Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality. In a way, this is inevitable with a wide variety of schools and treatment centers, and a yet wider variety of perspectives.
This particular story tells us little about these schools – it describes the perspective of a student, a client. This is valuable and I'm grateful to read it. However, I caution other readers against making assumptions about these institutions based on any given story.
I would know – I attended four of these schools. Some incredibly strict (even dehumanizing) and others a joy (one had season passes to the local ski resort). Most of them blended these two polarities. Students exhibited huge variation in responses, to the point that a listener hearing them describe their shared experiences would be certain they were discussing different places.
For example, some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week (I disagree). Other students thought it was totally fine to be required to wear hospital scrubs as a means of stigmatization (I also disagree). Almost no one questioned social isolation as punishment – perhaps the most incredible abuse I routinely witnessed and was subjected to, considering the developmental phase of adolescents. My point: it will take a mosaic of perspectives to really understand what's going on.
I also caution readers against abhorrence towards parents. Consider those not-rare parents who have tried everything to help a kid who is on the cusp of life in prison, undergoing their 8th overdose, or being repeatedly raped and subjected to prostitution/exploitation. Consider that many of these schools offer a greater education than what's locally available. Consider that some of these schools are effective and relatively safe.
A final note that I believe clouds this topic -> We live in a puritanical, punitive society. Even for non-religious people, we have been inculcated with ideals of purity and expectations of punishment. These delusions and biases cloud this topic.
My final guidance is to read these stories with an open mind. This author was truthful, and we should listen. The next story you hear will probably contradict it but also be truthful, and we should listen.
This all pretends like there’s somehow no causality to many of these kids being “difficult”. I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of control despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases.
My experience with friends who have gone to places like this is that the kids by and large were under extreme emotional neglect from a very early age, and visiting a “troubled teen” facility is that it catalyses and forever imprints a childhood completely filled with trauma. It destroys forever the possibility of a relationship with the parents. Kids are often not told where they were going or being rushed away in the middle of the night, with drill sergeants and harsh punishments and rural facilities designed to present escape. It’s psychological torture to “break” a child as one would a farm animal.
Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high.
> This all pretends like there’s somehow no causality to many of these kids being “difficult”.
I didn't get that from the above comment. They were just asking people to listen to the stories individually, and to consider that culture can influence the choices parents make. Parents' choices can be misguided, and as you say, they need guidance too.
> My experience with friends who have gone to places like this is that the kids by and large were under extreme emotional neglect from a very early age, and visiting a “troubled teen” facility is that it catalyses and forever imprints a childhood completely filled with trauma.
That may be. I don't think that disagrees with the above comment.
> I didn't get that from the above comment. They were just asking people to listen to the stories individually, and to consider that culture can influence the choices parents make. Parents' choices can be misguided, and as you say, they need guidance too.
I suppose I felt like it paints a fairly rosy picture of the "trouble teen" industry. "Resorts" with ski passes and mountain biking would seem to be the exception (and an extremely well heeled one at that) rather than the norm. I feel like in some ways the narratives that conservative "tough love" industries foist on parents is that their childrens emotions are unmanageable intrinsically rather than a relatively predictable outcome from parents who themselves were raised in a cycle of abusive and nullifying behavior.
That said there is a percentage of the bell curve of "troubled teens" who really did have a better than average upbringing in terms of getting physical and emotional needs met. The problem is that for many parents there's a self-perception that that number approaches 100%, when in fact its quite clear from the children's own experience that they were experiencing extreme levels of neglect. There's a vast gulf between the self perception of incompetent/traumatized parents and the actual needs of children, and I wanted to highlight that.
> I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases.
It seems wrong to single out environmental causes as dominant. There are parents with multiple children who all did fine except one. Anyway, we know it's a complicated mix of genetics and environment and either factor can be decisive.
> Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high.
Parents are much less sacrosanct in the US/UK than anywhere else.
No one actually knows how to raise children. We have decided to let parents experiment on their children and this seems correct to me. The more we mandate certain parenting techniques, the more it will become clear that the "science" behind child-rearing is not reliable. We'll be screwing up children uniformly instead of haphazardly. I think it's better to let parents do their best. This leaves us with some children who were over-disciplined and some who were under-disciplined and this is a better outcome than everyone being screwed up in the same way.
>> There are parents with multiple children who all did fine except one.
Isn't that highly subjective? I know of cases in which children literally broke with their parents. Two siblings turned out "fine" (social and parents definition), the one that broke with them didn't (parents' definition again). turned out the "troubled" one finished school on top of class (not that I would take that a true measure so) after leaving home aged 16, that kid actually did turned out more then fine IMHO. Working and helping kids with similar, and even harder, backgrounds is tough and valuable work.
The terms "troubled" and "fine" are highly subjective. And shouldn't be basis for any abusive measures. Unless they are illegal, in which case there are laws (which have to be revisited every once in a while. Also prisons seem to be better places then some of those tough love programs).
It's not subjective to say drug addicts, criminals, or people who died in drunk driving accidents didn't turn out well.
I think parents should implement "tough love" themselves as necessary and sending your child to one of these programs is, in general, a failure of parenting.
> Parents are much less sacrosanct in the US/UK than anywhere else.
By what measure? Cultural relevance or actual legal authority?
> No one actually knows how to raise children.
We have a much better idea now about how to meet the developmental needs of children than ever before, I think almost anyone would argue. We have studies on the outcomes of things like corporal punishment. We have the ACE study and it’s effects. So many other foundational developmental science has been done in the last 30 years.
> I think it's better to let parents do their best. This leaves us with some children who were over-disciplined and some who were under-disciplined and this is a better outcome than everyone being screwed up in the same way.
I certainly won’t argue against that but I would argue that having people have at least a cursory education on child rearing might be something that would help. As a survivor of abuse it’s very difficult to allow for the idea that nothing further could be done for kids in similar positions.
> By what measure? Cultural relevance or actual legal authority?
Both. Wales made corporeal punishment illegal recently. That would be unthinkable in most of the world. In most Asian cultures, children have a lifelong obligation to their parents. In the US, once you're an adult, you're on your own and it's not uncommon to have limited contact with your parents.
> We have a much better idea now about how to meet the developmental needs of children than ever before, I think almost anyone would argue. We have studies on the outcomes of things like corporal punishment. We have the ACE study and it’s effects. So many other foundational developmental science has been done in the last 30 years.
We might know more than we used to but we know very little. I suspect the vast majority of these studies have no predictive power.
> I certainly won’t argue against that but I would argue that having people have at least a cursory education on child rearing might be something that would help. As a survivor of abuse it’s very difficult to allow for the idea that nothing further could be done for kids in similar positions.
I think your experience ("survivor of abuse") probably informs your views more than supposed advances in science of child development. And the same is true for me: the fact that my parents were/are wonderful and my father hit me occasionally explains my views here.
There is such a thing as abuse, it should be illegal, and it's a serious problem. But we're in danger of demonizing discipline and reasonable physical punishment. My experience is that discipline and love aren't opposites, they should coexist and when you don't have one, you're going to have trouble.
> Both. Wales made corporeal punishment illegal recently. That would be unthinkable in most of the world. In most Asian cultures, children have a lifelong obligation to their parents. In the US, once you're an adult, you're on your own and it's not uncommon to have limited contact with your parents.
Isn’t this the parents rather than the kids? Parents who expect their children to take care of them even in Asia may tend to treat their children better.
> We might know more than we used to but we know very little. I suspect the vast majority of these studies have no predictive power.
Look up the outcomes of the ACE study, it’s one of the most predictive statistical studies ever created when it comes to many outcomes, including premature death, substance abuse, imprisonment and even bodily health outcomes. It’s extremely important.
> And the same is true for me: the fact that my parents were/are wonderful and my father hit me occasionally explains my views here.
Studies have shown that hitting children either is neutral or harmful. That it was neutral doesn’t mean on measure it’s not tending towards harmful. The more a child is hit the more developmental problems arise. Nearly any cohort controlling for other factors, striking a child has worse outcomes. There is data to back this up.
> But we're in danger of demonizing discipline and reasonable physical punishment.
Let’s not conflate the two. A time out is not the same as teaching a child they will be hit if they don’t obey. Parental authority is not infallible.
> My experience is that discipline and love aren't opposites, they should coexist and when you don't have one, you're going to have trouble.
I agree with this point and am not arguing for no discipline. The context of this thread is being labeled a troubled teen and being forced to go to a “discipline” prison.
>Wales made corporeal punishment illegal recently. That would be unthinkable in most of the world. In most Asian cultures, children have a lifelong obligation to their parents.
China banned corporal punishment during the communist revolution of 1949, and is about to enact new laws that strengthen enforcement in rural areas and send offending parents to reeducation facilities. Japan banned it in 1947, and passed another law more explicitly banning it in 2020.
Still you are right in that compared to most of the world, the US/UK gives less authority to parents. But compared to other developed countries with similar GDP, they are still very traditional.
>the fact that my parents were/are wonderful and my father hit me occasionally explains my views here.
I'm sure many people have the same experience, but frankly I don't understand why this would lead you to conclude that hitting a child is reasonable. People cannot be divided into "good people" and "abusers"; everyone is capable of both types of behavior under the right circumstances. We can always use more research, but we have studied this topic enough that you should not be relying so much on personal anecdotal experience instead of peer reviewed research. We have large, well controlled studies that consistently show that corporal punishment contributes to developmental problems and is an ineffective method of promoting good behavior.
Answer me this: is there any type of evidence you would accept? If you were to design a study to determine whether corporal punishment is helpful or harmful, what method would you use? How big would the study have to be? How strong of a correlation would you need to see to believe it?
Do you really think these studies are "well-controlled"? If the studies showed the opposite result, would your opinion be different?
> Answer me this: is there any type of evidence you would accept? If you were to design a study to determine whether corporal punishment is helpful or harmful, what method would you use? How big would the study have to be? How strong of a correlation would you need to see to believe it?
If some mad scientist does an interventional study I would take that seriously. Can't happen, of course.
I'm not "in favor of corporeal punishment". I just don't accept the evidence that it's bad. I don't think questions like this are answerable with observational studies. Like my original post said, my view is that parents are inevitably going to experiment on their kids and that's the way it should be. There's a line somewhere, but spanking isn't over it.
> We have studies on the outcomes of things like corporal punishment
Really, though, if you understand what a study is, and the principles it must live up to to avoid inaccurate conclusions, wouldn’t you have to say that the effects of corporal punishment is almost impossible to study?
To do it right they’d need to get rick and mortys help to bounce between dimensions.
(I am sorry you suffered abuse, and I too wish more could be done to stop it).
I'm not saying anything is infallible, but the vast majority of what we know around corporal punishment is that it is ultimately harmful for everything other than obedience. It elicits aggressive behaviors in the children.
I have a question. Do these programs exist in other countries? A cursory search (I honestly am not sure what I should be looking for) couldn't find any here in Australia. Is this a uniquely American thing? Surely not, I assume. If it's not, do these programs have the same horrible stories coming out of them elsewhere, and if they don't, does that not paint a picture that the approach taken in the US isn't a good one?
I freely admit to being pretty ignorant about all this. I do not have the best view on these "programs" though, from everything I've seen.
Yes, they exist in India. The usual purpose is to force kids to study.
India has coaching centres which are worse than jails for kids where they are coached to crack JEE (Elite college entrance exam) and other competitive exams.
You can find all sort of abuse happening in these.
Stack class ranking, subtle gender separation, and some verbal & physical abuse is common in most schools outside of few urban centres though.
Public stripping and getting kids dehydrated outside in hot temperatures was a thing few years ago but it might have stopped now, I hope.
