have to have playtime.”

Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard have shared a picture of Israel in a playpen in the collection of family photos on their website, and this could be evidence that they aren’t blanket training their baby — if they were, they wouldn’t need the walled playpen to keep Israel from crawling off.

What do you think of Jill Duggar’s video of Israel crawling? Are you worried that she and Derick might be blanket training the baby, or are you more concerned that the parents are letting their son chew on a marker?

[Photo by Jill Duggar Dillard / Instagram]