Kristin Bennett

Hot topic these days…and for me it is a very deep complicated one as well. Recently I posted an article that briefly covers my medical ups and downs of the last 10 years along with the lessons learned. In that article I mentioned being diagnosed with MS in November of 2001, abou. About two weeks ago I got some test results back from my ND that showed I was terribly malnourished and very allergic to a lot of different foods, including wheat, barley, rice, soy, dairy, eggs, almonds, peanuts and quite a few more things as well.

Abuse of Youth in Residential Placements: A Call to Action

The growth of the troubled teen industry, including wilderness camps, therapeutic boarding schools, and boot camps, has given rise to allegations of inhumane treatment of youth, and exploitation of families who are desperately seeking help for their teenagers. This topic, previously the subject of two hearings in Congress and two special reports by the GAO, was examined further on Feb. 19th 2009, at a meeting sponsored by the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (ASTART) and CAFETY on Capitol Hill. This timely meeting was held several months prior to yet another death arising out of negligence (Sagewalk Wilderness Camp) and the closure of Mount Bachelor Academy as a result of substantiated abuse allegations considered part of their therapeutic milieu. (Both programs are owned/operated by Aspen Education Group, subsidiary of CRC Health).

Please help increase awareness of this issue and distribute widely.

Part of the book I’m in the process of writing talks about my experiences in 1995 as a young 14 year old being sent to a ‘therapeutic’ wilderness program and then to a therapeutic boarding school that I ran away from.

14 years later, seeing the story in TIME about the school I ran away from has hit me hard. On some days I feel kind of vindicated, and confirmed in my reasons for choosing the streets over this kind of residential treatment. Other days I feel lucky, lucky that I was brave. smart and capable enough to pull it off and get away, not to mention surviving on the streets long enough afterward to be able to continue life afterward.

I do not believe that it was the correct decision to send me away. As an adult looking back, and looking at teens I see around me I strongly believe that what most teens really need is attention and help in cultivating their interests. If you skip all the time between my being sent away and my graduating from high school and leaving home for college, it looks like it all worked out as planned. I always loved taking any kind of art class from pottery to drawing, origami, and much more. Upon graduating High School I went to and graduated from Parsons School of Design. Just to make one alternative obvious to me they could have put me into art therapy, or into an art class.

Parents however naive aren’t necessarily the ones to blame however, most parents who send these kids like myself to these ‘therapeutic’ treatment centers consult with people claiming to be professionals in the field, people called “therapeutic consultants” or “educational consultants” whose credentials are extremely hard to find and I’m willing to bet in many cases are non existent or come from a kit they ordered online. In my case the person recommending that my parents send me away (I’d been caught smoking pot) never met me. I’ve worked with children and I do not believe anyone’s untrained description of a child OR an adult can be taken as fact, or even as strong evidence regarding what they ‘need’. An adult who has been through challenges or is well trained should work with the child to do an evaluation and ideally eliminate the need for a child to be legally kidnapped into the desert.

I just read some absolutely comical and sickening ‘journal’ entries of a reporter claiming to have had a taste of the experience of one of these wilderness camps and it is laughable. It is very lighthearted and implies that the camp is not a boot camp but more of a boy scout camp. Comical, I wonder if she saw when they made a kid dig his own coffin? How often they are allowed to clean their bodies? My memory only recalls about 3 camp showers over the 54 days I was living in the desert, with only one change of underwear every week or two, is that humane?

Parents need to know there are other alternatives to this, and also need to learn the importance of community. If I had other family members or other members of the community who knew me and were looking out I would have had other places to go for help, for guidance. I agree with the title of Hilary Clinton’s book “It Takes a Village” wholeheartedly.

Today I realized that someone needs to figure out how to make parents aware of these needs and alternative actions they can take to preserve their relationship with their children and guide them to succeed by building their strengths, not breaking them down. It is my goal to step into this role as educating parents, teachers, guidance counselors and more about their options. There are not any real standards in this industry of ‘fixing’ teens and it is time there was.

Most of the kids getting into trouble are already broken down, it’s the last thing they need.

What a busy weekend!! Saturday started out taking a tour that for me was an interesting blast from the past at a church where my congregation is considering moving to. I lived in the neighborhood where this building is when I got my first apartment in Seattle as a single mom and also where I lived when I met my husband Geoff!! After the tour, we went to a dear friend’s 2yo’s birthday party which was fabulous, loads of fun…and much needed after a pretty intense morning.

Sunday started with church at the Masonic Lodge where we had a meeting after wards followed by a Christmas party where I took pictures of all the kids with Santa Claus!!

