Member-only story
Teens are being killed for being teens.
As a life coach, I help them avoid this fate.
He was a twelve-year-old boy. I could feel his death because I lived it, when my own mother paid to have me locked up and brutalized. Official accounts say he died by asphyxiation, his mouth and nose smothered by the material of the bivy — the coffin-like one-person tent — into which he’d been placed by the wilderness camp staff. But as any kid who’s done time in the troubled teen industry (TTI) will confirm, even after they kill you, sometimes you’re still breathing. I was dead and breathing for sixteen months in the Straight Inc. warehouse. For this boy, at Trails Carolina, it was only twenty-four hours.
As an adult, my training to become a teen life coach confirmed what I inherently understood. The adolescent behaviors that are pathologized and punished are rooted in unmet social needs. Meanwhile, the evidence-based strategies that support teens’ positive changes, like deep listening, self-direction, and validation, are the opposite of those used in the TTI: isolation, humiliation, and control.
The boy had been sent away to be fixed, because he had intolerable problems. These included migraine headaches, anxiety, ADHD, and “social challenges, including ‘a very hard time making friends.’” Same, same. Migraines, anxiety, undiagnosed neurodivergence…
