Cypress--
I'll try to be specific about what the CEDU parent program was like for me, of course I was not in the student parts of the program so I will rely on what my son and others have told me. I'll try to explain what I think is behind the power of these programs.
From what I've been told, key concepts that are played out in the parent workshops are woven into the student curriculuum as well so that when I talked to my son about ideas like "The I and the Me" or like the Dreams workshop, he was able to immediately know what I was talking about.
How these ideas were gotten across (multi-day workshops for me, marathon Propheets for the students, for example) was different but apparently the ideas were very similar.
Now I had never been to any kind of workshop before I went to these, and I went rather reluctantly because at the time I viewed my son as the problem--that is another personal parallel, he started out viewing me as the problem and through these experiences we came to understand that we were both part of the problem we were having and part of the solution to them.
So here is what I liked about the workshops: the experiential nature of them: actual exercises that made the concepts real and tangible; the opportunity to interact with other like-minded parents in an emotionally enriched way (I still stay in touch with people who were strangers to me when I met them at one of these things); the uniqueness of the setting and ideas---some workshop leader could confront a parent and make them look at themselves in a new light in a way that many of us, as priviledged people in the world, are not often confronted.
There is nothing more important to most people than their children--oh you can say that parents do it wrong sometimes, and you're quite correct, but I'm talking about feelings. At these workshops, people poured out honest emotion like you would not believe and to see people in such a genuine state was a new thing for me.
All this, the experiential approach, the emotional piece, the uniqueness of the occasion and the setting, for me, led to a belief in the possibility of change. Just really knowing that things can be different.
You can call it "brainwashing" if you wish, but really that's just sticks and stones, because if what happened there is brainwashing, then every time we are exposed to a new idea and decide to do something differently we are brainwashed. Most good parenting is pretty much brainwashing if you define brainwashing this way.
For example, after one of the Dreams experiential exercises, I remembered that when I was little I wanted to be an artist, but because I am kind of scholastic and for other emotionally related reason, my life went off in another direction. I literally hadn't drawn or painted anything since I was about 9, but it was like a wall came down and suddenly it was possible. Within a few weeks, I had had my sketches mistaken for the work of a professional artist. And a couple of months later, I had done a painting in some little art class I found and because my husband liked it and wanted it in his office I took it to get it framed, and another customer wanted to buy it.
Same with writing poetry, I hadn't written for years, and after one of the workshops, it was possible again, just in an instant of belief in the possibility.
None of this was magic or hypnosis, and not in my mind at least, brainwashing, it was learning to be able to let down resistance to a more complete way of experiencing the world.
I could tell you other much more remarkable stories than this that happened just to people I know after these workshops, but we took a pledge not to talk about other people's experiences publically, unless they specifically permit it and so I'll leave it at my own experience.
All I can say is that there is now a connection in my life between my thinking and feeling lives that was not there before and which is unshakable, in a way that passes for strength in the world.
Before these experiences, I would never have had the courage to speak about these things and my own vulnerabilities to anyone, much less on a site where many of the participants are like wild dogs and this kind of disclosure is like raw meat to them. Now it matters not at all, because I feel internally integrated and content with my feelings and my life.
Now, of course the difficulty in terms of the kids is that they really do not want to be there, so it is a stretch to think that they are going to immediately celebrate emotional growth, because they are not at all interested in opening up, they in fact frequently want to be less open, in order to hide things from staff.
There has to, over the course of the program, be a way to get them out of their comfort zones, if they are going to take a new look at the way they have been living and even consider the emotional side of their lives. Because the underlying premise is that it is this ignorance of the worth of their own emotional selves that is at the heart of their self-destructive behaviors. The rather sensible idea is that if you love yourself, you will not do terrible things to yourself.
This is at the heart of why I just don't see how you can do the whole thing without some degree of coercion although we can certainly agree that some of the stories told here suggest that at times, there has been too much, and the wrong kind, and sometimes, coercion without caring and that can't work.
So, for example, according to my son and others, the overnight propheets (which you would probably call sleep deprivation, although he said everyone he knew liked them because caffeine was available) created an event in which there was more possibility of letting guards down and allowing for looking at things in a new way. He says that the propheets were his favorite part of the whole program and I've heard many other people say so too. And in a bunch of different ways he had experiences that paralleled mine in terms of opening new possibilties for him and helping him understand why he was doing destructive things to himself. And being able to change.
It also made him fearless--he had always been reckless, I think, but only to run from his fears. Like me, now, he does not care if others approve of his experiences, is at ease with who he is, is content. Don't make the mistake of thinking that he is not at this site because he is shy or timid--I've heard him speak face to face about his experiences to some very hostile people--he simply can't see any point in talking to people who have closed minds and closed hearts--he sees the site as a waste of time, and cannot understand why I would bother to be here (that should please Son of Serbia, Bryan and Company).
Now see, here is what I think is another important piece to the puzzle of why people have different experiences in the program: with my son and his friends, there was in all cases some kind of close bond formed with a counsellor for at least part of the program, or in different parts of of the program with different people, and I have a sense that that has something to do with the success rate too. That's why I think caring, insightful staff is crucial and maybe that just didn't happen with a lot of you guys but it did with us.
And I never heard any of the really egregious stories that I've heard here, maybe we were just lucky and the staff and the ideals of the program were just right when we were there. If that is the case, it doesn't mean to me that the programs should be abandoned, but they should certainly be modified.
Also, I have a sense that some of the schools may, or may have at times in the past, let in kids who were not well suited for this kind of program--I'm still formulating that one, so I'll let it go for now.
Well, I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I doubt that I have explained this in a way that is going to mean much to you or anyone else at this site, but that's the way the cookie crumbles as we say when using one of poster Deborah's food-based metaphors (Deborah is the only person in the world with a longer post than me, I think, and after this one, I will likely take the lead).
Some of you have had such bad experiences that I don't think there is a way to talk about any of this that would make sense to you.
Maybe someone unbiased will read this sometime and it will mean something to him or her. It is not impossible.
By the way, my last workshop was with Mel Wasserman, who came to Idaho from California for one last workshop before he sold the whole thing to the Brown Schools. If it makes you feel any better he really did beat up the parents emotionally pretty well, there were people crying all over the room all the time. So we had a tiny bit of pain too, and in my own case, enough to get a glimpse of how hard the program must be for my son--I was really proud of him that he chose to stay and finish when the time came that he could have walked down the road and never gone back.
So there you have it, I hope this is what you wanted, I will be glad to talk further if you would like to.
