Help for Troubled Teens and their families
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p ...@backbenimble.com (Brad)
I just wanted to share a solution my wife and I have found invaluable for dealing with our troubled teen girls. We have two adopted girls who had been born as "crack" babies. They have always been hyperactive with a tendency for lying, but as they approached the teen years the troubles were amplified. Their grades declined, they began stealing from home and school and were attempting to sneak out of home and school. We were fearful of what the future held for our girls. After a long trial of constant grounding and establishment of consequences, without much success, we tried counseling which didn't seem to work well for us. Finally, we found a very special school program with excellent care and academics for our kids. They are really doing well.
For more information on this, I would like to suggest you visit.
http://www.teenpaths.org You will find useful information on Troubled Teens, Drug Use, Teenage Sex Addiction, behavior problems, failing school performance and more...
Hope this helps you guys like it has helped my family Brad
Steve rste...@armory.com
I saw your website. There'a absolutely NOTHING WRONG with teens raised under abusive authoritarian bullshit developing those features which you COMPLAIN ABOUT as strategies to deal with your shit****ing abuse!!
It's a NORMAL RESPONSE!!
If YOU were treated that way as an adult EVEN YOU would develop the VERY SAME RESPONSES to abusive authority that THEY developed AGAINST you!! We saw that in the Eastern Block populations in the Cold War!
The ONLY way to raise a child is as your EQUAL!! Anything else that deviates from that AT ALL will result in them telling you to go **** yourself!! They do this because that IS THE NORMAL RESPONSE TO UNREASONABLE TYRANNY!!!
ANY attempt at bullshit "rule setting" will result in the same thing as tough love, which MOST often results in the child leaving home!! The ****ing "Tough Love" people NEVER *TELL* YOU *THAT*, *DO* *THEY*!!!!??
You keep hoping that you can keep it up JUST LONG ENOUGH to control their lives underhandedly till they accidentally find that they're 18, and you can throw them out, but you're doing them a VERY ABUSIVE DISSERVICE, because then they go out into the world WITHOUT having developed life skills and WITH which such unbelievable resentments of you and anyone LIKE you that you have effectively crippled their lives, and your relationship with them is also forever fractured and irremediable!! You'll be lucky to get a ****ing birthday card, and they'll fight over who has to even bother with you!
You stupid fatuous abusive bullshit artists have to break down and APOLOGIZE to your kids, THAT is your REAL only hope, and to resolve with them to treat them as total and complete equals, only then do you have a hope of restoring honest communication between the generations so that your experience and help can be of actual USE to them ON *THEIR* terms, and not yours, which is your ONLY PROPER function and duty as parents!!
ONLY THEN will you be living up to your ACTUAL inborn obligation to them instead of just trying to bully to get your way and please yourself, which is a selfish fatuous nonsense born of your frightened prudish religious bigotry and your stupid impoverished bullshit antisexual "what-will-the-neighbors-think" upbringing!!
Steve
"Elaine Gallant" elaine.gall...@worldnet.att.net
You adopted kids with a genetic predisposition to the sort of behavior you discribe. Their entire genetic backgrounds predispose them to impulsive behavior, inability to defer gratification, and ***ociated character and mood disorders.
Ya, typically they tend to do better in very highly structured environments.
Boot camps, strict boarding schools... i.e.. prison.
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Steve rste...@armory.com
There are no known predispositions to behavior, that's nothing but the popular "bad seed" myth by which people try to excuse their own bad parenting.
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That's nothing but a myth.
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People like you who's knowledge is so defective that you believe such crap are the ones who should be in camps if only to keep you from voting your ignorance.
Steve
Banty Banty_mem...@newsguy.com
If it weren't for the fact that the OP was bascially just a vehicle for a website announcement, I'd point out that Elaine Gallan't advice in this matter is useless and unhelpful, and comes from her long-standing prejudice concerning adoption. She holds strongly to the "bad seed" theory.
But, since it was just basically a vehicle for a website announcement, I won't :-) Banty
Cecelia Temple ce...@whtvcable.com
Actually, several of the mental illnesses do in fact appear to be genetic, and they certainly do predispose people to certain types of behaviour.
Bipolar, for example. Schizophrenia.
