On 2006-02-15 12:05:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Julie,
I have to disagree with you. Parents are also brain washed by these people. I had my child in SCL. I found this site while he was there. Some parents are brain washed easier then others. I was afraid of finding my son in a ally dead from drugs. When I called the teen hotline they directed me to SCL. You think it must be a good place if you get them from the hotline. chances are Alex's parents do love him and don't want him punished but want to get him help so he can have a good life. There was a time where I didn't want to believe or see the things that you talk about happening. I had to keep faith that my son was getting the help he needed. After 3 months I missed him and he sounded like he realized what he had done wrong so I decided to go get him. He is doing good. We do go to therapy. This program is bad I now see that. He wasn't physically abused but the whole being locked up and so controlled and the fear of what could happen was bad. I have read that CIM would never put her child there now that she has read all of this. That is great! The problem with Alex's parents IMO is when given this info he was already there and they are hopeful that before he turns 18 he will get the help he needs. They will find out when he gets home how much damage it did to him. Keep up the great work!
Best Wishes, Denise"
You cared and you were duped. You didn't know. I'm not surprised it took you three months to believe that the place really was bad.
I think that even if you didn't consciously realize it, that after those three months you weighed what he was telling you against what you had heard about SCL and decided he'd be better off home.
You had to have. Even if you didn't consciously believe it, you had to know it was *possible* that all the people telling you it was horrible were telling the truth. A parent can't help but have that knowledge of the possibility sink in.
So you went and got your kid. Whatever reasons you told yourself why you were doing it, even if they *were* some big reasons why were doing it, you got him and brought him home.
That was a big act of love.
The cumulative weight of all the people who have been at SCL and say it's bad grows larger and more credible all the time.
All the time, it's getting to where there's less and less excuse for parents postponing bringing their kid back home.
All the time, people are getting more used to the idea that, "Google is your friend." More and more, it's getting to where there's no excuse for parents not checking it out beforehand.
It took you a little while, but you did the right thing, because you were duped by the marketing.
Maybe Alex's parents will do the right thing, but right now, they know, and they're not doing it. There are pictures of "The Hobbit" at SCL up on the internet. I wouldn't lock my kid in a place like that for 24 hours, much less 72 hours, no matter *what* she'd done. Add to that the smell of the urine in there.
That's pitifully easy for a parent to check out. They can fly up there and say, without giving them advance notice, "I want to see the hobbit." If they don't show it to you, you know something is very wrong. If they show it to you and it really is unheated and un-air-conditioned, and it really does smell like urine, then you know something is very wrong.
You could not build one of those in your backyard, pee in it for a week and then clean it out, making sure you *didn't* get all the urine smell out, then lock your kid in it for 24 to 72 hours at a time, with light meals, few bathroom breaks, and a thin blanket, in the wintertime (or if you're in a hot climate, in the heat of summer)---you could not do that without child welfare removing your child from the home and probably prosecuting you. If you tried that, or I tried that, it would make the national news as a child abuse horror story. Even if my kid was smoking ice, sneaking out, and having sex with every boy in town, it would make the national news as child abuse.
The parents could *check* this. Easily. Going up there, unannounced, and asking to see the hobbit is a perfectly reasonable request.
If we're mistaken and the hobbit is clean, if they have a schedule of bathroom breaks that's reasonable, if, on a surprise visit, there are adequate clean linens on the bed, if there's a reasonable shower schedule, if the hobbit has heat (since SCL's problem is cold, not heat), then we're wrong about that and the parents could feel somewhat reassured.
There are other concerns, of course, from all the things people who were at SCL as kids have to say about it. However, the allegations about the hobbit are dead easy to check.
Most likely, they'd give you an excuse instead of showing it to you or make light of your objections and try to convince you that it was really okay.
My point is maybe your kid was there for three months because nobody pointed out to you that there were things you could verify yourself pretty quickly and without a huge amount of sleuthing.
We had a lady whose kid was at Carolina Springs and I and others suggested concrete things she could check, reasonably, to check up on the allegations and get the idea of what was true.
She checked, she didn't like what she found out, she brought her kid home quickly.
I understand why parents duped by the marketing don't want to believe they were duped, but if there are things they can check out to get some evidence quickly, one way or the other, there's no excuse for failing to check.
At some point, "I didn't want to believe it," quits being an excuse.
If there's nothing to check out, that has some merit as an excuse.
If the parents are distraught and don't happen to think of how they could reasonably check it out, that has some merit. Having a kid whose having problems is scary and shakes you up---I know first hand.
But if you've been told ways you can check and you just don't check, then you don't want to know---and rage is the only reason that makes sense for that.
There are good inpatient drug rehab programs that last a few weeks to three months. There are multiple good drug rehabs that use different methods to get their results. Parents can try 12 step, education, or aversion. There may be more methods, I don't know, but there are at least those three. If the first drug rehab doesn't take, you can use another that works by one of the other two methods. If that doesn't work, you can try the third method.
There are good drug rehabs they could put Alex in, inpatient, that work, that last a few weeks to a three months. There's no excuse for not moving him to one of those.
Money is no excuse, because since most Programs don't tell you in advance how they do what they do, and their marketing is misleading, they've materially breached the contract with the parents. I've never heard a parent come back here and say they got sued or anything for not paying the Program another red cent--probably because the programs know that if the parents got a good lawyer, the program would lose.
Insurance is just as likely to pay for real drug rehab as they are to pay for SCL. Probably even more likely.
There's no good excuse for failing to check out at least the hobbit, then move the kid to a good drug rehab facility that actually works---by using the same methods rehabs use for adult patients who can up and walk out if the treatment is abusive instead of helpful.
I'm not anti-treatment. I'm pro-treatment. There are people who really need treatment for various things. Parents are paying Programs for Rolls-Royce treatment and getting exploding Pinto station wagons. I think families should get the quality care they're paying for.
Bootcamps and behavior modification facilities that are punitive like bootcamps just don't work.
Rehab works---the kinds of rehab they do for adults. There are plenty of high quality rehab facilities. They aren't juvenile behavior modification facilities.
Families deserve quality care.
It's a damned shame to waste precious time sticking a child in a confrontational-model juvenile behavior modification facility when he could be getting high quality, supportive-model care that really has a decent clinically proven success rate, for the same money or less.
It's a damned shame.
Julie
