But see, sitting back under your umbrella on the porch and relishing in the fact that you prevented a child from entering a program is a hollow victory. You have done nothing to solve the problem. The family is still in turmoil and the child isn’t getting the help he/she needs.
There needs to be an effort to solve the issue and get to root cause. Granted that some kids are placed without good cause. But the majority of kids who attend the programs need help and by just putting up a road block without providing alternate solutions is more dangerous than placing a child unnecessarily.
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IT's not anyone's job but a therapists and the parents to straighten out the kid. It should not be up to me, sue scheff, you, etc what parents of a troubled child should do. all we can do is steer them in the right direction, or in my case, steer them away from the wrong direction.
You want to solve the root of the problem? create parental licenses and mandatory parenting classes. people not fit to have kids should not have kids. people who think that smoking a little pot and doing badly at school constitutes a troubled child should be re-educated. religious bias within families should likewise be abolished federally. But that's unethical and impossible.
so what's the solution?
make parents deal with their own mistakes, and prevent others from capitalizing on those mistakes. if they cant, that sucks for them. the kid will end up good or bad regardless of what you try to do. thats life. that's evolution. the strongest and fittest succed in life, while the weak fail. people have to quit trying to instill this artifical sense of self-worth in all the kids and their parents who are in fact Human trash.
alot of the kids i met at various programs are doomed to fail. they are fucked up regardless of what you try to do or help them with. those kids need to learn their lessons on their own.
Others can swing either way. how they do depends on their environment and opprotunities. they stumble around and make mistakes in their teen years, but that is no reason to get sent away. parents of these kids are over-reactive. the kind that think one joint equals a life of heroin addiction. the parents of these kids are responsible single-handedly for the success or lack of success of their kids.
Most of the kids at the programs are good kids that dont need a program. they need something called LIFE EXPERIENCE. you dont get that at programs. they give a false, highly censored experience usually modeled after the program founder's/director's view of reality.
so in the end, there is no need for programs. There still is a need for inpatient rehabs and psychiatric hospitals, along with short-term RTC's for court ordered nonviolent juvenile offenders. programs like those run by NATSAP and WWASPS along with others have no legitimate place in this society. please stop trying to make it look like these programs deserve a ligitimate spot in this society, culture, and economy. they dont.
100 years ago, did they send "bad kids" to programs? no. they didnt need to. the kids learned on their own, or they lived a short, unpleasant life, just like their parents, or they join the army where they get straightened out. there was no need for programs for millions of years, there is no need for programs now.
