I don't think any of us have a problem with a raging kid being placed in a proper isolation room until he or she has calmed down.
What we *do* have problem with is children or adolescents being placed in isolation rooms that are substantially deviant from 72 deg. F. and/or with a floor temperature substantially deviant from same, and forced to assume specific physical positions--facing a wall, lying on the floor, etc. for hours at a time with only short breaks to stretch, with the isolation placement continuing for days at a time.
In an isolation room, there is no excuse for not going outside the door and leaving the kid to pace or rage or whatever so long as he/she isn't banging his/her head on the walls or floor.
Bipolar rages are the longest rages anybody has. Nobody rages longer than a bipolar, trust me. A bipolar rage lasts four to five hours. Nobody else has the emotional energy to sustain a raging fit for that long.
There is absolutely no excuse for keeping an adolescent in isolation longer than six hours before slowly returning him or her to a low-stress, low-stimulation, quiet, *pleasant*, un-isolated environment.
You don't calm a raging kid down by treating them like shit.
It doesn't matter what a "spoiled brat" or "rotten monster" the kid is. You can have an art room with art charcoal, art paper, and soft music that the kids get certain amounts of time in, that you can use to transition a kid from isolation back into the general population.
I know from calming irrational and destructive rages. I have bipolar disorder, I parent a child with bipolar disorder. We have the worst rages there are when we're not stable, there's nothing you can tell me about calming a rage that I don't already know.
But these programs want to be such hard-asses that they'd think waiting for an end to an immediate rage and then transitioning a kid back in through a low-stimulus social environment was mollycoddling them.
So they abuse them instead.
Yes, I sure as hell *do* think that even if you threw a table at somebody you should *only* have been in isolation in a comfortable-temperatured room, with padded walls and floor, and left to pace and rage until you ran out of steam---which you would have in less than five hours, guaran-damn-teed.
Then you needed to be moved back into the normal social routine of the institution---which needed to be not so horrible as to provoke rage in a saint (and I don't just mean a garden-variety mormon). And you needed to be moved back in through an appropriate transition environment.
The transition environment needs to have been an available option the staff could direct students to as a normal part of conflict de-escalation efforts before an overwrought kid ever got to the point of exploding in rage.
When you go out of your way to put people in an absolutely miserable, utterly intolerable environment, barren of all beauty and joy, barren of all positive emotional support, D'oh! They explode in rage at the slightest trigger. That's normal and human and not the fault of the raging person, it's the fault of the people who put that person in an inhumane, neglectful environment.
There should be *NO* phase that doesn't include something positive, pleasant, beautiful, or joyful as part of the everyday experience *merely for being a human being*. Maybe the parents and facility are right if they say the particular kid isn't a very good human being, maybe they're wrong---but you ought to get one positive, joyful, pleasant, or beautiful thing a day not as a reward, and not susceptible to being taken away for bad behavior, but merely because you're a human being.
If you put people in intolerable circumstances, which the "level" programs very deliberately do, rage is a normal, human, healthy response. What *wouldn't* be a healthy response would be passively laying down and taking being put in those circumstances---which is the response the kids get beaten down into before they're allowed to "advance" a level.
I don't mind us putting Charles Manson on the guerney and giving him the needle and burying the bastard, but as long as he *is* alive even the worst human being in the world---and he's certainly the worst one I can think of---deserves to have at least one good thing to look forward to each day, not because he's anything other than a rotten monster, but because he's a fellow human being, however horrible of one he is.
To deprive a *child* of one single solitary beautiful or pleasant or genuinely joyful thing to look forward to in a day is a monstrous act that places the perpetrators in the same league with every monstrous child abusing felon rotting in jail across the country.
It could be something as simple as desert, a chance to choose and listen to *one* popular song, twenty minutes in a comfortable chair curled up with a book (with a bookmark and access to the *same* book subsequent days until the kid is through with it--because I know some sadistic slimeball would twist it so the kid could *start* a book, but would then have to toe the line to get to read more of the *same* book), five minutes petting a dog or a cat, a game of cards with a couple of friends----something simple and good.
Everybody should wake up in the morning with *something* to look forward to that day.
Anger is not a useless, negative emotion.
Pain is not a useless, negative feeling.
Pain is a warning from our bodies or minds that we are suffering harm or in imminent danger of suffering harm if we don't get away from the danger.
Anger is a warning that some entity or group is harming us or trying to harm us.
