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

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#151

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:07 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #143

watwut wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#152

Post by nkrisc » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #120

nradov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases it's parents who are at the end of their rope and feel like they have no other options. I'm not claiming they're necessarily making the right decision. It's just that they've tried everything they know how to do and see it as a last resort.

...and the predatory, profiteering abusers who market to those parents (and, for quite a while, another layer of attention seeking self-help celebrity profiteers who publicized them in the media.)

Don’t forget the therapists who get kickbacks to recommend these programs to the parents of their patients.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#153

Post by bjornsing » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:12 PM 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…

> I look back on it as one of the most valuable experiences in my life, not because there was any validity to the program but because it just confronted me with a lot of intense challenges at a young age that really developed my critical thinking and mindset at a young age.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Problem is, it does “kill”* some people.

(*) Sometimes literally, but probably more often figuratively.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#154

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:22 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #144

In 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, an…

That seems to a common thread. Homes for young mothers, and their children, in Ireland. Orphanages in Germany. All the same all run by Christians ignoring love and care for the sake of some higher moral purpose.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#155

Post by bjornsing » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:22 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #68

My first thought: wow, the US is crazy, I’m glad they don’t have this in the UK! Then I remembered that I was at a famous boarding school for five years, the most miserable years of my life. Thirty years later I’m still coping with the aftereffects. I think of that place as a form of institutionalised child abuse, and frankly if someone pipebombed it, I would not shed a tear. One simple thing: it wasn’t authoritarian…

> One guy, who I think was genuinely evil, took psychology as a minor subject. As an experiment, he decided to drive another, younger, vulnerable pupil mad. Gaslighting him, messing with his head, that kind of stuff. And he succeeded!

I’ve seen grownups engage in this kind of abuse too. It’s incredibly disturbing, almost a legal (or very hard to prove) kind of homicide...

But what can you do about it, other than try to encourage the victim to distance themselves from the abuser? There’s a lot of room for plausible deniability, and any attempt to prove it will look a lot like the ramblings of a mad man...

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#156

Post by djitz » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:28 PM UTC

arcturus17 wrote: post #138

bitL wrote: post #125

Earlier 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…

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Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#157

Post by arcturus17 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #145

arcturus17 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 air…

I volunteered as a teacher in Honduras, embedded in a piss-poor shanty town near La Ceiba that was once ravaged by hurricane Mitch, and while I saw some horror stories (ex: one of my pupils had a forced abortion b/c her partner kicked her), I still believe that about 95% of people lived decent, happy lives and not the constant oppressive existence you describe.

I've also travelled across Africa, and have seen plenty, and I mean plenty, of happy people. They lived in material poverty compared to my cozy European living standards, but in relative safety and prosperity.

Your interpretation of how most people in the world live in absolutely abject and violent conditions is not only wrong in my opinion and experience, the data is also there to back it up. Massive improvements in healthcare, education, policing have happened all across the board in the world.

There is atrocious violence in too many parts of the world, but not "most" of the world like you describe. For each example you describe in Latin America or Africa, I could come up with one hundred counter-examples of towns that live in pretty safe and prosperous conditions.

The world still needs a lot - and I mean a lot - of work, but an utterly bleak and defeatist vision of things does not help the cause.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#158

Post by arcturus17 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

djitz wrote: post #156

arcturus17 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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> that's how childhood looks like for the majority of people on this planet

They are saying it is mostly that, which I believe is blatantly false.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#159

Post by nyolfen » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

captain_price7 wrote: post #114

dash2 wrote: post #68

My first thought: wow, the US is crazy, I’m glad they don’t have this in the UK! Then I remembered that I was at a famous boarding school for five years, the most miserable years of my life. Thirty years later I’m still coping with the aftereffects. I think of that place as a form of institutionalised child abuse, and frankly if someone pipebombed it, I would not shed a tear. One simple thing: it wasn’t authoritarian…

We have something called Cadet College here in Bangladesh (grade 7-12), and British public schools were I think the primary inspiration behind them (actually first few principals were all British). It was just as brutal as you say, if not more. But the attitude of "ex-cadets" here is that of extreme pride, many consider it to be the best 6 years of their life. And this feeling is almost universal. I have now several…

it reminds me of an episode of a podcast i was listening to recently about somebody who grew up in a tough area with other people who experienced violence and difficult circumstances, and while there he had no emotional issues and simply pushed everything down; but once he moved to a 'nice' (american middle class) college and people heard about what he had experienced and felt sorry for him, he suddenly developed symptoms of ptsd. i think our individual response to circumstances can largely be shaped by what is normal around us.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#160

Post by gunfighthacksaw » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 12:48 PM UTC

arcturus17 wrote: post #138

bitL wrote: post #125

Earlier 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 wouldn’t say their perspective is woke at all, it reminds me of that well known passage in Hobbe’s Leviathan: nasty, brutish and short; which is a work associated with traditional conservatism, although you saw conservative neoliberals like Milton Friedman say similar things when arguing that capitalism has greatly improved the world.