Do "boot Camps" (courtesy Of S. J. Raphael.)

[Neil__]

[/QUOTE]
Rat Face

A child needs to know and understand where the line is drawn, and must know he/she'll be punished for crossing it.

Absolutely.
or how will they cope a s adults.

The UK seems to think that sending dilinquent kids on holiday as a punishment is the right idea. Bullshit. It teaches them that they get REWARDED for doing wrong.

I think the line between abuse and holidays has already been drawn so the point is at best provocative

If they had been doing stuff like that when i'd been growing up, i assure you i would have been shoplifting and vandalising too....I could have done with a few holidays

Just because the military saves peoples arses does not excuse screaming at a defenceless child untill it has a breakdown.

They also need to be appreciated when they do good. THIS also seems to be missing in society...recognition and praise when something is done well.

So what lessons about control will these kids contribute to a healthy society.

Neither punishment nor praise will work by themselves, they must be used together and consistantly.

Above all, kids should be loved....and KNOW they are loved.

At least you understand nurture is better for our children.

Neil

[Rat Faced]

Neil__

We seem to be at cross purposes.

UK does NOT do Boot Camp.

However, Social Services in many local authorities seem to have got the idea that taking delinquents on holiday (and i mean holiday..sailing etc) helps them become model citizens.

They then seem surprised that the kids enjoy them that much, they activly break the law when the next "holiday" is due...in order to "win" a place on it.


This is totally seperate to Borstal (which is probably the closest UK has to Boot Camp) which is restricted to youths that are consistantly violent/delinquent.

Which way the kids go, tends to depend on their postcode....like so much else in the UK.



If you push as to which i prefer...

One is too harsh, the other too soft.

If pushed though....well a punishment should be just that.

A punishment....it should, in no circumstances be a reward.

[Neil__]

Originally posted by Rat Faced@2 August 2003 - 18:41
Neil__

We seem to be at cross purposes.

UK does NOT do Boot Camp.

However, Social Services in many local authorities seem to have got the idea that taking delinquents on holiday (and i mean holiday..sailing etc) helps them become model citizens.

They then seem surprised that the kids enjoy them that much, they activly break the law when the next "holiday" is due...in order to "win" a place on it.


This is totally seperate to Borstal (which is probably the closest UK has to Boot Camp) which is restricted to youths that are consistantly violent/delinquent.

Which way the kids go, tends to depend on their postcode....like so much else in the UK.



If you push as to which i prefer...

One is too harsh, the other too soft.

If pushed though....well a punishment should be just that.

A punishment....it should, in no circumstances be a reward.

All your points are valid and the "nub" lies in the fact that if you run out of ideas then the first thing you have to realise is
"these future citizens" are still children.
Some are as young as 9 yrs and we all know they wouldn't have coped with borstal.

So you rest my case for me.

Borstal for 9yr olds is child abuse surely?


Neil

Edit : No 9yr old has done so bad as to justify taking that child from it's home to be "Mind fucked" by screeming adults in uniforms

[Rat Faced]

I thought we were talking about children with criminal responsability...teenagers in other words.

At 9, they would never be sent to Borstal.

The MOST that would ever happen, is they would be taken into Local Authority care surely.


I have to confess my ignorance, but im quite sure that the courts have little to no power over children so young.

[Neil__]

"Boot Camp" makes me think of "Center for Social Re-education".

And I wouldn't like to be taken there.

Neil

[balamm]

I take it Neil, that you've never been a parent. With no rights under law but all the responsibility.
With all the frustration, heartache, and embarrasment of association with your childs actions but no social or judicial support network.

Don't even get me started on the social services crock, an agency determined to empower these 9 year olds you speak of to destroy their parents lives and property and the lives and property of others with no remorse.

I feel you haven't got the personal insight or experience needed to even begin to understand this topic. Not many people do but they comment all the same.

Another reason I believe for the decline of the parent in our modern society.

These are really not our children any more, we are only to be concerned for their physical care. Any attempt to go beyond that and shape a future adult is shot down when it is observed. Unless it involves expensive vacation resorts and such things, as Rat Faced has noted.

[Neil__]

Please don't presume that I have ever wanted children.

So you armchair psychology has no point.

These are really not our children any more, we are only to be concerned for their physical care. Any attempt to go beyond that and shape a future adult is shot down when it is observed. Unless it involves expensive vacation resorts and such things, as Rat Faced has noted.

They are all our children and therefore they deserve our protection.

Because we have power over them and for no other reason.

Nweil

[balamm]

If you don't want children then what is your purpose in starting this topic? And what right do you have to judge those who take on the responsibilty?

Because we have power over them and for no other reason.

What the hell is this? You have no children. And I'll sure as hell not give you power over mine!

You'd better give this a little more thought I think, you appear to be doing nothing more than looking for an afirmation of your own misguided views.

Or looking for an arguement.

Your quotes or whatever they are are poor to say the least. I was prepared for at least a bit of educated debate but I doubt you know any more on the subject than what you've seen on some sensationalized news magazine in in a tabloid.

[Neil__]

Originally posted by balamm@2 August 2003 - 21:53
If you don't want children then what is your purpose in starting this topic? And what right do you have to judge those who take on the responsibilty?

Because we have power over them and for no other reason.

What the hell is this? You have no children. And I'll sure as hell not give you power over mine!

You'd better give this a little more thought I think, you appear to be doing nothing more than looking for an afirmation of your own misguided views.

Or looking for an arguement.

Your quotes or whatever they are are poor to say the least. I was prepared for at least a bit of educated debate but I doubt you know any more on the subject than what you've seen on some sensationalized news magazine in in a tabloid.

