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Messages - Karass

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166
The Troubled Teen Industry / Most fucked up ST parent ever
« on: December 30, 2006, 09:23:10 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
A lot of parents use college as a new means of control over their child. They threaten to not pay anymore, unless their kid will sit on command. I've seen it with a few of my friends. You'd think the parents wanted a trained dog instead of an independent human being for a kid! Caesar had already conquered the world and died before the age some of these kids finally cut the ambilical cord loose!  :P


Funny, some of us are just trying to get their kid to consider moving out and being an adult. Go to college if you want -- oh by the way, you have a scholarship that will pay a big chunk of it. Or don't go to college, just go out and live on your own -- you already have a job. It's not that we don't want him around -- we love him dearly. But I moved out when I was 17, got married when I was 21, and am looking forward to getting rid of my kids (so to speak) when they are ready to spread their wings and fly -- and he's definitely ready. I don't want any mid-20s or (OMG) older kids coming back to the empty nest!

167
The Troubled Teen Industry / Bringing TB to the UK or vice versa?
« on: December 30, 2006, 09:08:15 PM »
I think my kid's "coking" skills were quite up to par. "Cooking" skills too, and I don't just mean cooking food.

168
The Troubled Teen Industry / Bringing TB to the UK or vice versa?
« on: December 30, 2006, 08:22:58 PM »
Thanks Deborah for that very insightful post.

To answer your questions, the WC didn't really do anything for him that couldn't have been done in another way, although I doubt it could've been done at home. Hell, he probably could've achieved the same thing if he had spent the summer working on a fishing trawler off the coast of Alaska -- I'm totally serious. Not only would it have saved me a ton of money, but he would've made some of his own.

The "valuable, secret method" is neither valuable nor secret -- it's as you suggested, just letting kids do for themselves instead of having their every need attended to like they were royalty. That's our fault as parents. We live in the wealthiest country in the world, and some of us have given our kids way too much and encouraged them to become, as you said "invalids." School is boring and unchallenging, life is easy but conformity is expected, you can have any material thing you want and yet the world is a mess, and little Johnny down the street got a brand new Beemer for his 16th birthday. No wonder some people think their kids have "entitlement issues." It's more the parents' fault than the child's.

My kids have been more "allowed" to care for themselves than most of their peers. They resent this a lot, by the way. My 'problem child,' the oldest, is an incredibly brilliant young man. But the fact that he is near the top of his class and doesn't really remember his sophomore or junior years says more about how shitty the school system is than about how stoned he was. Still, he had his shit together enough to have a few different paying jobs, since he was old enough to lie about his age and get a job, and all our kids learned to cook, do laundry and chores and all that since a young age. It's not that we don't want to parent them, it's more that our idea of parenting is that by the time they are ready to move out, they shouldn't be very dependent on us anymore, except for possibly helping them with college so they don't acquire a mountain of debt like I had to.

The other thing you should understand about how I could do something so stupid as to send him to a wilderness program is that unlike most kids who get stuck in that situation, this was very familiar territory for him. He was 4-wheeling, camping and crawling in the dirt with his family before he learned to walk (literally) and has been exploring the wilderness on foot with family and friends ever since. So here he was a 17-year old kid getting dropped into the middle of Utah with a bunch of strangers, with the basic message of "you need to work some shit out," and he was very well prepared for that -- physically, mentally, emotionally. I had no doubt he wouldn't be the least bit scared of anything he would encounter out there. If they had called me and said "he's running away" I would probably have said "let him run. He can take care of himself." But when I heard him talk about some of the other participants -- for example, a 14-year old girl from Malibu who had never been anywhere but the beach and the mall -- I thought "that's just wrong."

I've rambled on long enough, but I hope some of it made sense.

169
The Troubled Teen Industry / Maia Szalavitz
« on: December 30, 2006, 07:39:51 PM »
Hey you stole my signature quote.

Seriously though, maybe the Guest was onto something with the comment about "liberal new age left coast types" being more into the wilderness type programs. There is definitely a different thought process among us westerners who actually live near the wilderness, grew up with it, visit it often and find it to be a fantastic getaway from the stresses of modern urban life.

