Hi Elliot,
Well, I'm really not hiding who I am either.
There's a lot about me on this site, but my interest in the troubled parent industry really goes back to the brief self description in my signature.
If you want to know more, well I host this site so the "About Us" page is all about us (though probably a little out of date)
It's really not necessary for me to know everything about you to have this conversation. And, for what it's worth, I believe that the Sudweeks believe in what they're doing. As for what I want, I want to know if they
understand what they're doing and if you kids and/or your parents understand it.
You might make a comparison to medical treatment. It's true, for example, that chemo therapy is a good and accepted treatment for some kinds of cancer. And it's true that some forms of cancer are first diagnosed by lumps in your flesh. But chemo doesn't cure all lumps. Some are cysts, some are benign tumors, some are fat, some are other things. And chemo has serious, often deadly, side effects. So you don't go around giving chemo to anyone who presents w/ any kind of fleshy lump. You have to understand what it is, how it works and what it's good for.
I want to know what form of therapy Whitmore (and other programs) offers, how it works and what it's good for.
From what you say, I'm glad you're back in school and looking forward to college. And it's good that you have high aspirations. But are you certain it's good to just shut out all of your old friends? Part of growing up has to do w/ gaining a certain level of
self determination. I have old friends who I've known for decades now who are doing nothing I find worthwhile with their lives. Even though I don't want to sit around watching Star Trek, smoking pot and drinking beer for all my waking hours outside of work, I don't feel any need to shut this guy out of my life. We're still good friends (though if anyone who knows him finds this and tells him about it, he'll be
pissed. But I think it's a safe bet that won't happen cause he also thinks the internet is a conspiracy.)
The friends I had before the program, I lost. And I regret that bitterly. That's one bit of Program advice I should have passed up, but it took me awhile to figure that out. By that time, all my old friends had moved on and I'd gone on in my own direction. Ya' can never go back home.
A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
A republic is where the sheep get to pick which wolves vote on what to have for dinner.
But in a constitutional republic, voting on dinner is strictly
forbidden.
--A Patriot