Celia
"Just Me" N...@ThankYou.com
There are quite a few of those and they seem to be finding more and more genetic tie ins to others. Have you read the studies that show that children with the genetic pre-disposition for schizophrenia are at a *much* higher risk to actually develop the symptoms when raised by a parent with that diagnosis than if removed at a very young age [I think it is at birth, but don't recall exactly]. The figures were astounding. Now, if I could only remember where I read that!
-Aula
"Elaine Gallant" elaine.gall...@worldnet.att.net
Yes, certainly. I believe inherent predisposition goes farther than that.
Things like character disorder, imp***ivity, IQ, language and reasoning ability and the ability to defer gratification.
The OP's story is a much repeated one about kids from drug abusing and criminal bio-parents.
Cecelia Temple ce...@whtvcable.com
I've read reports of them, but not the studies themselves. I have read some twin research, though on bipolar, and the concordance rate is very high, even with reared apart identicals. It's lower for fraternals. I'd have to go back and track down my reading to give you the exact figures.
Basically, environment makes a difference, but it doesn't completely negate genetics. Environment, though, is not only the family in which we're reared. It also includes peer groups, school, community, as well as airborne diseases, chemicals, available food, etc. etc. etc. People tend to interpret the word "environment" to mean "parenting" which is a shame, because while parenting is certainly critically important, I think that emphasis diverts focus from some of the other environmental issues that also matter a great deal. There's a fascinating book out there called, "The Nurture ***umption," by, I think, Jean Harris (my copy is virtually always lent out to someone). Interesting reading.
Celia
greccogirl greccog...@yahoo.com
Yes. Especially bi-polar -
Steve rste...@armory.com
Yes, but that is a spectrum of difference quite at right angles to that of "mean spiritedness". Such people as suffer bipolar paranoid schizophrenia are confusing to the rest of us because their responses seem inappropriate, hard to predict, and thus an emotional strain, but still they are not precisely mean or cruel.
There are a couple brain damage sites that can do that, but such specific damage is quite rare.
Steve
Steve rste...@armory.com
You will perpetually find these backlash reactionary books like "The Nurture ***umption" serving the wishfulfullment needs of conservative reactionaries and fundy bigots who always wish to believe that the worst happens not due to their abuses of other people, but due to genetics.
They ALSO like seeing support for their belief that THEM, of course, having more money and power than certain other people or groups has a kind of inborn fitness, because it relieves their sense of guilt over their illicitly gained and immoral advantages.
The fact is that the things by which we ACTUALLY DO differ genetically are so much at right angles in their effects to nurture/environment dynamics that they are not even interactive, and do not even multiply, potentiate, or act as co-factors upon each other.
So we find that the ways in which we differ genetically result in differences that we are not typically even concerned about socially or behaviorally, but only as regards sexual attraction or reactions by strangers who don't know the person.
And we find that all the things we are most concerned about socially and criminally emerge from early experiences of abuse, and are not at all directly related to genetically determined features or dispositions.
It is often alleged that people have inborn talents, but we do not often see a child become, say, musically inclined and talented if they do not have parental examples who have given them the opportunity to learn it because of their interest in it, and this is also true of academic accomplishment. If the child merely is lead to believe that their parent was academically capable, even if they were not very much so, the child will accomplish, mostly because they feel they are capable of it. Also if a child is adopted into a musically incompetent family they will replicate that incompetence quite intently!!
All efforts to deduce that either criminal behavior or achievement comes from genetics fails miserably when compared to all other environmental causes. That there is a slight correleation with genetics seems to always get heralded as evidence of genetic effect upon personality, but when looked at in comparison to all other environmental effects they look quite trivial.
Our ***umptions as to the effects of nurture are quite natural and right, precisely because it is our own personal internal experience that knows it is so!! When we are treated badly we know we react and waste our time getting revenge, and when we are denied what we want we learn deepest darkest hatred, a hatred that lasts a lifetime. We also know that what we come to value we do so because of the people we like, who have been good to us, who have shared those values. We also know that if we were praised to the skies that we tend to do more of that behavior, and to excel at it, even if we are not really terribly interested in it without those accolades!
All attempts to herald genetics as the causes of our behaviors rings very hollow and wishful by someone with an agenda, and it IS, and that's because it is all bollocks!
Steve
Steve rste...@armory.com
Now if only your theory had any evidence behind it at all. It doesn't.
Steve
"Elaine Gallant" elaine.gall...@worldnet.att.net
I believe the most important factor is parenting. Biological parenting being more significant even than adoptive parents.
