Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

Hey Che!

Will you please send me a post card, and perhaps a souvenir from your trip?  WTF am I saying? Everything in America is made in China anyway.

Also: consider to changing your name to Mao Gookin when you post from your trip!

Xie xie! and 旅途愉快!

Shangshanlea

Newsweek? The article on AA? Here's a quote:

"They start isolating people, getting them away from any feedback other than their own."

Sound familiar?  

It's not a blanket indictment. It's a look at the potential for Program Thinking.

You're probably right. I forgot about the entrenched patriarchy in China. I wonder how many men will be making the move to Dominatrix-ville? This might turn out to be an all female society. A feminist Eatonville so to speak. Of course, there may be some uptight American/German business men who would pay these gals a visit.  -lea

I wonder how many people who tried and failed are so happy they did. I think people should have the autonomy to do what they want with their own life, but I hope more would try every other alternative first. Its an understandable option if you live with a lot of interior pain.  So far, I've managed to retain enough hope or humor to get me though challenging times, and I think both these traits are necessary.  

But there is nothing worse than the aftermath of losing someone you care about to suicide and wondering what you could have done differently...

I don't get it. It takes a lot for Truth Searcher to come here and admit a mistake. Do you know how many parents still assert 20 years later that X program saved their kids' lives? Even as their children, now adults, suffer from all types of hidden (and not so hidden) scars?

Why attack her? She ALREADY said she was able to warn one family to think twice.  And the truth is, while anger can be a driving force, it can overwhelm the message if you sound like a fucking lunatic. I'll save that for the Ottawas, who blatantly ignore program abuses, and celebrate the programs while simultaneously overlooking the loooooong list of SPECIFIC abuses we suffered.  

Truth Searcher is exactly the kind of advocate we need.  She understands the perspective of desperation that leads to bad choices and had the humility and grace to recognize her mistake.

And the truth is: these schools manipulate the hell out of our parents.  They have it down pat. Exactly what to say to inspire fear if you even consider pulling your child out.  Parents trust them to be experts.

My parents thought CEDU would be a REAL academic environment (not even close) with accredited therapists, with supportive group therapy.  It was a place in the mountains in a bucolic setting.  They had no CLUE what was going on. It was recommended by pastors/therapists.  I WANTED help.  

When my Dad got cold feet, the school told him I was  a Coke Head which was a blatant lie--I wasn't even there for drugs! THey told him if he showed any weakness I'd be in jail or dead.... Because we were mointored and isolated it was easy to mainatin that... they also told my parents I was lying if I said otherwise... More BS!  I didn't even go there for lying! I was the kid who left notes when I snuck out and never lied to a direct question.  (I might for example try and say I was going to a slumber parrt, but if my Dad said You're not really going to a slumber party are you? I would say, you're right I'm not.)

CEDU made a liar out of me, a liar out of parents, and we won't even discuss their end of it!

So please, I think Former Program Mom has a lot to offer here in her own way.  If she can warn others to rethink their choices and research carefully, that in itself has real value.

When I had my student yanked out of my school to be sent to some whacked out religious cult with JC in it's mission statement, I didn't have a leg to stand on with the parents. (Frankly, it was risky for me to even say what I said.) But if they heard from another Mom who sent their kid there, with the same Christian values, they may have been more receptive.

We need all the help we can get.

I put off ordering it for a looong time.  I am only at page 34 and I am so sickened... So much reminds me of what happened at CEDU. Part of the reason I am so angry is that it is still widespread and public awareness is so small.  I am glad this book is out; But I would like to see it incorporated in a visual medium. I hope this trickle becomes a flood.

It is already bringing up such rage and anger toward the people who perpetrated this... And I also just realized that the program had a more traumatic impact on me then some trauma I dealt with at a young age.  That trauma was straightforward; this was insidious and made me lose sight of what was acceptable human behavior.  It basically validated abuse by making the lines unclear. If your parents and pastors send you to a place where you are psychologically, emotionally, verbally, and in some places, physically abused, and you are told it's love and therapy--how the fuck do you ever figure out what real love and therapy (which I'm skeptical of) is?

The truth is that I bear more scars from the program than from any experience prior to that. It messed up my relational boundaries in a way that I only recently discovered.  

I'm an educator now and I found out one of my students was sent to a similar program. Basically for being a normal kid. He has a wonderful attitude about life and his mistakes.  He is an involved teenaged father who works his ass off at work and school, and his religious zealot parents shipped him off to a school that uses Jesus Christ to shame him. He is already so convinced of his sinfulness (basically for having premarital sex and then doing it again!), he went away willingly...

I felt so helpless. (Just like I felt when I was dropped off for the first time.)  I couldn't, in my professional capacity, say anything overt, but I begged the parents to please look at all the fora available on this program before sending him away. But to them, anything with JC in its Mission Statement is A-OK.

I feel like I had finally put the lid on this can of worms,and they all popped out again.

The problem with America is we don't read varied news sources;we are sucked in by sound bites (more and more important with the advent of 24/7 news); and we vote according to who would be fun to have over at a BBQ than for someone who is best able to run the country. Kerry always said that issues pertaining to domestic and foreign policy shouldn't be summed up in a sound bite--they are too damn complicated. But increasingly, we even want convoluted issues McDonaldized for public consumption. It really doesn't say much about our brain power.

Additionally, the theological aspect of politics scares the living bejesus out of me. The last thing I want is to live in a theocracy. Religion should stay out of it. Those who don't think you can be a moral and ethical person without a religious code governing your life are essentiallly too weak and deficient to have developed an internal basis of right and wrong.

The most ethical and moral people I know are agnostic or atheistic--they are generous of spirit and strive to do the right thing on an intrisic level--they don't need an external framework to direct them (and sometimes misguide them) accordingly.

Maybe I'm just venting because I live out in the boondocks with religious dogmatics.  And I see people suffering needlessly for it.

Historically, religion has been used to oppress people, keep them in line, give them a feeling of both shame and guilt AND moral superiority, and remove intellectual thinking from the process. This is helpful, because without logic and intellectual reasoning, you have little resources to fight dogma. That is why my friend's father in Iran (who advocated religious freedom) was jailed and killed-he was an intellectual and religious progressive who was charged with "thinking against the government." He was also a nonviolent pacifist--it was his thinking that drew fire.

Today, I feel we are increasingly asked to support platforms and policy based on religious grounds. This is not a healthy development.

I  don't know what it would take to get people to think more deeply on the issues, but even the powerful Roman empire fell.

The next President needs to focus on re-developing strong foreign ties (we don't live in a world where we can be the lone rangers, making unilateral decisions anymore), and keeping religious moral issues a private matter that people can attend to at home or at church or by creating programs independent of the government.  Let the government do their job of dealing with global, domnestic, and economic concerns.