When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged • Hacker News Board

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#171

Post by Clubber » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #167

Clubber wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive. I don't disagree, but also consider the entire picture. Some of these people end up being the ones that get raging drunk, and into head on collision with a family of 4 killing them all. How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?

> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? Surely not by preemptive incarceration. GP said: > Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. I don't agree. Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probab…

>> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?

>Surely not by preemptive incarceration.

You aren't suggesting any solutions.

>Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive.

You shouldn't dilute the term abusive like that.

>In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed.

I don't think you have kids, you're looking at it from the child's perspective, not a parent's. You haven't really promoted any solutions, just saying things you shouldn't do, leaving a parent with zero tools whatsoever other than to just let the kid be wild. I've seen the results of that, it's quite destructive as well. It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to raise children, and at least in the US, they get zero help and mostly criticism for how they do it, mostly from people who don't have children themselves.

What do you do if you suspect your child is the next Adam Lanza? What do you do if you are as financially constrained and have nearly zero help as a parent in the US? Some variation of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps?"

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#172

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #140

unityByFreedom wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some children are "bad" and need to be taught not to hurt others. The title of this post is relevant. OP "obliged" because he was told he was bad. The point is to not do that. > Children certainly need boundaries and rules Rules are paramount in "Positive Disipline". From the section "Creating Rules" [1]: > In her book entitled Positive Discipline, Jane Nelsen emphasizes the importance of not only creating clear ru…

Have you ever interacted with a "troubled" teen? This comment is not based on reality. It's laughable, really. There are kids who cannot be reasoned with. You try to explain the importance of healthy teeth to troubled teen and they will respond "I don't care". "Natural consequences" are not sufficient. A troubled kid will drink himself into the hospital over and over. A troubled kid will have run ins with the law ove…

There's a tendency to explain away behaviour as being the result of a person being "bad". It's a lazy way out.

> healthy teeth

So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right". If you have charge of an unruly kid, I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene.

> These kids are labeled troubled because they are.

Gosh, that sounds rather black-and-white - they're "bad" because they're "bad". I think the word "troubled" here is serving as a dog-whistle; a lot/all of the time, what's being referred to as "troubled" is really "traumatised".

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#173

Post by rajin444 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #167

Clubber wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive. I don't disagree, but also consider the entire picture. Some of these people end up being the ones that get raging drunk, and into head on collision with a family of 4 killing them all. How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?

> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? Surely not by preemptive incarceration. GP said: > Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. I don't agree. Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probab…

> My guess is that his behaviour was a rational response to being brought up in a home where he was denied love and affection.

I wish this were always the case but statistically this would be a miracle. There is a non zero number of humans born that no matter what we do they will not work with the society that works for the rest of us.

That’s the root of this issue. How do you help the ones that can be helped, and what do you do with those that can’t be helped. I imagine we’ll need a much more sophisticated understanding of genetics before we can answer that.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#174

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #157

unityByFreedom wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your solution sounds like we should try nothing, > There are kids who cannot be reasoned with. Are you familiar with an approach that can help? The approach I mention has been around for over 70 years.

Are you a parent? And if so, did you use your approach? It would just be anecdata, but at least some real world experience.

I'm a parent. I didn't use any approach; like every first-time parent, I had never done it before. You can read books and Wikipedia articles as much as you want, but you have to work out how to parent real kids in real life. And not all kids are the same; not all kids will respond the same way to a given discipline regime.

Both my kids sometimes exhibited "challenging" behaviour. As we all grew older together, I became increasingly sure that coercion isn't a helpful response to such behaviour.

I was brought up with coercion; I was sent to a boarding school where I was caned (yes - when I was a child, adults attacked me with sticks). My parents were of a generation where that kind of act was considered reasonable.

It took me time raising my own kids to realise that coercion isn't a solution, unless your child is literally a psychopath. Psychopathy is a pretty rare trait.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#175

Post by paganel » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #161

paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taking my mom’s car out for joy rides without permission, skipping class Those are all just "things that kids do", or they used to be some years ago, pretty sad that "skipping classes" has transformed into a "reckless" thing that risks getting you, as a kid, quasi-institutionalised.

It's not to be normalised though. I sorta-knew a kid like that (he ended up living at his grandma across from our street after his family fell apart due to marital reasons); he was also mid teens or so and went joyriding in her car. Which nobody would probably find out or care about, but he ended up parking it against a tree if you catch my drift. He was unharmed thankfully, but it could have ended badly. It might be…

I agree, but there's a difference between "needing to be told" and "institutionalising your kid" because of it.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#176

Post by unityByFreedom » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #166

unityByFreedom wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and yes, of course I do! I've learned a ton from this discipline and never need to raise my voice with my kid. When I do raise my voice, it is almost always unnecessary. I apologize in those cases because I want her to know we can recover from mistakes and that it is okay to be upset. Our relationship is stronger for it.

