Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps • Hacker News Board

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#41

Post by adrianN » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

in_cahoots wrote: post #38

adrianN wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A child's peer group is often at least as important as whatever their parents do. Parent have little influence on that.

Is that really true? At my school your peer group was heavily influenced by your interests. Kids who played sports hung out together, kids into band hung out, kids in honors classes hung out. And kids with no other interests hung out too. By and large this last group had parents who weren’t involved in their kids’ lives. It’s just one data point, and there were many non-troubled kids who had non-involved parents. But…

There are probably no simple answers when it comes to how a person's character forms. I just wanted to point out that "the parents are at fault" is not the whole truth either.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#42

Post by Gunax » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

18 years a slave

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#43

Post by throwkeep » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

throwaway_egbs wrote: post #4

I 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…

It’s insane these are a thing. I didn’t know about them until the recent Paris Hilton documentary. She was sent to something similar and if I recall correctly was taken in the middle of the night, as though being kidnapped.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#44

Post by prestigious » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

throwaway_egbs wrote: post #34

thatswrong0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the kind of thing that sounds like it would "help" on the surface but maybe create more suffering down the line.. do you think there were any benefits to your life for having gone or was it a purely negative experience?

I’ve gone back and forth on that question a thousand times. I’m almost pathologically agreeable so it’s easy for me to minimize and slip into a place of, “oh, it’s ok, I was off my rocker and extreme measures were necessary.” But just because I needed help doesn’t mean I needed what that school was doing. So, while it introduced me to a way to stay clean, and kept me clean for long enough to clear my head, those aren…

If you had a child like you were, what would you do? What do you think the best solution is for such a “troubled teen”?

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#45

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

Cynthia remembers her daughter as a bright, thoughtful and athletic young girl who had always done well academically until she began suffering from mental health problems aged 14. Her struggles led her to become suicidal and begin experimenting with illegal drugs. When Erica was admitted to hospital and excluded from school, the family felt frightened and out of their depth.

I am reminded of this piece from a few days back:

A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27509586

I first began blogging about twenty years ago to write about parenting. That never really gelled and I keep trying and failing.

We seem to have gone wrong somewhere really badly. It seems like you can't talk about the connections between physical health, social stuff and mental health anymore. It's verboten or someone decries it as "practicing medicine without a license" or (insert some other objection) or maybe people just no longer understand the connections.

"A sound mind in a sound body" is a very old saying, yet we seem to now think mental health is some distinct issue from physical health.

I am appalled that the parents thought they could help their child by deceiving her so terribly. I cannot fathom where people get such ideas.

It's crazy making when you can't trust the people close to you, doubly so when they have as much power over you as parents have.

I keep wanting to write about such things but my only real qualification is "I was a full-time mom for a lot of years and I'm a great mom" and how do you prove that? That was a private activity.

My sons think I'm a great mom and say so regularly, but you can't build an audience on that and ...there have been a lot of issues I have been trying to sort out, from how to write well to how to deal with privacy issues while writing about family life.

I don't know how to make the connections I need to make with people in order to get meaningful traction on what to write about, where to promote it, etc. And it just really upsets me to see articles like this and feel like good information on the topic of parenting is desperately needed and not know how to make that happen.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#46

Post by slipframe » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #29

trentnix wrote: post #27

Parents whose choices and behaviors have resulted in having raised a troubled teen make really poor choices in how they deal with their troubled teen. That’s not surprising.

A child's peer group is often at least as important as whatever their parents do. Parent have little influence on that.

There is quite a lot parents can do to stack the odds, though of course nothing is ever certain. Signing their kids up for extracurricular activities to keep them busy after school is something my parents did. And not all teenagers are disobedient all the time; twice my parents forbade me from hanging out with somebody. Maybe it's a coincidence, but one of those people is now in prison for domestic violence, and the other is dead from drug abuse. In retrospect I think my parents were right to put their foot down in the case of those two.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#47

Post by isomnesia » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:24 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #45

Cynthia remembers her daughter as a bright, thoughtful and athletic young girl who had always done well academically until she began suffering from mental health problems aged 14. Her struggles led her to become suicidal and begin experimenting with illegal drugs. When Erica was admitted to hospital and excluded from school, the family felt frightened and out of their depth. I am reminded of this piece from a few day…

I made the exact same connection as you. I wonder was it PANDAS..?

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#48

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:26 AM UTC

isomnesia wrote: post #47

DoreenMichele wrote: post #45

Cynthia remembers her daughter as a bright, thoughtful and athletic young girl who had always done well academically until she began suffering from mental health problems aged 14. Her struggles led her to become suicidal and begin experimenting with illegal drugs. When Erica was admitted to hospital and excluded from school, the family felt frightened and out of their depth. I am reminded of this piece from a few day…

I made the exact same connection as you. I wonder was it PANDAS..?

[deleted]

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#49

Post by havermeyer » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #40

I went to one of these places when I was 13. Same thing, picked up in the middle of the night, and sent to a wilderness program that turned into 18 months of boarding school. The school was burnt down by the students a few years after I left and I got a couple thousand dollars in a class action lawsuit when it came out that they were hiring unlicensed therapists and admitting students who should have been in intensiv…

Did you keep in touch with any of the other students? I can't imagine that anyone came away thinking it was pleasant, but I'm curious how their thoughts on the experience compared to yours.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#50

Post by anm89 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:34 AM UTC

havermeyer wrote: post #49

anm89 wrote: post #40

I went to one of these places when I was 13. Same thing, picked up in the middle of the night, and sent to a wilderness program that turned into 18 months of boarding school. The school was burnt down by the students a few years after I left and I got a couple thousand dollars in a class action lawsuit when it came out that they were hiring unlicensed therapists and admitting students who should have been in intensiv…

Did you keep in touch with any of the other students? I can't imagine that anyone came away thinking it was pleasant, but I'm curious how their thoughts on the experience compared to yours.

Not many. There was a Facebook group where people kept in touch which I disconnected with because it was pretty toxic. Most of the people in there seemed like they never got over it and were sort of still reliving it 10 years later and still held a lot of anger about it.

To be fair a lot of them had pretty deep substance abuse issues and probably needed some kind of organized help although I doubt very many got any of that at this program.