Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Apologia - Serious debate only, please!
Anonymous:
Please explain what you mean by "healing" and why you would equate controlling the attitude and behavior of a "captive teen" and their check-writing parents as good for "change"? Personally, I think anybody that forces children out of their home, school and community and into some behavior-changing-money-making-institution is guilty of abusing the rights of their own child. Go on and admire yourself but know your self-adoration is looked upon by others as pathological, not miraculous.
:roll:
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2003-12-30 18:18:00, Anonymous wrote:
Those that merely "play the game" will eventually show their true colors and then is when their healing begins. If they don't, then that's their choice and the way they will continue to live their life. Neither good or bad, really, just sad.
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On what, exactly, do you base the assumption that most fakers get caught or that those who get away with it are somehow to be pittied? My pov derives from watching 4 older siblings and half their friends go through the program and then having known them for the 25 or so years since. Then, over the last 6 years or so, I've talked to a LOT of former Straightlings. What's your basis for knowledge on the subject?
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Maybe, a kid says what they want to hear. Flipside of that is that they are learning to make better choices, even if they don't think so, even if they think they're pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.
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Who defines the term "better" in this context? The kid who will live with the consequences of those choices, possibly for life? Or the strangers who view them with disdain as lying, manipulative, contemptable human beings? What you're describing here is brainwashing. Can you even imagine the horror of discovering that, even in the privacy of your own mind, you can't be sure what you believe and what you're just pretending to believe?
The only place I know to look for stats on that would be to study the pshych pathology of undercover police. Well, that or you could take a frigging look around these forums and see what kind of psychos who graduate from these programs. Not quite exactly like the kids in the brochurs, huh?
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What you don't accept is that programs don't work for everyone. You think just because a parent pays for it, it's a guarantee!
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Oh no! I don't know where you get the impression that I thought these programs worked at all, far less for everyone. I'm not the one who came up with the bogus 96% success rate or the warranty. Those are entirely the doing of WWASP
http://www.teenswithproblems.com/treatm ... l#warranty
Straight and The Seed always had the same policy. Art called it an open door policy. Any graduate could drop back in anytime they wanted to bask in the love and support of every person they'd been allowed to talk to for the past year or two. Of course, if someone thought you looked stoned or unhappy or had heard rumors about you, you might not be allowed to leave. That "Open door" policy was always a whole lot more popular among the more controling parents than among any of the clients. One thing I can say for WWASP, at least they're a little more up front about it.
--- Quote ---You gotta want it, or it won't work.
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And how, exactly, is that compatible with lying to the kid to get them there or outright tying them up and hauling them in against their will? Ya know, one of the significant effects of brainwashing is a total lack of cognative dissonance. When you're able to hold two completely contradictory beliefs and not even notice that they're contradictory, it's a good sign that you might be pretty fully baked.
--- Quote ---Did you ever have a job you hated and couldn't wait to get out of there at the end of the day? Did you ever learn anything from that experience? If you didn't, then you didn't want to.
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Absolutely. So I can speak from a position of authority in saying that there is NO comparison between tolerating a job that you hate (aside, maybe, from orderly at a particularly stressful psyche ward) and the kind of fatigue, lonliness and constant, nerve rankling stress of being in a 24/7 lock down where they practice confrontational therapy or coercive pursuesion, whichever term you prefer.
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Yes, programs are here to stay. There will always be kids crying abuse, crying brainwashing, and always parents that believe them. Co-dependence and control are two of the worst drugs I know of. It takes a true commitment and a lot of work to overcome that addiction.
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Yes. And control over others is the most addictive substance nown to mankind. Way more addictive than crack sometimes.
"Tough Love: Abuse of a type particularly enjoyable to the abuser, in that it combines the pleasures of sadism with those of self-righteousness. Commonly employed and widely admired in 12-step groups."
--Chaz Bufe
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I know that with all the publicity that Tim Weiner started (from the bogus information provided to him from those outside of WWASPS) that wwasps programs are among the safest programs around now. Who would want to fan the flames in their program now?
I full heartedly agree with the philosophy and the process of change that this program stands for. I love and respect children and feel that everyone deserves the best possible way to be happy. These kids and families learn what happiness is. It's a process and I trust that process.
You can look at it positively or negatively, agree or disagree with the process. No, the parents can't control their kids choices, but they can control what they do about it. In the process they learn a better way to relate to each other, a better way to BE a family.
