I Have A Troubled Son. What should I do?

[mbnh31782]

as far as the ombudsman program goes, you may want to check to see if they'll let him try an example computer model.  he may find he likes it better than a teacher gabbing to him at the front of the class...  I'm willing to bet some of the instruction is computer video where he would wear headphones to hear instructions etc.  similar to spoonfeeding as you said

as far as whoever being a troll whatever....

[Anonymous]

Remember though its the middle ground tendency these folks fall into so easily. Program A isn't a wwasp so it must be better. Just go look at the Why fornits is superior in all ways to Antiwwasp thread. You see an entire forum on Antiwwasp that for the most part seems to be buying into the notion that if it isn't wwasp it can't be so bad. Then over here on fornits we have people saying, "lets not waste money at all. Let us scare the kids straight ourselves right in our own homes."

It is just another manifestation of the middle ground tendency I've been yakking about. We all hate fear based tactics and other techniques to gain complaince, but for some reason we feel the need to endorse them on a home level? Sounds to me like we've decided to take the program out of the program and try it out at home. Might as well write up a guide to BMing your kid.

Step 1) Build dog cage in back yard.

Step 2) Pepper spray must be purchased.

Step 3) hose down kid with pepper spray and lock him in dog cage.

I've seen alot more of this sort of thing on fornits. I say if your child is out of control in a violent fashion I want you to call the police. Don't waste anyone's time with an attempt to scare your kid straight. That bullcrap doesn't work in a program and it isn't likely to work at home.

Also for reference:

I say burn all the programs down.

I also say pass a constitutional amendment ensuring due process rights for children. They pay the same sales taxes we do.. so its a natural extension of the founding father's arguements for equal representation for taxation.

Don't even need to take it that far though. Just the right thing to do to keep these kids out of hell hole TBS's where they parents ship them off with no regard for the rights of the child.

Werd to your mother.

[Anonymous]

They aren't going away. We are a fucking MINISCULE minority of people here. This is mainstream shit.

Bullshit.

The only reason there's relatively few posters on Fornits is because the subject matter scares the shit out of sane parents.

It's the programmies who are in the fucking minority.

[Ganja]

bam..shit comes out of the grit trying to reach up and inevitably ends up back in the shit i was trying to escape damn dirt.. that tree looks nice though.. not like the sky.. that shit is heavenly.

Eloquently portrayed (in pictures and words).

[Antigen]

I tried to help him get a job, but he couldn't find one available for a 15 year old. He actually wanted a job, but I think he wanted to get a car to be more "free."

You say that like it's a bad thing???

So, your kid isn't following your idea of what he ought to be doing with himself. And you're just certain he's going to fall on his ass and be a failure for life unless he does?

Too late, there's nothing you can do to avert this impending disaster. Your little boy has decided to grow up. His elders have failed to impress him. I can understand that. I'm not very impressed w/ my generation at all either. The last damned thing you want to do is join forces with the various bullies and do-gooders who are trying to trash his life for him.

If the kid is passionate about music and he thinks he's ready to make it in the work force, let him try. You may be pleasantly surprised.

In most states, you can register him as homeschooled till he hits 16 and then there's usually no attendance requirement. If he changes his mind and wants to go to college, he's got a couple of years to repair his transcript by taking a couple of remedial courses at the local JC. This he will do of his own free will and in the company of other kids who are willingly working toward college or at least a trade. Contrast that w/ the Allice in Wonderland, Zero Tolerance lunacy that is day to day life in our much vaunted education system.

I guarantee you none of the coercive behavior mod programs are going to help him to become a productive, capable adult. That's not what they're designed to do. They're designed to break the will of an individual and force compliance and dependency. You can go from one to the next to the next and they all have slightly different marketing pitches designed to appeal to a variety of cultural styles. But, at the end of the day, there's only one way to change a person against their will. You have to break their will.

Now get behind your kid and encourage him, damn it!

[Antigen]

Code: [Select]

if (real_parent_presence_probability > .09)
{deliver_standard_warning($parent = "Dad Trying", $programmie = "TheWho")};

Makes sense..

It does

return undef() if /coercion/i;

[Ganja]

Code: [Select]

if (real_parent_presence_probability > .09)
{deliver_standard_warning($parent = "Dad Trying", $programmie = "TheWho")};

Makes sense..

It does

I know; I wasn't being facetious.

Btw, the consensus is that DT is just a troll.

