Interesting, Whooter, that you keep putting accountability on kids. How about those "poor parents" who have to send their terrible teen away? Oh yes, I remember, you got to keep the parents on board to maximize profits.
The fact is very few posters (in spite of your condescension) would exclaim to be the poster child for Main Street America. (And does it really exist?) My argument is whether you were just different, a pain in the ass, or serious trouble, why would you put your child in a program? The ones on this forum seem to share common "treatment" modalities that include the following:
1. Attack therapy and persistent public humiliation (how does this develop self esteem?)
2. Total lack of "therapeutic" and interpersonal boundaries (important for trust and self respect)
3. Sustained level of chronic anxiety due to living in an environment of unrealistic social protocols and regular intervals of public degradation
4. One sized fits all therapy that ignores the individual needs of each student. No individual treatment.
5. Insular cultic social paradigms that promotes intense interpersonal relationships and social paradigms that does NOT work in the "real world"
6. Staff who are unaccredited, unaccountable, inculcated, and/or projecting their own neuroses on residents. (If my Dad heard staff confessions, I would have been out in a heart beat. Really sick, twisted stuff. How are we supposed to feel safe much less respectful of these people?)
7. Regular participation in 1-7 day psychodramas that manipulate and distort the sense of self and infuse cult "values" and "thinking"
8. Regular immersion in 1-7 day experiential/psychodramas that create an atmosphere of overwhelming intensity and false sense of meaning that can NEVER be duplicated outside the cult. Thus, when you leave, you constantly seek a level of intensity in experiences and relationships that is not healthy or normative. Just by nature of its intensity, everything is rendered meaningless comparatively.
9. No preparation for the real world. You are stripped bare, infused with social schematics that do not exist "outside," and are often unprepared academically with false or inflated transcripts.
10. Low self esteem because everything is "dirty" - this is especially harmful when the things labeled dirty are normative feelings and behaviors. For example, I can't smile at a male peer my age, but I can sit on the lap and be stroked by an adult male staff member. This is just one example.
11. Students level up by badgering and bullying others, participating, leading, and powerhousing in attack therapy.
12. Arbitrary, bizarre, petty rules designed not for practical compliance but to break you down. There is no way you can follow them ALL the time. Another way to shame and control students.
13. Total insularity from outside world, all contact monitored, no true advocacy for the child. Threatened with deportation to a very frightening lock down facility if you complain/lack compliance even when you are NOT a criminal, an addict, or a threat.
14. Conflict of interests. Staff will create dishonest family dynamics to divide the family and retain power over the child. Also, parents often not held accountable because you don't piss off the bank. I can tell you right now the staff lied about me to my parents and my parents about me. My family and I all agree on this now comparing notes later. The same phrases and techniques were used with other students and families. One power staff did admit to me that lying is sometimes part of the job.
15. From the outset, the youth resident is criminalized, already characterized as "bad" -- this is simply a bad place to start. You can't grow if you've already been stigmatized and painted with a very side brush.
I am skeptical of all programs because so many employ these techniques on a systemic level. I am skeptical of programs because I do not want to insert middle management in the relationship between myself and my children. I do not accept programs because I do not want an unknown, packaged entity to takeover "the voice" of my children. I do not accept programs because I do not want them to feel degraded, broken, and replaced by some Stepford version of themselves.
No matter what struggles children might face, these are not the values and experiences that will serve them best.
