Author Topic: Who would be open to merging this forum with the Struggling  (Read 3754 times)

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Offline BSarro

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Who would be open to merging this forum with the Struggling
« on: March 06, 2005, 04:07:00 PM »
I think that would balance out the debate more fairly.Lets get it done Ginger!
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2005, 04:31:00 PM »
:lol: Well if that's not the stupidest suggestion I've heard in a while Woodbury is all about censorship. Ginger is not. There could never be a meeting of the minds. Parents will not find a 'balanced' perspective at Struggling Teens, because even the more 'negative' posts are so edited and watered down as to have very little significance to reality.
Nope, it works quiet well as it is. Parents can visit both in order to get a balanced perspective. They will have to rely on Fornits to hear from parents/students who were very unhappy with their experience.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2005, 05:01:00 PM »
Quote
Parents can visit both in order to get a balanced perspective.

They only need to come here for a balanced perspective.  There is nothing to stop the folks who post on Struggling Teens to post here as well or instead.  Oh wait a minute.  They don't.  I wonder why. :lol:
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Offline spots

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« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2005, 06:23:00 PM »
Yes, that's a stupid idea.  As one who monitored the Struggling Teens forum for the year that my grandaughter was incarcerated in Casa by the Sea and kept from all communication with the World, friends, and family, I got a real good feel for the kind of parents most actively participating in ST.  

There are two kinds of adults posting on ST: 1) the parents who are seriously looking for help with their difficult children, and 2) parents who find the answer for ANY problem to be had with difficult children is to send them away.  Those parents' only role in that forum is to reinforce the "ship 'em off" solution, and share the ultimate value *they* got by shipping their kids off.  NOTICE:  The newly-returned (or not-yet-returned) kids had parents full of hope, even with a little trepidation.  The Old Timers were the most strident in their support of excommunication, and those Old Timers almost always do not speak of their children in the present tnese...i.e., they don't seem to be on speaking terms with their children any more.  

About 3 years ago, there got to be such a word-war on strugglingteens that Woodbury enforced new rules, not allowing identification of any institution specifically by name.  This was from an anti-WWASPS/pro-WWASPS battle that threatened to flood the board.  Oh, and Lon also was really good friends with the pooh-bahs at WWASPS and had their advertising on the back cover of his ed consult book.

OK, so now you could bounce around a named school, but not say it directly.  Knowing this, I could pretty easily talk about Casa as a Bad Place, and pretty much everybody knew about it and agreed.  In fact, if somebody jumped on me for saying that RTC's or BM boarding schools were not the answer for everyone, I got defended by a whole slew of people who said, basically, "...yeah, but she is dealing with the Worst of the Worst, and she is right in saying IT'S bad".

Well, one day, I wrote a post suggesting that the rah-rah's be very very careful when gushing in public over the wonder of having somebody else take care of the problem with your Bad Kid.  I said that the folks in the grocery store line or the server in your restaurant may take you literally, and feel that The Most Advertised Program (Teen Help aka WWASPS) is a really good thing, because this lady was overheard in the store talking about how wonderful it was, yadda yadda.  I did not mention ANY specific program [against the rules], but said that extolling the virtues of ALL programs might not be a good thing.  

BINGO!  Touched a cord there.  Next thing ya know, my post was deleted by Jena The Moderator (mother of a "very difficult" teen who had been shipped off umpteen times to various Programs and still was a pill).  And low and behold, that day there appeared the famous Whistle-Blower icon at the bottom of every post, so it became sooo simple for The Strident Ones to immediately tell on anyone whose ideas are honest, questioning, or negative...and who go contrary to the business philosophy of Lon Woodbury who makes a shameful living shipping kids off to the tons of places talked about here on Fornits.

The upshot is...the Stuggling Teens website is the private property of Lon and he can censor it any way he feels like.  There is no Free Speech entrenched in this form of website.  He obviously wants support for his business, and allows ONLY those posts which reaffirm his ideas.  OTOH, Ginger also has an ax to grind (she was in Straight), but I am sure she does not censor.  She allows anonymous postings, anything goes, and she wisely lets the survivors' thoughts speak for themselves...and it ain't purty, either.  So, if one wants a balance of opinion, go to each forum and sort out the rhetoric, make your own informed decision, and act on it.