A very common theme is the utter discard of any "growth mindset". And students are increasingly not only ranked within the same class, but thereon the classes themselves are ranked - where the best instructors are assigned to the best classes -> students. The ultimate incentive here for the school is to land 5-10 very smart students that will "top" the national exams bringing pride and most importantly, a lot of applications to the institution.
YMMV as the thread states, but it is undeniably a feature of these schools.
These are quite different in spirit to the kind of schools that OP posted. Parents aren't sending their kids to the coaching centres to straighten them out. They all want their kids to do well in studies, and unfortunately, this is all they care about. In some sense, these schools are like boarding schools; some kids shine, some get traumatised for life.
Seemed scary at first to me (for example, they only allow a single 10-minute phone call per week to friends and family during your stay, and religion + teens makes me think of the Christian Brotherhood shit), but people swear by it on Reddit.
The latest episode of Darknet Diaries[0] talks about Adam being sent to a Behavior School in Australia, so they do exist in Australia and this is not a US only idea. Therapeutic Boarding School[1] is also a term used to describe them.
I france, this allegedly doesn't exist, but we have some private schools that use some of the tactics GP and OP describe (especially isolement). Mostly highschools aimed to late teens, "luckily".
They might do better on test, so there is that, but they also have classes of 20 max, unlike most public and most other private but les stringent schools. I think this is 90% of their success (i can elaborate on that but this is personnal anecdata, not a all something to be taken seriously)
>Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive.
I don't disagree, but also consider the entire picture. Some of these people end up being the ones that get raging drunk, and into head on collision with a family of 4 killing them all. How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?
> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?
Surely not by preemptive incarceration.
GP said:
> Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive.
I don't agree. Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed.
This kid was surely troubled; but why? He didn't talk much about how his parents treated him. All we know is that their response to the trouble was to dump him in an institution. My guess is that his behaviour was a rational response to being brought up in a home where he was denied love and affection.
> My guess is that his behaviour was a rational response to being brought up in a home where he was denied love and affection.
I wish this were always the case but statistically this would be a miracle. There is a non zero number of humans born that no matter what we do they will not work with the society that works for the rest of us.
That’s the root of this issue. How do you help the ones that can be helped, and what do you do with those that can’t be helped. I imagine we’ll need a much more sophisticated understanding of genetics before we can answer that.
You know who else tried to predict future compatibility of certain people based on genetics? We are as much a product of our genes as we are of our environment. Nothing justifies any of those measures described in the NYYT article and by others in this thread. Nothing, period. If people commit crimes, we have a justice system (no matter how fucked up those can be, not even talking about prisons). For those truly having mental and psychiatric issues, we have corresponding hospitals (again, those can be, and are, pretty abusive themselves). And none of those should be above critical investigations.
As a society we have to accept that some people don't want to cooperate. As long as nobody is harmed (up to the justice system to decide) we have to accept that too.
> Don’t our genes dictate how we respond to our environment?
"Dictate" is much too strong. Genetics and environment interact in complex ways, that aren't well understood.
I detest the idea that some people are just bad, and were always going to be bad. It seems to be an idea that attracts religious fundamentalists. I struggle with the idea that literally all psychological problems are the result of trauma; but I do think most of them are.
Some kids seem to be able to largely shake off trauma on their own; others need help. My guess is that it's much harder to help a 30-year-old deal with childhood trauma than it is a 12-year-old. But that doesn't mean the 30-year-old is "bad to the bone".
>I detest the idea that some people are just bad, and were always going to be bad.
I think some people (children really) have a propensity to be bad, but it can be corrected. When and how it's corrected has a lot to do with success. It has to be worked on early and properly, or it could make the problem worse. Like you I'm not comfortable with the idea that any child is irredeemable.
>I struggle with the idea that literally all psychological problems are the result of trauma; but I do think most of them are.
I agree, much of it is trauma, but some of it isn't. I think drug and alcohol dependence seems to be passed down quite a bit, which is also a significant source of detrimental behavior. I have it in my family but it seems to have dodged me.
>I think some people (children really) have a propensity to be bad
That's... incredibly simplistic. When you're describing actions as good or bad you've already lost the truth.
A child can have poorly informed priorities. They can be sociopathic. But if your local government is experiencing an armed revolution, you're going to envy that lack of care for society.
Blanket characterizations like 'bad' and 'good' might have been useful in the third grade, but accurate and specific diagnoses that bring accurate and specific treatments are the only way to solve this problem.
>You know who else tried to predict future compatibility of certain people based on genetics?
Jesus, a Hitler reference? Lots of organizations that aren't Hitler diagnose behavior based on genetics, including alcohol and drug abuse prevention and modern medicine. Your parents have cancer? Well predictively you might have a higher chance of getting it too. Your parents are smart? We should test you for the gifted program.
>Nothing justifies any of those measures described in the NYYT article and by others in this thread. Nothing, period.
Nobody is justifying it, read what you are replying to.
>As a society we have to accept that some people don't want to cooperate. As long as nobody is harmed (up to the justice system to decide) we have to accept that too.
Most of the time people are harmed, not just the troubled individual but the family of 4 they crash into and kill on a drunken joyride. What tools do parents have to prevent that? That's the whole point of the discussion.
>> Most of the time people are harmed, not just the troubled individual but the family of 4 they crash into and kill on a drunken joyride. What tools do parents have to prevent that? That's the whole point of the discussion.
Answer: None. Because it can happen, all the time. Whether those kids are 16, 18, 25 or 53. Also, it is a pretty specific example...
EDIT: Just because it hits home, genetic prevalence of cancer is something completely different from behavior and how people work in a society. Don't even think of comparing those. The former is your body turning on you, the latter is society deciding you are "troubled" and need "fixing".
>Just because it hits home, genetic prevalence of cancer is something completely different from behavior and how people work in a society.
>You know who else tried to predict future compatibility of certain people based on genetics?
Both can be predicted genetically. You insinuated predicting outcomes in genetics was bad somehow because Hitler did it. It wasn't a great argument, you should just own up to it.
≥Don't even think of comparing those.
You ain't my daddy. You think you're the only person with experience with cancer? Everybody, and I mean everybody has a cross to bear.
>The former is your body turning on you, the latter is society deciding you are "troubled" and need "fixing".
You shouldn't minimize mental health issues, many of these troubles can be the result of that, at least in part. Killing a family of 4 in a drunken joyride isn't just society deciding you are troubled, it has real world consequences. You seem to have some emotional block to thinking about this rationally.
For risking a pointless dispute on forum, I'll comment one more time. No, I didn't make a Hitler comparison. Owning up to it? Sure, look up the history eugenics, its use through history and you'll find that the Nazi's use of it was the worst but by no means the only or first occasion where this approach (it doesn't matter that we can analyze genomes now) utterly failed.
And no, future compatibility with society cannot be judged on genetics, hell we have hard times predicting stuff like cancer and other diseases based on genetics. And those are much more driven by genetics than behavior. Using proven things like cancer to justify BS theories like "eugenics" is, IMHO, unacceptable.
I have no emotional block whatsoever, at least none that I'm diagnosed with. Drunk driving happens, reckless driving happens, people die in accidents. The solution there is driver training, strict rules around legal alcohol and drug limits. None of these will prevent those accidents from happening. Because you don't have to be "troubled" (how I hate that attribute...) to drive drunk and kill a family of 4 (or whatever number you can think of). One bad decision is enough.
Generally speaking so, if Hitler thought something is a good idea I think it is fair to assume it wasn't until deliberate analysis showed otherwise.
Why did you even bring it up then? Nobody from my comment down was talking about eugenics that I can see, until you introduced it to the discussion. It's like you are arguing against an imaginary person in your head.
This is the comment you replied to with your eugenics/not-Hitler argument:
>I wish this were always the case but statistically this would be a miracle. There is a non zero number of humans born that no matter what we do they will not work with the society that works for the rest of us.
>That’s the root of this issue. How do you help the ones that can be helped, and what do you do with those that can’t be helped. I imagine we’ll need a much more sophisticated understanding of genetics before we can answer that.
What does eugenics have to do with that comment?
>future compatibility with society cannot be judged on genetics
Nobody said this but you.
>Using proven things like cancer to justify BS theories like "eugenics" is, IMHO, unacceptable.
Nobody said this either. Who are you even arguing with?
>Because you don't have to be "troubled" (how I hate that attribute...) to drive drunk and kill a family of 4 (or whatever number you can think of). One bad decision is enough.
No, but I would argue people with "troubled" childhoods have a much higher propensity to cause societal damage like killing a family of 4 in a drunken joyride.
You are either trolling, or not mentally present. Either way, please refrain from commenting further.
In case of the latter:
>What does eugenics have to do with that comment?
rajin444 is stating that an understanding of genetics would allow us to rehabilitate people that "will not work with the society that works for the rest of us." This implies that socially desirable behavior can be genetically coded, which has been debunked by the failure of eugenics.
>>future compatibility with society cannot be judged on genetics
>Nobody said this but you.
You had said in a previous comment:
>>Just because it hits home, genetic prevalence of cancer is something completely different from behavior and how people work in a society.
>>You know who else tried to predict future compatibility of certain people based on genetics?
>Both can be predicted genetically.
Which implies that you think future compatability can be judged by genetics.
>>Using proven things like cancer to justify BS theories like "eugenics" is, IMHO, unacceptable.
>Nobody said this either. Who are you even arguing with?
You commented this earlier:
>Your parents have cancer? Well predictively you might have a higher chance of getting it too. Your parents are smart? We should test you for the gifted program.
In this comment, you explicitly compare the use of genetics in a.) cancer and b.) screening for intelligence.
I am inclined to think that you are trolling, especially considering that you are repeatedly using an appeal to emotion in the form of a hypothetical traumatic event. Please stop.
>> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?
>Surely not by preemptive incarceration.
You aren't suggesting any solutions.
>Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive.
You shouldn't dilute the term abusive like that.
>In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed.
I don't think you have kids, you're looking at it from the child's perspective, not a parent's. You haven't really promoted any solutions, just saying things you shouldn't do, leaving a parent with zero tools whatsoever other than to just let the kid be wild. I've seen the results of that, it's quite destructive as well. It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to raise children, and at least in the US, they get zero help and mostly criticism for how they do it, mostly from people who don't have children themselves.
What do you do if you suspect your child is the next Adam Lanza? What do you do if you are as financially constrained and have nearly zero help as a parent in the US? Some variation of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps?"
I'm not a child psychotherapist (but I was married to one). But I believe that in the case of children, and possibly with adults too, providing a warm, supportive environment for the subject to explore their feelings and behaviour is at least part of a solution.
> You shouldn't dilute the term abusive like that.
What's your threshold for calling something "abuse"? At my school we had to play Rugby Union. In one year, several kids in my class were hospitalised with gashes caused by metal boot-studs in the scrum. My son had flat feet; running literally caused him pain.
> I don't think you have kids
I think you think too much. I have two adult kids, and two grandchildren.
> just saying things you shouldn't do, leaving a parent with zero tools
Well, the subject is the consequences of using incarceration as your parenting tool, so that's not surprising.
I'm not suggesting that parenting is easy. And I'm certainly not going to point at some doctrine or methodology, and say "everyone should do it this way". People are people, and they're all different. There's no "right way" of dealing with people. But neglecting children, and then punishing them because they act up, is the "wrong way".
> This particular story tells us little about these schools – it describes the perspective of a student, a client.
Accounts of people who were clients or experienced X tell a lot about X. Not a little. When we take accounts of people who experienced it as a little, that ia when we are missing the most important perspective. And that is when abuses escalate.
Yes, good experience matters as múch as bad ones. But bad ones dont tell "a little".
> help a kid who is on the cusp of life in prison, undergoing their 8th overdose, or being repeatedly raped and subjected to prostitution/exploitation
One of these things is not like the others. One of them is much more likely to happen in an institution.
>it describes the perspective of a student, a client.
