IIRC Stockholm usually revoves around a captor who has the opportunity/means to kill you but choses not to. After looking around a bit I haven’t noticed anything about kids getting killed by camp staff.
neither are we.
Although they, and society, probubly expected you to follow *most * of it’s rules and laws.
Then in your case you would not profit from going there.
You do not know me, you have not lived what I have lived. If anything I had too much compassion. Compassion that did not want our son to wind up in youth prison. At least with our descision I had some control over where he went and how long he’d be there, rather than some judge. Also he does not have a longer criminal record for being there.
Pride? How does my pride enter into this? I don’t recall making any statements that could lead you to believe I suffered from wounded pride.
When he is an adult that will be his descision. I never asked him to love me. I only told him to follow the rules of common decency and obey the law of the land.
Is that any different from an ex-con who, after a hard time in prison, obeys the law only out of fear of being sent back?
It is not preferable in any way, I’d rather it never got to this point. I’d have prefered we built treehouses and went to ball games. However, my preferences had precious little to do with his choices in what he did.
Something tells me few would.
That’s true.
I dunno, from what I’ve observed, males tend to compete with other males, regardless of relation. Blood related father and son, or otherwise, there always seems to be some level of competition going on. I think I’ll call it the Dad Philosophy, even though it probably has more to do with being male. Anyway, the dad is inclined towards unreasonable control over the son. The nature of the competition between the two compels the son to rebel, which in turn, forces the father to even more extreme forms of discipline. It’s a vicious cycle, because neither wants to give in. The son, seeking some sort of vindication for the fact that HIS pride was wounded as a result of the progressively harsher punishments, goes on to do worse things. The father may be motivated by good intentions, but his unwillingness to give in, regardless of the “rightness” of his actions, actually damages his quest to turn his son into a model citizen.
Maybe you’ve done it; won that is. What is the benefit? Is he happier? More fulfilled? More motivated? Have you ever asked what was troubling him?
Well then, it is my opinion you will always have this problem.
Would you consider that rehabilitated?
What do you consider “unreasonable” enough to warrant lying on the floor, arms twisted behind your back, every day for 18 months?
Something like… not sharing enough secrets with your “family”?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=185544
Don’t go there. And don’t send your kids.
(see my posts on Deer Park Hospital in the referenced thread. I bet Tranquility Bay is the same shtick.)
You missed this quote from the article:
The implication being if you have $40k a year to spend on this crap, you probably are pretty wealthy. Susie Crackpipe and Tyrone Bluntsandfourties are probably not going to be the ones attending summer campt in Traquility Bay.
IMHO, it’s the same kind of “absentee paranting” as shipping the kids off to boarding school or never being around and letting some nanny raise them. Then all of a sudden, they are 15 years old, you barely know them and you don’t know what do about their behavior.
I knew people who were like that at that age. They were called EVERYONE. And I’m sure it is worse for you since you are “New Dad”.
I have to ask myself, why would I ship my kid off to be disciplined by a stranger instead of administering the discipline myself. Why should my kid fear some wanabe jarhead who thinks he’s a D.I. more than he fears my discipline?
I’m pretty sure if my son or daughter is anything like me, the would get little benefit from such a camp. I would go through the motions half assed while ridiculing the instructors behind their back. Or maybe I wouldn’t do anything at all - what’s the worse they could do? Yell at me? What would they do if I said “Fuck you bitch! I ain’t running shit!”? Beat me? Not give me any food?
Really? Cause I would thank them. Probably while they are sleeping.
I believe the term is “Oedipus Complex”. Loosly based on the Greek myth, it basically amounts to rivalry between the father and son over the attentions of the mother. Someone with greater knowledge of psychology can probably give a better diagnosis.
I think you’re confused with respect to the posessor of the authority problem.
The Wwasp crew seem to have one tool, and it’s clearly a hammer. So to them, everything looks like a nail. And they keep hammering, whether it’s doing any good or not. Whether it’s far past the point where any reasonable person would have started to wonder whether it could do any good.
The people who are running this program are allegedly the adults. If this girl is ‘pulling crap’ after three years, maybe they should figure out that the probram isn’t working, at least in her case?
Same deal here.
My thought on this is pure and simple: these people are acting on behalf of the parents. If it would be considered child abuse for the parents to administer such a program themselves, then it should be considered child abuse for parents to consign their children to such a program.
