Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think about your parents?
I'm not in contact with them at this point.
[deleted]
Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
141–150 of 281 posts
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most child soldiers’ mental health is ruined for life. A model of obedience and desensitization achieved through abuse followed by committing unspeakable atrocities is not a great formula for making good citizens. What kind of twisted mental gymnastics convinces the creators of these programs that their programs are anything but harmful?
I was rewatching shows from 1990 and so on lately. One of surprising observations was that "tough love" came up multiple times, always as positive. There is something appealing about tough no nonsense solutions to people with authoritarian tendencies. And there is ignorance about how bad it can get in isolated communities where weaker individuals have no where to escape.
I think it's not surprising that it had (and probably still has) positive connotations to many people, because "tough love" sounds like something most people employ sometimes - from a parent enforcing bedtimes to a friend telling another friend that they're being an asshole in some way. I think what clicked for the majority of people was the idea that loving someone doesn't mean saying yes to their every whim, rather than anything extreme.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most child soldiers’ mental health is ruined for life. A model of obedience and desensitization achieved through abuse followed by committing unspeakable atrocities is not a great formula for making good citizens. What kind of twisted mental gymnastics convinces the creators of these programs that their programs are anything but harmful?
I was rewatching shows from 1990 and so on lately. One of surprising observations was that "tough love" came up multiple times, always as positive. There is something appealing about tough no nonsense solutions to people with authoritarian tendencies. And there is ignorance about how bad it can get in isolated communities where weaker individuals have no where to escape.
When growing up as a teenage male, there was a turning point in my mental development. I was sitting in class cracking jokes when this jerk kid stood up and punched me in the back of the head. I didn't know how to respond, so I just sat there. I was an out of shape kid who would have definitely lost.
That event changed me. In the weeks and months ahead, anger and shame in my response led to a focused and intentional mental and physical development. I started exercising, eating better, and learning how to fight. I developed social responses that helped me become better respected and less manipulated, and changed from a rotund pushover to a normal male.
Our society has changed massively over the decades, and one of the biggest changes I've seen is that it's become significantly more feminized, but I think it's important to acknowledge that some things that work for feminine young women won't necessarily work for masculine young men. I think that tough love programs exist because many men who go there and run the place went through similar experiences as me. If the stress is handled adaptively and not maladaptively, it can be a motivator for positive change while dealing with our weaknesses.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#144In Canada our government ran a program like this for all indigenous people for over a century, the goal of which was to "take the Indian out of the child". The children would be taken, often forcefully, and maybe allowed home for a visit one a year maybe not. They were beaten if they spoke their own language or indulged in their own culture. Often abused, sometimes killed. The goal was total cultural annihilation, and the results is generations of entire peoples with PTSD.
Many of these "schools" were lovingly run by Christian churches in the name of the friendly government. The only "trouble" these kids had before most of them were forced to attend the schools was that their parents were messed up because they were also forced to attend the schools.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say that's how childhood looks like for the majority of people on this planet outside of the first-world protective umbrella. Imagine growing up in war-torn Africa, drug-ridden slums of South America or fanatical Middle East with daily executions.
> Imagine growing up in war-torn Africa, drug-ridden slums of South America or fanatical Middle East with daily executions. This sentence is so ignorantly woke that it has come full-circle and it is blatantly racist. Latin America is much, much more than drug-ridden slums, war hasn't torn apart all of Africa - and many countries have recovered from such strife -, and many people in the Middle East live under moderate…
I traveled around the world and spent some time in Brazil. Look e.g. at Rio de Janeiro - a small "city" with a few luxurious somewhat safe neighborhoods like Ipanema and Gavea, then a bit more seedy Copacabana, then a Maputo-style Centro, and all this surrounded by slums that take about 20x the size of the core Rio, including the famous "Zona Morte" a foreign tourist sees first when arriving via the international airport. Friends were telling me stories they experienced in favelas, like grandma phoning to her grandchildren to skip the school because there "were a few rough days" with bullets flying around, or all inhabitants running away because two gangs decided to wage a mini war on some nice afternoon. You see 16 year olds with faces that look 50+ from the "tough love" they experience everyday, lack of opportunities, constant fear of not making it to another day, rampant cheating in everything because that's what everyone is doing, and that's just Brazil, one of the most developed ones. Now look at San Salvador or Guatemala, or some parts of Mexico that went completely bonkers. I am not sure what is "woke" or "racist" in this - most of our planet feels like a hellhole and there is a lot of work to do to improve it. Most people have terrible lives as they have to cope with these either directly or indirectly (even if your life is fine right now, you are still constrained by the hostile environment around), a small minority is cushioned from all that "fun" and pressure.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#146The "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 ahea…
In a lot of ways, good faith, "fix people" institutions are the worst. Belief in a system, religious, psychiatric, social or whatnot can allow good people to override their common sense interpretations. Early modern prisons were designed to help/fix people. Some were designed by moral philosophers, experts in ethics. These became nightmarish, producing more psychological injury than many intentionally punitive models…
Good faith is worse than... bad faith? Or worse than pure intuition?
Because people have had intuition for all time, and they've never stopped using it, including herbal cure remedies for cancer. The option to go without institutional care is already there for anyone without enough money, and it's being exercised all the time, all around the world.
Even when you choose institutions you must exercise intuition.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#147Parents 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.
I've heard it as the adage 'you are the average of the 5 closest people to you'.
> Parent have little influence on that.
Depends if the parents can afford to live where they want. For me growing up, friends were people who lived close enough to bicycle or walk. Given where I lived this meant some were jocks, some were rich, and some were poor.
We were closer to the poor side, but having rich (basically both parents were doctors or some other professional) friends taught me a lot. Namely, there is a path to not being poor. My parents for better or worse put me in that neighborhood.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#148Where do we find a middle ground?? I can see the point of people starting "tough love" camps. But also, youth of today are incredibly soft, condescending and not ready to take responsibility for themselves. We people above 40 years old built the modern world that everyone now enjoys. Many of us had INCREDIBLY rough childhoods. We never enjoyed the helicopter parenting that Millenial-on-up children got. The world (des…
> But also, youth of today are incredibly soft, condescending and not ready to take responsibility for themselves. Where's the evidence for this?
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#149I forget which podcast it was, but they had an interview with someone who survived one of these and wrote the book on them. I wish I could remember the podcast or the person's name, but the impression I got is these camps are completely horrible with no redeeming qualities.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a lot of ways, good faith, "fix people" institutions are the worst. Belief in a system, religious, psychiatric, social or whatnot can allow good people to override their common sense interpretations. Early modern prisons were designed to help/fix people. Some were designed by moral philosophers, experts in ethics. These became nightmarish, producing more psychological injury than many intentionally punitive models…
Good faith is worse than... bad faith? Or worse than pure intuition? Because people have had intuition for all time, and they've never stopped using it, including herbal cure remedies for cancer. The option to go without institutional care is already there for anyone without enough money, and it's being exercised all the time, all around the world. Even when you choose institutions you must exercise intuition.
I meant worse than bad faith, not always... But sometimes in these circumstances.
Maybe "no faith" is closer to the mark. Reformatories with no ideals, just trying to stay open and make ends meet.
I suppose the canonical example is the Spanish inquisition, and the rest of the conquista culture. They were saving people from hell, barbarism, sin and such. Also Russian gulags, Canadian residential schools, and many other examples.
A "for your own good" mentality has often resulted in some of the worst institutions, or at least a distinctive flavour of bad.