The student is not the client. The student didn't pay for it. The student didn't ask to be there. The student isn't the one for whom incentives and interests align.
It's an interesting doublespeak to use for someone who is effectively interred - a prisoner, basically, but extralegal in that they weren't convicted to them. I think anyway, I'm sure there's plenty of these camps that actually are court mandated.
> I'm sure there's plenty of these camps that actually are court mandated.
That may be, but in those cases you would be talking about behavior problems that resulted in problems with the law, trial, guilt and conviction.
Those cases are per definition a sub-set of the much larger group of people that are innocent, don't get in trouble with the law, don't go to trial, aren't convicted, but still are sent to these internment facilities.
If these facilities were limited to kids that are actually mandated by court to go there, then it would be a VERY different story.
> Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality.
Why do you say that, and then why is your story different in that respect?
We cannot, in the face of evil-doing, remain forever in a state of hesitation, saying 'we don't know'. We need think critically, accept our uncertainty, and yet at times draw conclusions and act.
> For example, some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week
Those are strawpersons. Who is saying it? It is not at all what is described in the OP or in the other stories by HN commenters.
> The next story you hear will probably contradict it but also be truthful, and we should listen.
The stories here in this HN discussion agree with the OP.
I have a difficult time understanding this. I was a kid that was rebellious, but in a way that didn't get me in trouble. When I read stories like this I get an intense feeling of fighting back, or at the very least, hold everyone that participated in contempt for the rest of my life. I am certain that if my parents had done something like this I would never have forgiven them. Nor would I have forgiven anyone that works in a place like this.
> I was reckless, taking my mom’s car out for joy rides without permission, skipping class
That may be after 16 years of doing outrageous things to get attention at home.
Some psychologists in the 1950s [1] suggested kids will do whatever gets them attention while striving for a way to participate in the family. That can include bad behavior. If they don't receive attention for good behavior, then they can gradually find their way towards things that will definitely get attention, like getting into mom's makeup, throwing around food or dirty diapers or whatever. Today, many psychologists suggest using positive discipline [2] to reinforce good behavior while weaning bad behaviors.
Often a family might have one "good" kid who excels in school while another struggles. Why is that? Aforementioned psychologists suggest it is because each kid finds a way to "stand out" in their family, and families who dote on the good child may reinforce the chosen behavior of both children.
In your case, maybe your family did effectively use positive discipline, or you were an only child, or you were the "good" one in your family.
One thing I’ve learned at this point is that almost l no kid or adult is actually irrational.
If someone seems irrational, it’s because their shoes are so different from any that you’ve been in. You simply have never experienced anything like their life (because if you did, you’d be like them).
And you can’t actually ask someone to explain their own behavior because everyone only lives one life and they rarely know in what way their shoes are different from someone else’s.
This goes along with my own observation that when someone you just met says "I'm a really fucked up person," you should believe them no matter how attractive they are.
Heh. Yeah, avoid it. One girl who said that to me killed herself by hanging a couple years later with an electrical cord in the backyard of a rehab facility. And the girl after her who said something similar is in rehab now. Ain't no joke. I think when people say that jokingly, they know something I don't. I appreciated the honesty I thought they were giving me, but I was too young to realize how seriously they meant it. I don't even know if they thought they were being serious. But they knew.
I'm a dude who thinks about intentionally walking into propellers or windmills to take my face off, and turn into a fine red mist. So it's not totally weird I'd date women with suicidal tendencies. But yeah, if you say that kind of shit out loud, it's usually coming from somewhere true. I'm a pretty fucked up person. I'm trying with all my strength not to be one, to the people who matter to me and the people who count on me. But recognizing the dark ones so they don't fuck with you is essential to survival.
> you can’t actually ask someone to explain their own behavior
Yeah I think that's best done with a therapist who will take time to guide someone through their past. Asking a kid why they acted out, or an adult why they did something crazy, is almost rhetorical. They're not going to know the answer without a deep dive into how they grew up.
OTOH it's a little shocking if you actually ask people and get them to think about it. Like, my friend's 8 year old kid was always hitting his 6 year old sister, so [my friend, the mom] would hit him and punish him when he did it. I said did you ever ask him what he thought his sister felt when he did that to her? So next time he hit his sister, my friend sat him down and said "What do you think that felt like to her, being hit by her older brother?" And didn't let it go, she demanded an answer. The boy was dead silent for about a minute and then buckled and apologized, and apparently hasn't hit his sister since then. The mom thanked me when I saw her and says she never would have thought of that approach. Far be it from my childless ass to give parenting advice. She's a very, very smart woman. But I think we too often think of self-reflection as some kind of adult thing we can't do on our own, or need deep therapy for, when sometimes someone just holding up a mirror to you can do it in an instant.
Some psychologists suggest that kids fight because they subconsciously know it gets their parents' attention. So when a parent breaks up fights it can unintentionally reinforce that behavior.
>If someone seems irrational, it’s because their shoes are so different from any that you’ve been in. You simply have never experienced anything like their life (because if you did, you’d be like them).
I disagree with this. As an example, a video came out the other day of a Chicago Transit Authority employee getting into an altercation with some guy. "Some guy" pushed him to the ground and walked away. The employee very slowly (he was quite obese) rose to his feet, pulled a gun, walked after the guy, and then shot 14 times hitting him 3 times. In short, he murdered the guy on video in the middle of a crowded station. There's no way that's not irrational behavior.
You can be 100% rational but 100% wrong. A computer is 100% rational but whether the output is right or wrong depends entirely on its input.
I make this distinction because if you want to change someone's mind or behavior, assuming that they are irrational is a non-starter. You won't make any progress. Once you get past that, you realize that they are actually being rational and that there are deeper obstacles that need attention.
I think the parent commenter is suggesting that employee may have experienced some past trauma before that event. None of that excuses the behavior, nor does it excuse them from the consequences. Also, I would not call it "rational". I think that comment is just saying the hate could come from some past incident, and that it can be helpful for society to know the roots of violent behavior.
> I disagree with this. As an example, a video came out the other day of a Chicago Transit Authority employee getting into an altercation with some guy. "Some guy" pushed him to the ground and walked away. The employee very slowly (he was quite obese) rose to his feet, pulled a gun, walked after the guy, and then shot 14 times hitting him 3 times. In short, he murdered the guy on video in the middle of a crowded station. There's no way that's not irrational behavior.
"If someone seems irrational, it's because you don't understand the person"
"Thats not true, because I didn't understand why somebody did something, so he must be irrational."
IDK if you know what circular reasoning is, but you're suffering from it.
The video in your example doesn't fully explain the situation. You don't know these people, you don't know what happened before, you don't know if they know each other, you don't know what the other guy said/etc.
I personally don't know what the circumstances are, but I do at least admit, that in the infinite amount of possible circumstances there are at least a couple which allow for a sane/rational person to shoot somebody in broad daylight.
> There's no way that's not irrational behavior.
There's a book called 'Thinking fast & slow' that talks about questions like these. "Is someone's behavior rational?", is a very hard question to answer for your brain, unanswerable even. Still your brain quickly comes up with an answer: 'it's irrational', disregarding the fact that this by itself might arguably be irrational, how does the brain do this? What is this answer based on exactly?
To answer hard questions quickly like that, your brain has a trick: it doesn't actually answer THAT question, but secretly gives the answer to a different question, that merely looks a lot like the original question. In this case, I suspect your brain is actually answering: "If I had an altercation on a crowded station, and somebody pushes me to the ground, WOULD I slowly get up, draw a gun, and shoot the guy 14 times?" The answer is no, so the 'answer' to the question is this guy being rational is also 'no'.
So basically your brain is transplanting your own experience, your own set of learned behavior, yourself, into the situation that you saw in the video, and then decides: "Well, I wouldn't do that, so conclusion: this guy is crazy". But ofcourse out of all the possible upbringings, experiences, lifes you could have, you only have 1. So you will never truly know how it is to be someone else.
The only way to know if the shooter in your video was rational or not, is to ask why he did it.
>"If someone seems irrational, it's because you don't understand the person" "Thats not true, because I didn't understand why somebody did something, so he must be irrational."
Who said I didn't understand why the guy shot him? I certainly didn't.
>To answer hard questions quickly like that, your brain has a trick: it doesn't actually answer THAT question, but secretly gives the answer to a different question, that merely looks a lot like the original question. In this case, I suspect your brain is actually answering: "If I had an altercation on a crowded station, and somebody pushes me to the ground, WOULD I slowly get up, draw a gun, and shoot the guy 14 times?" The answer is no, so the 'answer' to the question is this guy being rational is also 'no'.
Uh, no that's not what I did.
>I personally don't know what the circumstances are, but I do at least admit, that in the infinite amount of possible circumstances there are at least a couple which allow for a sane/rational person to shoot somebody in broad dayligh
I’m probably a rare person because I can and do understand other people and myself to the level they aren’t foreign to me.
What I’ve noticed is all humans seem to operate on the same frameworks. It’s just filtered through their nature and experiences. Mental illness is just another filter.
Maybe it’s because my bipolar brain has a lot of hard, untreated mileage in it. I’ve experienced so many emotional and mental states that there is little I find difficult to relate to.
> taking my mom’s car out for joy rides without permission, skipping class
Those are all just "things that kids do", or they used to be some years ago, pretty sad that "skipping classes" has transformed into a "reckless" thing that risks getting you, as a kid, quasi-institutionalised.
It's not to be normalised though. I sorta-knew a kid like that (he ended up living at his grandma across from our street after his family fell apart due to marital reasons); he was also mid teens or so and went joyriding in her car. Which nobody would probably find out or care about, but he ended up parking it against a tree if you catch my drift. He was unharmed thankfully, but it could have ended badly.
It might be "things that kids do", but it shouldn't be normalized or tolerated. Especially children, there's a lot of things that, until they can understand themselves, they need to be Told. How many things did you (dear reader) do growing up that, in hindsight, you think "wow that was stupid / reckless / I could've died"?
>"Today, many psychologists suggest using positive discipline"
From Wikipedia:
>"It is based on the idea that there are no bad children, just good and bad behaviors."
Given the fact that we've known for decades now that behaviour is roughly 50% nature (and 50% nurture), this foundational (implied) premise is unequivocally and demonstrably incorrect. Some children are "bad" and need to be taught not to hurt others. This parenting style is growing in popularity and I don't think it's a surprise that we now see an epidemic of kids with mental health problems.
Children certainly need boundaries and rules. They need corrective measures when children rebel. I think it's clear that a lack of negative punishment is leading to all kinds of negative outcomes for children.
> Some children are "bad" and need to be taught not to hurt others.
The title of this post is relevant. OP "obliged" because he was told he was bad. The point is to not do that.
> Children certainly need boundaries and rules
Rules are paramount in "Positive Disipline". From the section "Creating Rules" [1]:
> In her book entitled Positive Discipline, Jane Nelsen emphasizes the importance of not only creating clear rules, but of making them fair...
Positive discipline is anything but permissive parenting. The point of the statement you quoted is simply that all kids can be guided towards good behavior, because as you said, nurture and nature both contribute.
> I think it's clear that a lack of negative punishment is leading to all kinds of negative outcomes for children.
To each their own, but I agree with Dreikurs that natural consequences are enough to teach kids the lessons they need to learn. Forgot your lunch money? Figure it out. Maybe it's hard to convince your kid to brush their teeth because the consequences are so far in the future, but if you take a moment to explain the importance of healthy teeth, they will hear you. The idea is to build a forthright, trusting relationship with kids so they feel comfortable coming to you with the harder problems later. I'd argue that using harsher measures pushes kids away so that when they do struggle with more advanced concepts later, they feel left adrift. On the other hand, if your parents were "tough" with you and you still have a good relationship then maybe that works for you.
