On 2004-04-19 10:20:00, notworking wrote:
People like you have pathologized childhood and adolescence. You expect children to behave better than their parents, to meet their parents' needs instead of vice versa. What's next? Telling a parent to keep their infant in a locked, soundproof room because otherwise "all they'll hear is crying?" After all, parents of newborns have rights, too!"
The statement about expecting kids to behave better than their parents rings true for me.
I don't want to go into details, but the case I'm personally familiar with (and what I've seen of parents and survivors on this board) has painted a picture for me, in cases where the kid is not genuinely mentally ill, criminal, or actually alcohol or drug addicted (as opposed to a casual user), of excessively emotionally needy parents.
One of the problems with these dysfunctional families is that screwed up adults have kids so they'll have someone to love them regardless of how crappy or immature their own behavior is---and little kids will do that---you can be a total immature, selfish, screw-up--even abusive--and your small child will love you anyway.
It's when children reach their teenage years that they start discovering their parents have feet of clay.
Only some parents are more fundamentally flawed as people than others.
And not all of those fundamentally flawed, selfish, immature parents are poor.
So along come these "schools" that tell dysfunctional parents what they want to hear---that their teen no longer unconditionally loving them is a "problem" with the teen that can be "fixed" for a price---and that meanwhile the teen can be gotten out of their house so the parents don't have to personally deal with the consequences of the mistakes they made and the bad feelings their *years* of selfish and immature behavior and general screwed-upness has generated---bad feelings that build up and up in children and only boil to the surface in teens.
TBS's for non-criminal, non-mentally-ill, non-addicted kids seem to be a last-ditch attempt on the part of the parents to mind-control the teen and *force* him/her to love the parents unconditionally again, like a small child.
Parents who come in here singing the praises of these programs usually tout how demonstrably affectionate their post-program teen is.
That's the big payoff.
"You don't love me anymore! Bad! Bad kid! I'll show you! I'll *make* you love me!"
We in society need to protect the teenage children of dysfunctional parents from this kind of abusive desperation measure.
Love for adults is not unconditional, and it can't be compelled---it has to be elicited by kindness and maintained by good behavior.
If you want the closest thing to unconditional love an adult can have in this life, get a dog.
"The Libertarian Party is a coalition of those who hold dear the economic freedoms championed by conservatives, yet abandoned by Republicans, and the civil freedoms championed by liberals, yet abandoned by Democrats."
--Rick Root