[Antigen]

We are a fucking MINISCULE minority of people here. This is mainstream shit. We are like the conspiraacy theorists on their website who think the revolution is about to happen at any time.

and

How many people actually understand the extent of what's happening to today's teenagers, how their freedoms are being stripped from all directions? How the pressures are increasing to inhumane levels? How they hypocrisy that surrounds them just screams to their soul - cry out for freedom and justice... do what your heart desires!! Not many.. not many at all. Most are saying send em to wilderness or an RTC or scare them by calling the cops. What's the next new age light option? We should start a pool bet on it.

Well, I think most program vets have some sensitivity to it. We were the unfortunate ones who's parents were the early adopters of this particular brand of insanity. And, regardless of what some of my fellow alma mater may say in words, even some of the most devout followers and practitioners of Stepcraft won't send their kids off when they find a sack a sticky in the kid's glove box. In fact, I sometimes think them others are sort of whistling past the bone yard by saying what they say. My own brother is a good example. He's a lifelong devotee, been through many flavors of XA and runs an XA outreach and education program. Last I heard he was talking about starting a TC of his very own for wealthy adult practitioners of his XA of choice. When I first asked him to look at my Anonanon site, he just started gushing about good old Art and oh how he loved and missed his dear old mentor. Never stopped to say hi to him, of course, in all the times he blew right past the back door of  So. Andrews on the way from the airport, or even when he lived there in town. I can't explain it, weird. But I'm just glad he never shipped my niece off.

[Antigen]

Vexing dad, this is really interesting. It really is hard to tell the difference between satire and spontaneous lunacy sometimes. My opinion? Honestly, I'd have to flip a coin. If this is a troll, 10 stars on a scale of 1-5.

If not, all I can say is that you're being absolutely hysterical about the pot and friends. Now it may be true that I was a 17yo escapee from a drug rehab (well, except the part about it being an entirely bogus rehab), but I'm also a mother of three, the eldest being 22. I don't have to hypothesize or conjecture about what I would do in your shoes. I know. I did some things right and some things way, way wrong. First of all, let's talk about the friends. I hated this one chick! Well, hate is too strong a word. But I thought she was petty and shallow and mean spirited. Boy, was I WRONG! Thank God my daughter passed on my advice in that instance. This kid stuck by my daughter through thick and think up to a point far beyond where the rest of her friends lost patience with her.

She lost that friend due to a boyfriend. One girl's bf jumped the other's, there was a mob and gangs and weapons, cops, agrivated assault charges, permanent injury and PTSD symptoms. And my darlin daughter had to choose. I so wish I could turn back time and delete all of those many, many instances when I tried various kinds of prohibition and coercion to try and get this girl to see the little weezle for what he was. Maybe she wouldn't have dug her heels in so hard, maybe things would have been different. As it was, never saw my daughter and hardly spoke with her, except over the phone while Psycho Boy was in jail, from the time of the trial till a couple of years later when she finally decided to take up that bus ticket I had held out for her to come home (follow the family, actually, to another state) Maybe if I hadn't been trying to force my conclusions on her so hard she wouldn't have been fighting me off and she might have reached her final conclusion a good deal more quickly.

But, it's your life, your kid, what the hell do we know?

Do you really think pot smoking is more dangerous than forced indoctrination? Do you really? Well, if so, you're wrong and that's all there is to it. Roughly half of all Americans have been reliably copping to having smoked pot in high school since we started surveying them on the topic in the very early `70's. The vast majority of those I know personally who have significant mental and emotional issues went through the program.

[ZenAgent]

I have a 15 year old son, lives with me and his mom. He met bad kid at public school last semester and started with bad crowd. Now he has been suspended four times for smoking, terrible grades last semester, tested positive for THC, bought pot at school, gets cigs at school, took mushrooms and OTC pills to school to sell, physical fights with parents, curses at parents, took parent's car at 2:00 am for joyride, runs away for several hours at a time, pulled knife on parents, doesn't want any rules.

Son has treated with a psychologist and psychiatrist for a year and a half for OCD first and now depression. Is on enough anti-depressant med, but this doesn't stop his actions. I have tried talking to him and have spent time with him. I tried to get him into track and field this semister and even offered to pay him for doing it. He did two days and quit. Also, offered to get him a car if he "would make good grades and quit the cigs and pot. It didn't help. He bought pot at school last week. I threatened to cut off his guitar lessons if he got suspended again for smoking cigs. But, he got suspended again last week for that.

I checked him into a medical treatment facility for emotional and drug problems last week. It's short-term. He gets out in a couple of days. I started researching some TBS's about 3 weeks ago and read the horror stories about some of those on this site and others, so I won't send him to one of those.