I appreciate your response and I apologize for the brevity of this one, but I worry that pretty much everything in the second half of your comments is based on a highly-idealized perspective of the situation.
What if you try and be fair with a kid and they just never understand fairness? What do you do if you need the kid to follow rules so they don’t get in trouble? What are the “natural consequences” for a kid who keeps hitting his classmates on the playground? Law of the jungle?
> What are the “natural consequences” for a kid who keeps hitting his classmates on the playground?
My little brother did that, he was like 6 or 7. My father pulled him from school for a week, brought him to work. At the time he was a social worker, finding jobs for excluded people and helping reinsertion through work, in a rural area (not as rural as some areas in the US, but very rural for western Europe). Gave him some books, pens and blanck sheet to draw, took him to lunch, probably had him "work" a little (he did basically the same to me when i was 14, only it was only work). He also send him to judo classes. Worked pretty well i'd say.
It wasn't a punishment, it was more of a "timeout". Also, all kids understand fairness, they just don't always have the same understanding. You just have to explain it, before the act. You can't say "don't hit people" to a kid and expect him to understand, ESPECIALLY if he has been hit before. Also, this would have been a lie, as he can hit people. And to teach how, when, why and why not hit people, a martial art teacher is probably better equiped than a pacifist father.
> What if you try and be fair with a kid and they just never understand fairness?
If that's your kid, speak to a therapist. There's definitely more to good parenting than a single concept, and more than anyone could relate on HN. By mentioning natural consequences and positive discipline, I'm only introducing topics which are described in more detail in books. I mentioned natural consequences specifically as an alternative to punishment which I don't think works. Adlerian psychology suggests misbehaving kids subconsciously want to be punished because that's how they learned to get attention. By the time they're adults, they act out all the time as a matter of habit.
For my style of positive parenting a lot of it comes down to clearly illustrating for my kids that they enjoy many privileges around the house. These privileges are conditional on their behaviour in the house. That is basically the foundation and then it’s positive parenting on top of that with privileges lost when necessary. All lost privileges or up for debate and negotiation, there is no confusion or all mighty authority.
This comment is not based on reality. It's laughable, really. There are kids who cannot be reasoned with. You try to explain the importance of healthy teeth to troubled teen and they will respond "I don't care".
"Natural consequences" are not sufficient. A troubled kid will drink himself into the hospital over and over. A troubled kid will have run ins with the law over and over.
Assuming they really are troublesome, that justifies torturing them into compliance? On which legal ground are they basically imprisoned?
If they are so troublesome that they are a continuous threat to society (e.g. murders or serial sex offenders), there are legal ways to get them into psychiatric clinics (those means are easily abused as well so). If they are not, well, in a free society you cannot prevent people from ruining their own lives.
Most "troublesome" kids, so, are nowhere even close to these categories. And if they turn out to have really troubled lives after wards (e.g. drug abuse and everything that comes with it), I'd say most of that was caused by the "treatment" they received previously.
just to take your example of a drinking teen (being German my threshold for that would be considerably higher then the US one at that), how do you think such a teen, with already existing problems of substance abuse, would behave after going through months or years of mental and physical abuse? Turning sober? Or falling deeper into that hole?
I'm puzzled that I even have to argue against a system that, as was proven time and again, results in very serious child abuse.
I have seen limited success of real mental health institutions (nothing like the camps in TFA, obviously). I have also seen rehab work pretty well when substance abuse is involved.
The most effective method, though, is time. The author of the article is one example, and there are many more in these comments. Eventually, the teenage brain becomes an adult brain and a lot of the rage, impulsiveness, and destructive behaviors go away. (Most) people mature eventually. The key is to try to limit the damage of the "troubled" phase. If you end up going to jail in your teenage years because you act out, you're going to have a much harder time building a life for yourself later on.
Rather than waiting I'd suggest families try to find a therapist they can all visit for counseling together. There may be a broken relationship in a kid's past that can be mended, and that won't happen without understanding where the problem began. The kid isn't going to be able to tell you offhand where he went off the rails. It takes time to build a trusting relationship and share traumatizing stories.
> The author of the article is one example
It seems presumptuous to conclude the author never went to therapy or did not have further discussions with his parents that helped him move past the trauma. Maybe he says more in his book [1].
> there are many more in these comments
I haven't seen any suggest that waiting for time to pass is a solution for years of feeling "a blur of misanthropy".
> The key is to try to limit the damage of the "troubled" phase. If you end up going to jail in your teenage years because you act out, you're going to have a much harder time building a life for yourself later on.
It almost sounds like you would suggest parents bail their kids out of trouble so the system doesn't mark them as "bad". Maybe you're not saying that (if not, how would you "limit the damage"?). Anyway, I think parents covering up their kids' behavior, thinking it's just a phase, is exactly what gets kids into this pattern. People don't grow out of habits, they grow into them.
Yes and yes, of course I do! I've learned a ton from this discipline and never need to raise my voice with my kid. When I do raise my voice, it is almost always unnecessary. I apologize in those cases because I want her to know we can recover from mistakes and that it is okay to be upset. Our relationship is stronger for it.
Kudos, then, I try and fail at being the parent I want more often than I care to admit.
What ever makes our children human beings able to show compassion with others, and stay safe as soon as they have to live their lives on their own feet, is good parenting. Everything else is secondary. Same as the most important thing with new born toddlers is "are they healthy?".
Haha right, failure is part of parenting. Admit it! Even to your kids. You're a better parent for it, and it doesn't mean you're giving up. It just gives you a way to backtrack and avoid painting yourself into a corner.
And yes, if you already have a parenting style that works, stick with it. I mention Positive Discipline because it works for me and there are a lot of resources for it.
Fair enough! Positive Discipline wouldn't be my go-to approach (no formalized, available in book form would be by the way), so. I stick with Space Cowboys: "Lord, don't let us screw up." Not screwing up your kids is already high enough a bar. if they come out on the other end as decent human beings able to live their own lives that's all I can hope for.
So far so good, but then the rough teenage years are still ahead of us!
Ah, I love the books. Dreikurs made a career out of interviewing kids and training teachers, so I feel like I experience a lifetime of wisdom while reading his books. That said there is no substitute for thinking on your feet.
It's the thinking on your feet part that get's you in hot water as a parent. Especially when the timing is bad, your already exhausted and stressed out and should still act as the "adult".
As you said, saying you're sorry helps a lot. Not having it happen to often as well. And as long as it's not abusive (as subjective as that might be) it is, to some maybe cruel extend, part of training for life. It's also borderline bad parenting. Usually I care a lot more about results and effects then intent, when it comes to parenting and relationships in general intent plays a huge role so.
With one of our three kids, everything from those nicey-nice parenting books works perfectly, and always has. It goes exactly how the books say it will. It's wonderful, and so damn easy.
Sounds like you have a typical family where each kid has found a way to get your attention. Positive Discipline suggests you likely dote on the one who is well behaved, while the other two primarily receive attention in the form of "why can't you be more like Matt?" Or, when they do improve, they don't get any attention for it because it's not up to what Matt could or would do. How accurate does that sound for your family?
The starting suggestion positive discipline might have is to block out some one-on-one time in the week, one parent with one misbehaving kid, even if it's just for an hour each. Then you are fulfilling their need for a connection in a positive way. You may see each other in a different light and even discover new strengths and contributions to the family. The idea is their need to get your attention by misbehaving will decrease over time.
The one who's easy is the youngest. I assure you the first born got a lot more positive 1-on-1 attention.
[EDIT] Also:
> The starting suggestion positive discipline might have is to block out some one-on-one time in the week, one parent with one misbehaving kid, even if it's just for an hour each. Then you are fulfilling their need for a connection in a positive way. You may see each other in a different light and even discover new strengths and contributions to the family. The idea is their need to get your attention by misbehaving will decrease over time.
Yes, we've been doing that for years, of course. It is partially effective, at very, very high levels of time committed. Effective enough we can tell when we've not been doing enough. I'd say it closes the gap between the easiest kid and the most difficult by maybe 20% on a perfect week.
I'm a parent. I didn't use any approach; like every first-time parent, I had never done it before. You can read books and Wikipedia articles as much as you want, but you have to work out how to parent real kids in real life. And not all kids are the same; not all kids will respond the same way to a given discipline regime.
Both my kids sometimes exhibited "challenging" behaviour. As we all grew older together, I became increasingly sure that coercion isn't a helpful response to such behaviour.
I was brought up with coercion; I was sent to a boarding school where I was caned (yes - when I was a child, adults attacked me with sticks). My parents were of a generation where that kind of act was considered reasonable.
It took me time raising my own kids to realise that coercion isn't a solution, unless your child is literally a psychopath. Psychopathy is a pretty rare trait.
> These kids are labeled troubled because they are.
Well, again, the title of this post shows the results of that attitude. Years of misbehavior and a well written story from a lucky one who made it to the other side, no thanks to "tough love" bootcamps according to him.
Every kid looks up to someone, whether they see that someone in person or on a screen. Becoming that someone, or a trusted figure for a teen, is a lifestyle change. Building trust takes time, and it can be lost in a moment.
I'm certain you can find teens who have such attitudes and behaviors, but I'd argue that every one of them was made that way through years of abuse and neglect. Does it help them to look at them as fucked up, irredeemable, etc? Cause that is exactly how your comment reads.
There's a tendency to explain away behaviour as being the result of a person being "bad". It's a lazy way out.
> healthy teeth
So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right". If you have charge of an unruly kid, I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene.
> These kids are labeled troubled because they are.
Gosh, that sounds rather black-and-white - they're "bad" because they're "bad". I think the word "troubled" here is serving as a dog-whistle; a lot/all of the time, what's being referred to as "troubled" is really "traumatised".
> So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right".
That's unnecessarily combative. Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?
> I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene.
Dental hygiene was OP's example.
> a lot/all of the time, what's being referred to as "troubled" is really "traumatised".
I agree that most of the "troubled" kids I've known have been traumatized. But traumatization does not necessarily lead to being "troubled", and being "troubled" does not require traumatization. In any case, it does not excuse illegal, damaging, and destructive behaviors.
>That's unnecessarily combative. Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?
If all you did was explain to them the importance of healthy teeth, then denton-scratch is justified, all you're saying is that the kid cannot be reasoned with because they didn't listen to your explanation. Show them a root canal. Let them talk to the local crackhead. If your kid doesn't already have trauma and they aren't listening, most likely you aren't trying hard enough or aren't creative enough in your approach.
> Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?
No, I'm not. I'm arguing that poor dental hygiene isn't in the same universe as getting drunk, stealing your parent's car, and wrapping it round a tree. Or beating up small kids at school.
It seems an awfully trivial misdemeanour to bring up, in a discussion of "troubled" kids and abusive incarceration.
>This parenting style is growing in popularity and I don't think it's a surprise that we now see an epidemic of kids with mental health problems.
Mmm, let's ignore the profound changes in society, as well as the life-altering technologies... Yeah, being nicer to your kids is making them fucked up.
The nature/nature discussion is definitely still on and riddled with over-confident takes made in the past that now seem silly.
I would very much refrain from using the phrase "given the fact" here, and a video titled like a Buzzfeed article might not be the best evidence either
>> maybe your family did effectively use positive discipline, or you were an only child, or you were the "good" one in your family.
You omit the many sadly common cases for legitimate rebellion and escape, such as sexual abuse from stepparents or foster parents. Those unfortunately can't be remedied with "positive discipline" and they don't make a child the "bad" one.
Right because neither the OP nor the parent comment gave any hint they had been abused. There's no question that abuse is harmful.
One of the tenets of "positive discipline" is that disagreement and rebellion are expected. By accepting such behavior, a trained therapist may earn a child's trust. And, that can be helpful to a school or therapist to discover if abuse is occurring.
