On 2004-03-11 12:31:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Moronic is right, but how is this any different than parents allowing their child to be *disciplined* by 16 year old *upper level* program kids? With as much money as these programs are pulling in, trust me, they can afford to hire experienced, well-trained ADULTS.
:smokin:
"
The extremely poor judgment of the parents who put their kids in these schools with very little information about the schools is the main reason I think many of these kids would be better off in foster care, bad as it is.
I think it might work better if the teen section was run as a separate area of the foster care system, with social services and the foster family putting together a handout of the House Rules and daily and weekly family chores for that family *before* the teen is placed there, along with normal consequences for normal breaches of the rules.
(Like you might get your allowance docked a quarter for forgetting to call your foster parents Sir or Ma'am, or a dollar for a blatantly rude statement, with extra chores undertaken for money credited back at minimum wage.)
If you tell the teen up front what the rules are, and they're consistent and not stupid (don't ban talking to other kids or looking in mirrors, forex), then the teen can be evaluated for something like ODD on a more objective basis than the emotionally loaded situation with his/her own parents.
You know, kids *used* to be apprenticed or fostered out, routinely, at age 7, to perhaps return to their parents at age 14, with most of the rights and responsibilities of adults, or to continue under a Master in their craft as Journeymen.
A lot of the problems our society has with teens is we try to keep them children too long---we don't give them the opportunity to use their responsible behavior to get out from under their parents and the strictures of being a minor *before* age 18.
I think kids ought to have all the rights and responsibilities of eighteen year olds as soon as they can pass their state's high school exit exam (not GED--too easy), or at age 18, whichever comes first.
Most of these teens that are defined by our society as having some sort of pathology are just biological adults making the natural and normal youth separation-from-parents to independence response/rebellion. Many if not most of them, if they were given the chance to get out from under the control of their parents and out of the house into a job or college *early* just by studying hard would become some of the most enthusiastic scholars you've ever seen. Not out of love of learning, of course, but out of desperation to get away from their parents.
I get along fine with my own parents now, and I was never sent away, but *why* I get along fine with my parents is that *I* control how much I see them and how long the visits are. And I still have to see my parents and sisters in fairly small doses, because I love them dearly, but too much time around them and they drive me crazy.
Small visits work best. I love my family dearly, but I'm a very independent and introspective person and I can't stand being in anybody's hip pocket all the time for very long.
If I had to live under my parents roof, I *still* would be as frustrated with them as I was as a teenager. They're not bad people. I love them. But we're all stubborn and sot in our ways and just get along better in small doses.
I think that feeling kicks in just after puberty and for most people never quite goes away.
Kids with severe personality clashes with their parents *need* to move out not long after puberty---but not to these over-punitive TBS's.
Too bad we can't bring back old-style fosterage where people basically traded kids, and kids being fostered were on good terms with and visited their own parents instead of living with them.
Oh, well. "The world will go as it will and not as you or I would have it."
