Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Incidental Fees
Anonymous:
Typical.
Sence its normal for teens to have acne, they turn a blind eye to the fact that new and worsening acne indicates a lack of appropriate hygiene and nutrition, and the presence of stress.
Its the same way they hide behind how commonly teens lie to and manipulate their parents. All parents experience this with their kids to some degree; and the parents of a troubled kid especially so - and they use this to excuse away the many upsetting things the kids write home about. Its easy for the parents to believe this, b/c they have had so much experience with the kid lying. The Program takes advantage of this weakness in the average teen's character and turns them all into the boy crying wolf.
Keep in mind program parents - there was a wolf.
Anonymous:
--- Quote ---On 2003-10-08 16:22:00, Anonymous wrote:
"OMG! This is really grasping at straws! In the time my son was at both SCL and another wwasps program, NEVER ONCE did I get charged for CAT's! I didnt even get charged when he punched a hole in the wall, which I would have paid!
ACNE, get real! My son got acne IN the program, he was 15 for godsakes! My daughter is 15 and not in a program and has acne, no worse than his. I'd rather he be alive with acne than dead with clear skin! Do kids get acne in juvenile detention? Do they get acne living on the streets and prostituting? Do they get acne living at home?
It's like a husband blaming his wife for losing his hair! :rofl: "
--- End quote ---
Better than being "dead with clear skin."
This is what cult specialists call an "induced exit phobia."
The odds of a kid getting sent into a program dying if he had NOT been sent into the program are vanishingly low.
The fact that you are supportive of some "program" and you really do think a program kid "would be dead" if he wasn't in the program goes farther to substantiate, for me, the bad things I've heard about the programs than ANYTHING I've heard from the survivors or survivor organizations.
I would suggest that you talk to a good exit counselor and give them the things that you think are risk factors for your kid "being dead" if he hadn't been in the "program" and ask him to do a literature search (or send you to a legitimate research service that will) and calculate the actual odds of such a kid "being dead" by a certain age.
Then compare the *real* odds to what you have come to believe the probabilities are.
A good check would be to write a ballpark guesstimate of how likely you think death would be for a kid with those risk factors by a particular age. Just ballpark.
Then when the real odds come back, compare them.
You're paying thousands a month in program costs. You can *certainly* come up with a bit to double check whether what you've been led to believe is true or not.
If you don't trust an exit counselor, then go to the university in your state that has a research psychology program and hire a psychology grad student (the department head or one of the professors can recommend someone) to do the literature search for you. Grad students are poor, need money, and work relatively cheap. Particularly grad students in research psychology.
Get a totally disinterested second opinion.
And if it turns out that your estimate was *way* inflated over the real odds, then please go talk to a reputable exit counselor and at least consider whether you want to rethink some of your choices.
Anonymous:
I didn't say my son would be dead if he hadn't gone. You highlighted with I wrote. I don't know if he would be dead. His choices were headed that way and I won't go into all the ugliness of it, but WHAT IF I hadn't intervened and he had died? I wasn't willing to take that chance. What I said was a figure of speech, an example, not a psychic prediction.
Anonymous:
does anyone realize that every programmed parent or "graduate" says they would be dead if they didnt go?. Hmm could this be why the facilitaros in the seminars make them stand up and say that. SOMEONES GONNA TELL ME THATS NOT BRAINWASH.
EVERY BRAINWASHED SUCCESS STORY SAYS THEY WOULD BE DEAD IF THEY DIDNT GO TO THE PRISON "PROGRAM"
Anonymous:
--- Quote ---On 2003-10-08 17:54:00, Anonymous wrote:
"I didn't say my son would be dead if he hadn't gone. You highlighted with I wrote. I don't know if he would be dead. His choices were headed that way and I won't go into all the ugliness of it, but WHAT IF I hadn't intervened and he had died? I wasn't willing to take that chance. What I said was a figure of speech, an example, not a psychic prediction. "
--- End quote ---
But your saying it like that reveals that on some level you believe it. And you just reiterated it with, "His choices were headed that way..."
Were they? Really? How many kids who were making the same choices as your kid DIDN'T go into a "program" and DIDN'T die?
I believe you have a very inflated idea of the probability of actual death for a teen from various behaviors.
Every time my kid goes outside on a cloudy day, there COULD be a lightning strike and she could die. She could be sitting on the couch watching TV and have a brain embolism and die. Every time I drive with her in the car, we could get in a wreck and die. But the odds are REALLY, REALLY low.
I'm not worried about it because I have a realistic idea of relative risk.
That you are worried about it, and that that worry is really common in program parents, and that the real risks are pretty darned low, suggests to me that you (like other program parents) have a very inflated idea of what the risk of death to your kid really is/was.
What do you have to lose from finding out what the REAL risk is or was? What you have to risk is you may find out you were wrong, and that would be embarrassing.
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