That said, if you know a kid hasn't experienced abuse, you might wonder whether or not they receive any attention for doing good things. They may be acting out more because that's what got them attention. What constitutes "acting out" is very personal for each family and individual.
No, often the reasons why kids act out in ways that adults don't understand is that those kids have suffered abuse. A kid who's been abused may end up being violent, suicidal, addicted to drugs or all the above. The schools and parents may not know about the abuse, so their answer is to use extreme discipline. This just makes things worse.
I brought it up because it is usually an underlying reason for kids doing crazy shit because they don't give a fuck anymore. It's not always the reason, but it's way more often than most people realize. You think your kid hasn't been molested. There's a good chance he has.
43% of men report having been sexually assaulted or harassed in America. Actual penetrative rape numbers are around 20% of women and 5% of men, which equates to 20M+ men in the US at a minimum [1]
> You think your kid hasn't been molested. There's a good chance he has.
This.
If they get therapy, there's a slim chance that that therapy will lift the repression and expose the trauma; but it's usually repressed for good reasons, and exposing it will just lead to more trauma. But if you can make them feel safe and loved, you have a reasonable chance of addressing the unwanted behaviour.
Consigning them to a coercive regime in another state isn't going to make them feel safe and loved.
>> Consigning them to a coercive regime in another state isn't going to make them feel safe and loved.
Especially when you have them snatched at night from their safe space. That alone is serious trauma. And should be illegal, regardless if the parents are ok with it or not.
> Sexual abuse and trauma don’t seem to weigh into this story at all.
Sexual abuse and trauma underlie all child psychological problems, according to my ex, who has spent her career as a child psychotherapist. In fact she says that literally all psychological problems have their roots in repressed trauma.
I think she's an extremist; she hasn't convinced me that schizophrenia and manic depression are caused by trauma. But bad behaviour and non-compliance? Absolutely.
IIRC a tenet of developmental psychology that the worst thing for children is neglect - it's worse than abuse (and that isn't downplaying abuse in any way), because the abused child is getting attention. Children are absolutely dependent on their parents for survival (literally, food, water, shelter, protection, safety), for understanding the world, for learning. Neglect, the absence of parenting, is terrifying.
I was neglected and it has made things difficult for me. I learnt how to smile by practicing with a mirror and have no reference point for what a genuine relationship is. Never been hugged and still am terrified of getting touched affectionately. Anti-social and feel lightyears behind my peers in social aptitude. Don't know how to respond to affection and tenderness and have responded with angry outbursts in the past. It's a hole that takes some getting out of.
It's heartbreaking to here, and to think of, including imaginging the child. FWIW, from some random person on the Internet with no expertise, and without knowing you at all ... one of the best things I've learned is to start with the relationship with yourself. Have compassion for and love yourself (in a healthy, not a narcisisstic way). That's a relationship you always will have, no matter what happens outside, and as it grows you can extend that love to others. Maybe that's helpful (and maybe you've already heard that!).
A toddler can get your attention by breaking something if you neglect them. Physical abuse of a toddler is far worse and teaches them to internalize, rather than express, their emotions.
At a certain level it's not hard to understand, in that it's predictable: Power corrupts, and you can depend on it. People with power over vulnerable human beings, and with no check on their power, can be generally predicted to abuse it. Just look for those situations and I predict that you will often find it. (That's one reason transparency and openness are so important.)
Look at child sex abuse scandals: Who do they abuse? Vulnerable children without resources to fight back. Have you ever heard of such a thing happening to the children of the powerful? At Penn State University, at least some of the victims were in a program for parentless children (I don't remember if they were orphans, foster kids, etc.). IIRC, one had been abused elsewhere and was kicked out when he reported it - what could he do this time? You know what the abusers say: 'Nobody will believe you.' And he's a child, alone in this situation.
>> Have you ever heard of such a thing happening to the children of the powerful?
Yes. It happens all the time. In some areas of high society, in the recent past, it was downright common. Look into the history of British boys schools. I myself attended a British-style boarding school. While I never witnessed anything personally, a few years after I graduated my former math teacher was fired in disgrace. I never got the full story beyond "he had fail to register with appropriate authorities and so was let go".
The reason it seems that the children and powerful are immune is only because such issues rarely becomes public. Poor people report crimes to the police. Rich people talk to their lawyers and the issue is settled between the families.
I went to the Leys school in Cambridge as a border, and it was by far the worst experience of my life. I was burnt out for a decade and I turn 40 this year, only recently having gotten over the resentment. Much of this article rang familiar. Those British boarding schools are intended for upper class misbehaving teens who won’t conform. There’s no intent to educate, they’re trying to ‘break’ the pupils. A common tactic to sidestep accountability is to give authority to the older pupils. I can’t even think about it without getting angry and upset. They beat me to the point my whole upper body was black. I twice attempted suicide in the dorm only to be stopped and beaten more. I was sleep deprived to the point I could hardly stand. It was freezing at night and the older boys in the neighboring dorm made it a habit of sneaking in and hitting us (hard) with bats and hockey sticks. Enough, I choose not to think about it anymore. But I was unable to function in British society after that. My hatred for the people was to the point I couldn’t even speak. To this day I refuse to buy British product. I left a few years later and I’ll never go back to England.
I don't know about The Lees; the boarding school I went to was full of homosexuality, both between the boys and between certain teachers and boys. It was treated very casually; "boys will be boys".
I was a victim of (mild) abuse. I never told anyone, until my father died, a few years ago (my mother died 40 years ago). I had read an article by another victim, which named my abuser - at a different school. After my father died, I finally felt able to report my abuser to the police.
The way it works is that sooner or later, some boy reports the abuse to their parents. The parents complain to the head; the head explains to the abuser that he has two choices; he can stay and be prosecuted, or he can leave, with a clean reference. So he just gets a job at another private school.
Sorry couldn't let this one go:
I hope you've internalized completely that it wasn't your fault - and you where just a kid trying to survive - again not your fault.
My roommate who was athletic and feminine looking had it a lot worse. It was the first time I had seen any type of sex. It was violent and non consensual, and he was devastated, never the same. I felt faint there was a sense of shock. They involved me (with force) so that I couldn’t talk about it and they stopped me leaving the room. Then they said that’s part of the culture and he’s one of them now or something to that effect and stayed for an hour to see if he was going to talk. Then he and I had an argument and agreed that it just never happened, because being gay (I’m straight) is very much stigmatized and we both didn’t want our parents to find out. He went home I think a year or two later and overdosed and died. Then I really couldn’t talk about it, because my previous silence made me responsible. It depends how you look at it.
I mean you never hear the story of the perpetrators in shootings. Not that I’m condoning anything like that, that’s no solution. But I do understand that level of anger and but for access to a gun at that time I may well have filled those shoes. You can only push an unstable teenager so far, and I expect these things happen behind closed doors quite frequently. I just get so angry thinking about it.
> Then I really couldn’t talk about it, because my previous silence made me responsible.
You were a kid in an impossible situation; you weren't and aren't the responsible party. Most adults couldn't handle that situation, and the adults there didn't handle it at all. Your story and your roommate's story are just heartbreaking to hear. It makes me angry at the adults and, though I try to remember that they are conditioned the same experiences, at the attackers.
Just a side note. I don't know how the sex offender registry works in the UK, but in the US, it can be rather punitive. People can be placed on a sex offender registry for sleeping with their 16 yr old girlfriend/boyfriend on the day of their 18th birthday. Some have been convicted as sex offenders for simply receiving nude photos from their underaged significant other. I have even heard of cases where prosecutors have tried to try underage kids as adults for having nude photos of themselves on their phone.
This can then follow them the rest of their life. Being fired for failing to notify your employer could be a case as mundane as that.
Tangential side note I have to mention about that Penn State thing. I was at the uni from 2011 to 2015 and my father served on the facility senate.
Graham Spanier drew a salary from the university DESPITE being complicit in the cover-up until 2017. He merely was “removed from leadership.” It’s on us as a society to punish misuse of power more effectively. The consequences for misuse are often minor.
Since this account is ten minutes old I can only assume you made it to make this post anonymously, so I feel obliged to tell you that if one were inclined it would be trivially easy to find someone who graduated in 2015 with a father/parent in some form of [facility,faculty?] leadership.
I don't think you're saying anything here that needs that kind of protection, but just something to keep in mind.
I appreciate the thoughtful advice. You probably could figure out who I am, but I’m a LONG time lurker and the comment was docile enough. Faculty senate is 200 across all 20+ branch campuses and rotates every year. The caution is just to make automated scrapping of accounts harder.
There are some truly cowardly people and malicious incentive structures there… but I met some good folk too I suppose. Shout out to the good professors there with the patience to do the right thing. They don’t always win.
> Graham Spanier drew a salary from the university DESPITE being complicit in the cover-up until 2017. He merely was “removed from leadership.” It’s on us as a society to punish misuse of power more effectively.
Weren't Penn State U board members who punished the wrongdoing removed from office by their constituents?
"Power corrupts" may explain the abusive nature of "tough love" programs, but it does not explain how the teen became troubled in the first place. Thoughtful parents and older siblings will not abuse their strength/wisdom against youth because they know they are raising a new generation that may one day make decisions for them.
Most of the kids I knew who ended up in these programs were nowhere near as f*cked up as their parents - even before those parents handed their children to abusive thugs.
Right, so the question becomes, how do you break that cycle? These kids may grow up planning to be different from their parents. But when you become a parent, "muscle memory" can kick in. You end up parenting as yours did because that's what you know.
This really is the question. Not to be crass but at least 3 of the kids I knew were grabbed at night and taken to these places broke the cycle by committing suicide. I was tempted to respond to the Englishman in this thread who posted a heartbreaking story by asking whether he/they thought this was still having ramifications forward in British society, but then I thought, well it's an extension of 400 years of beatings and rape in the British Navy so no shit it's still a cycle. A quick look at the Russian Army... or religious communities in West Texas...
Uh, how do you break the cycle. Maybe one out of ten people who are abused have the strength to see the viciousness of it and reclaim some part of themselves instead of repeating the abuse, and write about it for the NYT. The rest go to alcoholism, self-harm, anger, and repeating the same on their kids.
The only thing that's sort of worked to break these kinds of chains of abuse is when NGOs and governments go after them and expose the evil. That has had some effect on the Catholic Church, and a little effect on the worst excesses of the prison system in some states. The 20-30% of people in this country who were lucky enough not to suffer some sort of abuse [edit: Or who consider it wrong] are a minority, but thankfully in control of most of the media and civic institutions (for now: When they're not, it looks like Russia).
So I guess the best way to break this particular chain is at the weakest link, which is these kinds of "schools".
[Edit: Just re-reading your earlier response in another chain, I should clarify that I consider this type of discipline itself to be a form of abuse, often including sexual abuse. But in any case, breaking one chain or another is equally difficult when someone has been subjected to it and is now subjecting their children to it.]
> I consider this type of discipline itself to be a form of abuse
Absolutely. The "tough love" program made everything worse for OP, but the problem started earlier. Prior to being sent away, OP self-described as being misanthropic for years,
> The years leading up to my being taken and the eventual break out is now a blur of misanthropy.
If someone hates humanity for years, they deserve loving attention to help them see they are valued just as they are. In other words, Mr. Rogers was right, and we each need someone like that to believe in us.
Definitely his report of his own behavior leading up to it is enough to make you wonder what you'd do if it were your child.
A lot of times when I'm out in the world and watch people acting out, or just behaving like they were raised in a barn, the coldest part of myself thinks their parents should have disciplined them. The warmest, fuzziest and most liberal part of myself thinks that their behavior is mostly due to abuse they suffered that was probably meant as discipline, which failed to impart its rationale and which their parents didn't know how to do any better since they were probably abused themselves, and their grandparents and so on.