It was my first time photographing an event and it was a lot of fun, I wrote more about it here.

I am convinced that it is what I need to do. I am working on a book that will touch on a variety of my life experiences that I occasionally ramble about that consistently lead people to look me dead in the eye and tell me that I need to tell my story. I’ve been told this by “Intuitives” who read this in my Chakras, friends, strangers, and many many more. I have held back in part because the sheer amount of intense stories I have intimidate me.

Anyway, I have gotten started and already had to stop, at least for today because I got to a part of my life that I do not have clear memory of. I have lots of random ‘scenes’ that pop up but don’t clearly fit together in my head. It is an interesting challenge to make a story out of the past with this kind of memory. At this point I am going to be digging for some of the old journals, though I know these do not tell the whole story, this part of my life I had no privacy and my journals were being read by other people daily and so were written in a way that they would be reading what I interpreted as content that would get me out of the situation. It had nothing to do with what I was really thinking and feeling in other words but I am hoping that it will still trigger some kind of memory so I can tell the story.

If the journals don’t help then I plan to write all those little excerpts and maybe that is how I will write them, it will be a kind of random set of memories that can be read as I remember them and maybe writing them like that I will find some kind of structure, I figure if I don’t then it just means they are meant to be communicated like this though.

I will also soon be writing some other ebooks with my husband for our other new site “A Niche To Scratch” as we are working together to help people to do what they are driven to do, and monetize their niche in life through the internet in ways that make sense.

Back to the life stuff though, I am thinking I might have to scan parts of the journal to put into the book as well as pictures.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, I sure did. I was home with my girls and my husband who did ALL of the cooking in a wonderful couldn’t be better way. We did a little video of what we are grateful for and everything. Loved it as it was the best Thanksgiving ever, no pressure, no drama, all love. We spent the rest of the weekend having fun visiting family and running errands, it ended too soon.

I was hoping it wouldn’t get to this point but it has, and my phone will be shut off tomorrow unless something comes through, wouldn’t be a huge deal except that I’m looking for jobs and that sort of thing, not to mention how active I am all the time with my blackberry etc.

I will absolutely be checking email and other sites @ least once every day or two still but responses might take longer.

Ironically my time will be focused on getting web design jobs probably, which I’ll pretty much be doing from starbucks.

It sucks because the way my husband has our phones set up, my phone, his phone, internet, and data plan to the phones are all linked, so that makes it expensive AND it makes it so if we can’t make the payment on time…all is lost at the same time too. Plus since we were already 30 days late, once it goes to 60 we have to make the FULL payment plus reactivate to get back in business.

I’m starting a 10 hour a week job watching another little 6mo which I’m looking forward to, that starts tuesday.

It’s crazy how hard it is to find a job these days what with the recession and all. My husband got rushed through 3 interviews for a position about a week and a half ago and then suddenly no call back at all, not a yay, not a nay. Meanwhile I’ve been applying for at least 3 jobs a week, I have to because I’m on unemployment, and nothing aside from this childcare gig has come through. It’s a trip considering I was making about 2.5 times the rate I’ll be making an hour and had benefits just about 7 months ago.

Anyway, surprisingly I’m not that upset, I’ve kind of accepted it and decided it’s time for me to write more, so I’ll be probably doing better writing too, the old fashioned way with that ‘word’ program and then bringing it to the cafe to upload. That is I will write as long as the daycare my daughter is at will let her keep coming. I might have to switch her to part time or fully pull her out of preschool because of this money stuff, I’m behind there too.

I think it would be great if we could just do everything based on a barter system, you know that whole you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours? There seems to be a lot of people who need ‘cheap’ websites, so I think I’ll pick up a couple of those low paying gigs just to build up my portfolio and then start going after the real design jobs…

In my dream world I’m finding a way to make this whole site into a non-profit so that I can help moms who are in a situation like mine. It’s the long term goal, if you want to chat about how to make that happen let me know, I’m a passionate designer wi/out a lot of non-profit experience aside from being a part of the board for a couple. I’m told to not bother even being an official 501(c)3 until I’m bringing in 6 figures but I have to get a lot more organized to make that happen. I’ll be working on that too though as that is where my passion is pulling me.

See everyone around, hopefully this won’t take long!!

What a busy month!! We have left Alki, and now I am considering closing down this blog as I have been writing on KristinBennett.com, AssociatedContent.com, DivineCaroline.com, Open.Salon.com as well as keeping up with all sorts of websites for mothers to spread word of MomsWithMS.com.