Brat camp: If children are from Heaven, why put them through

[Anonymous]

This is a well written critique of brat camp and programs in general. The rest of her blog ain't bad either.

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2005_0 ... chive.html



This here diatribe is my passionate rebuttal to the new TV reality series called "Brat Camp." Have you WATCHED that show? The mere THOUGHT of glorifying those hell holes is driving me NUTS. My daughter's friend Jordan refuses to even watch that show. Poor Jordan has already survived three different "Brat Camps". There is no way he is going to live through something like that again -- even if just on TV.

I knew that this show was going to be heavy-going to watch after having listened to Jordan's tales of his experiences in these programs so I taped "Brat Camp" ahead of time so I could watch it in segments -- and I'm so glad I did! That program is SCARY! I can only stand a bit at at time before I need to take a break and watch "The Cut" or "Big Brother 6" or "Hell's Kitchen" or some other program that puts adults through the wringer -- not kids.

According to the script, the nine kids featured on the show were lying, stealing, drug-using angry promiscuous monsters before they arrived at Brat Camp -- and of course the show is extremely dramatic and entertaining as it drags these poor juvenile delinquents all over the outback of high-desert Oregon. But. How did these nine middle-class American kids get so out of line to deserve this incredibly harsh treatment in the first place? No one on the show answers THAT very important question. That is a shame.

From the very beginning, this show had me climbing the walls. Check out the way these kids even ARRIVED at Brat Camp -- they were lied to, deceived and/or kidnapped and dragged there. What does that say about the camp -- and their parents? Can YOU imagine being dragged out of your bed by burly strangers in the middle of the night and frog-marched off to God-knows-where? Or imagine having your boss blithely lie to you that he is giving you a free trip to Jamaica and then he drops you off at the unemployment line? Not honest, not trust-forming, not cool!

In last Wednesday's episode they had these children being force-marched through a 17-degree blizzard. Is that not child abuse? What if one of them had died? One of them almost did. This is supposed to make a MAN of a 14-year-old? Why don't they save this boy's parents $4,000 a month and just send him off to Iraq?

But aside from child endangerment, what really angers me about this reality show is that it glorifies "Brat Camps" and makes them seem so therapuetic for the poor teen schmucks who trudge through them. The teens you see on the screen are probably actors but the real-life "behavior modification" programs that the show is modeled after takes kids that are already wounded and hurting and just grinds in the pain, twisting the knife in the wound.

If you think "Brat Camp" behavior modification programs will straighten your kid out, think again.

What those camps actually do to the poor sad children who are trapped there for months -- sometimes years -- is to teach them that adults are not to be trusted, that people can do almost anything to you and get away with it because you are powerless, that you have no one to speak up for you -- and that you are NOT allowed to think for yourselves.

After parents actually PAY those "camps" and "schools" and "programs" $4,000 a month for two or three years, your child will come back to you brain-washed and spineless -- if not completely brain-dead. "Sir yes sir!" is all that they will say to you. There will be nothing else in their heads. Most parents seem to LOVE the results of these camps but they might as well have given birth to a zombie.

Of course there's no chance your kid will get into Harvard after a stint at "Brat Camp" but he or she will have no trouble getting into the cast of a re-make of the "Night of the Living Dead."

Or you child may learn really nasty habits -- once they are up there out in the middle of nowhere with no one to hang out with except a pack of juvenile delinquents and untrained "counselors" who can and will teach them bad stuff. For instance, look what happened to one sweet innocent young girl who I know personally. At age 14, she dared to say no to her parents. A teen saying no? Unheard of! So shocked were the parents that they shipped her off to Mission Mountain School in Montana for the next THREE YEARS.

This girl came back from Montana, all loving the program and the guy who ran it. "I just LOVED it there!" she told me. Be that as it may, this girl now has NO ambition and is acting out sexually in more ways than I even want to think about. Nice job, Mission Mountain School.... Or not.

But I have a great suggestion. Instead of sending poor bewildered lost teenagers off to be drill-instructed, endangered, abused and yelled at, let's send their PARENTS off to Brat Camp and see how THEY like it.

At some of these programs, children are denied food, water, toilet privileges and bathing accommodations for days or weeks on end. Hungry, thirsty, soiled and dirty, what do they learn? They learn how to hate. How long would YOU last under these conditions? With maggots in your food, mold growing on the floor where you lie face down by the hour like the kids endure at Tranquility Bay? Or at the WWASP programs where children are constantly brain-washed? Shamed, humiliated and treated like animals? With no communication with the outside world to the point where you realize that suicide is your only hope for rescue? How long would YOU last?

According to the Billings Montana Gazette, "Spring Creek Lodge spent $56,677 during the 90-day period the state legislature was in session in 2005, successfully defeating legislation which would have required therapeutic boarding schools to be licensed and regulated by the state." That's a LOT of money to spend to avoid regulation. Why would a legitimate program do that?

But do parents of "troubled teens" have any other choices open to them? Yes, yes and yes!

John Gray, the author of "Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars," tells us that "Children are from Heaven". He says that babies come into this world with a very strong drive to co-operate. This is a fabulous idea. But if it is true, then how did America's children get so fouled up so quickly? Gray's theory about this is that many parents are either too strict or too lenient -- but there is a happy medium somewhere in the middle where it's "okay to want more" and it's "okay to say no" -- so that children can learn how to make their own decisions -- but Mom and Dad are still the boss.

This exploring of the parameters of decision-making and learning this valuable skill simply doesn't happen at "behavior modification" programs. Those kids are regimented in everything -- every single waking hour. Exactly WHEN are they supposed to learn to think for themselves? At these programs, it's regimentation, regimentation, regimentation -- or else. (These kids will be READY for Army recruitment. Think of the money saved from not having to send them to boot camp -- ship them right off to Iraq!)

And who is a kid supposed to appeal to for a judgment call if they think that a counselor's decision is immoral? (Some of the counselors on "Brat Camp" BTW appear to be paranoid burned-out loose-cannon control freaks but I COULD be wrong.... Maybe they are just bad actors.) What sane adult would be available to come to these children's rescue out in a 120-degree desert or a 17-degree desert -- where the nearest adult not in the program is 60 miles away in who-knows-what direction because the kids were actually BLINDFOLDED before being taken to camp so they wouldn't know how to escape? And no phone calls are allowed.

So. What have we learned? That Hollywood has glorified "Brat Camp" -- but at what a cost?. Parents who send their kids off to these programs just may get what they wish for -- the endless night of the totally obedient living dead. Forty-five-year-old children, still living at home. Even in Jordan's case, this is a problem. After running away from his camp in Montana, he is now friendly and loving and obedient and a joy to spend time with -- but has absolutely NO ambition, does mostly nothing, dreads being around strangers and is on the verge of flunking out of school.

Or parents may get the opposite reaction from their children, once the "program" brain-washing wears off -- Godzilla gone mad. Jordan's brother returned home after FOUR YEARS at these programs and all he does now is pick fights, collect knives and obsess on how much he hates his parents.

My advice to parents is this: Go buy John Gray's book and save yourself $75,000. But if you still want your kid to swing from vines and have the wilderness experience, send him or her off to Outward Bound or scout camp or someplace where they don't lock up the phones.

PS: There is one "Brat Camp" I would LOVE to see happen. Wouldn't you just love to see those juvenile delinquents who are currently trashing our White House -- the ones who lied to us about WMDs in Iraq, hacked our voting machines, stole from our purses with bogus tax cuts, played with matches on Downing Street and sold our kids harmful drugs -- get frog-marched endlessly off across some Utah desert? You would? Me too!

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for that great post! I am so glad that people can see just how wrong these programs are.
Here is my story about being in a wilderness "brat Camp".  I hope it can help keep teens out of such programs.

* Everything in my statement is true
I ask that any parent thinking about enrolling their child in The Aspen Achievement Academy, to please reconsider.  As a former student of the program myself, I did not see any of the literature provided to my parents until after my return from Utah.  After the initial review of a videotape, and several pamphlets provided by the program, I was disgusted.  Aspen did not accurately portray itself. My parents were shocked when I came home and they saw the evidence in my backpack, and heard my stories.  They had no idea what they had really signed me up for.
According to advertisements for the Aspen Achievement Academy, the program resembled a rugged, yet therapeutic summer camp experience.  In reality, this could not have been farther than the truth.  
It has been nearly twelve years since I spent those two months in the Utah wilderness, and my experience there still haunts me to this day.  The extensive neglect that my fellow students and I experienced was unacceptable.
I?ll never forget the morning of May 11th, 1994.  It?s a date that will haunt me for the rest of my life.  Two strangers awaked me at 5 am.  They ordered me to get up and get dressed because I was going to Utah for a long time.  I told them I couldn?t go to Utah; I had to go to school that day!  It turned out I had no choice.  After a lengthy struggle I found myself forced onto a second rate airplane (who?s ever heard of ?Morrissey? airlines anyway) bound for Salt Lake City.  That day remains in my memory as one of the most emotionally devastating and difficult things I have ever been through.
I remember before the program even started, they took us to a consular, or maybe he was a psychiatrist, in Provo Utah.  It was his job to be sure we were evaluated before being sent out into the desert.  One of the worst moments in my life was when he looked me in the eye and told me that he did NOT believe that I was a very good candidate for the program.  He said he I seemed like a relatively normal and stable teenager, but that he was going to recommend that I attend despite this.  Then he validated this by saying that he thought the program would be good for anyone, even himself.  He also told me that my parents had agreed to pay $23,000 for my time in the desert.  I don?t know where that money went; because it certainly did not go to proper care and feeding of my fellow students and I. Sometimes I suspect that that psychiatrist in Provo saw a fair amount of it for his recommendation.
We were starving in Utah; I lost over 20 pounds, and I wasn?t overweight to begin with.  We simply were not provided with adequate amounts of food.  Often times we were given no food at all, or forced to hike, exhausted for many miles before any food was provided.  On a good day, in the mornings we were able to eat half a cup of cold uncooked oatmeal, and then at night if we were lucky we could eat the same amount of cooked potatoes and rice.  If we could not start a fire this food was sometimes consumed raw. I still eat to fast, and too much as a result of this, and struggle with my weight.  Before Utah it wasn?t ever an issue for me.
Furthermore, the healthcare was unacceptable.  There were three specific instances that come to mind concerning this subject.  The first concerns my knees.  I was born with knee problems (a tendency for my kneecaps to dislocate).  During my time with Aspen my knees dislocated twice.  This was a preexisting condition, and in no way created by Aspen. However, after each incident I was allowed to rest for a few minutes and then was soon forced to hike on the injury. I have still had persistent problems to this day.  In fact, a couple of months ago I finally opted for surgery.  The surgeon found extensive scar tissue and damage.  I wonder how much of it came from those hikes.
For the last month in Utah, I also walked on what felt to be a broken toe.  We were pushing a very heavy handcart that ran over my foot. It was like they never really believed us when we were hurt. I was never examined, so I can?t be sure if it was broken, but the pain was excruciating for many weeks.
At one point I contracted the stomach flu during the program.  One of the counselors came in sick with it once, and I caught it.  She go to go home immediately. I spent three days hiking and vomiting.  Eventually I had finally fainted and collapsed several times from the exhaustion, and medical help was brought in.  They waited until I was lying helpless in the dirt, unable to continue. This was not an acceptable response.
During my two months there, I was allowed to bathe only twice, both times in the same mud and cow filled streams that we drank from.  I tried to do the best I could to stay clean, and splash my face with water daily, but it was difficult.  Several of the girls got bladder infections.  The second bath I took didn?t come until the very end of the program, right before our parents came.  We had to stand in the mucky bottom of an icy stream and wash as best we could. If we didn?t then we couldn?t eat. Before our parents saw us, we had to wash and change into fresh clothes. we argued that we wanted them to see us as we really were, but there was never any reasoning with the staff.  My Mom didn?t see the tattered truth of what I really wore until we were back home.  I remember her crying when she did.
As a student I had no rights, I was not even treated like a human.  I was a prisoner.  Sometimes I couldn?t even pee behind a bush without the rest of the group having to stand guard.
Often times we drank from streams with high sulfur content that made us very sick.  More often than not the water in my jug was brown.  Sometimes there was even brine shrimp swimming around in it.  I?ll never forget the feeling of them squirming on my tongue as I tried to swallow the gritty water, always to the sound of a counselor saying ?come on SUCK IT DOWN!? We had to drink it; we had no choice.
As a member of Aspen Group 211, I saw a thirteen year old girl turn purple and then blue as the staff sat by waiting for her to get herself up off the ground and keep walking.  We walked in circles, up and down mountains, in the heat, in the cold and in the dark. We were always lost.  For most of the time we carried a pack made of a blue tarp with seat belt material for straps.  It was painful and awkward.  
At home people watched OJ Simpson?s white bronco racing down Los Angeles highways.  Meanwhile, we walked, completely unaware of what was happening in the outside world.  I got the feeling that a war could have broken out, and they wouldn?t have told us anything. We knew absolutely nothing of the outside world for those two months. My Mom was surprised that I got home and had no knowledge of the OJ incident. We could not know where we were or how long we would be there.  
I knew that I was somewhere in Utah, but that was all. There were ?no future questions? allowed.  We couldn?t even ask when we would get to stop and rest, or be allowed a drink of water, because that concerned the future.
My hiking boots were brand new at the start of the program. However, by the end, the tread on the bottoms had worn down completely. They were basically flat bottom boots. That?s how much hiking we did.  
All that money my parents spent, for me to just walk. I walked in a line over cow patties and large rocks, through a desert wasteland, day after day.  I remember walking along sheer cliffs with no safety ropes or harnesses, eating from dirty and rancid dishes, and having to use our bare hands to dig up and relocate human "waste" on several occasions.  
On my high school transcripts there are credits for classes from ?Wayne County High School?.  I never went to such a school. They are really from my time at Aspen.  These ?classes? consisted of the completion a series of ?curriculum? packets.  They were really just confusing worksheets stapled together. The worksheets had obviously been typed out by one of the Aspen staff members. The physical education credits however, I had earned tenfold!
There was a wonderful older man by the name of ?Levoy? who was supposed to be the teacher.  He would come and visit rarely, and when he did it was never for an actual academic lesson that I can remember.  I do remember that never the less, that his visits were one of the few pleasant things about the whole experience.  
Actually, the academic instruction was a responsibility delegated to one of the older students and me.  We, of course did not understand anything included in the curriculum anymore than the other kids did, yet were the ones expected to ?teach?.  At the time I had no idea what, or how to teach. They told us it was a reward, because we were always the first ones packed up and crushing the coals from the fire every morning.  It seemed like a strange reward to me.
Aspen markets itself as a ?therapeutic? environment.  I find that strange. There was very little actual ?therapy? involved.  Once a week, for half and hour a ?therapist? would come speak with us.  This was an occasion we looked forward to because for one, the therapist would bring each of us an apple to eat, and for two, it got us out of having to hike for a couple of hours.  Other than that they were of no consequence. These therapy sessions were to brief and far between to be of any help.  
The only other mention of something resembling therapy came each morning when one of the 19 to 21 year old staff members would ask us to use a single word to describe how we felt for that day.  We?d go around the circle saying things like ?sad?, ?mad? or ?depressed?. The consular would nod. Then we?d all put on our packs and spend the next eleven hours walking. The ?therapy? was a joke.
Apparently the ?therapist? had periodic phone conversations with my parents.  I don?t know what they could have talked about; the therapist knew little of me, or my daily experiences in the program.  My main connection to my parents was the letters that we wrote back and forth.  The staff had to sensor them all.  I never sent or received a sealed envelope.  I had to be careful about what I wrote.  I tried to tell my parents what was happening, but it was hard.  When I got home I found out that they warned our parents that we would exaggerate and not to believe our first hand descriptions of the program.  I even heard that my parents had to actually sign over custody of me to the program, and couldn?t have taken me out if they wanted to. I don?t know if that was true, or just another scare tactic used by the Aspen staff.
To this day my parents and I rarely (if ever) talk about Utah.  About once every few years I casually bring up the subject.  They never do.  I still have a hard time finding the ability to forgive them in my heart.  I hated them like never before during the entire program.  I was not happy when they arrived in Utah for the last 2 days of the program, nor did our relationship improve once we got home.  It got worse for a while, and to this day I still hold a grudge because of the experience.
Before I went to Utah, I was a relatively good kid.  I was seventeen years old.  Sure, I wasn?t perfect. I had tried smoking cigarettes, tried smoking pot (and hated it) and had sex with two people.  When compared to my peers I was fairly normal.  Aspen didn?t care; they?ll take anyone whose parents will pay.  
After I came back from the program I had lost all sense of self worth and self-respect.  I decided I didn?t care; it no longer mattered if I continued to resist the bad things in life, because I had already been punished.  Within a month of my return I had tried hard-core drugs such as hallucinogens and Crystal Meth, I spent time in crack houses, with homeless drug addicts, and became a heavy smoker. I also had a lot of casual unprotected sex with different partners, had essentially decided to drop out of high school, and even had an affair with a much older man.  Before Aspen I wouldn?t have done any of this. But because of the fact that I?d been punished already whether I was good or not, I didn?t care anymore.  Also, after hearing about some of the things the other kids in Aspen had done in their lives I felt like a prude. Actually in comparison to some of them, I STILL wasn?t very out of control.
For many years after the experience I was tormented by nightmares about Utah and my time there.  I?ve been back to the state, and even out into the desert where the program was held, all in an effort to make peace with the memories.  Slowly, over time I did recover.
I only dream about it ever few months now, and I?m rarely kept up at night by the memories anymore. I think my parents are still paying off the loan they took out to pay for Aspen.  I wish they had used the money to help me in school, or something like that instead.
Eventually I recovered, and got on a good track.  But, I feel that had I not been sent to Aspen, I would have become a healthy productive adult much sooner.  
In recent years I have heard that the program has been altered slightly.  Apparently students now progress through the program at their own rate.  It is no longer an issue to wait for everyone in the group to complete a task.  Maybe this helps to control the animosity and resentment that existed in my group.  We hated each other much of the time. Still, no matter how many changes are made in the program, or how many favorable accounts they post on their web site, I would NEVER recommend this program to anyone.  
Now, despite the ?Aspen Experience? twelve years later I have been able to successfully graduate from college, find a healthy love relationship, a job as a teacher, and even quit smoking.  I have become the person my parents had hoped I would be.  But, I still have nightmares of Utah.
I remember Aspen T-shirts that read, ?You?ll go to Hell and Back?.  They were half right, I went there, but it took nearly a decade for me to make it back.

[Anonymous]

Welcome....
And thanks for 'your' story. I'm so sorry that our country allows this to happen to it's young people, and that so many still view this abuse as any for of 'therapy'.
Glad things are going well for you!!

[Anonymous]

I was so sorry to read your post and the horrible experience you at at Aspen.  I believe that Aspen has come a long way since your time there.  My daughter was at Aspen recently.  As parents we were at our whitts end as to what to do with our daughter who was tearing our family apart.  A very bright child, she felt the whole world was here to do her bidding. She stole from her family, stayed out at night drinking and drug taking, was rude to all and sundry, shocking those around her with her behaviour and language. Her education was going down the pan because she had been excluded so many times from school. And quite frankly, I believe that had things continued in the same vein, I may well have taken the decision to ask her to leave the home - before she destroyed us all.  You have to be completely desperate to even consider such a choice.

Her experience at Aspen was life changing (her words not ours), she learned to give and take, she learned to respect how other people feel, she learnt to respond appropriately in different situations and most importantly she learned that her actions - positive and negative - all have consequences and that she is responsibe for the way she moves forward in her life.

She has kept in touch via email with the staff and thinks fondly of all of them - moreover she wants to spend a year as staff during her university gap year. She believes that they have genuinely made a huge difference to her life.
She's now a happy teenager who is doing well in school, she's mentoring other teenagers with difficulties and takes responsibility for herself.  
On the family front  she has a much better relationship with her sibling and parents, she's a pleasure to be with and from her mother's point of view - I have a daughter who I can enjoy, have fun with and take enormous pleasure from being with her.  And she's HAPPY!  what more can a mother want?

[Troll Control]

Last post is setting off the meter...

[Anonymous]

To you Arnold it may be ....sh1t -  to us, Aspen put my daughter and our family back on track.  I will always be grateful for that.

[Anonymous]

not all wilderness programs, or therapeutic schools etc., do bad things, and not all produce negative reactions at the end for most who attend.  Some people - probably most, though there are no statistics either way - really do gain from the experience == so long as we're not talking Tranquility Bay etc.  You won't "please all of the people all of the time", but still, "don't throw the baby out with the  bath water".

[Anonymous]

I would just like to state that what i have just read is the biggest amount of crap i have ever seen.
i recently have just completed the Aspen program set in Lowa Utah. - it has changed my life, the therapy way amazing and if it wasnt for the staff, i wouldnt be writing this email today. I am 16 (just turned) and i wasnt a very nice person before i went to AAA - i was taking drugs, experimenting mostly, i got what i wanted when i wanted and i had a behavioral problem, (ADHD.
the staff treated me with respect no matter how much i shouted and screamed. i tried to hurt them and they still believed in me.
my last point is, if your child needs help. no matter how small of a problem it is, but they are spiralling out of contoll, Aspen is an amazing experience. and at a later date they will thank you for it.

[Anonymous]

My name is olivia and i watch brat camp, its great!

[Anonymous]

great...
enjoy series 3..
im the person who commented on how Asepn is amazing.
Poppy.