GROUND ZER0, NEW YORK, NY--Hundreds of American teenagers are being locked up, forced to sleep on cold, bare concrete floors with their noses buried on the floor, in an attempt to drive from them the Beast of Terror.   Their "torture" is sanctioned by their parents.  In fact, their mothers and fathers pay up to $30,000 a year to insure the Beast of Terror is exorcised from them.

       That's the latest "ripped from the headlines" news about how some frustrated parents are dealing with their children whom they can't manage.   Many are kidnapped in the middle of the night, put in handcuffs and sometimes leg irons, thrown in the back of vans, and driven to foreign countries such as Mexico where they receive treatment equal to or far worse than any Terrorist being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

      Frustrated parents unable to control their children's recalcitrant behavior, often those in the midst of divorce and wealthy enough to afford it, are shuffling their kids off to "behavior modification" schools that operate under U.S. regulatory radar.  Free from U.S. watchdogs, the schools can dispense what some call "cruel and unusual" punishment to students who don't comply with strict, often harsh behavior rules.
       Prison-camp type schools exist in Mexico, Jamaica, and Costa Rica where youths move up through "levels of compliance."   They are forced into submission by harsh rules that supplant their parents' lack of discipline, or, are corporal systems to treat drug abusers.
       The behavior-modification business is booming at Casa by the Sea, on Mexico's Pacific Coast, the largest of 11 affiliated programs with roughly 2,200 youths, about half of them in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica.  There are also schools in the Czech Republic and Samoa.   The programs are run by a small group of businessmen based in St. George, Utah, under the banner of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or Wwasps, and Teen Help, the programs' main marketing arm.

       Popularity of the programs have nearly tripled since 1998 when the schools had about 200 youths enrolled.  There are more than 570 being subjected to what some claim is "prison-like" management by handlers with little if no education training experience.

      Arguments for harsh treatment of the teenagers fly in the face of those trying to eliminate the schools.  According to the Wwasps internal surveys, 98 percent of the families are satisfied with the results.
        Compliance rather than education is the keynote of the training.   Youths are put in solitary confinement for violating rules, made to stand with their noses against the wall, or to sleep with their faces down if they violate rules.
        Patti Reddoch of Sweeny, Texas, had her son handcuffed and hauled off to one of the schools.  He cursed and spat at her.  But months later, the now 17-year-old praises the school, saying he would probably still be doing cocaine were it not for the harsh rules he was forced to follow.
        Aaron Kravig, now 19, offers a contrasting view.   He claims the Jamaica school he attended fed him meals of watery porridge and fish entrails, and that he contracted scabies, untreated for six months.  He testified against the school in a Virginia court last year.
       Bottom line, parents who send their children to discipline schools have one goal in mind--to drive out of them the "Beast of Terror."
       Through usually mismanagement on the parents' side, the child has enjoyed defiant freedom, unsupervised evolution where the child rules in spite of his or her role to mature in an orderly, reasonable, civilized way.
        The Beast of Terror reigns in such children.

        Parents, seeking to neutralize their own lack of management, pay outside forces to "knock some sense" into their children, and further that goal by sending them to schools outside the purview of America's highly concerned "children's rights" system.   Abuse, as we might term it, is the key to making a child surrender.   Cold, icy punishment breaks the will to defy, and forces compliant behavior, if for no other reason than to avoid punishment. If there is a lesson to be learned by these children, it is "harsh punishment" is the key to "good behavior."
         I find it difficult to think that one, letting a child fly out of control, and two, paying $30,000 a year for the child to be tortured back into compliance, can further the child's sense of self-worth, or, in any way effect long-term positive parenting techniques the child will use later when he or she becomes a parent.
         This isn't to say that some children might become "miracles" regarding turnaround behavior.   Sometimes desperate parents seek desperate measures, but when traced back to the origins of such bad behavior, it is easily identified as an "original parenting problem."  That is, the child became what the parent didn't manage.
        Essentially, neglecting a child's development increases the child developing as an Adolescent of Terror, a sort of mini-Beast of Terror, a Fledgling of Terror.
        The more removed a child is from the duty and responsibility to himself and others, the deeper into the dark and dank caves of Terror he or she falls.   Becoming an "outsider," living on the edge of life's mainstream, often attracts the child who seeks recognition, love, admiration, support.
       The outlaw behavior of most children is considered a plea for recognition, a need to align with some cause, or to seek role models to fill the vacancy the parents lack of love and care have left.   This includes drug abuse, anti-social behavior, and alignment with many call the "fringes" of society, the disenfranchised, marginalized elements who revolt against the norm in dress and music and behavior, standing out against normalcy with defiance or depression.