I’m not against boot camps, but they need to be regulated, overseen, and inspected just like any other facility that is given similarly extensive power over its wards. That obviously can’t happen when they’re located in a Third-World country.
And the parents…hell, it’s the parents that sound like they really need the boot camps:
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that if the parents aren’t taking responsibility for their own lives, their kids may fall down on that job as well.
Well, dipshit, maybe you should have straightened out your boy from Marriage #1 before fathering a new batch of kids in Marriage #2. If you hadn’t had the second round of children, you would have been able to straighten out that boy yourself, rather than having to ‘protect’ your new offspring from him.
Sheez. You want it all, without any consequence to your own life, so you throw your son, your own son, whom you claim to love, to the lions. Jim Mozingo, you need a term at Tranquility Bay. What a wretched excuse for pond scum you are.
It’s pretty obvious from the links that the demands put forth by the staff in that little hellhole are way beyond “behaving in a reasonable manner”. Is it really necessary to point out that not all authorities are worth respecting ? Anyone with backbone enough to flip these psychos (and by extension, the people who decided to outsource his upbringing by sending him there) the bird at this extreme cost to himself for 18 months is showing a helluva lot of character & backbone in my book. Of course, I’m in no doubt that they broke him in the end 
This is the most appauling quote from Mr. Monzingo:
Ok, so because you don’t believe in therapy, and because you don’t want to spend the time on it, you ship your kid off for abuse at the hand of strangers? I hope somebody seriously kicks this guy’s ass. (And I know therapy isn’t always effective, but it doesn’t even seem like he gave it a serious try).
Were you not hugged enough as a child or something?
Pain is also something that people grow a tollerance to. What happens when the slap of a slow middle age man is no longer effective at inflicting pain on a full-grown teenager? Do you buy a cattle prod?
Still, at least you seem to have the courage to administer the punishment yourself.
Respect has to be earned. You can have someone else earn it for you.
FYI, Stockholm Syndrome is a condition where a captive psychologically bonds with his captor as a defense mechanism for avoiding or enduring violence or pain. It does not have to be life threatening.
Perhaps none. Perhaps you just don’t believe that you, as a human being, are required to do what some poorly educated, poorly paid, in loco parentis stranger says just because he says so and he’s a nominal adult while you are under 18. If it means lying on a floor for 18 months in order to prove that you won’t be cowed under or forced to spout off nonsense (without Tranquility Bay I’d be dead or working for minimum wage?!?!) or reform your personality to someone else’s expectations, so be it, is I’m sure the opinion of some of these kids, including the 18-month girl.
Or perhaps she was simply apathetic, and was doing whatever they demanded until the day she finally turned 18 and could sign herself out. Biding her time, as it were.
However, it’s fairly clear that if someone is willing to lie on a floor for 18 months, or can be in a program for 3 years with so little progress that she must wear a sign around her neck like a dog, the program – which is clearly very one size fits all – isn’t utilizing the proper approach for those particular kids.
Perhaps some kids respond to hardnose bullying, inferior educations, new age-y self-motivation videos, unsanitary living conditions, crap food and no medical care in a third-world nation. Perhaps some kids work the program just to get the hell out.
But for every kid who does the program – for whatever reason – there is another or two others or several others who would be far better served by a personally tailored approach which explored the root causes of their unacceptable behavior, helped them deal with those issues, gave them alternative means of expressing themselves and encouraged them to move toward positive change.
If there were anyone involved with WWASP, or whatever its called, who had any training in education or psychology or social work, they’d know that.
It’ll be interesting to see if one of these kids signs himself out on his 18th birthday, comes back to the states the next day and files a massive lawsuit against his parents for the emotional and psychological damage inflicted upon them at one of these places. Parental rights aside, I’m fairly certain that you cannot give someone your approval to kneel on your child’s ankles and bend their arms behind their heads, or tell them that they’re whining and refuse help when they seek medical care for scabies and yeast infections.
Stemba, I think I see where you’re coming from, and I think I understand the perspective you were trying to relate, but I also think you picked one of the worst possible analogies to present your argument. And around here, I’ve found that people are reeeeal picky about what analogies and metaphors you use. Furthermore, while I believe your general idea is sound, there’s a certain air of excess that I’m not entirely comfortable with.
