Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Carlbrook
Anonymous:
If you go back in time on this board, you will find several postings about Carlbrook. My son went there, and it is a wonderful program. He loved the place, and it did a lot for him. Carlbrook's attitude is "Hey, you're a great kid, and somehow you screwed up. If you work hard and be honest with yourself, we can get you back on track." Academics is paramount, and the faculty is first-rate. Classes are small, and they expect a lot from the students. My son says he had to study like never before. But he's a high achiever, so that was a good thing for him. They are not an end-of-the-line school, so they can be choosy about who they accept. And if a student is not following their rules, and making satisfactory progress, they will be asked to leave. The positive peer environment means that new kids are buddied up with successful older kids. My son still stays in contact with friends who graduated earlier and are now at various colleges across the country. The kids have individual and group therapy sessions weekly, and it's expensive, but the facility and campus life are more like a "normal" boarding school than a program. Communication between the school and parents is excellent. Student phone calls are timed, but not monitored. When my son was there, on Mother's Day they made sure every kids phoned his or her mom. My son has talked about going back to visit sometime. We had an extensive tour and visit before enrolling our son, and a visit would be the best way for you to evaluate the school and see if it meet your needs and your child's. Good luck!
Anonymous:
I just graduated from Carlbrook in July 2005, and honsetly, coming on this website and reading people's replys about Carlbrook made me want to vomit. This school was the best thing that has ever happened to me and my family. I found out how important I am, and how what I was doing to my body, my heart, my mind was against everything that is simply true about me. Carlbrook does not beleive in fixing anybody, because they beleive in the theory that no one is broken, it is true. It is not a place where they lock kids up, it is a place where lost kids can find out what they want out of this life, to apologize to themselves for betraying love, truth and their hearts. This school has been my home for the past 17 months, it has been the most powerful experience. Yes, a lot of the student are in charge of things like a student body government, a committee where older students are bigs brothers and big sisters to new students who feel so completly and utterly uncomfortable, there are prefects where the students are making sure the dorms are emotionally safe. They dont care about the money, that is why it works, they put the students first and that should be the point of all therapeutic school. I wasnt planning on going to college before Carlbrook, I had gotten kicked out of my previous boarding school and was majorly addicted to drugs. Now i am here, i have been sober for 20 months, i have made the best friends i have ever had, friends that are based off of pure truth and love and what feeds my soul, not drugs or boyfriends or superficial nonsense, and in September I will be attending one of the best colleges in the Country. All because I simply trusted for a moment and let my family love me, and loved my family and let others hold me while i cried and danced with my inner child. I realized that everything that i have been searching for has been within me, i have let my mom be my mom and my dad be my dad because i understand how important i am to this world. Carlbrook made all this possible for me to find and discover. Honsetly people that bash this place are just afraid of letting their children go, who dont beleive in going back and facing what eats them alive everyday, people that dont trust...But i understand it is hard and many families think this way before Carlbrook. Its all about love and individual strength.
Anonymous:
--- Quote ---On 2005-08-07 21:14:00, Anonymous wrote:
" i have made the best friends i have ever had, friends that are based off of pure truth and love and what feeds my soul, not drugs or boyfriends or superficial nonsense, and in September I will be attending one of the best colleges in the Country"
--- End quote ---
Since when are boyfriends "superficial nonsense"? Relationships are an important part of life. Also, remember when you go to that "one of the best colleges in the country" that wise old saying that goes "I before E..." You're going to need it.
Nihilanthic:
Ok, just had a brief AIM Convo with a carlbrook grad.
Almost no details or substance at all, except they use seminars (called workshops) and apparently make a big deal about emulating the stanford prison experiment by having oldcomer teenagers boss around the younger ones, via some sort of hierarchy. Dunno if it would be considered a level system because she blocked me in a huff before I could get any acutal INFO out of her.
Apparently there are manditory weekly phonecalls, however the 'manipulate to leave' bullshit came out, again, just like all programs. YET, the same person told me not a minute before that "there is no fixing at carlbrook"... so why do you need to manipulate to leave if you arent kept there to be fixed?
Given the speech full of buzzwords and new-age hippy feelgood bullshit youd expect someone who spent time in seminars(workshops) to say, the most I can deduce about this program is that it makes use of the seminars(workshops) for all the 'emotional growth'.
See my first post in this thread where I list my grievances about such 'emotional growth' seminar experiences. Enough peer pressure, enough time worn down, enough mind-numbing buzzwords and enough stress to cause regression (really easy for a displaced teenager kept in a program with people working her mind over with mind-games and other seminar stressors) and they're psychologically regressed into a state where you can influence and suggest them to do whatever, which is called brainwashing for those of you who dont realize what it is.
Fortunately, its newagey hippy feelgood bullshit, at least what is given to me, so flowergirl is probably at least not going to hurt other people. How the program works except old comers boss around newcomers (like virtually any program with a level system) and that it uses seminars (called workshops there), I dont know, but that basically puts it in line with the industry as a whole.
http://www.isaccorp.org is full of information, and stories about what this kind of program can do. If you really insist on placing your child Id demand to see how it runs day by day, and not the usual dog & pony show given to visitors.
I'd also sit through a 'workshop' yourself before your kid does after reading up at ISAC about how 'emotional growth' seminars work - forcing a breakdown via many differnet ways (anger, humiliation, depression from past memories, disclosing all your past shit to a group, mind games, peer pressure, exhaustion) and then filling them up with the program dogma and bullshit, and then a nice 'lovebomb' (affection games and more buzzword bullshit like 44444's that WWASPS uses) during the euphoria at the end of the seminar - which is all the person REMEMBERS about it at the end if theyve 'drunk the punch', which is why they're so damned defensive about it.
Sorry to the person I talked to in AIM for calling you out like this, but its my job. You'll be able to sort all this out in a few years, but in your current washed state you think Im some poor wretched negative critical cold person and feel sorry for me, but thats okay, no need to. But I would challenge you with this - think about very carefully and critically (hey, sorry, this shit aint easy, but then again the seminars werent when you were IN them, were they?) about how they were supposed to work, what made you feel the way you feel, and why youre so defensive... but short on details about the program. You're coming accross like a cult victim, whether you accept it or not.
To everyone else, just two things. 1. Buyer beware. 2. ITS YOUR CHILD, you should be a PARENT and raise them, and if they truly need help that you honestly cant provide, you do your damnest to ensure their safety!
Don't let your dogma run out in front of your karma.
--Anonymous
--- End quote ---
Anonymous:
Oh, good. The all-knowing Nihil is now a Carlbrook expert after a brief IM conversation.
The parents actually DO go through shortened versions of some of the workshops. Even the most resistant kids really get a lot out of the workshops and look forward to them. While my kid was at Carlbrook we had a number of parent seminars and visits with our kid. At first the visits were short and on-campus and they progressed to off-campus and then home visits. The progression was logical. A number of kids actually chose to stay at Carlbrook past their program completion date to finish school. The campus is beautiful and looks like a normal boarding school. I didn't agree with everything that was done, but on the whole it is an excellent program and has done a lot of good for many kids. There is a big relapse rate within 6 months after leaving Carlbrook. It is a very insular and safe place, and the real world presents challenges that the kids are not always equipped to face. This is a problem with all programs and needs to be addressed.
Parent of Carlbrook grad 8/04
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