Second Nature Wilderness Program

[Antigen]

On 2006-03-22 12:59:00, Anonymous wrote:

If there's not much wrong with your kid and she just wants to get away from bad friends for awhile, there are all kinds of places to go that aren't geared towards the "troubled."

Julie

That's my thought as well. As an adult, reading descriptions of GAD, yup! That was me! Scared of everything and everybody and well trained to use offense as my first, best and most reliable defense. But how did I get that way? That's easy. My fucked up mother had been trying every crazy assed pop psyche snake oil to hit the market in an attempt to fix her horribly dysfuncional kids, all 6 or us, for her entire career as a parent.

That kept up until she found Nervana as a devout follower of Art Barker. That's about enough to make any kid anxious, don't you think?

Can you imagine if, instead of looking for treatment for your disordered kid, you had just assumed that she was alright and just needed a break from all of your "help"?

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.
--Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek

[Antigen]

On 2006-03-22 13:16:00, Anonymous wrote:


You get what you pay for.  I'd rather have my kid with Psychologists and MSW's and pay more than risk the possible deviant behaviour of low-paid chaperones.  "

The trouble is there is no standardized test for good intentions and real heart. Certification boards can test aptitude and manipulating the mind of another. But they can't test intent.

So, all things considered, I'd rather have a kid of mine on a more level playing field w/ a rank ameture than a certified professional. Actually, I'd never send my kid out to any sort of away program or vacation package w/o at least one well trusted friend or family member. That would just be stupid. Never leave home w/o an advocate and wittness, not to mention someone you can trust for a reality check.

Excepting drug activity for personal use or free
distribution from the sweep of the CSA would discourage the consumption of
lawful controlled substances.
http://www.angeljustice.org/' target='_new'>acting US Solicitor General, Paul Clement; Ashcroft v. Raich

[Anonymous]

On 2006-03-22 13:56:00, Anonymous wrote:

"

Stealing your kid's thunder by strong arming into accepting your ideas about acceptable risk and what is and is not a worthy objective or friend can be most unhelpful."

Eudora, please. STD's, unwanted pregnancy and death at the hands of drug dealers are not acceptable.  Kids aren't sent off to WT because of their clothing choices.  A good parent better pick their batles and strong arm their ideas regarding deadly behaviours.  And, if that doesn't work, time away from it all and breaking the cycle may be the answer."

Most STDs are curable, but there are very few kids who can't be persuaded to use condoms if they get to try out a few brands.

Unwanted pregnancy has solutions.  Adoption is one of them.

Drug dealers don't kill paying customers who aren't rival dealers.

It sucks getting an STD, unwanted pregnancy is bad, drug abuse is a bad thing.

Still, get your concerns in proportion to the risks.  None of those merits locking a kid up in what amounts to a private prison.

Programs are like Mai Lai.  "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

There are important life lessons to learn in adolescence that you can learn out in real life, even if you're behaving in those ways, that you can't learn in an institution.

Institutionalizing a kid for the last precious years of childhood, where the kid learns to form his own experiences and choices and separate from his parents, does enormous, irreparable harm to the kid's development processes.

If the kid graduates, the longer they stay in the Program in their head, the longer crucial life lessons are deferred, the longer the adult stays emotionally a kid under all the residue of the Program's coercive persuasion.

Julie

[Anonymous]

"Institutionalizing a kid for the last precious years of childhood,"

First of all, sending a kid to a wilderness program is not institutionalizing him.  These programs are fairly short-term.  
Ah, yes, those precious years of childhood. How precious it is to have your kid being violent towards you and other family members, destroying cars and other family possessions, getting in trouble with the law, getting kicked out of school, driving under the influence, selling drugs and/or alcohol.....  How PRECIOUS!!

Every teen could benefit from a wilderness program. Most families can't afford them. The programs are expensive to staff properly and the equipment and safety backups are costly. 2N does a great job of giving you more than your money's worth. What the kids object to is being removed from their druggie friends, their nice stereo systems and cars, their cell phones, their junk food and their nice clothes. Once they get over that, they begin to see what is really going on in their lives. At the same time, the parents are very engaged in the process. There is a LOT of family therapy going on which includes reading, long sessions with the wilderness therapist and letters back and forth to the kid.

[Troll Control]

Every teen could benefit from a wilderness program.

