I had an odd experience just before Christmas this last year. As I was mailing a gift package to a program kid and *hoping* at least some of it would get through, I mentioned to the guy behind the counter why I wanted to send it anonymously, if possible.
Turns out he had been stuck in one of these places by his parents when he was a teen. He understood exactly where I was coming from because he had been just a normal, garden-variety teen getting up to no more and no less than the average teen does.
His parents were just total whack-jobs and freaked out over stuff that my parents and my friends' parents and I and my friends as parents just handle and deal with as part of the normal process of parenthood.
When you treat a teen like she is not a human being with human rights, you may get away with it without going to jail, but the adult that teen becomes remembers, and judges you for it.
As she should.
Responsible parents are appalled by the excesses of Program parents. Hopefully someday we'll be able to intervene to prevent those excesses from happening.
Until then, the Program parents will just have to face the consequences of their own bad choices in the form of lost relationships with their grown offspring.
