The Jessaverse | Change and Exchange

On American television (and presumably British television as well), there is a programme called ‘Brat Camp’, which details the lives of several ‘unruly’ teenagers abducted from their home and taken to a behaviour-modification school since their parents are at their wits’ ends. The idea that these parents treat their children as property and have people abduct them into the night to be treated with abuse and ridicule at a behaviour-modification centre that is more like a gulag than a school is patently disgusting. What ever happened to individual rights?

I believe that the ideas promulgated by the adultist media and by autocratic parents are detrimental to youth self-determination. Youth are perfectly cognisant enough to make their own decisions as regards their own behaviour, and it is insulting to their intelligence and sense of self to force such barbarism upon them.

The reasons for sending the teenagers to the camps are also ridiculous. One was molested and was never the same again. Another had drug problems. Some others simply thought for themselves and wanted to live their own lives, rather than the ones their parents had mapped out for them. Here’s a news flash for the parents who want to live their lives vicariously through their children: They’re individuals! Don’t expect them to be like you. It’s perfectly fine for you to help and give them advice, but it is NOT fine to force them into your mould. And for the parents who throw their children into these programmes because they are on drugs: They don’t need to be tortured in order to get them off drugs! That’s what rehab is for! I think that these programmes don’t give any ‘real world’ training (as hard as it is to live these days, most Americans do not have to wander in the wilderness in order to be taught proper behaviour and humility) and they are demoralising and humiliating. And about behaviour changing if someone has been molested? Of course it’s going to change. Sexual abuse scars you for life. You’ll never see sex and sexuality the same way ever again, and you’ll fear that someone is going to harm you if you get too close.

If you want your children to learn from their mistakes, let them learn from trial and error, and then they will realise that they need to turn their lives around. Don’t make their lives worse than they already are.