Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 281 posts

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#161

Post by erklik »

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…

Similar situation in Australia. They're called the Stolen Generations, children who were removed from their Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent parents by state agencies and church missions. This happened until the 70s. It's nuts how recent it is.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#162

Post by detaro »

erklik wrote: post #161
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…

Similar situation in Australia. They're called the Stolen Generations, children who were removed from their Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent parents by state agencies and church missions. This happened until the 70s. It's nuts how recent it is.

In Canada the Indian Act allowed the state to force kids into such places until 2014.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#163

Post by devenblake »

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…

Happened in the United States as well (notoriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_Indian_Industrial_Sch...).

I was genuinely surprised to learn this in high school (for me, 2017-2021 or so) - not because it's not a notable event in US history but because I was surprised my history teacher was allowed to teach it.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#164

Post by jessaustin »

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…

Did you also stop cracking jokes while classmates were struggling to learn?

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#165

Post by schelling42 »

sasaf5 wrote: post #15

Institutionalizing someone without even telling them will completely sever any trust. Who thought this would be a good idea?

Abusive parents.

Kids are "defiant" or have "bad behavior"? Just abuse them more. Even better, just hand them to institutional abusers.

> Cynthia says they eventually settled with the programme for an undisclosed amount on the condition they could speak freely about the circumstances of their daughter's death. She learned Erica had been pushed to keep hiking as her condition worsened throughout the day. She later testified to Congress about how her daughter's distress had been mistaken for teenage belligerence by staff.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#166

Post by jessaustin »

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…

...most of our planet feels like a hellhole...

Donnie, is that you?

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#167

Post by petre »

erklik wrote: post #161
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…

Similar situation in Australia. They're called the Stolen Generations, children who were removed from their Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent parents by state agencies and church missions. This happened until the 70s. It's nuts how recent it is.

Oh, the Aussie government has been sending immigrants, including children, to processing centres in Nauru and Christmas Islands for a while. This is even more recent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Ce...

Also during recent events, the Aussie government banned their own citizens from returning from India under penalty of jail time and huge fees.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#168

Post by schelling42 »

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.

And this is a good thing. Stable friendships can balance out parental failure to some degree.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#169

Post by brian_cunnie »

bjornsing wrote: post #153
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.

I asked a psychologist (Dr. Judith Bernstein) if it's true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and she answered unequivocally, "Trauma never makes you stronger."

In a similar vein, with respect to "there are no atheists in foxholes", A three-tour-of-duty-in-Vietnam captain in the US Army (Harry McMenamin) said, "I was an atheist when I was in Vietnam, and I was in a lot of foxholes. There are atheists in foxholes."

Post reply on HN