My experience is either telling me:

1.) I need to chill, I must have insanely high expectations that may never be met and perhaps I should start taking some kind of a happy sedative drug while my girls are in school.

2.) I have my work cut out for me…clearly basic “Leadership” “Communication” and perhaps even “Management” or “Parenting 101″ requirements are non-existent in public schools, not to mention basic self care (health/diet/exercise), is it my imagination or are 90% of the teachers overweight? Maybe this comment should be in my first thought but if someone is teaching about healthy habits…shouldn’t they be practicing them too? I see this as “work” that I need to do advocacy and whistle blower-wise.

3.) I might need to just let her try it out, be diligent about providing ample learning opportunities at home and volunteer a lot. I feel like this is maybe what the school would like to see? It is difficult because as a non-paid problem fixer (how I see it) shows me a list about a mile long starting with things like:
*Get them a microphone that works or offer to help as a MC for their next meeting
*Offer to teach a course in public speaking that will show them a few techniques to quiet a noisy room of side talkers
*Explain the relevance of a “schedule” and recommend that part of encouraging adherence to one requires basic when/where/how information being communicated (ideally in advance and upon arriving to said events)
*Set up a parent email list for them/parents to communicate with
*Create a simple 8 item list (similar in style but shorter than the *to-do list I am writing here) that gives the outline for the content being discussed quietly in front of the parents so that we could have a slight bit of understanding, and for the ESL parents at least have something that someone can translate for them (I saw one table where a little bit of translation was happening and was a tad jealous they got the one on one information!)
*Creating an actual “Red” sign for the “Red Table” (it has a red dot that is barely visible that is red…nothing else)
*Repeat for other tables
*Print and laminate multiple copies of the kindergarten schedule to post around the room or at least by the sink for parents to see and take note of
*Print and laminate copies of the class lists so that parents can learn their child’s friend’s names, maybe offer to compile a communication list
*Send along any awesome dietitian or personal trainer groupon deals that come along

4.) Focus on finding a good private school (I have a few in mind) and get the applications in…holding her back a year to enroll next year if I need to.

5.) Get started with homeschooling!! The world really is turning the way of Idiocracy and Wall-E!!!

6.) Move to a snobby (rich?) neighborhood (outside Seattle?) where standards are being upheld

So yes number one might be the most accurate, which I am bummed about. Doesn’t everyone want to nourish the future? Are we really working to turn our children into clones who don’t think and either fail or excel (or both) when it bores them?

Sigh…

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.

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.