The high price of spoiling sprog
Related Topics
Juvenile DelinquencyPsychological TestingSchool Counselor | Signs Of StressStomach ProblemsSymptoms Of Stress |
gutterb ...@aol.compazine (Gutterboy)
Today's NY Times has a front-page story on just how expensive it can be once Bratteneigh reaches the Terrible Teens and it comes time to break his/her self-esteem at boot camps and correctional facilities: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/10/education/10TEEN.html?pagewanted=print (Since registration is required, I'll excerpt a bit:) Parents of Troubled Youths Are Seeking Help at Any Cost By SARA RIMER COLUMBIA, S.C. ??” The parents, who are divorced, were cataloging their fears and frustrations over their 14-year-old son. He had a learning disability and a hyperactivity disorder. He was failing in school. He was depressed, given to fits of rage, and seemed to have no idea how to make friends.
"His peer group doesn't want anything to do with him," said his father, a 53-year-old dentist. "His social skills are horrible.
"He has no remorse," the father went on. "He stole $100 from me over Easter." The boy lives with his mother, who is 42 and has recently remarried. "I have a concern that he could kill himself, or someone else," she said.
[Love the order of that sentence -- "or someone else." Yeah.]
---
But while experts praise many of the new programs and schools, some also say that their emergence partly reflects the failures of a generation of permissive, distracted parents. And many of the parents interviewed for this article would agree.
"I don't think there's one of us who has a kid in a program who doesn't feel like we've failed," said Susan Stevens of West Bloomfield, Mich., who sent her son to a therapeutic school. "We're the boomers. We read all the books. We were supposed to raise the perfect kids." Yet for all their guilt, parents like Ms. Stevens also say that they had no alternatives. Parents who turn to this industry have already made the rounds of doctors, therapists, clergy members and guidance counselors. They have exhausted the available resources at the public schools and the traditional private schools.
These parents, in many cases, end up intimidated by their own children.
"I refer to some of these kids as emotional terrorists: no matter how you look at it, the home is a war zone," said Rudy Bentz, headmaster of Academy at Swift River, a therapeutic boarding school in western M***achusetts.
---
And the help is not cheap. A six-week wilderness program in Idaho can cost $16,000 or more. The schools cost about $50,000 to $80,000 a year. While some parents can easily afford the costs, a striking number of other parents mortgage their homes or borrow from relatives to pay tuition.
Ms. Stevens, 47, borrowed the money to send her teenage son to a $17,000 five-week wilderness program and then a $4,200-a- month therapeutic boarding school from the college fund her parents had established for her two children.
"It's your kid," said Ms. Stevens, who is divorced from her son's father.
"You'll do anything." [Gotta love it. You've spoiled them by spending too much money on 'em -- and the cure is a $17,000, five-week "wilderness program."]
---
A 53-year-old librarian in Los Angeles sent his 15-year-old daughter to a wilderness therapy program after he discovered she was using cocaine and having sex in motel rooms. "Instead of being firm with my daughter, I told her what I thought she shouldn't do, and then left it up to her," he said, explaining that he had raised her in opposition to his own rigidly strict upbringing. "I told her I wasn't going to be upset if she had a drink at a party or tried pot, but I didn't want her to touch hard drugs. To a teenager that's like saying, `Do anything you want.' It was a big mistake." One woman, a university administrator, sent her teenage daughter to an emotional growth school after discovering that she was a heroin addict.
["EMOTIONAL GROWTH school"???!!!!] In retrospect, the woman said, she believes that she was not firm enough with her daughter. She would put in a 60-hour work week, and then come home and wash the dishes because it was easier than getting her daughter to do them. "I just copped out," she said. "It's parenting stuff, and I was too tired for it." She recalled that one of her daughter's proudest moments at the school was digging a stump out of the ground in the snow. "For me it was an epiphany," the mother said. "I had never forced her to stick to anything. I was constantly bailing her out." Gutterboy
-----------------
"we have the potty in the living room too! Without the tv, Java's sitting attention span is too short to go pee or poop, so there it is. We just put it next to the couch and called it modern art." -- Poster to the cowboards
mrfeath ...@aol.com
Gutterboy says...
(snip long story about parents who are amazed that not teaching your kid how to behave results in poorly adjusted kids) Here's a goodie: Tell us, duddie--where did the kid LEARN those horrible social skills?
This one's my favorite: D'oh. This is evidence, if I ever saw any, that some people should not be breeding. Mary
flaming cat flaming...@home.commm
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but are we describing a workplace in which you yell at children, and force them to do miserable things all day long...
AND GET PAID???
--
flaming cat (where's my interview suit?? the one with the spikes and the matching whip!)
redstick ...@yahoo.com (Red)
Whenever I read something like this or see Sally Jessy Raphale and the like send kids to bootcamp, I think not only do the kids need to go, the parents need to go too!
In fact, I think alot of these so called parents need bootcamp more than the kids do!
