Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
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Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#2This is the dumbest shit I have heard lmao. North America (and also poor parts of the UK weirdly) is full of this Be a Tough Guy aesthetic. “I kicked my son out of the house at 18 so he could learn to take care of himself in the world”. Dumbass shit hahaha. Taking care of yourself in the world is the easy part. It’s all the other shit that’s hard.
There’s a reason why there is such a strong ethnic correlation in US demographic outcomes that somehow clusters among groups where this belief is rarer.
Honestly, the one learning lesson for me is that this dumb shit is prevalent even in rich families (who have the resources to be told better).
Fortunately, this seems to have a significant impact on child outcomes, so you can beat the average by just letting poor parents give their kids Tough Love™ while you handle them properly. You can significantly out-compete their genetics with marginally better memetics.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#3I was in one of these and found the Paris Hilton documentary to be mostly spot on. If anything, (probably due to time constraints) it left quite a lot out.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#4I was sent to an “emotional growth boarding school” in the ‘90s. I wasn’t kidnapped but many of my schoolmates were. A few years later the department of education (can’t remember if it was state or federal) shut the school down after stories got out about the horrific things that were going on there. Kids forced to sit in corners for days at a time, ambulances not being called for kids who had very seriously self-harmed, strip searches (administered by other kids), physical restraints... I could go on. The place had a cult-like atmosphere that was centered on the headmaster and his weird homegrown therapeutic method.
I had nightmares for years afterwards and still haven’t fully come to grips with what happened there.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#5I had several friends go through the “Utah programs” back in the aughts and they were abused so badly. It still pisses me off. Paris Hilton did a great job with her documentary, her experience was so similar to the people I knew.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#6I was sent to an “emotional growth boarding school” in the ‘90s. I wasn’t kidnapped but many of my schoolmates were. A few years later the department of education (can’t remember if it was state or federal) shut the school down after stories got out about the horrific things that were going on there. Kids forced to sit in corners for days at a time, ambulances not being called for kids who had very seriously self-har…
That's awful, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Thank goodness that horrible thing was put an end to.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#7The people working at these camps should be named and shamed.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#8This makes me sick. I am sorry for those who had to go through such torture.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#9The "troubled teens industry" definitely has a lot of weird stuff going on. Some of the institutions are are bad-faith operations that were always scams (or worse); some were well-intentioned but were managed in a way that produced abuses nonetheless. Maybe a few actually did a good job helping out troubled kids, but it does not seem to be the norm.
This is perhaps a place where internet culture has been somehow ahead of the curve in a positive way. Former residents have been organizing online and exchanging information for a few decades. I believe the longest-running forum for discussions is the one at fornits.com: https://www.fornits.com/phpbb/. This site has been around for about 20 years, and used to also have a wiki with extensive information about specific institutions. Alas, the wiki seems to be down for several years now, and the discussion board is a few years past its peak of activity too.
More recently, I believe reddit is the most active discussion forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#10I was sent to an “emotional growth boarding school” in the ‘90s. I wasn’t kidnapped but many of my schoolmates were. A few years later the department of education (can’t remember if it was state or federal) shut the school down after stories got out about the horrific things that were going on there. Kids forced to sit in corners for days at a time, ambulances not being called for kids who had very seriously self-har…
That's awful, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Thank goodness that horrible thing was put an end to.
Thanks. I understand why my parents did what they did. I was addicted to meth and probably would’ve wound up dead without a serious intervention. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
(Clean and sober now.)