So since you made me think about this, if the kids are fucked up little sociopaths already because of their families - which are incapable of valuing them and giving them that loving attention - short of taking them away from their families to some kind of utopia, what's the answer? We really can't effect a chain of kindness in those families just be being patient strangers. The only thing we might be able to do is sanction the parents and take away the institutions they rely on to perpetuate abuse. It's also possible we're just a few reasonably friendly people sitting on top of a volcano of hundreds of millions of psychotic assholes.
> what's the answer? We really can't effect a chain of kindness in those families just be being patient strangers.
IMO we could all benefit from taking a "positive discipline" [1] approach to relationships. And in those difficult families, hopefully outreach can connect them with a trained therapist who can both listen and appropriately guide. We're not all in a position to directly help, and it is largely up to the individual to make necessary changes for themselves. But we can each be a sort of light by which individuals might find their direction.
> Thoughtful parents and older siblings will not abuse their strength/wisdom against youth because they know they are raising a new generation that may one day make decisions for them.
I'm not sure what you mean? Plenty of parents and older siblings abuse their power, and plenty don't.
I wouldn't say you can "depend on" power corrupting parents. I'd say it's more the exception, and that parental behavior is better described by how they themselves were raised. By the time a misbehaving kid is in their teens, parents are grasping at straws trying to figure out what to do. They need training, not condemnation.
> I wouldn't say you can "depend on" power corrupting parents.
I see what you mean now. I did not mean to say that we could depend on power corrupting parents ... but now I wonder: how much does it, and to what degree do we normalize it and not see it?
> They need training, not condemnation.
Yes, they are humans too. It's true of most people doing bad things (if we define 'training' very broadly).
How do these cases not result in mass prosecutions?
It shouldn't be too hard to tie a few people to the abuse at these schools, then police say, "give us names and help us understand who was responsible at the top, or you're looking at many, many years in prison for child abuse and we'll just find someone else who'll talk"
You know, the same way prosecutors go after mobsters and drug rings
> How do these cases not result in mass prosecutions?
In Luzerne County, PA, judges were paid off by local juvenile detention centers to sentence kids there. Over years, they sentenced many, many kids, in court, for absurdities (e.g., I think one kid was sentenced for throwing a sandwich at their teacher). Much of the court system and local legal community had to know; nobody put a stop to it. Judicial conduct boards and the PA Supreme Court were appealed to; they didn't act.
I forget how it finally came to light, but it got into the hands of federal rather than local state prosecutors. That's often how local corruption is stopped: the feds aren't tied to the local political system. The defendants, the Luzerne County judges, were clearly guilty of heinus crimes, ruining the lives of all these kids who spent high school in juvinile jail (imagine how your life would turn out). The federal prosecutors gave the defendants a sweetheart plea deal. Thankfully, the federal judge rejected the settlement and they were convicted and given long sentences.
(The Kids For Cash documentary tells the story.)
How does it not result in mass prosecutions? Look in the mirror. Me too. What corruption is going on in our communities? How about the IT community?
I don't think "the IT community" (is there even such a thing) has any sort of power where corruption in the traditional sense can even exist. Something like Kids for Cash is an institutional failing and requires the concerted effort and coordination of multiple, theoretically unrelated - or even opposed - parties that all have a lot of institutional power rarely found outside of government. Even huge multinational corporations worth hundreds of billions don't have the kind of power needed to literally sell kids into slavery with the blessing of the judiciary.
> I don't think "the IT community" (is there even such a thing) has any sort of power where corruption in the traditional sense can even exist.
My advice was "look in the mirror"; I understand the parent's advice as "don't look in the mirror, there can't possibly be anything to see there".
Responses like that are why we see nothing, hear nothing (and shut it down - discredit it, attack it, etc. - immediately if we do), and do nothing. I expect that people in Luzerne County had denials too. People can talk about and around these things infinitely, and they do.
Therefore the only question we should ask is, what are we going to do?
Edit: Abusing children isn't the only corruption, in case that's how you interpreted it. The amount of scams, fraud, mass surveillance, manipulation, etc. in our industry is astounding.
I think the closest analogy is the circulation of insecure software with aggressive marketing and its adoption in the sphere of direct and de facto coercion. The Equifax situation did not receive a great public post-mortem that went deeper into generally applied business practices than "credit processors bad".
There's corruption at every level in the IT community. On a large scale, there was a recent article how Microsoft is paying millions in bribes to local officials.
On a small scale, I have been approached by acquaintances who suggested they'd sign off on a large contract for me to make some trivial app if I paid them a percentage under the table.
Look at Lapsus$. They were enabled by corruption in the IT community. Due to effects of scale, corruption in IT doesn’t have to be widespread to have major effects worldwide.
Others have mentioned https://elan.school -- it's a horrific eye-opener. I'd recommend against binging the story; it's heartwrenching. There's a few methods they use: (a) they do shit so horrific that folks don't believe their own children (b) they brainwash, gaslight the kids so they're conditioned to not talk about it, even teach them lies to tell their parents with dire consequences (c) police and politicians are actually in on it.
Shorter answer, lots of americans are hard-core authoritarians and this is what "law & order" actually means.
Whatever nice-sounding things the little kids are told, the police, "justice" system, etc. are actually more interested in enforcing the existing social order than they are in being the good guys, or the letter or spirit of the law.
And such "schools" are certainly all about enforcing the existing social order, upon "residents" who the Cops & Co. are not favorably inclined toward.
> the police, "justice" system, etc. are actually more interested in enforcing the existing social order than they are in being the good guys, or the letter or spirit of the law.
What are you interested in? I know it's a provocative question, but blaming some 'system' is 90% of the problem. What am I interested in? My actions speak.
The "system" isn't a vague boogeyman but the product of individual decisions that funnel things in aggregate to a certain conclusion. Think of how birds fly in a "V" formation, something emergent from each bird following the same simple rules.
A teen not abiding by the boundaries of society may be dealt with in a way that seems viciously over-reactive because maintaining order is the entire focus of each element of the legal/judicial system. The degree of infraction is less important than respecting the authority of the system itself. Like be an asshole to a judge or cop and see what happens - it shouldn't matter as much as it does, but everyone instantly feels the raw danger of doing such a thing because of this dynamic.
The problem is that "testing boundaries" is a natural phase of growing up and is really about coming to grips with your own identity and values. There is a huge disconnect between how "the system" (or people serving roles within the system) approach these situation vs. any actual threat to the system itself.
We're not birds or beasts acting on instinct; they don't invent democracy and form judicial systems. The system is not somewhere else, it's not something else, it's not someone else, it's sitting in front of your computer right now.
Let me try: Blaming 'the system' isn't abandoning responsibility (or isn't necessarily). It's a statement about the structure of the problem.
Some evils are caused by the intent of one individual. Remove that individual, or change their behaviour, no more problem. In other cases the situation is perpetuated by a structure of social relations which isn't visible if you only consider individuals.
Yes, ultimately individuals have to take responsibility and take action, but that is necessary but not sufficient. To understand what it will take to cure the disease requires understanding 'the system'.
Suppose in this case, one year we manage to remove all abusive staff from these schools. That's a solution at the level of individual responsibility. And well worth doing. But soon enough abusive individuals will work their way into these positions again. Only by recognising that this system is inherently prone to result in abuse can you figure out how to prevent it.
We are literally beasts that invented justice and democracy. This is a reasonable interpretation of a constrained view of these things. Such is my view.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with the conclusion in the second paragraph.
Do you really believe that the judges and prosecutors who send kids to these abuse factories don't now they are going to harm the child? That's why they do this, they like to hurt/intimidate/damage people, that's literally all their jobs do all day long. Why would they go along with prosecuting people who were performing the abuse they wanted done? I'm sorry but these places have been out in the open since they first started, kids have been telling similar stories to this from the beginning. No way the people doing this don't know exactly what's going on and actively want it to happen to the kids they send there.
We can think of other populations that consistently tell stories of abuse, over generations, and are downplayed and denied - today, yesterday, even here on HN.
I mean, you can look at vulnerable populations that report abuse (not the same abuse as kids in these programs, but abuse), and you can see it denied, including here on HN regularly. Women and black Americans are two prominent examples.
I mean a German professor, Helmut Kentler, openly placed foster children with pedophiles for 30 years with the thinking that they would love them more. He was never prosecuted.
A lot of these places are located in counties or states with lax regulations and rules around this. The one I went to "lost" a few of my classmates' patient notes and histories. Also, a lot of the stuff they do isn't illegal. It's just emotionally abusive at times, but because you have all this "support" and attention around its not really seen as neglect. All the kids look healthy, they're exercising, eating three times a day, and their grades are usually better than ever. I do not know a single person from my few years in the troubled teen industry who actually feels better. I've lost 3 of my classmates to suicide in the 3-4 years following treatment. These programs take advantage of families in very vulnerable times.
Unfortunately, you only ever hear about anecdotes because there isn't a lot of genuine research done about efficacy, and since its teens, its all very restricted.
I was sent to one of these programs when i was 13. Two guys came to my house and picked me up in the middle of the night and traveled with me to a wilderness program in the north georgia mountains. That ended up turning into a 20 momth stay at their "Therapeutic Boarding School".
About 5 years later the students burned the school down and i got about $2000 dollars in a class action lawsuit because they were hiring untrained therapists and admitting students who they knew were a risk to others around them.
The schools was Hidden Lake Academy anf the wilderness program was Ridge Creek Academy
This is so weird and could definitely identify myself, but... I was sent to a therapeutic boarding school called elan. A month or two after I got home my best friend was "taken" and did outward bound then got sent to hidden lakes in GA.
I still remember the first time I saw him a year or two later... He was home on a visit and snuck out of his house and rode his bike to our friends house. We got really baked and he got all serious and was like "Guys.... Do I have an accent now? I fucking hate how the people down there talk" lol
I was one of the unlucky people who spent time at elan. It was a terrible terrible time. Much like the author of the article I was awoken by 2 big dudes in my bedroom and was given the choice to get dressed and go peacefully or they would drag me out of bed and take me away in my underwear. I said I'm not doing shit until my parents give you permission to take me. They handed me a piece of paper with both my parents signatures on it that effectively signed custody over to them. I asked if I could smoke a cigarette before we left and they told me I could smoke as many as I wanted in the van.
That was the start of one of the worst times in my life.
Yeah I'm glad you asked, I do have a question. I read that comic linked above, it was incredibly horrifying, but as I kept reading, something felt off about it. The guy who wrote it is clearly a professional writer and he uses many common manipulative tricks to engage the reader, and that bothers me a little, like he isn't being completely honest.
So I did some research and it seems most of his facts check out with what other people say, but I have to wonder particularly about the part where he claims that they forced him to scream at and abuse his parents in exchange for holiday time. Do you know anything about that really happening? Did they really force kids to act crazy in front of their parents in order to ensure they got locked away at Elan for longer? I haven't heard anyone else corroborate that part.
Edit: actually a read your other comments and it seems it really was as bad as this comic book says. Controlling what you were and were not allowed to say to your parents is crazy.
I haven’t read all of the comic so I can’t say if he embellished things.
I can say 100% that screaming at people was very much encouraged(during “therapy” sessions or as punishment). It was referred to as “getting your feelings off”. Sometimes it would be in a group setting where you sat in a circle and everyone had to pick someone else in the group and scream at them as loud as possible about anything the person did that made you angry or annoyed you. Other times it was a form of punishment where they made you stand against a wall or in the corner and everyone else in the “house” would crowd around and all scream as loud as possible at you all at once. They only rules were you can’t make fun of them for things like race, sexuality, appearance, etc.
I was very fortunate that my parents believed me and withdrew me after ~5 months.
My parents sent me there with the best intentions. But elan tricked them. And they realized that. They have both apologized numerous times and explained how they regret the decision. Last year, so over 20 years later, out of the blue my dad just blurted out “I’m so sorry we sent you to elan. We truly didn’t know…”. It took me by surprise.