I don't imagine as many conservative eastern Republicans fall for the wilderness therapy sales pitch, probably because "wilderness" is such a foreign concept to them -- something they might have seen on TV or in a book, but never actually experienced. They're probably much better candidates for the "boarding school" sales pitch, which sounds so preppy and upper class, as in "after boarding school, junior will go to a really fine college."

170
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 30, 2006, 07:29:06 PM »
What's really hilarious is that I have had some interesting and productive dialogues here that included MGDP, TSW and others when I was just "Guest." As a Guest I could be a member of Fornits,  but as someone with a real username and with what I have said and done, I'm just another stupid program parent to be ignored or flamed. I have on this forum and ST expressed mostly anti-program sentiments and have advised other parents publicly and privately to stay away from the Troubled Teen industry, and to not send their kid to wilderness and especially to not send their kid to a Therapeutic Boarding School which is neither therapeutic nor much of a school. If I have helped even one parent (and I think it's many more than that) to avoid making a mistake, then I've had a positive impact.

I feel lucky that my son had a positive experience in the wilderness, but I know that many others do not. "Luck" should not be a factor when consider "therapy" or "recovery" options, and my wife and I were foolish and definitely beyond desperate at the time. The fact that I still post here and on ST should be a good indicator that (a) I'm not really "ok" with what we did, (b) I don't want other parents to make uninformed decisions that could really fuck up their kids and (c) I resent the strong pressure that was applied to us to send him to a TBS after wilderness, despite the fact that he did so well in WC (by their assessment, not just mine) and that I felt like 7 weeks was already a pretty long time for him to be away from the real world.

Every time I try to write about wilderness, I find myself using words that appear to defend it, even when just trying to explain what happened and what didn't happen.

I apologize for trying to compare how wilderness therapy today is different from boot camps or abusive death marches like Challenger. To do so only sounds "pro-program" and might encourage some parent to send their kid to wilderness after they catch him smoking his first joint. That would be wrong on many levels and would undo what little bit of good I may have done these last few months.

171
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 30, 2006, 06:18:29 PM »
Quote from: ""hanzomon4""
Well natural consequences may be good and well but it depends on the folks in charge. Many deaths at programs come from staff dismissing medical problems as "manipulation" or "attention seeking", and apparently even when doctors are present this can still happen

Ian August
Michelle Sutton
Lakeisha Brown
The last one is about a facility operated by the state government  they had doctors and everything, including the usual "you're manipulating" kind of attitude.

But yeah, natural consequences in an unnatural setting can be risky. It all depends on how staff interpret a situation.

@Charly - What are "bans"? Also your son "mentioned that the program was "abusive in a good way" - meaning physically rigorous- Now from your description he seemed to be athletic at the time. I'm curious did they give a physical or some kind of test to determine if a child is health enough to participate in the program? @Punk - same question......
 
Sorry I keep adding stuff - Do you folks know what the wilderness programs claimed to treat(not fix) Like did they accept kids with mental health issues(clinical depression, Tourette's Syndrome, Bi-polar, ADD/ADHD, OCD, ya know real mental health issues........  If so what about the program did they say, or imply, would help in treating these conditions.....


You forgot Aaron Bacon, who was from my neck of the woods. You also don't necessarily understand or agree that a lot has changed since the days of Challenger and uncaring assholes like Steve Cartisano. You can agree or disagree with the "therapy" in "wilderness therapy" but this is way different from a tough-love bootcamp.

