It's just amazing how may people are recommending residential treatment now - I've heard of so many parents sending their children to Idaho, Utah, Montana. They don't even visit the place first. Sounds just like this lady - she drove her unsuspecting child to Colorado and then handed her over to ESCORTS to take her to the Escalante desert in Utah - to work like a slave in below freezing weather. How is that going to help? It seems the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
There's an old saying, "man can force no man to heaven." Elizabeth will have to find her own way - and it may take some time.
The Good Book says, "teach a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." There's a lot of wisdom in that. Values form as a result of time and experience. Some children must learn the hard way - in fact most of us have learned the hard way.
As parents it is difficult to see a child go off on a wayward path. They often learn quickly that their actions have consequences like jail, pregnancy, venereal disease, illness. How many of us have told our parents, " you were rigtht, I should have listened to you." Experience is the best teacher.
These youth programs force youth to follow a very rigid line. This usually causes them to further rebel. Elizabeth must find her own way with the guidance of her parents - she can't be forced to mold into something her mother wants her to be. It doesn't work that way....
Whoever kindles the flames of intolerance in America is lighting a fire underneath his own home.
--Harold E. Stassen, 1947
[ This Message was edited by: nite owl on 2004-11-20 13:21 ][ This Message was edited by: nite owl on 2004-11-20 13:22 ]