Does anyone know of a legit TBS or program that includes school work? If not, any suggestions on what to do for my son? He will be selling pot at school if he stays there and end up in jail. I checked into one private school near our home and it won't take him.

A therapist suggested this program by Eckerd:
http://www.eckerdyouthalternatives.org/
The one he would go to is in Hendersonville, NC. I have seen bad things about some "wilderness schools" on the internet. Any info on this particular program or Eckerd in general? Other suggestions?

Thanks.

I glanced at this thread when it was first posted and detected the malodorous essence of a  troll, the kind that hides under bridges and shakes down travellers for change, steals babies, and gives voice to Lonnie the leach's agenda. I ignored it, but it continues on and on.  If you're looking for a TBS, Fornits is not the place that pops up first on a search engine, or even the first couple pages.  Parents on Fornits have already been burned or discovered through serious research the ugly truth about the shithole their kids are wrongfully imprisoned in.  They aren't looking for another facility.  Why worry about your son's next stop being jail?  He'll have more privileges and rights in County lock-up than he will in a TBS.  

Your son "runs away for several hours at a time"?  Technically, that's not running away, he's simply AWOL.  He's in with a "bad" kid, and indulging in risky behavior and being disrespectful to you and your wife.  I find it horrible that he could threaten you and your wife with a knife, but is it only you two?  I would expect his violence to be more widespread, not limited to his parents. When I was a kid, that kind of activity (outside of threatening to shiv the folks) was called a "phase", and normally worked itself out through the passage of time, or therapy with a counselor the kid could relate to and confide in.  I realize you've sought help from professionals, but a very skilled and successful adolescent psychiatrist told me that unless he can gain the kid's full trust, he can't help.  Gaining the kid's trust means not reporting the details of the teen's confessions to the parents unless the child is planning to self-injure.  Through this method, the psychiatrist I mentioned has patients who enter his office stand-offish and resentful, and quickly begin to look forward to their sessions with him, often continuing sessions well into early adulthood.  No offense, Dad Trying, but the kind of acting-out you describe is often the result of of some conflict in the home.  It might be rebellion against authoritarian rule, rejection of the family's religious values, or darker issues that cause him to vent his anger and frustration by engaging in behavior he knows will shock you.  Vengeance against a parent is not uncommon, and a kid's means of exacting vengeance are limited.  The most obvious and effective way to strike a blow is to renounce the parents' values and indulge in behavior guaranteed to embarrass the family and ruin their "good standing" in the community.  

I looked over the Eckerd site, and the bullshit alarm went off after reading this list of "troubled behavior":

*  Spiraling out of control
    * Having difficulty in school, skipping school or
      even failing school
    * Causing conflicts at home
    * Acting defiant
    * Acting angry or having anger management problems
    * Experiencing depression, anxiety, ADHD or
      oppositional defiant disorder

These issues have been the signposts of teenage angst and hormonal turmoil for ages.  None of these "problems" justify removing the child from the home and putting him in a possibly abusive program where the child might pick up some new and even more disturbing behaviors through deviant peer influence.  A too-common reaction of teens abused in hellhole programs is a deep-seated resentment against their own parents for placing them there.  The resentment doesn't go away quickly, and it can last a lifetime.

"I threatened to cut off his guitar lessons if he got suspended again for smoking cigs,"  This gave your story a ring of truth.  As a teen, I was often banned from guitar lessons until my grades came up.  Bet your ass they came up.  I was a legendary drinker at 14, and my literary (and musical) heroes instilled a desire in me to indulge in all pleasures and intoxicants, the more exotic the better.  
I was a teen monster in thought and deed. but smart enough to not look the part of a deliquent or get caught.  My group of friends thought being caught was a sign of failure.  We were "Mod" kids, short hair, Oxford button-downs, military surplus gear, jackets, and an insatiable desire for all vices.  That's not meant to be boastful:  by the time I was thirty I was nearly dead from alcohol, and it was not concealed.  I quit drinking and pulled myself together.  I miss drinking like I would miss a hellspawned case of treatment resistant crab lice.  