"Danicka" dani...@altcastlenet.com
Where are you posting from? This thread is cross-posted, and I'd like to join in your discussion.
Danicka ...
Steve rste...@armory.com
All newsgroups in the newsgroup line are on an equal footing, and you can post from any of them to any of them simultaneously. There may be an "origin" for the original post, but if you post to the same list of newsgroups it will go to all of them.
Steve
Cecelia Temple ce...@whtvcable.com
I'm not sure anyone can accurately state "the facts" regarding the great nature/nurture controversy. I do agree with your apparent fundamental premise, that environment is critically important, and that it can and does override apparent genetic predispositions in many instances. Evidence that it does not always do so, however, may be found. For example the Swedish study done a number of years ago on the topic of manifest alcoholism in male offspring of alcoholics, raised in both biological and adoptive homes, as contrasted with male offspring of non-alcoholics in similar circumstance. There was some pretty compelling evidence there that alcoholism is at least to some degree genetically controlled. Further research links bipolar disorder to alcoholism, and of course, the presence or absence of bipolar has implications for behaviour. Then again, obviously, alcoholism is linked to foetal alcohol effects/syndrome, both of which are environmentally (albeit prenatally) induced. So the waters are certainly muddy.
Again, I submit that certain mental illnesses, which are demonstrated to be genetically linked, as well as certain syndromes which are without question genetic (for example, Praeder-Willi) can and DO impact behaviour in quite critical ways.
Then again, your essential premise appears to be that MOST genetic differences are NOT critical as regards behaviour/personality. This may of course be so. There doesn't seem quite enough data out there for me to be convinced. In any case, whatever the data looks like, it certainly behooves us as parents to proceed with full expectation that our parenting is of critical importance. As far as I'm concerned, it is.
The great link between abuse & genetics is worth a look. I refer you to the abusive behaviour above, of drinking alcohol while pregnant, linked to a disorder (alcoholism) which does have a demonstrated genetic component. I use this example because it's the one with which I'm most familiar.
:) Well, I am a musical moron, and I have a daughter readying herself for a career in musical theatre. I also have a daughter with learning disabilities with whom I am working very, very hard to build academic self confidence, despite my holding graduate degrees of my own. The LD daughter may have had her difficulties somewhat environmentally induced, in that I had salmonella poisoning at 12 weeks gestation.
The musically gifted daughter must be the milkman's kid.....LOL Ah, here we have some common ground. I agree that negative behaviour is greatly influenced by pre and postnatal environment, including childrearing practises. This is well documented.
Fair enough. Possibly because some examples are so striking, they ***ume disproportionate positions in the popular mind. I refer you to such books as, "A Child Called It" by Dave Pelzer.
Personally, I have noticed among coworkers that some are far more interested on revenge than others. Some people tend, for whatever reason, to focus backwards in time, while others focus forwards. I prefer to look towards improving the future rather than zoning in on the past.
Certainly this is a basic premise of good child rearing and teaching.
It's those absolutes that cause me problems. I don't feel that there's full enough understanding of the big picture of how the human brain develops and functions to be comfortable with absolutes.
Take care.
Celia
Cecelia Temple ce...@whtvcable.com
I'm not sure "mean spiritedness" is quantifiable. Bipolar is a separate disease from schizophrenia....they may be comorbid, but it's highly unusual.
As to whether or not bipolar can cause a person to be "mean or cruel" - they most certainly can. At least, that would be the case unless one ***umes that most people with bipolar are inherently cruel to begin with, which I do not believe is the case.
Pretty hard to test, that one. Anyway, you might want to drop in on a support group for family members of those with bipolar - I think you'll find that while they're not USUALLY cruel, many can occasionally be VERY cruel.
There are many instances of brain injury causing disinhibition and loss of self control. This, coupled with anger at whatever catalyst (often including the injury itself), make out of control anger quite common in brain injured people. Which is not to say, of course, that everyone with a brain injury has these characteristics.
They do not.
Celia
a ...@sonoma.edu (Dan Abel)
You snipped the part about "Teenage Sex Addiction". That made me laugh, and I was just sure you would respond to it. I don't always agree with Steve, but I think we need to recognize that sex is a natural part of human life, and although we need to teach our teens some responsibility, the phrase "Teenage Sex Addiction" is just ridiculous.
My teens have a problem with "Teenage Food Addiction". They eat like they have hollow legs. Is there a website out there to help me cure their addiction to food?