My breeding potential has nothing to do with the protection of children.
And not having children doesn't exclude me from that responsibility.

As I have stated before your arguments aren't rounded in a way that shows any real intelligent thought.

balamm if you look a little further then you will see that I only took to task those who abuse the "privalage"

Neil

Edit : I have the responsibility to protect your children in your absence
Even though we don't get on.
And if you would chose that everyone turns their back on your kids when thay need help
Then "TOUGH"
I won't protect them for you
I'll protect them because they need help.

Neil

[Everose]

I wonder if this boot camp is as bad as you are saying it is? I do not think a nine year old belongs in them, but a last ditch effort with a teenager.....I would send my child to one if their behavior put both themselves or others in danger.

I married a man who had adopted, along with his since deceased wife, two children from social services. His wife and he were foster parents for severely handicapped children at the time of the adoption. One child was the product of a schizophrenic mother on street drugs who didn't know she was even pregnant and went to the hospital for stomach pains. She said the father was a drummer from a band in the midwest. James weighed one lb, ten ounces at his birth, at twenty six weeks. He is a survivor, though, and although crippled with cerebral palsey, and deaf from birth, he learned to bath, make his own bed, clean his own room, put his own clothes up and dress himself. James is a joy to anyone that meets him. So special. He is now, at age 25, living in a group home 60 miles away from us,. and we see him often.

The little girl.....Patty, was the sweetest, most charming little red haired imp you would ever meet. She was severly abused as an infant and was removed from her home. Put in foster care. Put back in the home, came back out with cigarette burns and failure to thrive. Placed with foster parents once again. Was adopted at 3 years of age by my husband and his wife. Two years later her adoptive mother died of a heart attack during surgery to remove her gallbladder. Another bond broke.

I became a part of these childrens lives when they were eleven. (What can I say.....I fell in love with little James)

Patty was the challenge of my life. When you think about it....a failure to thrive infant is extremely strong willed. However, I had a teenage son myself and I had learned you don't break that will. You work around it guide it, shape it, support and love it.......you try to break a will, the will only gets stronger, but you may destroy the spirit. Nothing in my previous experience ever prepared me for a child that would not respond to love and guidance. Nothing.

By the time she was 12, she not only was in counseling, but so were her father and myself. We felt like failures. Nothing we did worked, and she was in tremendous trouble constantly at school, with her friends and siblings. I am not talking your run of the mill trouble. I am talking setting fires in the house, drowning a cat in the pool, and I will never forget the time I walked into the kitchen and she had her cousin on the floor, sitting on top of her with a butcher knive at her cousins chest and a wild crazed look in her eyes.

My husband had requested help with Patty constantly from SRS. He was at his wits end, not only feeling like he had failed but that anything he tried just didn't work with Patty. We loved that girl and still do. The school was constantly suspending her, we had to spend 3 hours a night with her on homework, and then she sometimes tore it up or lost it on the bus ride to school. Please remember, their were four other children in the household.

I was in a very serious wreck at about that time, and had a severe concussion, three herniated disks, etc. I was self employed and back at work within a week, I had no choice due to financial reasons. Patty's care fell to her father, who was already at his wits end. We begged social services to place her in a therapeutic foster home. We were told they didn't have those in our state.

My husband turned the tide on social services and petitioned the court that Patty was a child in need of care. (This pissed SRS off, because they are the ones that usually do this....and remove a child from it's home.) During the trial my husband relayed her history, her behavior and how deeply we loved her. But he also said she needed help that try as we might, we could not give her. We felt like such failures. It killed me. I tried to testify, but could not stop crying. Our psychologist said that in his opinion, our home was where Patty was best off. The court placed her in a temporary foster home and we stayed incontact and paid the state child support for her. We insisted she be given further testing,as we had new evidence that her natural parents were both on drugs and alcoholics. She was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome. Attention deficit disorder, and on and on. FAS's main symptom is imability to learn from experience.

Patty was moved to about 10 different foster homes in the next 3 years, with all of them not being able to handle her. At 16, she ran away with her boyfriend due to pregnancy. We basically went under cover, went to the large city where she was last seen and tracked her down. We brought both her and her boyfriend back to our small city and they lived with us and went back to high school. The boy, we learned to love, too. He has since graduated from high school and college and has custody of their little boy. Patty decided, right before giving birth to their son, that she was bored with this town and they took off again. Since then, we have kept as close contact as we can with her. She has three children by three different fathers and has been deeply involved in drugs.

At this time, she seems to be holding a job and with a very nice young man with his own home and who loves her. We hope all remains well, but know that she will always have love totally messed up in her head. I remember when she would beg me to hit her.....she knew I was mad, why didn't I just hit her???? I never could. You see, she only knew abuse as love as an infant and a toddler. I never would have guessed this could not be turned around with the right kind of love and care, but my experience with little Patty have shattered my beliefs.

Balaam seems to have a lot of insight to the simple fact that there are some children that boot camp would help. I agree with him. Oftimes though no fault of their own, often for various reasons.

I don't believe boot camp would legally be able to lay a hand on a child. SRS wouldn't let them, would they? As it is, in the states, a child can only be spanked on their bottoms with a hand. I would imagine that SRS refers a lot of these kids to boot camps because parent after parent after parent could not handle them. I would be very angry if it is true, and they are so abused. And very shocked.

But Neil, you really have no clue until you have walked half a life with such a troubled child. No clue. And to be quite honest, I didn't either before Patty.

Neverose (sorry about the length of this post.)