:wink: "
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Tell me about it! There haven't been more than two of the six of us kids living in the same state at the same time for nearly 20 years. Now, there are not even two.
A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.
--Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
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Anonymous:
--- Quote ---On 2003-12-30 18:50:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Please explain what you mean by "healing" and why you would equate controlling the attitude and behavior of a "captive teen" and their check-writing parents as good for "change"? Personally, I think anybody that forces children out of their home, school and community and into some behavior-changing-money-making-institution is guilty of abusing the rights of their own child. Go on and admire yourself but know your self-adoration is looked upon by others as pathological, not miraculous.
--- End quote ---
Okay, so wasn't the kid abusing the parents, the values and the rules? Yes, most, but not all..yada yada yada. The parents abuse the kids rights? Who's abusing whose rights? I don't see it as abusing their rights. From the sound of this, you're saying parents aren't allowed rights! Are you saying the kid has every right to steal, lie, break things, threaten to hit them, run away, skip school, manipulate, on and on? These are not bad kids, they are kids that are crying out for help. They wish they didn't have parents, and could go on their merry way of destroying their life. Hey, there's a lot of them out there that aren't getting the help they need. The lucky ones are the ones that have parents that DO care.
I don't base my love of a child on how much money I have to spend on helping them. How many parents would rather spend it on buying them a new car, expensive toys, etc., in an attempt to buy their good behavior? In my experience, it doesn't work, it only makes them want more and the parents go happily off to work everyday to support the addiction. Hurray to the parents who see that there is something more important than "things."
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2003-12-30 18:50:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Please explain what you mean by "healing" and why you would equate controlling the attitude and behavior of a "captive teen" and their check-writing parents as good for "change"? Personally, I think anybody that forces children out of their home, school and community and into some behavior-changing-money-making-institution is guilty of abusing the rights of their own child. Go on and admire yourself but know your self-adoration is looked upon by others as pathological, not miraculous.
:roll:
"
--- End quote ---
The key to clarity is, indeed, brevity.
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
-- Richard Harkness, The New York Times, 1960
--- End quote ---
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2003-12-30 19:19:00, Anonymous wrote:
Okay, so wasn't the kid abusing the parents, the values and the rules?
--- End quote ---
No tellin'. We have a process by which to determin guilt or innocense. Probably the best one ever devised and implimented by mortal humans. It owes all the way back to BOTH the traditions of John Locke and the Magna Carta AND those of the Iroquois Nations. Unfortunately, these programs generally don't avail themselves of this remarkable process. So no one knows for sure if the kid even has a problem. The only criteria for admission seems to be the parents' level of distress and their coorisponding ability to write big checks that don't bounce.
Has it ever occured to you that totally irrational people sometimes have kids? That maybe it would be prudent to use some more objective criteria for admisions than the emotional state of the parents?
--- Quote ---From the sound of this, you're saying parents aren't allowed rights! Are you saying the kid has every right to steal, lie, break things, threaten to hit them, run away, skip school, manipulate, on and on?
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Try and ignore that voice in your head. No one here said anything like that. Kids have the same right to due process, to objective, reasoned judgement, as anybody else. You can't throw a kid in juvenile detention without some sort of hearing before the courts. Why should a private business presume the right to suspend a person's civil liberties in a closed door financian leal?
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I don't base my love of a child on how much money I have to spend on helping them. How many parents would rather spend it on buying them a new car, expensive toys, etc., in an attempt to buy their good behavior? In my experience, it doesn't work, it only makes them want more and the parents go happily off to work everyday to support the addiction. Hurray to the parents who see that there is something more important than "things." "
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To me, this shows a totally fucked up attitude toward parenting in general. I like to buy my kids nice things because I love watching them enjoy them.
Look, I understand the impulse, sometimes overwhelming, to grasp at anything just to do something when you think your kid is in danger.
But there is absolutely no credible evidence that I know of to back up the notion that this type of therapy is either safe or effective. Go and look around and see for yourself. You might ask program vets for direction. A lot of us have a common interest in the topic and some are the studious type, inclined to research. There's lots written about the effects of this kind of treatment. Not much of it both credible and good.
When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years ago, he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promise.
-- FRANKLIN P.ADAMS (1861-1960).
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