You are right that it depends on the people in charge. Interesting you should mention medical problems, since my son had one in his 2nd week. He was hauled out ASAP and taken to the ER at a real hospital. No small task considering how far he was from town. It turned out to be no big deal, but they treated it like a first-class emergency. Maybe they really cared, maybe they were just trying to avoid lawsuits or whatever. Either way, they definitely took care of it. Funny thing is my son had the option of staying indoors for a couple nights and eating food that was more "normal" but he refused and wanted to get back out in the field with his group right away. Some of you might say he was already brainwashed at that point. He says he was highly motivated to "make this work" or get everything out of it that he could.

My son's WC emphasizes substance abuse treatment, and the 12 steps are part of what they do. That's what he was there for and nothing else.

172
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 30, 2006, 04:43:50 PM »
I agree Karen, denying him access to his education is not an acceptable 'consequence.' That's ridiculous.

As for the "natural consequences" of wilderness, I felt like my son's program used them appropriately. There was nothing contrived or done just for 'make work' sake. If a kid didn't want to contribute in some way to the cooking fire, he/she was free to eat uncooked rice. Their choice -- work for hot food, or eat cold food. Nobody is going to give a shit either way. That doesn't mean the kids who never mastered the bow-drill always ate cold uncooked food. They just had to choose to actively contribute to something that benefited the group meal. Or not.

Not putting up your shelter before a rainstorm was another obvious one. Nobody gives a shit if you want to get soaking wet. If you're too lazy or stubborn to make a small effort to stay out of the rain, that's your business.

The gear was all top notch. In fact, my son still wears the boots when we go out into nowhere, like we did yesterday for a few miles up in the mountains. The sleeping bag is the highest quality one he's ever owned and has been used on 3 camping trips since wilderness. So "natural consequences" did not extend to things like freezing at night or getting blisters from shitty boots that don't fit. Those would be very unnatural, mean-spirited consequences.

Karen earlier said something like her son thought it was "abusive, but in a good way." That's an interesting description that I think my son would agree with. By the time he was done, he really felt like the sleeping bag was optional (at least in summer) and his biggest annoyance was that the hikes were often at a slower pace than he preferred -- due to the pace of the slowest person.

The food sucked, but he feels he got all he needed. Too bad there weren't his favorite treats in each re-supply, or a nice T-bone steak, but there was a lot more than just oats, lentils and rice. So no, forced starvation was not one of the "natural consequences." Since he was already into health food, I think he adjusted to the diet a lot better than a kid who never ate anything but junk food.

173
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 30, 2006, 03:51:26 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Calling the cops is not a good option to do to your kid. It's ironic to rail against abuse and call in the cops. The juvenile justice system can be just as abusive as private programs. So can the psychiatric adolescent system. So unless you know or experienced these things, don't be reccomneding them so freely. It's like parents who reccomend programs off the cuff.


I have never had a positive experience with cops and the justice system, either involving myself or my son. There were times when things were really out of control with him that my wife would say, "why don't we just call the cops?" and I would say "are you fucking kidding me?!!! How is that going to help anything?"

I hate to admit it, but one thought that was a factor in our decision to send him to wilderness was that it would look good to the juvenile court and his probation officer, and that he might get off probation early -- before he failed a court-mandated drug test or some other probation rule and got deeper into the juvenile justice system. It worked. He got off early, and part of it was the perception that his parents "really did something about him." It sucks, I know, and it was definitely not the major factor in our decision, but it was a factor nonetheless.

I also don't mind admitting that I bought him detox kits when I knew he needed them or else he wouldn't pass the pee test.

174
The Troubled Teen Industry / Bringing TB to the UK or vice versa?
« on: December 30, 2006, 03:08:00 PM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
Let me better clarify "rules".  

Kids want structure in their home lives, not chaos caused by out of control parents.  Rules are part of a structured home life.  Curfews being the one rule that most often comes to mind.  Instead of obeying their curfew on Friday night, the kid parties into the wee hours with his friends and pays the consequences later.  That's the way it worked in my youth.  I looked forward to dinner with my folks and then sneaking out to party with my buds after I did my homework and any chores I had to do.  I knew I was breaking "the rules" but hell, a kid's gotta do what he's gotta do.  Somehow I made it through adolescence without driving my parents over the edge or ending up in one of these hellhole programs.  Guess I just knew how to play the game without tripping the wire, I don't know.  But rules (structure) as opposed to chaos caused by out of control demanding bully drug abusing parents or worse, indifference caused by parents who are not involved in their child's lives,  is what kids need and want in my experience. I'm probably not expressing my opinion very well, maybe someone else can explain what I mean?


