from what i saw at HLA, most parents were liberal arts college grads, suburban middle-class, many with their own small bussinesses. There were also quite a few upper-class families, i wont mention specifics, but many parents were c.e.o's or were on the boards of big hotel chains, food companies, designer labels, banks, international shipping and real estate companies.
Now that you picked up on this, it will not amaze you that these are the parents that the program's salesmen target. This way they can use the line...."What kind of price tag can you put on your child's life."[/color]
Mom and dad both postal workers. Dad had driven trucks and done AC and refrigeration repair while Mom stayed home with her soaps. We were not affluent but grandma and grandpa were. They were also in tight with the Shriners, AA and certain political/business figures allegedly affiliated with the Mad Monk. Jack Slesinger lived upstairs from grandpa and grandma. There was a picture of me at about age 4 or 5 at the helm of his yacht all dressed up in sailor garb. I wonder if my mom threw it out along with all of the other 'clutter' her 'therapist' told her was holding her back.
I've always thought that the high price tags of program are a "guilt" self-punishing mechanism for the parents. They feel "guilty" that they are abandoning and destroying their kids (they're aware of this at a certain level) so they use the high money expenditure to punish themselves for their transgression, thusly absolving themselves of the guilt.
Mom tried this on me once. I told her if she had only
asked me I could have saved her lots of money, time and trouble.
Also, if they are spending a great deal of money on a program they can tell themselves they are sacrificing for their kids. This helps them hide the reality of their abuse from themselves
+666 insightful. This explains quite a bit of it.
Combine the above with "It's expensive, so it must be good", "your kid will DIE if he doesn't get HELP NOW, so you have to PAY OR ELSE", and the "Oh, we sent him to a posh school for kids like him, very expensive" factors, and you get a pretty cohesive picture.
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I've kept pretty quiet about this till now, hoping I'd be able to have some contact w/ my niece through the family while she runs the gauntlet. I just spoke w/ my sister in law the other day. and remembered what a foolish idea that really is when she started telling me that my niece is a whole lot better, but not quite ready yet after 18 months. Then she said that she'd just go right back to what she was doing if she pulled her out too soon--"Your kid will DIE...". I told her that would only be true if she and the program pounded it into the kid's head so she believed it and that I'd heard the same rap from hundreds of parents, including my own, over the last 30 years or so. My niece was supposed to have her second two week home visit since she'd been there.
Everything was still cool enough till she started talking about how my brother had abandoned the kid. Now that pissed me off! My brother may be a phenomenal fuckup in many ways, but to say that he wilfully abandoned his daughter when, in reality, it took the bitch 3 separate legal actions to sever contact was just beyond the pale! After I opened my mouth, it finally dawned on me that, to a large degree, her induction into the program has more to do with a dirty and protracted divorce than anything at all to do with her daughter.
I wonder how many program parents are divorced? I remember being piqued by how many adopted kids there were and how many with scoliosis. I think those are common threads more than money. Lest we forget, there's a booming public sector market that doesn't require the parents to pay a dime. Martin Lee Anderson died on his first day of "therapy" in one of those. His family were not game for it, but my understanding is that other state funded programs like Eckerd Youth Alternative and the STAR Academies operate on basically the same parent group structure as the Seed and Straight, Inc. No big surprise there, since Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Drug Free America Foundation have always been in tight w/ the 'colorful' characters on Florida's political stage.
I think money is part of it, guilt is part of it, I've met some of the most sadistic, dark, insidious mindfucker parents imaginable. That's probably a lot of it too. But there's a simpler, more practical explanation that covers most of it all by itself. Stepcraft and the rest of the ToughLove hate group is a cult. It started out that way in the daze of Bill Wilson and has remained so through the daze of Nancy Reagan, Dr. Phool and some thousands of little tin god types on the level of the Who, Lon Woodbury and how many others.
When I explained my weird history to a good friend from Haiti, she listened patiently till I was done and I asked her what she though. "Yeah, zombie", she said. Then she explained how certain unscrupulous shamen would make slaves of people in a desperate state for various reasons--young orphans, terminally ill or just shell shocked from life in the wild parts near the Dominican border. They did this by convincing the mark that they had magic to save them from whatever trouble.
It's an old scam, old as the hills. But people continue to fall for it if they are desperate and haven't had sufficient experience with real community.
