Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Brat Camp

ABC Brat Camp

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Anonymous:

--- Quote ---On 2005-07-14 11:19:00, Deborah wrote:

"
.... The parents can be lame, show no respect but expect it, neglect the kid's real needs, and then pay to have them tortured into compliance- to 'act' with respect.

This is undesirable authoritarian, top down, control; lauded as 'therapy'. The parents should be right there with the teens, sleeping in freezing weather, no hygiene, pathetic food, using a latrine, hiking with packs equal to 1/3 of their body weight, publicly divulging their wrongs. They are equally responsible for their kid's distress and skewed perceptions of reality, if not more so.






"

--- End quote ---


It's a theory that started with "Tough love". Parents don't understand how there actions are negatively effecting their children. By the time children start acting up, the parents start up with tough love and don't understand it's just more of the same in a dysfunctional family.




Giving children a reason to be paranoid, that's what happens when they are lied to enough, isn't a healthy responsible act by a parent. If the child is into drugs, how did they meet those type of people? Those children are going to have to change associates. Oh and it't usually not the people that THOSE types of parents are able to detect. Those types of parents will start accusing anyone they don't like of being a drug addict or drug dealer. Who could use the word of an over emotional lair. Then the parent will encourage there precious children to remain friends with the real drug dealers and real users, because the parents are such experts. That is what the friend's of THOSE types of parents consider them.




It's a shame because even when the children are officially adults at 18, if they are healthy they  should leave home, they find out that they are still tied to their parents when they go for grants, scholarships, and federal loans. In the United States, parents have to sign in order for adults aged 18 through 25 to  receive funding from the government, even if they don't live with the parents and haven't for years.

Anonymous:
Antigen,
I read the article. It covers far to broad a range of issues for me to adequately address. As a middle-aged man with a family, I think I am a pretty worldly guy. I have been around kids all my life. I'm well traveled, well educated, and well read.

I agree that the period called adolescence has been getting longer in recent years. Many, if not most of my friends got married in their late teens - right after high school. That was normal in those days.

I also agree that as a kid, me (and my generation) were given more adult responsibility and more adult-like freedoms than kids today are. By the time I was nine I was: camping overnight with friends with no adults, on my own from school dismissal until parents got home, taking care of younger kids during that time, had a job (paper route), left home alone while mom went shopping, etc. By age 12, I had my first gun, had gone on extended away from home trips, driven trucks on farm land, and yes, smoked pot and drank a beer or two.

But at the same time, Kindergarden was a half day and included milk, cookies, and nap time. We had no day care or pre-school (moms stayed home). We learned to read in first grade at age 6. We did not have to make 'play dates.' We just walked to our friends houses and played with them. We had far fewer scheduled activities. Summers consisted of two months of largely unsupervised free play. In other words, we were allowed to be children.

I remember when my friend and I got our first car at age 16, his father threw us a box of condems and said, "Now that you have a back seat, you will need these." Yes, times have changed.

That was then. This is now. The country has swung way to the right. I see two trends. The right is too punitive, the left too over-protective. Kids are over scheduled, over burdened, and over pressured these days. It sucks. There was no such thing as ADHD in the 1970s. Boys (84% of kids diagnosed with ADHD are boys) were expected to be active, difficult, and sometimes get into fights. "Boys will be boys" after all.

BUT! I don't think teens are as competent as adults. There is a reason we don't let 13-year-old boys drive cars on the highways. I also do not think kids should EVER be charged and tried as adults. To me, it is not about whether they know right from wrong. They do. What they don't know is how to navigate the adult legal system. I think the cases of the Central Park Jogger, Michael Crowe, and the King brothers are good examples of this. What we don't want to do as a society is throw a young life away when that life can be turned around. I am against the longer/harsher sentences imposed on kids, too. When I was a teen and we got caught with pot or beer, the police just took us home and told our parents. We got grounded. We received lectures on the dangers of this behavour. We turned out just fine.

I agree with article that competency is more a function of the individual than of age, but we have yet to come up with something better than age. The Supreme Court mentioned this very issue in their recent ruling that no one under 16 may be executed. They said they needed to set an age limit which would in many ways be arbitrary, but no better determination exists. They chose 16 through a combination of child development research and international standards. Personally, I am opposed to the death penalty.

Whew! That was long winded.

Anonymous:
Antigen,
I forgot add that I'm not backing down on my statement that 'each generation villifies its children.'

When growing up I saw Time magazine covers in the 1970s decrying the 'teen drug epidemic' and the 'national crisis' of 'teenage pregnancy.' I had do endure many an adult talk about 'kids these days...' Each generation of adults thinks the world is going to hell.

My Dad said the same thing happend in the 1950s when rock and roll was destroying the youth of America and turning them all into beatnicks. My Dad was born in 1930. He taught math in high school from 1953 to 1993. His opinion is that teens were just as nice in 1993 as they were in 1953 and saw no cause for alarm.

Anonymous:
I agree, we live in very conservative, over-protective, anti-youth times.  People act the way they are expected to act, so in a society that treats kids like criminals, no wonder boys are wearing their pants to their knees and waddling around like little wanna-be thugs.

Anonymous:
People should start treating kids like respectable citizens, and not always just assume they are up to no good.  More often than not, kids are just hanging out and talking or playing games.  That's the honest truth.

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