The programs you see mentioned on Fornits should not be considered as options.  StrugglingTeens will offer you places that sound wonderful, but they make their living off of "kickbacks" from the programs they recommend and get students enrolled.  ST's interest in your son's wellbeing is non-existant, their interest ends when they get their check.  Look through the StrugglingTeen archives and read the glowing reviews they give programs that were eventually closed for criminal neglect and abuse. Sue Scheff at PURE is the same way, notice on her site that she denies liability for any atrocities or injuries kids suffer at programs she recommends. Sue, if you can't stand behind the programs you endorse, don't send the kids to them and try to hide behind a legally questionable "safety valve".  It won't hold up in court, since you tout yourself as an "expert", and yet at the same time deny any liability for harm suffered in a facility you recommend.  You're playing both sides against the middle, and you will be called to task for it soon.

To sum this up:  Dad Trying, if you aren't a shill for the tortured teen industry, you have some options.  Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore MD is a world-class facility, and stays are no more twenty days maximum, and the kids leave with coping skills and references for ongoing out-patient treatment.  They stabilize the kids, involve them in group therapy and individual-based treatment.  I could call my step daughter any time I wanted and talk at length, or talk to the head psychiatrist and get a full report on progress being made.  My stepdaughter prospered and was happy there, the staff told me she was only "being a teenager", and she was a "joy to work with in the milieu with a refreshing sense of humor" and offered emotional support and friendship to peers who were suffering.  This wasn't good enough for the biological father, since Sheppard Pratt revealed him to be an alcoholic and drug addict during his clinical interview, and a source of abject terror to his daughter.  Since Sheppard Pratt could find no problem to keep my girl there, they were faced with a dilemma:  They said under no circumstances was my step daughter to be allowed to live with her bio-dad, due to the strained relationship and safety issues.  Since he had custody, they had to go with the father's plan B:  Peninsula Village.  Sheppard Pratt seemed to hope custody would revert within a week of her release, and considered the placement at PV uneccesary, but it did offer a better choice than being remanded to her vindictive father.     The Sheppard Pratt clinicians called my wife and I often after our girl left, wanting to know how she was and if she had been returned home.  They were horrified to find out custody had not reverted, and it could be a long time. Not only did Sheppard Pratt help our girl while she was in their care, they went beyond the call of duty to check on our daughter and offer us emotional support.  I have nothing but warm feelings for the caring and dedicated staff at Sheppard Pratt.

During my step daughter's stay at PV, I never saw or talked to her once in six months, and her mother was banned for photographing a brutal and improper physical restraint.    Since the bio-father was having rich family members sport the bill, he had weekly face-to-face sessions with our patient.  The last session father and daughter had ended with my step daughter confronting her father and overriding the staff therapist's control by throwing her father out of the session and refusing to meet with him again.  PV practices parental alienation, isolation, false imprisonment, physical abuse and mind-fucking.  The bio-dad loved it for a while, until a team of lawyers told him the "treatment" at PV was at best ineffective, at worst harmful.  She's home, and surprise! she's happy, doing well at school and looking forward to College in the Fall.  Just don't talk to her about Peninsula Village, what happened there left wounds that only time, love and the best  therapy can hope to heal.  

And Dad Trying?  My step daughter's relationship with her bio-father is non-existant, she will probably never forgive him or be in his presence.   To further complicate any reconciliation, her father stated (drunkenly) "I don't care what happens to S------, as long as she never tries to contact me again,"  He DID send her a Christmas present, along with a poison card telling her she was surrounded by lies and alternative realities, and would be lost until she came to terms with HIS reality.  Dad Trying, do you want to risk alienating your son for a long time, or possibly forever?  Try looking into community based treatment - your son would stay at home, receive counseling on a frequent basis, and the entire family would be involved in treatment. Parents involved in community based learn better parenting skills, and how to LISTEN.  Community based is also a fraction of the price of a TBS.  Peninsula Village is $9,000-$12,000 a month, community based averages $1200 to $3000.  Whatever you do, make sure you do your research.  Go to ISAC and read the warning signs of abusive programs.  Read Maia Szalavitz's "Help At Any Cost", and check out the questions to ask programs you're considering.  If they can't give you reassuring answers, look elsewhere.  Unfortunately, I doubt you'll find any program that can give you answers that will put your mind at ease.

[Dad Trying]

Vexing dad, this is really interesting. It really is hard to tell the difference between satire and spontaneous lunacy sometimes. My opinion? Honestly, I'd have to flip a coin. If this is a troll, 10 stars on a scale of 1-5.

