I really wish we could reach these kids with information before they get sent off, so we could equip them with the mental and emotional tools to resist the damage.
For example, many kids fall into the trap of cooperating with the program because they believe it will get them sent home earlier, particularly if they have a lot of time until they age out of program control.
The truth is that they're likely to be in the program until their parents run out of insurance or money. At that time, they're likely to go home no matter what their behavior in the program was like.
So with that being the case, the best way of surviving the program would be to play the game *except* the aspects of it that would do actual harm. To play the game except for abusing or reporting other kids, to play the game except for the seminars.
Yes, I know this isn't playing the game at all and will get the kid dropped or pressured----the point being that is going to happen anyway until the parents run out of money.
So playing the game, specifically including making up personal prior traumas, but not doing harm, gets the kid out of the most hassle for the least long term harm to the kid.
The best personal prior traumas to make up would be traumas that are verifiably (later) impossibly untrue. For example, Grandpa Joe dies when you're five and you allege he raped you when you were ten. The program will accept the made up trauma uncritically because it's what they want to hear. Yet, if they ever try to use it against the kid at a later date, the kid can prove it never happened and was made up to get the program off their back.
All intimate personal revelations to a therapist should be copious, made up, and untrue in verifiable ways---as verifiable as possible.
If we could only get the kids to plan ahead. I know that's against the nature of kids, but many of these kids are okay and just have freaky parents.
*sigh*
Julie