I agree with you about structure & rules. My 'problem kid' has, at times, reminded us that he needs structure, he needs boundaries, he needs consistency and he wants "parents," not older "friends." Great, wonderful. That's what we have tried to do for over 17 years. Sure, teens need to cross some of the lines at times and find their own way and all that. We were teens too, and we thought we understood how to balance that structure, rules and consequences with a fair amount of common sense when it comes to "teens will be teens" kinds of things.

But we made a lot of mistakes, and in so many cases we aren't sure what we should've done differently. We have tried lots of different parenting strategies. Heart-to-heart talks, getting more involved in his life, getting less involved in his life (giving him his space), trying to force some responsibility on him, trying to let him just be his own person and make his own mistakes -- you name it, we tried it. So-called "experts" were no help at all. I've got my own friggin' library of parenting books, self-help books, substance abuse recovery books and mental health books. I've got files full of receipts from all the therapists, community-based programs, etc. that he's tried over the last few years. Other parents, our friends, were not much help either because they had no similar frame of reference, either in their own teenage past or in their own kids' behavior.

You said when you were a teen you "knew how to play the game without tripping the wire." I can relate to that. So what do you do with a kid who constantly goes out of his way to find that wire and then trip it just for the sake of tripping it? How do you parent a kid who says he wants structure and boundaries and "parents who parent," but then takes every opportunity to demonstrate that no boundaries are acceptable to him and that he will do everything in his power to dismantle any semblance of structure and order in his life? Oh yeah, add to that a couple of serious mental health disorders -- repeatedly diagnosed and treated over the years by various professionals.

Keep in mind this is a kid who has two teen siblings that are happy, well-adjusted kids (to the extent that is possible during adolescence!), who were raised in the same household by the same biological parents, still happily married after all these years, using the same parenting approaches. They would constantly ask what was the deal with their brother, why did we let him get away with certain things, what were we going to do about it and so on. We never had any good answers for them, for him or for ourselves. We are not "out of control demanding bully drug abusing parents," but we do have past experiences with drugs and we are moderate social drinkers. We are definitely not indifferent or uninvolved in our children's lives. We are not perfect parents -- if there is such a thing -- and we are not uneducated or incompetent. We are human, doing the best we can with the best intentions and the best information available to us.  

Things had reached an all-time low just prior to us getting sucked into this shitty Troubled Teen industry. Life is a lot better now, but by no means perfectly happy and trouble-free. I don't necessarily credit the program with anything in particular -- he got to where he is today because he wanted to, because he did the hard work. I wish we hadn't felt compelled to do it, but given where things are today, I don't entirely regret the decision.

Let the flames begin.

175
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 29, 2006, 03:51:20 AM »
I wish I had moved the wilderness chunk of this to a thread of its own, since it really has very little to do with Carlbrook, but oh well.

Some very good points were raised, and in the usual manner on Fornits (or anywhere else) we didn't really resolve anything, but the exchange of ideas, opinions and info is valuable.

Looking back on it, it's kind of weird to read what I wrote earlier today in what I would call my "ST persona" vs. some of the anon stuff I have posted here over the last 6 months. Even more weird when I recall some of the things I have written to other parents along the lines of "stay away from this industry." In many ways I wish I had never gotten involved and wish my kid had never gotten involved. I wish I hadn't felt compelled to make a radical choice for him. I wish I didn't feel compelled to help other parents get educated and avoid making huge mistakes. But in spite of my support of the whole concept of community-based options, I wish to hell that there truly were some more of those that were viable. We tried everything, and we live in a big city where we have more options than many people. Nothing worked. Things just seemed to go from bad to worse. One local 'legitimate therapeutic situation' even did a lot more harm than good. Maybe it wasn't the therapy or the therapists that were "bad" -- maybe he just wasn't ready to be helped or to help himself at that time.

