Childhood Trauma

Season 3 has not disappointed. I still love the Goonie-esq vibe the show’s creator has instilled… pause…wait for it….there is a “but” coming……BUT, I am perturbed…Like season 2, the creators have written into the script the suggestion that Kiera’s parents have had it with her and are suggesting she go away to a wilderness “camp”. This season isn’t any better than last in representing wilderness therapy. It is shows like this that haven’t done their research or if they have, they portray only one side, which is the side that shows these long term programs in an abusive light. Look, I do not discount that abuses have happened in years past. There have been known conversion or boot-camp type programs. Those programs are shut down now or are few and far between. This is why I recommend Educational Consultants who have vetted programs, but more importantly the families need to do their own research. From our experience there are many versions of the story. There are the parent’s perspective, the adolescent’s perspective and then there is the onlooker’s perspective who has no experience in any of what is going on in that family but feels the need to pick a side. Let’s break it down a bit, shall we?…….. Since I am a parent of a child who has struggled and has left his home so that he would not die, let’s start with the parent’s point of view…..In regards to the show Outer Banks, Kiera’s parents were “Freaking Out!!!” Over the past 3 seasons, they have seen Kiera change friend groups from Kooks to Pogues, she has been participating in underage drinking, she has not come home at night, she has skipped school or refused to go, and as season 3 starts we find out the teens have been missing for over a month! What parent wouldn’t be besides themselves?!?! Seriously, our job as a parent is to keep our kids alive. It is the natural order of things. When your kid starts engaging in riskier behavior and stretches boundaries beyond the normal teenage rebellion, Parents Will Freak Out! The parents themselves will become irrational. They will make decisions that could be rash. It’s not out of hate, but out of love…..all to save their child. In the show, we don’t see any other previous interventions to help Kiera. We only see that the parents went from 0-100. They got out the “big guns”….They “gooned” their child. They had people come take Kiera away against her will. Let’s switch and look at this from Kiera’s view point, now. Kiera knows she has pushed the boundaries to the breaking point. She has rebelled to the point that she can’t see the difference between risk and reward. I am not blaming her because that is what teens do….They live in their 6 inch bubble and can’t rationalize how their actions could affect others and that they themselves could be hurt or die. Their need to be with their friends outweighs any consequence. In the scene where Kiera is “gooned”, she stands in the driveway talking to herself as she figures out how to tell her parents that she needs to leave again and go to South America to help her friends. A truck from the “program” pulls up and 2 men manhandle her into the truck and take her away. Can you say Traumatized with a capital T?!?! At this point, I turned Netflix off and thought about canceling my membership….! I know….I know…. I am exaggerating. I won’t cancel Netflix! Do you see what I am trying to get at? In today’s climate of being able to say, do or portray anything on TV, movies, social media etc., just know that what you see is not always the truth… it’s an exaggeration. Why would anyone do that? not represent the truth? Well….probably to be more dramatic so that you can be sucked in to believing what you are seeing or reading. Did Netflix and the creators of Outer Banks intend to throw the adolescent/young adult therapeutic programs under the bus and make something that saved my son’s life seem seedy???? I don’t know….Maybe if they were to actually have a movie, series or documentary depicting the real truth than maybe we would know the answer. So Netflix……call me….I have a real, very gritty and truthful story about the “Troubled Teen” industry that saved my kid’s life!