:-)
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Dan Abel Sonoma State University AIS a...@sonoma.edu http://www.sonoma.edu/IT/AIS/people/Abel.html
Steve rste...@armory.com
Here's the problem. Genetic differences are simply not divided up the way we divide up character traits. The genetic differences that are possible are only about 30,000 according to the latest genome info, and these instead select physical and functional features to us that are both multifarious and also not labeled and restricted to any one aspect of personality that the english language recognizes. We are as unaware of our genetics as a determiner of personality features as we are unaware of our instincts at work, because we do not NEED to be, it is outside of what we evolved to need to know. We simply do not have words for the things that genes do in their most complicated expression in our personality. Instead we have good labeling not for genetically induced personality differences, but only environmentally acquired ones. We simply did not evolve to distinguish these, undoubtedly because they didn't become important to our interpersonal interactions, a kind of existence-proof that genetic personality differences are apparently not that useful to us, else we would have evolved to be highly attuned to them!!
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But the correlation is only very marginally greater for genetically related people! So you forget to say that only the very tiniest percentage of all alcoholics can clearly be linked in this way, and that the vast majority of alcoholism cases could be linked with virtual entirety to JUST their abusive environment and upbringing! So this is again an example where the genetic link is a REACH, and the acquired personality is the vastly widespread cause.
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Sure, but only grossly and in a manner easily identified as grotesque!
These are the m***ive side effects of the genetic defect.
For example: We can easily see in faces the difference between a normal range of variation and an abnormal variation like a bone cancer, and this is the order of the effect of these sorts of genetic defects, versus acquired dispositional features to personality.
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No matter the genetics, defective or other, the human child still responds best to kind and loving treatment, none respond well to vicious cruel treatment, and this in and of itself is kind of remarkable if you think about it. No defect that leaves the human ALIVE seems to invert good and evil!!
And this is also REALLY important to know about child-rearing, that we need not digress into paranoia and believe that ANYONE needs to be mistreated to get the best possible response out of them.
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Alcoholism is linked to depression and self-esteem produced by systematic abuse, and drinking in pregnancy comes not from some feature of personality that makes them hate fetuses, but from their emotionally damage that causes self-involvement and requires so much care of self at that time that it precludes care about others for a time in their lives.
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And I wonder if that ***umption has affected her to any degree in her life! If people really knew that such differences can come merely from the random occurence of opportunities and the order of formative experiences, and position in family and such, they might be less inclined to shun a child they suspect was either born of an illicit liason, or to declare a child a "bad seed" and write them off.
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The only prenatal effects seem to be chemical, and relate to the brain's hormonal environment, the programmable portion of the levbel of arousal, irritability, etc. It is unclear that PERSONALITY-caused behaviors are in any way related to this, and instead it appears likely that the responses of others to more easily stimulated arousable people make them come by an uncomfortability in dealing with them, and cause them to mistreat them almost from the beginning of life. Those with such arousability which are carefully treated with love and fairness have some unusual and extraodinary qualities of singular creativity, while the same person who is mistreated and abused by less tolerant suspicious people be made into a psychopath!
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The ***umption that such a child "survives" such systematic severe abuse as that because of some specific specialiness or worthiness of theirs is a truly obnoxious victim-blaming ***umption. The appeal of such books is often pathological and plays on poor understanding of human psychology found in the portion of the public who seem to fancy themselves informed but who are actually not so.
In point of fact those who "survive" such abuse were 1) accidentally rescued early enough before the personality shut down, and 2) had accidentally discovered coping mechanisms that preserved them longer than some victims.
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Steve rste...@armory.com
But in service to what is easily recognizable as a paranoid delusion only. That is significantly different than even what is publically understood to be "mean-spirited".
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No, and as I said, the difference is quite peceptible.
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So can any bunch of family members. Sure, this is flavored by the weirdness of bipolar disorder, but it is not clear that the disorder participates in the degree of cruelty, just their particular take on such things, which is quite strange!
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My point is that such emotions are the result of the human condition, while any specific disorder or genetic defect seems far more to be something that we have negative emotions ABOUT, rather than being any cause of them.
And that these emotions are universal even between the sane and the insane is a remarkable constancy in the face of some truly remarkable depths of difference!
Steve
Steve rste...@armory.com
I should post the emails that ***hole wrote me, those would be even MORE instructive as to the depths of western antisexuality and idiotic antisexual parental bigotry!!
Steve
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