As for *my* bias, we are now parenting the 16yo grandaughter. She is going to a special high-school-in-college program next year at our local community college, partly because she feels "older" and more mature after her experiences in WWASPS than many of her high school junior peers. She has minimal occasional contact with her parents, one day last summer on her birthday, and two days during the Christmas vacation.  

She spent a long day yesterday at UC-Davis, competing in a horse-judging show for FFA.  She's thinking about dropping track and doing the FFA soils and irrigation segment for the spring semester.  Who would have thought?  The "difficult" teen sent to WWASPS for brainwashing and abuse is a happy functioning young lady, cowboy boots and all. She seldom talks about her experiences any more, except sometimes in those late-night kitchen-counter conversations with me, and has not told even her long-time boyfriend about the reality of her "boarding school" situation. That is the Past, and the worst outcome of it is for her mother who has permanently lost her child and grandchildren-to-be.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2005, 06:58:00 PM »
the struggling teens forum is not only censored but is bias, they have "their programs" who pay for "their" members to travel to, and get put up in grand hotels, and fed good meals.  I guess now if you want the truth you  have to go to ISAC or to Parents for Residential Reform you all here are selling us all out. :flame:
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2005, 08:57:00 PM »
Also at Struggling teens, it takes about a week after signing up for them to decide whether or not they will accept your application to join and allow you to post.
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Offline BSarro

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« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2005, 09:01:00 PM »
I thought Ginger was a Seed Sibling. Are you people changing the story now?
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od helps those who help themselves.                            Take marriage seriously.                             Once the Wedding Ring goes on the finger, it stays on the finger.

Offline Antigen

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« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2005, 09:26:00 PM »
:rofl:

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
--Ambrose Bierce

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"Don\'t let the past remind us of what we are not now."
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2005, 09:37:00 PM »
BSorry,
Splitting hairs? Seed and Straight are virtually one in the same.
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2005, 10:48:00 PM »
Mad March ones, evidently.

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.
--  J. Robert Oppenheimer



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"Don\'t let the past remind us of what we are not now."
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #10 on: March 07, 2005, 02:59:00 PM »
I certainly hope that never happens.

Struggling Teens is read by us parents when we are trying to justify sending our kids to a program, and we heard exactly what we needed to hear to do it...send our child to a place that made promises and gave false hope, ONLY to be disappointed, and devastated to have our child damaged even more so than by the problems we thought we had to begin with.

Now, we have this site to try and figure out how we went so wrong, and to listen to what really goes on in those programs. And to sit in absolute wonderment that our kids don't hate us for sending them away in the first place.
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #11 on: March 07, 2005, 09:59:00 PM »
Except in the sense of the word sometimes used by pigeoners, I don't see it happening.

Welcome, btw, to the flock.

When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years ago, he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promise.
-- FRANKLIN P.ADAMS (1861-1960).

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Offline BSarro

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« Reply #12 on: March 08, 2005, 03:09:00 PM »
Does anyoe here dispute that if there was a merger, Lon Woodbury would be providing EXPERT ADVICE FROM A LICENSED EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT? Who here has qualifications anywhere near matching Lon Woodbury's?
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od helps those who help themselves.                            Take marriage seriously.                             Once the Wedding Ring goes on the finger, it stays on the finger.

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #13 on: March 08, 2005, 05:59:00 PM »
It's a mute point. What part of NO don't you understand? Lon is welcome to post here as anyone else is, if he hasn't already.
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Offline Deborah

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« Reply #14 on: March 09, 2005, 09:28:00 AM »
EXPERT ADVICE FROM A LICENSED EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT like this:

http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... tart=20&29
Excerpts:
Education consultant Lon Woodbury sends a lot of kids to Elk Mountain - the type who ``when in a safe environment, the decent kid comes out.''  He said that private behavioral schools have to launch aggressive public relations campaigns to overcome the fear factor in the community. ``People assume they're criminals. Most of these kids aren't,'' Woodbury said.