The parents get brainwashed by these companies. It's like a cult mindset. They've got the script down perfectly, preying on the parents insecurities and fears until rational people make irrational, fucked-up decisions.
But what about most kids there are from group homes or foster situations? Those people don't have that excuse, except perhaps for the first kid. The comic states they send dozens of kids there, over the years. So for CPS, the "they didn't know" doesn't apply.
I’ve read some of the comic but not all of it. From what I read it’s fairly accurate. I witnessed “the ring” and experienced first hand the psychological manipulation.
My relationship with my parents is good. They truly sent me there with the best intentions and I know that. They have expressed remorse and have apologized many times over the years.
Seconded. This is a very compelling read, and a great graphic novel style. One of the things Joe says several times is how part of the design of the elan program is to be so absolutely insane that it literally sounds unbelievable if described to anyone. Coupled with a separate, well-groomed veneer presented to parents and the outside world, any "troubled" kids trying to explain what's really going on just come off as so massively exaggerating the situation that you can't even begin to take them seriously.
It’s also more then that. elan was VERY good at disguising themselves as a caring and helpful place. On paper, elan had it all. But it was all an illusion. My parents spent over 3 months researching different schools and elan seemed to have everything I “needed”. This was before the internet had social media and review sites so the people who elan abused didn’t really have a visible soapbox. My parents even went to elan and took a tour before sending me there.
elan also had complete control of every letter or phone call. You have to earn the privilege to them. I had no contact with my parents for the first 2 months. And when I did, it was over a speakerphone in a room with a elan staff member who literally had their finger on the button to hang up if I pleaded for my parents to take me home. And before the call that day they had been coaching me for days on what I could and could not say. And if I said something I wasn’t supposed to I would lose all privileges and go “on shotdown”. elans vicegrip on communication actually led to my parents withdrawing me. They sensed something wasn’t right and (against elans wishes) demanded a in person visit with me(in person visits are a extremely privileged event). They saw I had lost a ton of weight and looked all fucked up and withdrew me.
Very much reminds me of another “program” a good friend of mine endured for 2 years called “Straight, Inc.”
Plenty of horror stories on the web about it as well. For nearly 40 years now I have heard him recount stories from his time there. I know them all and they still chill me every time he needs to tell them.
I went to a few of these places. I tried to run away from one of them and then they made me exercise until I couldn't move any more. They called it "energy release." I couldn't bend my knees at all for at least 2 weeks. It's still open and has only grown since I left.
Is anyone else disturbed at the sheer number of people in this thread alone who are coming out about being forcibly sent to one of these camps?
And I'm thinking that statistically HN's demographic probably swings more towards nerdy, well-behaved white boys from two-parent families who are middle-class or above. Not necessarily who I would have thought would have been at harm from this scam.
So, if the demographic I believe is least at risk is coming out in such numbers, how many kids are really being taken like this? I'm scared this problem is even bigger than the few media stories are making it out to be.
I come from a regular middle class background. Like, where your mom is a teacher, you drive to vacations instead of flying, and your neighbors are truck drivers and cops and firefighters and car salesmen. Lots of two-parent families, lots of white people.
A bunch of kids got into all sorts of trouble, but I can only remember one kid getting sent away to one of these ”scare your kid straight” camps. He was a grade-A jackass, but the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
When he left, most people (adults and kids) had the same reaction: confused why a parent would do that to their child, but also not confused that those parents did it, and also not losing much sleep over who it happened to.
And so, at least in my experience, this wasn’t some sort of epidemic. Maybe it is now, I don’t know. Maybe it’s something mostly rich people do.
Now that I come think of it, wouldn't that demographic actually be the target one? I mean you need to be affluent to send a kid to such a place. You, as in the parents, are under some social pressure to retain your social standing, you even have some lofty goals for your kids. You might be working, and travelling, a lot, so you're not around that much.
After all, we are talking about private programs here. The poorer folks are usually victims of the state sponsored, and sometimes enforced against the parents will, programs. Which are as bad as those private ones.
This is, of course, just a theory. In the end, so, I think that the number of abuse victims, pick any kind of abuse, is orders of magnitude higher then we all think.
You might be right on all those points. If you look at interactions with the justice system it is skewed towards poorer demographics, but as you say, those are not the target of the scam as they lack the significant funds required to pay.
And in poor communities it is expected that your kids will get into trouble, sometimes even celebrated or encouraged by the parents (especially if gang membership is involved), so I can see that the middle-class or above are the ones that would be easily shamed into signing up.
When I was labeled a troubled kid, they stuck me in the portable classrooms for the next 10 years and forgot to give me an education. They did however give me PTSD, anxiety, and sexually abused a few kids without ever being caught
There's a chicken egg problem here: when you were labeled a troubled teen, you already were a troubled teen. What happened to you after was bad, but it wasn't all peaches and cream before. Finding the appropriate way to deal with troubled teens (even if it did start with poor parenting) is not easy, and this discussion seems like a one-sided caricature.
>Picked off. Kidnapped. Taken. Call it what you wish, but trying to sleep each night with the notion that a pair of strangers could come to lift you from your bed, whether your actions were deserving of this treatment or not, haunts me, haunts thousands.
How can the response to that sentence be anything but horror?
Regardless of what people did, or someone perceived as bad behavior, there are things that should be totally, absolutely off limits and unacceptable as either "treatment" or punishment.
What the author, and other in this thread, describe falls so squarely into the unacceptable category as things can be. I always wonder how such things can happen at all. Until I read comments like yours, and when combined with the usual power imbalance and social pressure, it all falls into place.
Pedantry incoming, I have no serious criticism of your comment. I just think it’s interesting that we seem to agree but I thought your word choice was interesting.
Non-conforming is a funny word to use for this, so I’ll rephrase for clarity to represent a bit of a middle ground:
Even shitty kids should not be kidnapped or psychologically abused.
Brainwashing has lost all its bite in this day in age. I’m coming around to the opinion/usage that something as innocuous as public school can reasonably be understood to engage in the “brainwashing” of children. Same is true with ‘isolation, ‘surely, or is ‘No Recess’ no longer the most effective elementary school disciplinary tool?
This begs the question: Is everyone who is labeled a “trouble teen” actually a troubled teen? I sincerely doubt the system is 100% accurate in assigning this label.
I'm exceptionally lucky in that when I got my first apartment at 19 years old, you could still find an apartment in LA for $600. Now you're just screwed, I've met tons of people who are essentially trapped in extremely abusive homes well into their twenties and beyond.
I've seen this happen to people from practically every background, with a good chunk of my Asian friends experiencing something like that. One lived in a homeless shelter for a while just to get away from his parents.
Getting rid of the current FASA system which assumes harmonious families, would do so much to help young people get started. If I had a magic wand, I'd ban affirmative action completely, and in its place give everyone financial aid even if they don't have a relationship with their parents.
"It's 4 in the morning, there's two huge dudes in my room, they're like 'You're coming with us', and they put in the back of a car and drove me to the middle of nowhere."
Not too long ago I saw Ricky Gervais' last Emmy speech, so funny that actually hurt, and so true that it actually hurt. Just brilliant. The reaction of the audience told more about the individuals there then about Ricky. Most women for example either laughed or nodded. Scorsese had a great time laughing about himself.
Why am I mentioning that? Because Tom Hanks, it seemed, was close to yell at Ricky to just stop throwing "dirt" around. He looked like a hit dog, almost like he felt being accused of something. Adding the fact that he send his own child to tough love program doesn't paint too nice a picture of him. At the very least, he took the, for him, easy way of parenting and can't lough about himself (or his social circle).
The field of "Positive Discipline" [1] or "Positive Parenting" provides workable solutions. There may not be a quick fix. The idea is to reinforce good behavior while weaning bad ones. There are a ton of podcasts and books on this topic you can find using those keywords.
Why I downvoted? Because, to me, the linked approach is the first (well, actually already a couple of miles) step towards tough love programs. It goes against everything good parenting is. Because at its core, much like tough love, the goal is to create "conforming" children that aren't causing any trouble.
The goal of parenting, so, should be to offer a safe environment for kids to become who they are and want to to become no matter what that is. And to prepare them for an independent life. None of that is easy, and yes discipline is necessary. As a tool, not as a means. If parents would just accept that their kids aren't going down the road the parents choose for them a lot of trouble and issues in parenting would already be solved.
>> The idea is to reinforce good behavior while weaning bad ones.
That's how you educate dogs, and even with animals there a limits to what is acceptable (and rightly so).
> Because at its core, much like tough love, the goal is to create "conforming" children that are causing any trouble.
"Positive Discipline" is nothing like the "tough love" described in this story. It's only "tough love" in the sense that you still give kids boundaries. There's nothing conformist about it. Rather, it encourages parents and kids to express themselves, allowing time for emotions to come out in a healthy way that encourages independence while reducing reliance on family members to step in and fix things that kids are capable of doing themselves. This all starts at a very young age, when you begin to sleep on your own, feed yourself, tie your shoes, etc.
> That's how you educate dogs, and even with animals there a limits to what is acceptable (and rightly so).
This is a discipline that's grown over the last 70+ years. Everyone responds to feedback. Learning, trial and error, evolution etc. apply to all species, albeit at different rates.
I believe there is a true self in all of us. Whatever that is, and it might change. We have no way to tell what that is, so. Discovering this is what personal development is about. This development should be as unhindered as possible. One, rather obvious, example is trans-gender people. That's the "who / what you are" part.
The become what you want part is ranging from career choices to the kind of person, besides identity, you want to become. This should be as unhindered as possible as well.
Personally, whenever someone, something or a society tries to hinder any of this, I have adverse reactions. Of course there are limits to this, personal freedom ends at other peoples noses. It's hard to tell the good solutions, it's easy to tell the bad ones. And tough love camps are definitely bad ones.
If you truly want a life that involves running from the police, constantly wondering if your death is around the corner, having no sense of community/family etc. then there are places in society where you can do that productively (e.g. a soldier, special operative, foreign agent). But most children don't know that they don't want that, and that's the fault of the parents.
> The goal of parenting, so, should be to offer a safe environment for kids to become who they are and want to to become no matter what that is.
Even if what they want is to become a drug addict felon?
A mentally ill teenager does not know what is best for them. The parents job is to help their kids grow into happy, healthy members of society. The existence of rules does not preclude kids developing their own personality.
> I was given prescription medication to ease my anxiety and depression, which left me hollow and numb. I was made to answer questions about my life and emotions until, I was told, I got them right, framing things in a way the program and therapists felt more accurately told a story about my deviance that I then internalized. My journals were confiscated, their private contents used against me in “therapy sessions.”
Ooof, this one hits right home. My abusive parents sent me to an institution twice, except in my province it's the state and not private companies and the transporters do not come during the night. For me it was a "voluntary placement", that is one not ordered by judge and they "convince" you it's better for you to be there (or else). It was hell nonetheless. I was diagnosed with depression, took pills for depression and ADHD (wtf). It made me feel buzzed and like I was a soulless robot. I quickly learned how to hide them in the space below my tonsils.
No questions, I was a troublesome kid. But I was the product of my environment, and the "specialists" never asked a fucking single question about life at home. Even shitty kids should not face abuse by their caretakers and government.
I am also an adult bedwetter. The "specialists" there often use "manipulation" as a placeholder of their incompetence. So therefore, since I was wetting my bed to "manipulate", they forced me to stay in my room for 6 fucking months. I could only go outside for school and basic needs.
I looked into suing them all. Turns out they delete records a few months after you leave. And since the "specialists" working for CPS all know and work together with the same lawyers and judges, no lawyer will want to these cases.