Right up front - I don’t have a kid. Sometimes, I’ve felt like I did, there’s a boy I love like a son and have tried to do my crippled best for, but I realize that’s not the same thing. I realize, while typing this out, that this makes my opinion totally void in this very discussion, so, um, I’ll shut up now.
http://fornits.com/anonanon/docs/wwasp/toc.htm
should be of interest…
I’m working my way through Aaron Kravig’s deposition. He’s a recent former ‘student’ there. He testifies that the place, besides being harsh, was dangerously unsanitary: shower stalls with stuff growing on the floors and walls, open sewage in places where it might get on clothes and towels; being made to clean dorms with rags that may have also been used to clean toilets.
That’s just one former student’s testimony, but if it’s corroborated, they should be shut down pronto, just for that alone.
Emphasis added. Maybe that was the problem?
Well, I come from an old school family, so I can see where BMalion is coming from, and don’t think that it deserves this particular recrimination.
I love my boys, with all of my heart. But I don’t ask them to love me. I do my best as a dad, and hopefully, If I’ve done a good job, they’ll appreciate it when they are older. But I’m sure that I’ll do a lot of things to piss them off- we all know that teens can react badly to restrictions of any sort, regardless of the prudence or necessity of the restriction (recalls the mention of ‘injustices’ earlier in the thread) .
I want my boys to love me- but that is not the most important priority in their raising. I want them to grow up to be men that I can be proud of, but more importantly, men with self-worth and who can take care of themselves and interact with society to its benefit and theirs. Too many parents (especially after divorce) devote too much time to making their child love them instead of making their child a good person.
Like I said, if I do right, and act out of love, I hope that they will love me in in return- if not now, then when they are old enough to understand. I’ve been lucky, especially in our blended family, that they reciprocate my loving them…but I know that not everyone is as lucky as we are.
You’re right. I stand corrected. Trying to stay calm and answer posts quickly while at work on this touchy subject has caused me to choose words that are not always perfectly accurate. I apologize.
What I said, many times, when our son screamed at me about how “I don’t love you I hate you…” I would respond. You don’t have to love me, that’s your choice. But you do have to follow the rules …etc " Be assured I told him many times, and still do, That I love him.
Sorry for any confusion but it’s hard to condense three years of life into a couple of posts. Thanks for your patience.
You bring up some interesting points, and I thank you. But it seems that in reading my brief story you’re trying to perhaps mold it to fit your theory, (or philosophy) of father-son relationships.
I don’t feel the need to defend myself on a message board about what I did. But, I don’t mind sharing information for the purpose of education.
Rather than try to pick my posts apart for information on what I did to my son that was monsterously evil (and I don’t mean you specificaly MmmDoughnut, I would hope that at least you could imagine for a moment that you were in my shoes.
My mother worked for over 30 years in the juvenile court system in our county. She got her masters in family counseling and was instrumental in training and/or hiring most of the staff at the detention facility, the courts, and the counseling staffs. I have many freinds in the psychotherapeutic/counselling professions and I’ve volunteered many hours to help troubled teens. I was, at least, in a position to know of the resources for help available and the dangers of abuse and neglect.
What a silly question to ask me. Of course I’ve asked him. Do you think a violent, defensive, angry teenager is going to give a meaningful answer? You have to sift through alot of crap and sulky non-verbal body-language to come to the conclusion that: What’s bothering him is that the world does not give him everything he wants when he wants it. Of course, he’s not that way now.
Mind you, I can only speak from my experience about my situation, yours or your friend’s may be different.
And on a public service note, if you know of someone who is having a struggle with their son or daughter, offer to let the kid spend a night or 2 with you (same-sex only, of course). You will help de-fuse a possibly bad situation and it might be that just knowing a non-family adult is willing to listen would make all the difference.
Also, a lot of kids scream, “I hate you!” when what they really mean is, “I’m really really PISSED at you!” but don’t know how to say it.
BMalian, I respect your decision to throw your kids away because they are unruly. That is your perogative. However, Military school doesn’t sound as bad as Tranquility Bay though. I just finished reading the link mmmmDonut provided with the court case and have to say all the kids talked very similarly about the torture they received, the unsanitary conditions, the lack of contact on both the “inmates” and parents to eachother, the quality of the food, the round of scabies that many of the people received, the fact that when one of the girls committed suicide that several of the boys had to continue drying off with towels with dinner plate sized blood stains and parts of the girl who killled herself’s hair on it, etc.
If I were put in that situation, I would work it until I got out and then whoever sent me there would wind up dead. Jail isn’t as heinous as that hellhole.