After learning all I have learned about the horrors of this industry -- after reading Help At Any Cost, and 63days.com and watching the French TBS documentary, and the Montana PBS thing, all I can say is that my son and my family is fucking lucky. He is happy, healthy and safe, and maybe that's just a coincidence.

I am, however, thankful that some degree of regulation has hit this industry -- although much more needs to be done. I am grateful that he got enough calories -- he neither lost nor gained more than a couple pounds in those 7 weeks. I am grateful that he was not over-exerted -- he thought the hiking was easy and no big deal. I am grateful that he got the kinds of things out of it emotionally, psychologically, that I would hope to get myself if I did a similar program myself. Was he abused? Some of you will say "yes" no matter what. He doesn't think so, and I don' think so, and I am a bigger critic of all of this than he is, but we all have to live with it and we have to take from it what we can.

The bottom line is all is good now. The money might have been wasted, or might not.

176
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 28, 2006, 10:03:28 PM »
Quote from: ""Nihilanthic""
Quote from: ""70sPunkRebel""
Quote from: ""Deborah""
And why would this be more effective 'after' a program than before? Isn't placement in a program just another attempt at 'rescue'? Is this what you did, and are you prepared to following through with it?

It was more effective afterward because I was able to communicate directly with my son instead of the chemical 'him' that he had been for quite some time before. Wilderness was another attempt at rescue -- a final attempt.

I/we are prepared to follow through on making him be responsible for his actions and his personal well-being. It's been 5 months since he got home and there haven't been any reasons to think I would have to kick him out when he turns 18. He has it pretty good here -- he would be the first to say so. But he understands when I say "look dude, this is my house. I can't have cops showing up here, or drug deals going down on the side of the house," and that kind of stuff. Once he moves out, he can do whatever the fuck he wants in his own place.

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So a wilderness is a detox?

It can be, and not just from drugs & alcohol, but also from strained relationships and toxic self-perceptions that have become very dysfunctional.

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What if he does drugs again?

Who says he hasn't?

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Why do you need all of the full wilderness load of shit to do detox?

You don't. He could've detoxed perfectly well in a 30-day inpatient program not too far from home. But I think, and more importantly he thinks he got a lot more out of the "full wilderness load of shit" than he would have gotten from a standard inpatient detox.


Quote
Somehow I fail to understand why you would have to go have him controlled and 'fixed' before you sit on your hands and go "Okay! You're on your own, kid!". It just sort of lacks consistency and rhyme and reason is all.


I don't expect you to understand. I'm not sure I fully understand it myself, "it" being the thought processes and rationalizations my wife and I went through at the time. Part of it was the belief that he needed something different, since everything else had been tried and failed, and the fact that he was asking for help and not wanting to continue living the way he had been living. Part of it was the fear that if we left him 'unsupervised' all summer while we were at work, he might not survive. He almost didn't survive the previous summer. And I don't mean that in the program-speak 'insanedeadorinjail' manner, I mean it in the IV tubes/ER/vital signs manner.

If he had just stuck to pot, coke and hallucinogens, like kids of my generation, his summer might have been a lot different.

177
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 28, 2006, 08:01:08 PM »
Quote from: ""Deborah""
And why would this be more effective 'after' a program than before? Isn't placement in a program just another attempt at 'rescue'? Is this what you did, and are you prepared to following through with it?


It was more effective afterward because I was able to communicate directly with my son instead of the chemical 'him' that he had been for quite some time before. Wilderness was another attempt at rescue -- a final attempt.