Kudos, then, I try and fail at being the parent I want more often than I care to admit. What ever makes our children human beings able to show compassion with others, and stay safe as soon as they have to live their lives on their own feet, is good parenting. Everything else is secondary. Same as the most important thing with new born toddlers is "are they healthy?".

Haha right, failure is part of parenting. Admit it! Even to your kids. You're a better parent for it, and it doesn't mean you're giving up. It just gives you a way to backtrack and avoid painting yourself into a corner.

And yes, if you already have a parenting style that works, stick with it. I mention Positive Discipline because it works for me and there are a lot of resources for it.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#177

Post by slibhb » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #168

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #68

Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality. In a way, this is inevitable with a wide variety of schools and treatment centers, and a yet wider variety of perspectives. This particular story tells us little about these schools – it describes the perspective of a student, a client. This is valuable and I'm grateful to read it. However, I caution other readers against…

This all pretends like there’s somehow no causality to many of these kids being “difficult”. I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of control despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases. My experience with friends who have gone to places like this is that the kids by and large were under extreme em…

> I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases.

It seems wrong to single out environmental causes as dominant. There are parents with multiple children who all did fine except one. Anyway, we know it's a complicated mix of genetics and environment and either factor can be decisive.

> Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high.

Parents are much less sacrosanct in the US/UK than anywhere else.

No one actually knows how to raise children. We have decided to let parents experiment on their children and this seems correct to me. The more we mandate certain parenting techniques, the more it will become clear that the "science" behind child-rearing is not reliable. We'll be screwing up children uniformly instead of haphazardly. I think it's better to let parents do their best. This leaves us with some children who were over-disciplined and some who were under-disciplined and this is a better outcome than everyone being screwed up in the same way.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#178

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #131

noduerme wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> maybe your family did effectively use positive discipline, or you were an only child, or you were the "good" one in your family. You omit the many sadly common cases for legitimate rebellion and escape, such as sexual abuse from stepparents or foster parents. Those unfortunately can't be remedied with "positive discipline" and they don't make a child the "bad" one.

Are you extending the conversation on purpose? Sexual abuse and trauma don’t seem to weigh into this story at all.

> Sexual abuse and trauma don’t seem to weigh into this story at all.

Sexual abuse and trauma underlie all child psychological problems, according to my ex, who has spent her career as a child psychotherapist. In fact she says that literally all psychological problems have their roots in repressed trauma.

I think she's an extremist; she hasn't convinced me that schizophrenia and manic depression are caused by trauma. But bad behaviour and non-compliance? Absolutely.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#179

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #173

denton-scratch wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? Surely not by preemptive incarceration. GP said: > Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. I don't agree. Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probab…

> My guess is that his behaviour was a rational response to being brought up in a home where he was denied love and affection. I wish this were always the case but statistically this would be a miracle. There is a non zero number of humans born that no matter what we do they will not work with the society that works for the rest of us. That’s the root of this issue. How do you help the ones that can be helped, and wh…

You know who else tried to predict future compatibility of certain people based on genetics? We are as much a product of our genes as we are of our environment. Nothing justifies any of those measures described in the NYYT article and by others in this thread. Nothing, period. If people commit crimes, we have a justice system (no matter how fucked up those can be, not even talking about prisons). For those truly having mental and psychiatric issues, we have corresponding hospitals (again, those can be, and are, pretty abusive themselves). And none of those should be above critical investigations.

As a society we have to accept that some people don't want to cooperate. As long as nobody is harmed (up to the justice system to decide) we have to accept that too.

Re: When I was labeled a ‘troubled’ teen, I obliged

#180

Post by dahfizz » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #172

dahfizz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever interacted with a "troubled" teen? This comment is not based on reality. It's laughable, really. There are kids who cannot be reasoned with. You try to explain the importance of healthy teeth to troubled teen and they will respond "I don't care". "Natural consequences" are not sufficient. A troubled kid will drink himself into the hospital over and over. A troubled kid will have run ins with the law ove…

There's a tendency to explain away behaviour as being the result of a person being "bad". It's a lazy way out. > healthy teeth So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right". If you have charge of an unruly kid, I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene. > These kids are labeled troubled because they are. Gosh, that sounds rather black-and-white - they're "bad" because t…

> So "cannot be reasoned with" seems to mean "refuses to accept that I'm right".

That's unnecessarily combative. Are you arguing that refusing to brush your teeth is a reasonable position?

> I hope you aren't focusing mainly on their dental hygiene.

Dental hygiene was OP's example.

> a lot/all of the time, what's being referred to as "troubled" is really "traumatised".

I agree that most of the "troubled" kids I've known have been traumatized. But traumatization does not necessarily lead to being "troubled", and being "troubled" does not require traumatization. In any case, it does not excuse illegal, damaging, and destructive behaviors.