Rage is anger combined with a sense of helplessness, and suppressed until it explodes.
The teen inmates' anger at the facility personnel is a normal reaction to the psychological harm they are doing to the teen by *deliberately* putting him/her in a situation where he/she gets up each morning without a single, solitary *good* thing to look forward to that day.
Learned helplessness as a replacement for anger and rage is not *progress*. It's severe psychological *damage*.
And that wilful or negligent (doesn't really matter which) damage to the teen's long-term psychological health is some of the first child abuse perpetrated on the teen in the program facility.
I haven't heard anybody yet, from *any* WWASPS program, list a single good thing they could unfailingly look forward to each and every day, that was *NOT* in any way conditional on their behavior, that would *NOT* be withdrawn no matter what---that they could look forward whether they were in intake or on the lowest level or in OP or in the infirmary---no matter where they were, *ONE* specific positive thing that they could absolutely count on having happen to them that day.
So you can tell me all day you weren't abused or didn't consider it abuse or that abuse is a subjective concept.
Abuse certainly *is* a subjective concept. CULTURALLY and SOCIETALLY subjective.
Abusers never consider what they did abuse.
SOCIETY defines abuse. WWASPS doesn't get to get together in its little cult and define abuse and neglect all by itself to whatever it wants those definitions to be or thinks they should be.
Our larger society's standards and community standards---community standards being the community standards of the US as a whole or those of the child's *HOME* state--not the state or country the facility is in------*WE* define what abuse is.
*WE* being the rest of America. Not me alone, not you and the little cult you got stuck in, the American people decide what is and isn't abuse.
And by those community standards, what happens at level-system program facilities *IS* child abuse.
To the lady who says she and her sister differ as to whether their parents were strict or abusive---the one of you whose opinions on your parents' behavior coincides with what the general American public would think, whether abusive or "strict", is the one who's right.
This is not a situation where neither of you is right or you're both right.
If the general American opinion would be that it was abuse, then it *was* abuse.
If the general American opinion would be that they wouldn't have wanted your parents prosecuted for it or you kids pulled from the home, but that it was too harsh, then your sister is still justified in being upset about it. And while you might not consider yourself abused, in that situation it would be unreasonable to think she *shouldn't* be upset.
If the general American opinion would be that your parents were normal and reasonable, even if on the strict side of normal and reasonable, then your sister isn't being reasonable.
But it's NOT just a morally relative matter of opinion where your opinion and your sister's opinion are equally valid just because they're opinions.
When you parent within a society, you have a responsibility to at least meet that society's minimum community standards for proper and loving care and raising and discipline of your children.
If your parents did, they did. If they didn't, they didn't. And unless they were right on the borderline between acceptable and unacceptable, one of you is right and the other one is wrong.
Abuse is subjective *FOR THE SOCIETY*.
Abuse is *NOT* subjective for the perpetrators and the victims. Parents know damned well when they are breaching society's norms. Facilities know damned well when they are breaching society's norms, which is why they hide in other countries and hide behind locked doors, and hide the ownership trails of their facilities, and hide whether they're affiliated with themselves or not.
Parents and facilities demonstrate an Awareness of Guilt.
And children in society have a right to expect that they will be cared for *AT LEAST* in accord with the minimum expectations that society has as norms for the care of children.
One of the reasons children have the right to that minimum is that we as a society make provisions for parents who *CANNOT* provide that minimum. We have social services--like AFDC and Medicare and Public Schooling, and when those aren't enough, we have a foster care system where we endeavor, not always perfectly, to see that kids get *at least* that minimum acceptable care---and better if we can manage it.
Which is why society is justified in punishing parents and facilities that wilfully put a child in a situation that we deem to be harmful or neglectful *by our own societal standards*.
We've provided a safety net--not always a perfect one, but still a substantial safety net---for the parents who *can't* meet the standards.
*Won't* is not an option. We're entirely justified in removing kids and punishing perpetrators for *won't*.
So if your parents' behavior wasn't so close to the borderline of unacceptable that most reasonable people would at least sympathize with your sister, one of the other of you is wrong.
It's a matter of opinion, yeah---but it's not a matter of *YOUR* opinion. Or hers.
Timoclea
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300001479/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'> Ben Franklin Letter to M. Leroy, 1789.
[ This Message was edited by: Timoclea on 2005-04-22 09:34 ]