I/we are prepared to follow through on making him be responsible for his actions and his personal well-being. It's been 5 months since he got home and there haven't been any reasons to think I would have to kick him out when he turns 18. He has it pretty good here -- he would be the first to say so. But he understands when I say "look dude, this is my house. I can't have cops showing up here, or drug deals going down on the side of the house," and that kind of stuff. Once he moves out, he can do whatever the fuck he wants in his own place.

178
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 28, 2006, 07:07:57 PM »
Quote from: ""Nihilanthic""
Suffering but feeling capable? What?

You mean to tell me all the psycho-bullshit interrogations and confrontational crap, intersperced with repetetive difficult tasks somehow boosted self esteem?

No.

What happened is when the bullshit was over, or at least mostly over, and he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and learend how to do what the camp wanted him to do, he started to feel better because he didn't feel as hopeless and they didn't hurt him as much.

In his view, they never hurt him at all, psychologically or otherwise. I tend to be a little more skeptical, since I know that part of group "sharing" is revealing a lot of personal stuff, all the things you've done that hurt others, etc., and brutal honesty is expected...and usually achieved. Participation can be very cathartic or it can be humiliating and damaging, depending on how the person feels about participating and "sharing."

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This was about spending 7 weeks away from civilization to figure some shit out with a clear head, and having a safety net to make sure he didn't fucking die in the process.

Too bad that safety net doesn't work that much to keep him ALIVE, and definitely doesn't do much for psychological injuries, considering that part of a "wilderness" is to cause a breakdown/breakthrough episode... its not about being able to think with a clear head at all. Its about shit put into his head by the people there called 'counselors'!

Oh, but it did keep him alive. The participants quickly learn the Utah regulations on hiking, water, minimum calories, etc. because it becomes obvious that the staff are following some specific rules. Funny you should mention counselors filling his head with shit, since he didn't think he got a lot of value from the two licensed therapists that worked with him ("the usual talk therapy stuff"). On the other hand, he learned a lot from the field staffers, most of whom are self-described fuckups in thier late teens and early 20s.

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So, if I put someone in Sobibor, and teach him to play violin he gets a self esteem boost? Riiiight  :wink:


A good analogy...almost. I would put it this way: if you take someone who has mostly been taken care of and 'rescued' by their parents for their entire life, and you put them in a "Survivor" type setting, and teach them how to survive with nothing but their wits and a knife, then yes, they can get a self-esteem boost and a feeling of accomplishment from having mastered something that is very difficult and demanding.

Then you bring them back home from that setting and say, "look kid, this is your life and your deal. We're not bailing you out of jail anymore. We're not covering for you with school anymore. We're not going to police your substance abuse or your recovery or your therapy. If you want to go back to the way things were, just remember that we're only responsible for you until you turn 18. After that, you're free to walk out the door, and we are free to insist that you walk out the fucking door if it comes to that. We've done everything we could think of to try to help you. The rest is up to you. Time to sink or swim."

Freedom and responsibility. That is a much bigger self-esteem boost.

179
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 28, 2006, 06:31:50 PM »
Quote from: ""Nihilanthic""
Its about as useful as a wake up call as me beating Karen with her own medicine was.

TBS is not real therapy, and you dont make people get therapy by abusing them first. Thats unethical, unnecessary, and pretty ineffective. Do you think Karen wants to talk right now? Think she's open right now? Oh, maybe a few weeks of this in my backyard without showers eating MREs and oatmeal might make her more 'open' :rofl:

Hey, is her self esteem high right now? No... i'd imagine its pretty crushed right now!!! How the hell does 'wilderness' or ANYTHING a program, camp, or what I just did help self esteem?

They SAY they do it, but when you get specifics, it sure tells another story, don't you agree?

Scared straight bullshit doesn't work, the APA has already demonstrated that, and just common sense does too.


What Karen is feeling right now and what my son was feeling after 7 weeks in the wilderness are probably very different on many levels. There were genuine self-esteem boosts my son experienced, related to physical, emotional and task-specific accomplishments. He learned a lot, and by no means was all of it from the program staff or the other participants. He learned a lot just from the experience, from finding out just how capable he really is. This wasn't about getting "scared straight" or about "tough love." This was about spending 7 weeks away from civilization to figure some shit out with a clear head, and having a safety net to make sure he didn't fucking die in the process.