RedStickHam http://www.geocities.com/redstickham
MG scaperch...@hotmail.com
Those "send my kid to boot camp" shows make me sick. These kids are absolutely insufferable, evil, disrespectful creatures, but they got that way because *the parents didn't do their job*. These brats are being abused because their parents gave them no discipline. The (so-called) PARENTS should be sent to these places right along with the uncontrollable kids that they produced.
****ing breeders.
MG *remove the block when replying by email*
labmous ...@hotmail.com (Mouse)
'em -- and the cure is a $17,000, five-week "wilderness program."] To be fair, before judging the parents for spending that kind of money, you need to understand that those wilderness programs are for seriously troubled teens and are very good. My parents sent my brother to two - a drug rehab out in the middle of Montana and the other was a boarding school in Idaho. They didn't do it because it was an expensive vacation, as you seem to be under the impression of it being. They, and all of the other parents there, did it because then their teenagers are isolated from the larger part of society and what got them addicted or troubled in the first place. This social separation does have certain fallbacks, most of the time being that they've been isolated from temptation so long that it can be hard for them to stay clean when confronted by their addict friends upon arrival at home. Those wilderness programs can be very hard, though.
They're really not a vacation home. There's one in Wyoming, I believe, that takes a group (just one gender, so there is no sexual stuff to worry about) camping into the wilderness for several weeks. During this time they'll chop wood, make camp fires, hike to their next destination, hunt for their own food and do several hours of therapy a day. There are all sorts of activites designed to help them identify and deal with their disease. However, when dealing with drug/alcohol addiction, five weeks is hardly enough. Six months should be the minimum, depending, but it usually is that length.
Scott Amspoker s...@rt66.com
How come nobody ever says those things about a sprog who died?
Scott Amspoker | Yields over 30 blasts or s...@rt66.com | 80 gentle honks per charge!
http://www.rt66.com/sda |
dippenflip ...@hotmail.com (Caelan)
Pa-the-tic.
These Moos still don't get it. Even when their ignored, unruly, undisciplined teen sproggen have become exactly what the absentee breeders have raised them to be, the breeders are amazed. And the solution? A smack in the ***? Grounding? More supervision? NO! God forbid they put any effort into their spawn! It's someone else's problem! The breeders do exactly what they've always done...throw money at the problem and hope it goes away.
Age 2: Shitlina is screaming? Buy her a toy.
Age 6: Bratney won't obey? Bribe him with toys and gifts.
Age 10: Shitlina wants to dress like Skanky Spears? Let her.
Age 12: Bratney smokes crack? Ignore. He'll grow out of it.
Age 14: Shitlina is knocked up. Raise her child.
Age 17: Bratney hears 'NO' for the 1st time and wigs out? 16K wilderness camp.
I hope these kids sue their parents for failing to raise them to be mature, thoughtful, independant, adjusted adults. Breach of contract or something..
Caelan.
gutterb ...@aol.compazine (Gutterboy)
Wrote Mouse: Not at all. I was just marveling at the fact that a bit of discipline and boundary -- which the teens in the article sorely needed (I don't know about your brother) -- is a hell of a lot cheaper than $17,000, and that several of the teens seem to have gotten to this point precisely because their breeders were throwing money at them instead of rules.
Gutterboy
-----------------
"we have the potty in the living room too! Without the tv, Java's sitting attention span is too short to go pee or poop, so there it is. We just put it next to the couch and called it modern art." -- Poster to the cowboards
lot ...@aol.comaol.com (And Knowing Is Half The Battle)
Some of these bootcamp things are ****ed up themselves.
In one a horrible teenager was giving a 'Scared Straight' tour of the local ER.
Halfway through it they got a crashing patient. Patient died right in front of everyone, girl included.
"Horrible." I thought. "But it seems to have affected her in a good way." Except...
it was all a hoax. Nobody died.
And they told her this.
My head exploded at the whole deal.
--
"If life gives you a lemon, pull out a gun and start shooting." Please spay or neuter your pet (and hot pavement hurts them) Not all comic books are meant for kids!
"We pull pranks because we're goofy monkey children." - Recess
Scott Amspoker s...@rt66.com
*LOL* Scott Amspoker | Yields over 30 blasts or s...@rt66.com | 80 gentle honks per charge!
http://www.rt66.com/sda |
solomonta ...@computer.org (Sol Taibi)
[...]
> There's one in Wyoming, I believe,
> that takes a group
> (just one gender, so there is no sexual stuff to worry about) Well, not the "regular" kind, anyway. Just the kind stereotypically ***ociated with British public (prep) schools.
Rah-ther!
"Critter" sawy...@erinet.com
<>...
Well certainly no pregnancies.
ced1 ...@aol.comNOSPAM (Washu)
I remember reading a similar article in Salon.com (chorus: email me if you want the link). The Salon.com pointed out what we're saying: What's the point of sending a child to one of these camps if the problem is at home?
It's scary -- I haven't read Sunset magazine in years, and now there are something like two or three pages of ads for these "Special Schools".
Speaking of money, I was reading Consumer Guide, and the cost of a kid until 6 is 50K for low-income people, and 100K for higher incomes. Pick your favorite investment return, plug it into the Rule of 72, and find out the **real** cost of a six-year old child!
Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^
| To Top |