      Not all children who are alienated seek to surround themselves with others like themselves, and to dress in bizarre clothing and listen to dark music.  Some retreat to deep bouts with depression, isolating themselves in the closets of their mind, shutting the curtains to life in a quiet surrender to the Beast's Shadow of Intimidation, and surrendering to the Complacency of life itself.
      Unfortunately, these children often receive medication rather than prison schools.  Instead of being physically forced into compliance, they are chemically seduced with medications parents talk doctors into administering.
      A Parent of Vigilance is one who recognizes that these children described above are extreme examples of what all children can become if left in the emotional cold of non-Vigilant Management.
      Inside all human beings is a Beast of Terror, that part of us that isn't loved enough, cared for enough, appreciated enough or respected enough.   Human beings are driven by a desire for recognition, just as a wild tom turkey is driven to display his tail feathers to attract the attention of females, or a woman is driven to apply more and more makeup to make herself more attractive, or a child is driven to rush to someone they love with open arms to receive the thirst-quenching hug of confirmation that the love is reciprocal.
      In business, employees hungrily await raises or pats on the backs for jobs well done, and CEO's often cook the books to make themselves "look good" to stockholders, or to hide misdeeds so they won't be castigated for mismanagement.
     Doctor Freud, said that all humans are driven by conflict, the push and pull of plus and minuses within the emotional chemistry, seeking always to affirm the positive side, and when that is repelled for whatever reason--either from the outside or inside--the individual retreats into dark caves of aberrant behavior, often leading to what the above teenagers exhibit--depression, defiance and often drug abuse.

     A Parent of Vigilance recognizes the Beast of Terror is doing push-ups inside us all, no matter how small or tall.   He awaits those moments when the human being crumbles from within, when the castle walls of self-worth are smashed by events, or the lack of them, and the icy air of feeling unloved, unworthy, unequal rushes through the breech, making us feel naked, alone, frightened we might never rise above the salt, forever trapped in the demise of the self.
       And it all happens in little degrees.   A lack of attention here, a lack of love there, a lack of concern here, a lack of a hug there, all mount up and force a child to form defenses against the cruelty of Complacency, for the lack of love to a child is nothing more than the result of parental selfishness.   When parents, rich or poor, are too busy to nurture the child's flowering personality, then the Weeds of Terror take over.  They choke off the child's senses of value and strangle out the good and sprout the weeds--the things that parents send their children to foreign lands to have clipped and stomped in hopes the child will return free of the anguish that drove them to recoil from authority they never learned to respect.

      While most parents might quickly discard the recalcitrant behavior of the teenagers noted in this story as being extremes that do not apply to their own children, the odds are such denial suggests a blind eye to their own parenting.
       A Vigilant Parent is one who wakes every morning knowing that there aren't enough hours in the day to love their children, or guard them against the Beast of Terror's wrath.   He or she recognizes that a child's evolution to the highest level of human dignity can be accelerated by constant parental reinforcement of the values in life, and a constant reminder to the child who is evolving about how to combat the Beast of Terror.
       No one graduates from evolution.
       There is no legal age for reaching self-sufficiency or "absolute maturity."
       When parents "wash their hands" of managing a child, they are simply turning the child over to the Beast of Terror.   This includes taking a child to a doctor to get pills for bad behavior, or putting a child in a special school for children with behavior problems.
       The truth is the parents need to go to such schools.  Parents need to have their own Beast of Terror brought into control, for when a parent abdicates his or her responsibility to manage a child, it is nothing more than an admission that the parent is operating out of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.    It is an admission the parent knows nothing about parenting, and has failed miserably at his or her duty to teach a child how to climb the ladder of self-worth and self-respect because they themselves have forgotten how, or, worse, were never taught.
       Parents don't stop being parents.
       They go on to become grandparents.
       And, sometimes, great grandparents.
       They are also uncles and aunts, and their actions and behaviors become role models for other children aligned in their filial communities.

       When dissected, the average Parent of Vigilance has a daily duty to keep the Sword and Shield of Vigilance at a ready position.   He or she has an obligation to keep Fear at bay by the promotion of Courage, to hold back Intimidation with Conviction, and to drive off Complacency with Right Actions that benefit future generations.
        That's why every parent needs to become a Citizen of Vigilance and a Parent of Vigilance.  Only by taking the Pledge and Vow of Vigilance, can a parent or loved one keep a watchful eye on a child, guarding it against the rapacious appetite of the Beast of Terror who slips into all vacancies left by a child's sense of alienation.
         The kind of love a Parent or Citizen of Vigilance offers is not forcing a child to lie on the cold concrete with his or her nose to the ground, or eating fish entrails.   It is about hugs and loves, and sharing one's deepest emotions with a child so that the child learns how to trust the insides of himself or herself, and not rely on the outsides.
         Vigilance comes from within, but  it doesn't come easily.
         A Parent of Vigilance learns to pry open the child's walls, and expose the Beast of Terror so the child knows how to defend himself or herself against its wrath.   

        This makes the "cold, cruel world" much more palatable, much more "user-friendly" because by enhancing a child's self worth and dignity, the Parent or Love One of Vigilance is thickening the steel on the Sword of Vigilance, and increasing the strength of the Shield of Vigilance the child must learn to use to ward off the Beast of Terror's Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.
          Think about the children above.   Think about how Complacency can lead a child into a prison of the self.
          Free yourself and your children.
          Take the Pledge of Vigilance today.
    

May 8--Cutting Off The Arm Of Terrorism

©2001 - 2004, VigilanceVoice.com, All rights reserved -  a ((HYYPE)) design

The Pledge Of Vigilance