Just months after vowing not to increase their numbers at Elk Mountain Academy, owners Carl and Loretta Olding have asked the county to allow the school to house up to 12 more students at their woodsy campus below Scotchman's Peak.

These are not dangerous kids, the Oldings and their staff insist - despite the neighborhood rumors of gun thieves and worse. ``We don't get crazies here,'' said Mark Rocha, a youth minister and Elk Mountain employee. ``We're talking about youth. We're not talking about a nuclear reactor here.''

``Until they learn how to abide by the laws, they shouldn't have more kids there,'' said Jeannie Roach, one of a coalition of neighbors near Elk Mountain.

Neighbors have a running list of violations at Elk Mountain: building dormitories without the county's blessing or knowledge, exceeding its licensed capacity, housing students in incomplete buildings without proper safety inspections, failing to test water and even a poaching incident.

Most of the problems have been resolved, but any trust between neighbors and the Oldings has vanished. And some neighbors still grumble about the roar of Elk Mountain's dirt bikes in their peaceful outback.

``Who's kidding who?'' said Carl Olding in reference to one vocal opponent to the bikes. ``We'll never be buddies.''

Elk Mountain recently was licensed by the state as a children's treatment facility, which allows for more than 12 students. But the license still is on provisional status. The school also persuaded the county to issue a conditional use permit that allows up to 25 students for two years, when the permit will be reviewed. But that permit didn't include the academy's Base Camp program, which houses as many as 12 additional students for six to nine weeks in an unfinished cabin on the heavily treed mountainside above the main
campus.

It's those students that the school still needs permission to house. Two or three teens were up there this summer, cooking up Campbell's soup for dinner and sleeping on bunkbeds without mattresses.

``They've flaunted the fact that they don't have to abide by the rules,'' Roach said of Elk Mountain. ``If they get away with it, we'll wind up with 100 little schools around here that get away with breaking the rules.''

Olding started planning Elk Mountain Academy while working for less than $8 an hour as a counselor at Eagle Mountain Outpost. He and his wife started their family-based group home in Clark Fork in 1993.

Their group home was allowed under Bonner County's zoning laws only after the county's legal counsel agreed that attention deficit disorder qualified as a disability. Olding claimed that all of his students had the condition.

Northwoods has yet to apply for a permit from Bonner County to operate a school in the Sagle area. It is in the process of applying for a foster care license, which allows up to six unrelated children in a home. Northwoods isn't the only facility expanding. Elk Mountain is moving part of its program across the border.

``To be at Elk Mountain is to be in a bubble,'' Olding said. ``How do you get loaded at Elk Mountain? If anyone smarts off in class, they're out picking rocks immediately. They live in this surreal world where there is no temptation.''

So Elk Mountain has spawned Elk Creek, 86 acres the Oldings just bought near Heron, Mont., where they plan to build another home for boys who progress to their second year at the academy. Those students will go to public school in Noxon, Mont.

The Oldings already have four students enrolled in Noxon, but for now the teens still live at the academy north of Clark Fork.

Noxon High Principal Bob Goodrich has had students from other group home settings. Northwest Montana seems to be a magnet for the behavioral school industry, he said.

One well-known school is the boot-camp style Spring Creek Lodge near Thompson Falls, which is expected to soon have more students than the entire Noxon School District. Those students never leave the facility.

``It's one of the enterprises of Sanders County that's somewhat lucrative,'' Goodrich noted.

Elk Mountain's move to Montana was partially motivated by pressure from neighbors. Montana has fewer restrictions on group homes and private schools.

``We get a lot of, `Well, we'll just move to Montana,''' said Puett, the Idaho state licensing specialist.

In Montana, Olding sees an opportunity to offer more services to students who aren't ready to leave the support system that Elk Mountain offers. He also has 86 acres to play with - plenty of room for a dirt bike track that won't bother anybody, he said.

``No matter what happens,'' Olding said, ``I'm going to continue to do this work, whether it's in Montana or Idaho.''
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gt;>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Hidden Lake Academy, after operating 12 years unlicensed will now be monitored by the state. Access information on the Federal Class Action lawsuit against HLA here: http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=17700