The part about medication and your private information being used against you is very real and it really shaped my strong views around privacy and not trusting other people taking decisions for others but I digress. They used to note everything that people hated and liked in a very systematic way to control us, it was so horrible that it has gotten to the point I numbed myself into not hating nor liking anything, or hiding it the best I could; even today I like barely nothing and endure injustice without complaining. Funny story, I wised up to their game and pretended to be antisocial and preferring being alone in my room so I would be "forced" to go outside. It worked. Turns out that the school's psychologist was feeding them information about me from our private sessions.
To this day, I'm in my early 30s, I still have dreams and visions of shame, humiliation and sometimes of dark thoughts of getting back at them (I will leave it at that).
CPS attracts the worst kind of abusive people. Anyone working in this industry should be viewed with suspicion, disdain and should not be allowed near kids or vulnerable people in general.
My reasons for being sent there are similar to the author's. I didn't take my dad's car without permission, but I did drink a lot, skip school, was generally rebellious and refused to be disciplined. My issues were compounded by the fact that my mom had died when I was 11 years old and my dad worked in a field that required lots of travel, so he had a lot of trouble supervising me.
The school was terrible in its methods and I don't think their therapists were qualified. Males and females were completely segregated and talking to females would get you immediately thrown into "jumpsuit", which was the harshest discipline level and meant you lost all privileges and had to wear an orange jumpsuit 24/7.
Responsibilities were doled out in a few levels: on-shadow, shadower, and appropriate. An "appropriate" was the highest level of responsibility, trusted to monitor groups and make sure nobody broke rules or talked about inappropriate topics. "Shadows" were trusted to watch other people and help the appropriates deal with new kids and misbehavers. On-shadow just meant you always had to be with someone watching you and you didn't have any of the trust given to higher levels.
You weren't allowed to go anywhere without an "appropriate" and at least one other person. Even when I would take a shower or go to the bathroom, I had to have someone watching the door and waiting for me to finish.
Parent phone calls and visits were supervised by an "appropriate" until you got to higher privilege levels and were allowed to go off-campus. This was to prevent newer kids from complaining to their parents and getting their parents to take them out of the program.
Lots of the graduates were convinced by management to stay on for their "sobriety" and help as an employee/intern with the kids and dorms. I remember several graduates who stayed 6-12 months after their graduation doing this. Seemed like a scam to me.
One guy from my class ended up marrying one of the dorm monitors, who was an older, but attractive woman in her ~30s. This seemed really odd to me, I don't remember there being any opportunities to do anything like have inappropriate relationships, but things did apparently change after I left. I heard a few months later kids were doing crazy stuff like breaking into the medicine cabinet and the males/females started hooking up. But when I was there, that kind of stuff was out of the question and unheard of.
The only music we were allowed to listen to was really old stuff like Beatles, CCR... Movies were filtered for any scenes with alcohol or drug use, no talking about modern music, movies with drug use, drug use or partying / etc. was all forbidden topics that would get you in a ton of trouble. Punishments ranged from writing 40,000 god prayers to digging ditches or cleaning for hours.
Overall, I needed some kind of wake up call, but I ended up leaving when I turned 18. They threatened that I wouldn't graduate on-time and go to college, but I had already been accepted to university and I knew that most of my credits would transfer. I finished out the year at public high school, went to college, and moved on with my life.
Edit: I'm reading through https://elan.school , and it sounds like my school copied their program, even using a lot of the same terminology "strength" vs "non-strength" etc.
I was in elan and yea, a lot of similarities. elan had a pretty extensive class system. Shot down was the lowest, worker was standard entry level, then expeditor, then something else, then guru, and I can’t remember the rest.
Anything lower then expeditor weren’t allowed to talk to one another without a higher up “being aware” or couldn’t use the bathroom without an escort(who could deny you if they were busy or just didn’t want to). If you wanted to speak to a staff member(even if they were right next to you) you had to ask a higher leveled person who would then tell the staff you wanted to talk. At meal time the highest member at the table got to pick the food first followed by the next highest and so on.
elan also did the same thing with boys and girls. They were not supposed to talk to each other and doing so could get you in trouble. elan had like 4 houses and on the very rare occasions the houses crossed paths, you were not allowed to talk to them or even LOOK at them.
They also stripped you of any “old you” identities. Plain clothes, no logos, no piercings, no jewelry, no non standard hair colors/cuts(I don’t think they even allowed boys to have long hair), no hats, and no hoodies.
They did the same thing with music as well. No swear words or extreme stuff. Thankfully burning cds were a new thing when I was there and my used his works CD burner to burn me some good music I liked.
If they suspected you were going to escape( pretty much impossible, the place is in bumfuck Maine in the woods) they would make you wear fluorescent clothing, and in the case of boys… fluorescent PINK clothing and take your shoelaces. Sometimes make you wear a sign around your neck as well.
The one good thing about elan was it wasn’t backed by religion. I don’t even remember an option for church.
The school I went to did the same with stripped identity. No logo clothing, everyone got the same haircuts. Kids on punishment “learning experience” wore either a bright Orange shirt or red shirt with the words “learning experience” or orange jumpsuit with “runaway call 911” written all over it.
We didn’t have access to anything like music, computers, phones, etc. The only contact we had with the outside world was through supervised parent phone calls, supervised doctor visits (only if you absolutely had to go off-site), and supervised on-site family visits once you were promoted to strength.
Excel’s program was rooted in AA which they claimed didn’t require a higher power or religion, only a belief in a higher power outside of yourself.
It was an incredibly controlling environment. The amazing thing is, even in such a place I managed to form some good memories and forget a lot of the bad. I immersed myself in schoolwork, and duties like working in the kitchen which was an enjoyable outlet since I like cooking.
At the end though, I guess I was just one of those who faked their way to the top (strength) as I was one of the fastest students ever to reach the appropriate level, but I hid my unhappiness and disagreement with their methods and refused to return as soon as I turned 18 and had my first off-campus visit.
Since you mentioned religion. Most places like that I know of in Germany were either church influenced state-run or state-sanctioned church-run. Which added an additional layer of hell... One the church is really reluctant to talk about, and state authorities to investigate.
Most of the Troubled Teen industry in the US spun out of Synanon, so it comes from a very particular religious background. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon
It seems like Elan comes from there, but I can't be sure.
> Responsibilities were doled out in a few levels: on-shadow, shadower, and appropriate. An "appropriate" was the highest level of responsibility, trusted to monitor groups and make sure nobody broke rules or talked about inappropriate topics. "Shadows" were trusted to watch other people and help the appropriates deal with new kids and misbehavers. On-shadow just meant you always had to be with someone watching you and you didn't have any of the trust given to higher levels.
It sounds like an extortion pyramid scheme, worthy of a gestapo prison camp. What a thing to teach kids: Comply with the abusers and join the power structure.
It's hard read these stories and not wonder about the parents.
At the same time I'm often drawn to the story of my high school buddy's youngest sister. His family was as normal as you might expect, the kids were perhaps unusually "driven", but in good ways, music, athletics, academics, all three even.
But the youngest was driven to rebel in the most distributive ways possible, the usual running away from home, older / inappropriate men, drugs, alcohol. Everything short of physical violence, although that occurred too.
It got so bad it was almost impossible to physically keep her in the house or apply any kind of rules. Any rule was just a goal for her to obliterate and more.
The parents eventually sent her to some of these camps, she escaped, was notorious even among other troubled kids there.
It all took an incredible toll on her parents. Financial and psychological. They would have done anything to help her, anything, so at times they chose those camps, even if it seemed just to provide physical safety.
Eventually she turned 18 and left. Some contact here and there, she seemed to want the contact but also was aloof in a way. It seemed like she really kept in contact to keep up with the family dog more than anyone there.
Years later in her early 20s she showed up at the family house unannounced. She was pregnant, her mom answered the door and she asked if she could come home.
I don't know what happened between 18 and showing up that day, but after that day she was "back" and was a different girl. She worked for the family business for a while but she quit saying it wasn't for her. She took some college classes but didn't like school and the rules.
She eventually took a job at a pet store grooming pets and loved it. She started doing it privately and my wife's family financed her buying a truck and remodeling it into a mobile pet grooming van (this was really early in the days before mobile pet grooming was "a thing").
Eventually the previously very troubled girl had keys to any number of houses in town (so she could pickup the pets while the owners were away) and she has been great since, kids, family, met a great guy. She's a model local small business person, mom, etc.
I often want to ask her what changed, but I feel like mentioning it would reinforce a "troubled girl" label that I'm sure she knows some folks still think of her as.
As a parent now I think on that other girl. It's unsettling to think of. These kind of camps are disturbing, but in some cases ... I get it when you feel like you're out of options. There are kids who misbehave, and there's situations that are orders of magnitude beyond that.
When I was growing up I knew a boy who suddenly, around 12 years old, in an otherwise healthy-seeming family, began behaving badly - violence, drugs, flunking out of school, etc. Many years later, he told me the turning point: He was raped and felt he couldn't tell his parents (I don't know who assaulted him). Maybe a/the question to ask is not how the girl recovered, but why it started.
I know this branch in the thread is purely speculative - but it sounds awfully familiar to me as well.
Dated a woman in college who fits that profile in every including being sent off to firms like TFA - it was rooted in a decade of rape by her older brother. Her mother fell into that “we don’t talk about such things” type of profile and so it was left to fester despite being addressed.
Well, sometimes families can be, internally, incredibly abusive while presenting a very convincing image of being loving and caring, even "perfect in every way" to an outsider. If you go to places where survivors of narcissistic or familial abuse congregate it's not uncommon to hear stories of people saying of an abusive parent things like "all my friends used to say 'i wish my mum was like your mum'" and what not. It can be very hard to escape from such situations, sometimes people who seem to have escaped, later voluntarily return to them. Sometimes, when even heinous abuse becomes exposed, the victims will protect the abusers. Narcissistic families excel at keeping secrets.
You have to realise that children have genetic wiring for survival. If their parents are neglectful or abusive, the child cannot simply go on to the free market to shop for a replacement. Rather, they are much more likely to become increasingly compliant, in order to extract as much care as possible from the defective parent. Mild forms of this can involve the child performing very well at school, or in sports, once they realise that love is contingent on performance. Children who feel invisible might act out because negative attention is perceived, perversely, as a workable substitute for love.
Over time, the roles in narcissistic family systems can change around: the golden child can become invisible, or the black sheep, or vice versa. Humans are at the same time as being quite vulnerable to abusive and neglectful environments, also incredibly resilient to them - finding coping strategies which work, even if they can appear to be incredibly destructive, self-destructive, or totally inexplicable to someone lacking the full context.
There is a book called "The Narcissistic Family" by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman which describes the dynamics that can occur in these sorts of family systems.
It seems like these places have nailed the brainwashing of the parents. Most of these parents seem like normal, rational human beings that are basically getting the cult treatment and ending up drinking the whole glass of Kool-Aid.
At best, the article seems disjointed and confused...then suddenly sort of resolves things in one vague and creepy paragraph. Reasonably symbolic of a teen in such circumstances, but the author hasn't been a teen for quite a few years.
I finished it thinking "Yeah, the current system is a really poor fit for a lot of teens, and the 'corrective system' is crap too...but that was old news decades ago. The author offer no insight, no better idea, nothing."
Parents students and teachers treated me like shit throughout elementary school, went to a new school and decided I wasn't gonna take it anymore.
Started misbehaving and getting suspended literally all the time, had over 400 disciplinary actions on my school recorded, got expelled from a few schools then expelled from the whole district, as in they just wouldn't let me go to that high school at all...
Turned myself around after choking my sister when I was 15 and damn near got arrested for it.
As in, I was sitting in the back of a cop car, not handcuffed but they patted me down, bawling my eyes out.
Thankfully my sister didn't say a word to the cop and that's when I decided I had to change.