It's this kind of extreme thinking that really bothers me.

This person is saying that 100% of teenagers would benefit from a long-term (more than 30 days) out of home mental health placement.

This logic is disturbing for a few reasons.  The most obvious one, of course, is that all teens would benefit being institutionalized (they can't leave - but they're outside instead of in buildings) in such a manner.  This is nonsensical.

[Anonymous]

[/quote]


Most STDs are curable, but there are very few kids who can't be persuaded to use condoms if they get to try out a few brands.



Hah!  How old is Katie?  Has she reached the age where she won't listen to ANYTHING you have to say?  Good luck.  Are you going to take her to the Walgreens to pick out some pretty pink condoms when she's 13? You are in for the ride of you life.  Your naivety and arrogance astounds me.

[Anonymous]

What is Katie doing while you're writng these long, drawn out posts about everyone else's failures?

[Anonymous]

I think the perfect Katie is somewhere between 3 and 7.  I hope we are all around when the shit hits the fan in the Katie/Julie household.  That poor kid doesn't stand a chance.

[Antigen]

On 2006-03-22 13:56:00, Anonymous wrote:


Eudora, please. STD's, unwanted pregnancy and death at the hands of drug dealers are not acceptable.  Kids aren't sent off to WT because of their clothing choices.  A good parent better pick their batles and strong arm their ideas regarding deadly behaviours.  And, if that doesn't work, time away from it all and breaking the cycle may be the answer."

A lifetime of PTSD
Permanent damage to what is supposed to be that sacred, unbreachable parent/child trust bond
Having your mind scrambled to the point where your very identity and perceptions are forever changed.

Those are just some of the risks you run sending your kid off to a be held incommunicado by a bunch of people who are, by training, most adept at manipulating the minds of others.

Those are not acceptable risks either. And I would hold that these things are, by far and away, more likely to happen to a kid who gets shipped off to some 'troubled teen' service company than any of your dire predictions are likely to happen to a kid who does not.

Has it ever occured to any of you people to have faith in your own flesh and blood children to grow up and learn to manage these risks of life on this planet? I mean, the human race, in it's present form, has been banging along now for some tens or hundreds of thousands of years prior to Gestault and Synanon. How'd we manage that? Really. How in the world has the human race survived at all without the troubled parent industry to fix us before we could get out there and take any risk?

Revelation indeed had no weight with me.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor

[Troll Control]

On 2006-03-22 15:02:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I think the perfect Katie is somewhere between 3 and 7.  I hope we are all around when the shit hits the fan in the Katie/Julie household.  That poor kid doesn't stand a chance."

Why are you so nasty?  You're such a judgemental freak it's no wonder your family dynamics are so skewed.

You've got problems.

[Anonymous]

12 WEEKS out of 20 years!  Hardly shirking my parental duties. She's had plently of time post WT to grow up. She wanted to go!  She has no PTSD. I'm sorry Eudora, but saving her from her physically abusive boyfriend and a burgeoning cocaine habit (or the PTSD from it)was more important to me than sitting back and doing nothing.  That would have been the wrong thing to do.  Talk about shirking your parental duties!

[Anonymous]

Ok, DJ you make some valid points.  I realize that my kid's success may be an anomaly.  Julie, I think, has her heart in the right place but is blinded by arrogance and an "it won't happen to me" mentality.  One anon obviously hates Julie and is cynical.  Another anon likes the program and occasionally weighs in to keep this thread balanced.  Eudora obviously has had a bad experience and I'm sorry for her.  But, my last word is that Second Nature Wilderness Program is a good place with a safe record, a talented, educated staff and lots of former parents and students that believe in it.  That's where this started and that where I'm signing off.  I'm not going to beat this dead horse.  Though it was fun realizing yet one more time that I did the right thing and wasn't a wasted afternoon defending my decision and the program.

[Anonymous]

Oh, one more thing Eudora.  My brother died when he was 17 as my parents sat back and waited for him to grow up.  I was not going to let history repeat itself with trying something different.  My father was of the "boys will be boys" school of thought.  Guess what?  We (all of my surviving brothers and sisters) have PTSD from our parents watching him die.

[TheWho]

On 2006-03-22 14:06:00, Dysfunction Junction wrote:

"

You guys can't keep making assumptions that sending a kid to WT or TBS is the first thing a parent does the first time their kid smokes a joint or snorts a line.

