Kristin Bennett

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.

So, we left the house, in the car, baby in back, kitten in the cat carrier in front on our way to pick up Kenzie my 4yo daughter. If you missed yesterdays post this is a feral kitty, who came to us last night, and we decided to take it to a no-kill test/alter/release or adopt clinic after picking up our daughter so she could be a part of the process of saving kitty.

So we got to the school, I went in and had to stop and talk to the owner of the daycare for a little while. We are behind in payments and it’s getting to a breaking point, our only income is my unemployment and we don’t qualify for any assistance programs because we aren’t both ‘working’ when in reality, hubby and I are both working like CRAZY to make some money, there just isn’t any money yet, we’re also both applying to jobs like crazy but what is on the news is true in that it isn’t as easy as it once was to get a job. Verdict was that I promised to go try and apply for a DSHS Emergency Childcare Assistance and after that, if it was denied again we would try to file an exception with the city, as there is a special program for all pre-k students to keep them in school. It’s an odd loophole that we are in because we don’t have real jobs and so our work counts for nothing and these programs require working parents.

So I pick up my daughter and explain what we are doing, and then we all get in the car and drive on up to the clinic which is a great little place that seems like it is run 100% on love and donations so if you have any kind of soft spot for this kind of work please donate because they need it. Their site is: http://animaltalkrescue.org/help.html We brought kitty in, and the lovely lady there who has seen soo many cats come and go gave us her sad evaluation which is that the kitty seems to have the symptoms of distemper, and would likely not be living much longer. Fortunately K was having fun playing with the cats who were up for adoption and looking at the birds, lizard and other fun animals they had visible as well. I think she was hungry at this point as well because she didn’t seem too overly concerned.

We left the kitten with them, they will keep an eye on it and let us know if it survives/dies and hopefully it will live and if that is the case it will get fixed and vaccinated. We will keep or release the cat at this point depending on it’s temperament, they explained even letting it go will help reduce the feral cat population because the cats get territorial.

Also, we became pretty passionate about the cause, there are at least 2 other kittens in the litter this kitten came from and of course the mother cat as well. We are borrowing 2 traps from the center and will be trying to catch the other kittens to get them all taken care of. This is of course if they are still around, we have not seen them since we brought in yesterday’s kitty which is either because they too have distemper and aren’t moving much or hopefully just because it is raining and they have found some safe place to stay.

All in all it was an enlightening experience, I think it is very sad that the kitten will probably not make it but feel good that it will be somewhere safe and warm surrounded by loving people in it’s last hours if that is the case.

Kitty came to us when in pain, was crouched on our front porch and did not fight us much when being put into the kennel. We feel strongly this was for a reason of course because we are like that and we are grateful that we had the experience of helping this kitty, and of course we are hopeful we can help the other kitties as well.

I have joined in the movement called 29 Gifts recently and yesterday was day 2, I’m considering this rescue effort as my gift of the day yesterday, giving the kitten a chance of living and of sharing the concept of rescuing animals with my daughters, one of which will remember but the other one will just hear the stories.

Here are some pictures, the first is our cat Bello, who doesn’t seem to really know what is going on, and the following is the rest of us getting ready for our adventure.

I will follow up with any more Kitties or the Mom Cat if/as we get ahold of them…I’m hoping we’ll get a kitten that we can rescue and keep too! They did say that they are about 5-6 months old and probably domesticate-able still.