If not, all I can say is that you're being absolutely hysterical about the pot and friends. Now it may be true that I was a 17yo escapee from a drug rehab (well, except the part about it being an entirely bogus rehab), but I'm also a mother of three, the eldest being 22. I don't have to hypothesize or conjecture about what I would do in your shoes. I know. I did some things right and some things way, way wrong. First of all, let's talk about the friends. I hated this one chick! Well, hate is too strong a word. But I thought she was petty and shallow and mean spirited. Boy, was I WRONG! Thank God my daughter passed on my advice in that instance. This kid stuck by my daughter through thick and think up to a point far beyond where the rest of her friends lost patience with her.

She lost that friend due to a boyfriend. One girl's bf jumped the other's, there was a mob and gangs and weapons, cops, agrivated assault charges, permanent injury and PTSD symptoms. And my darlin daughter had to choose. I so wish I could turn back time and delete all of those many, many instances when I tried various kinds of prohibition and coercion to try and get this girl to see the little weezle for what he was. Maybe she wouldn't have dug her heels in so hard, maybe things would have been different. As it was, never saw my daughter and hardly spoke with her, except over the phone while Psycho Boy was in jail, from the time of the trial till a couple of years later when she finally decided to take up that bus ticket I had held out for her to come home (follow the family, actually, to another state) Maybe if I hadn't been trying to force my conclusions on her so hard she wouldn't have been fighting me off and she might have reached her final conclusion a good deal more quickly.

But, it's your life, your kid, what the hell do we know?

Do you really think pot smoking is more dangerous than forced indoctrination? Do you really? Well, if so, you're wrong and that's all there is to it. Roughly half of all Americans have been reliably copping to having smoked pot in high school since we started surveying them on the topic in the very early `70's. The vast majority of those I know personally who have significant mental and emotional issues went through the program.

I'm not a fundamentalist prude. When my son's therapist mentioned that most kids experiment with alcohol and/or pot I told her that I wouldn't be that concerned if all he did was smoke a joint on the weekends at a friend's house, but kept up his grades and otherwise held it together. That's not the situation here. Look back at my original post. His first "bad" friend was the one who got him into smoking pot and he got into it heavily. At the time we put him into a short-term inpatient program, his next step would have been dealing pot. We decided to get more concentrated help for him mainly for his underlying emotional problems rather than the drug abuse.

I understand what you're saying about kids wanting to do the opposite of what their parents tell them. I can see his 'contra' attitude even with little things. I even had started using a little reverse psychology on him. However, I can't say, "smoke all the pot you want," or "hang out with drug dealers." In our family group session I noticed the therapist using the Socratic method with him rather than giving him advice or rules to follow. Giving him information and then asking him questions and letting him figure out the answers for himself seems to be the best method to use to teach him.

My wife is determined to use the 'grab the bull by the horns' method. She is adament that he won't return to public school this year. This has been very hard on her because she has a brother who started using pot at an early age and went on to other drugs. He is currently a divorced 35 year old father of 3 and a meth addict. My wife paid his child support payments for two months while he went to a men's Christian Rehab Center. He gave a good speech the day he got out of that rehab saying he was free from drugs. He was using again within a week. My wife has been on our son like white on rice because of her brother's history with drugs. At our family therapy session my son said his mom disgusts him and he kept his hand up to the side of his face so he wouldn't have to look at her. But, she was right about his drug use. She knew the signs.

[Dad Trying]

Well, I guess Ombudsman school is out of the running. He would be around a lot of (maybe all) bad kids there:

http://www.statesboroherald.com/news/article/2191/

The choices are now home school  or let him return to public school. He is adamant about going back to public school, but his mom is just as adamant that he not return.

[Anonymous]

Well, I guess Ombudsman school is out of the running. He would be around a lot of (maybe all) bad kids there

That's called "his peer group".

[Dad Trying]

Well, I guess Ombudsman school is out of the running. He would be around a lot of (maybe all) bad kids there

That's called "his peer group".

That's what I'm trying to change.

[TheWho]

Well, I guess Ombudsman school is out of the running. He would be around a lot of (maybe all) bad kids there:

http://www.statesboroherald.com/news/article/2191/

The choices are now home school  or let him return to public school. He is adamant about going back to public school, but his mom is just as adamant that he not return.

If you can swing the home schooling I would try that before sending him back to public school.  We have a friend of the family who attempted this and it started out really bad because nobody got a break from each other and the situation got worse, very quickly.  But eventually with the outside influences severely reduced their son began to respond and got back on track, its not easy and it doesn?t work for everyone, but based on what I have read in your posts it would be better first step than initially sending him back to Public ed.

Another thought, you could try broadening your scope and looking for help outside your immediate area, don?t limit yourself geographically if you don?t have to.  There may be other schools/programs out there which could help with your situation.