I've only gone by what you said.  I haven't assumed anything really.  I've read what you wrote and commented on what you said.



In any case, I think you are quick to insult others due to what you perceive to be an attack on you when people ask questions and ask you to justify what you say with facts.  It's a touchy subject and people don't like to go into details.  I understand that to an extent.



I have said it before that I'm glad that your kid is doing better.  Who could be upset with a happy, functioning child?



What I object to is that places that use these types of "programs" don't tell the truth about their approach to "treatment."  Now. I'm not saying that your program has done this - I wouldn't know.  What I do know, however, is that they advertise that they can treat various psychological/social disorders.  They advertise that they are successful, yet there is not a single shred of evidence to support this claim.



I can say this universally about all of these programs simply because I stay current on the research being conducted and there is not a single, solitary clinical trial for "wilderness programs" that indicates that they can successfully treat anything whatsoever. Current research indicates that these programs are at best ineffective and at worst damaging.  



Mental health treatment must always be conducted under the least restrictive conditions possible.  This is a general rule of the discipline.  Sending a child to one of these programs against their will is counterintuitive the "least restrictive" philosophy.  



Their going voluntarily is rare and is usually coerced or in some cases the children are "kidnapped" from their beds in the middle of the night by paid "escorts" who handcuff your kid and drag him/her from the house in handcuffs, against their will, to be forcibly transported to the program - for a fee, of course.



My point about this has been that if your kid required out of home placement (dangerous to self or others - well below 1% of all cases) then he/she is in need of a level of care that a WP simply cannot deliver.



I'm not saying that there aren't some people in this industry who have good intentions and are trying to help kids.  



What I'm saying is that these places, based on the least restrictive care model, are accepting children whose placement there is unwarranted (many) or even dangerous (very few).  I'm saying that they're in business to sell a product - like every business sells a product to make profit - and the product they're selling isn't therapy for the kids, it's hope for the parents and it's wrong.




"

DJ, I dont totally agree, but that was a well thought out balanced argument, void of any anger.  I agree with anon, You made some valid viewpoints.

[Antigen]

On 2006-03-22 15:45:00, TheWho wrote:

DJ, I dont totally agree, but that was a well thought out balanced argument, void of any anger.  I agree with anon, You made some valid viewpoints.  "

Well slap me silly, we agree! Is there an eclipse tonight or something?  :em:

DJ. Once again, DJ, I am awed by your ability to elevate any discussion. If I ever find the way to turn Fornits into obscene profitability, you'll be my first ever paid moderator on damned near any topic you may choose. You can take that and three fity to the nearest Starbucks! LOL

Couple of questions for you:

"

On 2006-03-22 14:06:00, Dysfunction Junction wrote:


Mental health treatment must always be conducted under the least restrictive conditions possible. This is a general rule of the discipline.

Where can I find some good solid hostorical context for that? Seriously. I hold a pretty strong fidelity to the idea because it fits well w/ my own personal experience and philosophy. But how did the psyche profession/industries come around to this conclusion?

Their going voluntarily is rare and is usually coerced or in some cases the children are "kidnapped" from their beds in the middle of the night by paid "escorts" who handcuff your kid and drag him/her from the house in handcuffs, against their will, to be forcibly transported to the program - for a fee, of course.

My point about this has been that if your kid required out of home placement (dangerous to self or others - well below 1% of all cases) then he/she is in need of a level of care that a WP simply cannot deliver.

What are the expected and less common effects of this sort of experience? We've talked to death the perceived risks of not sending your kid off. And everyone in this thread agrees, I think, that Randal Hinton or Bay County Boot Camp type "therapy" is unkosher.

But what about the impact of just being a captive? In the Stanford Prison Experiment, they took some pains to realistically simulate the experience of becoming a prisoner. Even though the participants, both guards and inmates, were college student volunteers and fully aware that they were just playing a role in an experiment, they had to pull the plug on the project after just a couple of weeks due to the way it was effecting some of the subjects and even the clinical staff observers.

Just how desperate do you have to be to think this is an acceptable risk? I think the parents just don't know the risk. How could they? Most of them have never been arrested, held captive or subject to the constant stress of communal life in an authoritarian TC setting. How could they know?

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor