Post your positive program experiences

[SUCK IT]

Here's another positive experience I had. On our birthday's we got a cake with our dinner, and share it with other people. So it created a relaxed and fun situation. We got to eat a lot and most people gained weight. I know the girls complained about it.

[none-ya]

Maybe I'd have more positive program experiences had I been sent to
FUCKING DISNEY WORLD TOO!
Cake? You gotta' be kidding.

[Whooter]

Maybe I'd have more positive program experiences had I been sent to
FUCKING DISNEY WORLD TOO!
Cake? You gotta' be kidding.

I think you might have read too much about the rotten food that they served at Straight.  When my daughter attended ASR they celebrated birthdays by serving cake and ice cream with her closest friends and peer group.  Its very common whether you are celebrating inside or outside a program here in the states.  None-ya you may be from a different country and that may be why you see this as inappropriate.

In Canada they grease the kids nose with butter.. in China they serve noodles.. in England they mix objects into the cake.. but this isnt considered abusive.  Every culture celebrates in a different way.   You try too hard to make it seem like celebrating a child's birthday is anything but good.



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[T-Rex]

Maybe I'd have more positive program experiences had I been sent to
FUCKING DISNEY WORLD TOO!
Cake? You gotta' be kidding.

Maybe when you wake up from hell, you will realize up here we serve "cake".  Good luck.

[none-ya]

Cause there's a sugar-plum lollipop
cinnamon rainbow
At the program
There is some butterscotch
lemon-drop sugary sunshine
At the program.

AND THEY HAVE CAKE TOO!

[Froderik]

Theres no earthly way of knowing
which direction we are going

Theres no knowing where were going
or which way the boat is flowing

Is it raining? Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a'blowing?

Not a speck of light is showing,
so the danger must be growing...
The fires of hell are glowing!
Is the grizzly reaper mowing?!?[/b]

[Awake]

Believe it or not, birthdays and cake can be a bad thing. Hard to imagine but yes, birthday cake has been used as motivation in harmful settings. The manipulation of important things like birthdays wouldn't surprise me, so I wouldn't be all that shocked to find that some bad programs also had cake.

[SUCK IT]

They gave cakes to everybody,  so I don't see how it was used as manipulation. The most controversial part of the whole thing was who you would give the biggest pieces to. The cake was really big, like a 12"x24" cake pan with lots of frosting. You got to cut it up however you wanted and then give the pieces away to your friends. Since cake wasn't an everyday occurrence, it was a fun thing to get something that tasted so good. Some people would split their cakes evenly among everybody. Others would cut a couple huge pieces for their best friends, and then little pieces for everyone else. Everyone cut it differently, depending on who their friends were and stuff like that. But that didn't involve the staff or anything, because everybody got the exact same cake, same size and everything. It didn't matter how well you were doing in the program, everybody got a cake.

[Awake]

I’m not saying your program made harmful use out of your birthday cake get together. However I have seen otherwise. People are expressing how they can’t see it as a bad thing. In behavior modification settings positive and negative stimulus are used, birthday cake has been one of those things.  Harmful situations that motivate negative outcomes can utilize positive stimulus to achieve that end.  If your situation was different you may not have had the same positive memories that you have now. It’s good you were not taken advantage of in that way, and got to ‘have your cake and eat it too’.

[Whooter]

I’m not saying your program made harmful use out of your birthday cake get together. However I have seen otherwise. People are expressing how they can’t see it as a bad thing. In behavior modification settings positive and negative stimulus are used, birthday cake has been one of those things.  Harmful situations that motivate negative outcomes can utilize positive stimulus to achieve that end.  If your situation was different you may not have had the same positive memories that you have now. It’s good you were not taken advantage of in that way, and got to ‘have your cake and eat it too’.

I think we can all agree that most of the kids are there to have their behavior modified.  BM isn't a bad thing, If they screw up and break the rules then they may have to miss out on some cake and ice cream.  The same rules apply if the kid were at home they would be kept home from the party.  I am sure these kids would have bad memories also, but its part of life in and out of programs.

Behavior modification occurs from the first day a child is born and continues throughout their life time.  We have all been through it otherwise we would all still be in diapers.


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[Ursus]

I’m not saying your program made harmful use out of your birthday cake get together. However I have seen otherwise. People are expressing how they can’t see it as a bad thing. In behavior modification settings positive and negative stimulus are used, birthday cake has been one of those things.  Harmful situations that motivate negative outcomes can utilize positive stimulus to achieve that end.  If your situation was different you may not have had the same positive memories that you have now. It’s good you were not taken advantage of in that way, and got to ‘have your cake and eat it too’.

I think we can all agree that most of the kids are there to have their behavior modified.  BM isn't a bad thing, If they screw up and break the rules then they may have to miss out on some cake and ice cream.  The same rules apply if the kid were at home they would be kept home from the party.  I am sure these kids would have bad memories also, but its part of life in and out of programs.

Behavior modification occurs from the first day a child is born and continues throughout their life time.  We have all been through it otherwise we would all still be in diapers.

Subjecting people to harmful psychological coercion and thought reform with the express aim of altering their character and persona ... is not the same thing as toilet training.

A more apt analogy would be beating your kid 'till he peed in the pot.

[Whooter]

I’m not saying your program made harmful use out of your birthday cake get together. However I have seen otherwise. People are expressing how they can’t see it as a bad thing. In behavior modification settings positive and negative stimulus are used, birthday cake has been one of those things.  Harmful situations that motivate negative outcomes can utilize positive stimulus to achieve that end.  If your situation was different you may not have had the same positive memories that you have now. It’s good you were not taken advantage of in that way, and got to ‘have your cake and eat it too’.

I think we can all agree that most of the kids are there to have their behavior modified.  BM isn't a bad thing, If they screw up and break the rules then they may have to miss out on some cake and ice cream.  The same rules apply if the kid were at home they would be kept home from the party.  I am sure these kids would have bad memories also, but its part of life in and out of programs.

Behavior modification occurs from the first day a child is born and continues throughout their life time.  We have all been through it otherwise we would all still be in diapers.

Subjecting people to harmful psychological coercion and thought reform with the express aim of altering their character and persona ... is not the same thing as toilet training.

A more apt analogy would be beating your kid 'till he peed in the pot.

Ursus, I agree, toilet training at gun point would be harmful also.  But aside from that Behavior Modification isnt harmful and occurs throughout our life time.  This has been my experience with Therapeutic boarding Schools, not harmful psychological coercion.  Sometimes many here have the tendency to view all the programs based on the worst story or outcome.
I am sure we could all find example where BM has been used to hurt someone, but I dont think we could consider that the norm nor the intent.



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[Awake]

As far as behavior modification goes I don’t think your being quite as creative as some programs out there. we got cake too and were limited to inviting I think 6 friends (one tables worth) to join. It wasn’t a given of course, you could easily be denied it if you weren’t progressing to their standards. I do remember that the invite limit put a bit of pressure on you to exclude friends and in essence publicly rank them, but I don’t consider that a very extreme use of behavior modification, although I guess it might depend on what the program is asking for from the kid in exchange for friends and cake.

My program applied it in some unique ways, and I don’t think it is all that hard to imagine that practitioners of BM would instinctively make use of the naturally occurring positive and negative anchors and rituals that are commonly learned in our culture and distort the meanings for effect.  Cakes, birthdays, friendships, you need to be careful with behavior modification.  Some things are not just a carrot on a stick, although this is the lesson taught.  You can’t blame the kid for having a distorted view of those things after that, that’s the reality he was shown.  Again, I’m not saying SUCK IT had to deal with that, but it has happened.

[DannyB II]

Guys we were talking about giving folks cake on there birthday. Jesus, must you over analyze everything.

[Awake]

I think some folks underestimate the lengths to which some programs might go to motivate change in a person. I heard several people saying that they don't see how these could be made to be harmful or manipulative, coincidentally I know this to be untrue. From what SUCK IT said it seemed everyone had a birthday party without limitations, sounds like a birthday to me. It doesn't take on quite the same meaning if it is used to manipulate someone and gain agreements to motivate them later. Not like every kid in a program has to worry about it, I was just reponding to what was said, and frankly it wouldn't strike me to know it was common usage. It's not all that hard to imagine, although I don't think I could have been as creative as my program.