I have a friend who is a bit older than I, who practices what I can only describe as a Native American spirituality or "religion" if you prefer. This guy routinely goes out on his own in the wilderness for weeks at a time on personal "vision quests" and finds them very rewarding. He does crazy shit like fasting for 3 days while hiking endless miles -- stuff a program would never (and should never) be allowed to do, even to consenting adults with properly signed release forms. My son knows him and had many conversations about all that stuff, and about what my son was going through, prior to wilderness. Considering that we had tried everything with him already, and considering he had already had a few close brushes with death and had begged us for help, I thought that a similar kind of wilderness experience might be more appropriate than a 30-day inpatient detox followed by yet another string of therapists, none of whom were likely to 'click' with him. There were times in his early phases of wilderness where he wished we would've just sent him to inpatient rehab. But by the time he was done, he was feeling very different about it. He was confident, physically and spiritually strong, and genuinely enjoying most aspects of the experience. He also has a newfound knowledge of and respect for the environment, and has become very interested in environmental activism. I can't find fault with any of that.

The most regrettable aspect of the whole thing, for me, was the coercion, which I understand is very un-therapeutic. My son can list a few other regrettable aspects, especially the sucky food, but he understands the coercion. We struggled a lot with that, considering there was a good chance he would agree to go willingly. He says in retrospect, that was probably the only way. He would've asked too many questions on the long trip to Utah and would've been really unhappy about the 7-week duration. Two or three weeks, sure. But 7 weeks was most of his summer vacation.

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You were a kid, don't you remember being one?


According to my wife, I'm still a teenager in a middle-aged body. I was definitely what many parents would consider "program material" when I was his age, but I grew out of some of the crazier shit I did back then. I don't wish for my son to be any different than he is -- rebelliousness and all. I don't even wish for him to have a substance-free lifestyle (hell, I don't!). I just didn't want to bury him before he was 18. That's so cliche, and 'program-speak' and all that, but in his case it really was a possibility, and one that we came close to facing more than once.

I can't credit the wilderness program with "saving" him, and I can't really say that he was completely unharmed by it. But he likes who he is today, he is not actively or passively trying to kill himself or putting his body in a state of extreme chemical distress, and he has hopes and plans for the future. Like all of us, he is the sum total of all his experiences, thoughts, ideas and beliefs. For better or worse, his wilderness experience is now a part of what has shaped him into who he is today.

Oddly, he is a lot more "ok" with that than I am.

180
The Troubled Teen Industry / Carlbrook
« on: December 28, 2006, 05:40:31 PM »
Quote from: ""Nihilanthic""
Nice little verbal outburst there..

Too bad all you've done is reinforce what our said, that wilderness is just the first stage in the TBS cash-cow-pipeline, and not show that they do anything but... get kids to go to programs.  :rofl:

I also find it funny you need 'aftercare' after 'therapy'. The only time I hear of 'aftercare' is after major surgery or a intense BDSM scene.


You exactly nailed the thing that first raised red flags for me, when I first heard phrases like "therapeutic boarding school" and "aftercare" coming from the therapists at wilderness. WTF? I thought. Only then did I discover the linkage between wilderness and TBS, the cash-cow-pipeline and some of the other nonsense that goes with this industry.

I also found it funny that you would need 'aftercare' after 'therapy.' But to my way of thinking at the time, wilderness was a desperate last resort to get him to take a good look around -- within and without -- and get himself some real therapy. Wilderness was an intervention, a wake-up call. It had some therapeutic elements to it, and some elements of boosting self-esteem, but it wasn't intended to be "the main course," so to speak. And like I said, TBS or RTC wasn't even something that was on the radar screen for us. Even if the cost were zero, that was simply not going to happen.

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