Posted on 03/03/2007 7:02:14 PM PST by gcruse
Pupils up to the age of 11 are being bottle-fed and mothered in school as part of a radical new move to address poor discipline.
A state primary school has become the first in the country to take part in the approach, which was developed in the US to give problem children the love and attention they may have missed out on at a younger age.
Instead of being given a sharp telling off or a few minutes on the naughty chair, they have one on one sessions with a trained school therapist.
The children - aged between six and 11 - are bottle-fed like young babies, nursed and encouraged to play games promoting patience and teamwork.
Parents who feel they no longer have control over their child can sign up to the Theraplay programme, which lasts up to three years and emphasises the importance of a strong and loving bond with a mother figure.
The controversial approach - developed during the late 1960s - has now been adopted by Rockingham Primary School in Northamptonshire.
The technique is based on the assumption that children with behavioural problems have often failed to bond with their parents in infancy.
It aims to redress this by making them feel loved and secure once more.
Last night, the school's headteacher Juliet Hart defended the programme amid opposition from critics who claim it prevents children from growing up.
"I'm sure there will be some people who won't agree with what we are doing but this form of therapy is recognised around the world for changing behavioural patterns.
"We are still like any other school. In each classroom children agree appropriate types of behaviour and know the consequences if they are not adhered to, including time-out or missing play-time.
"They also know that if they work hard they will be rewarded with approval. However, there are some children who need help to develop relationships with their parents.
"For whatever reason the bond has gone and there is no mutual respect. Through theraplay we encourage that bond to grow so the child feels more secure, calm and happy.
"It's not about discipline. This is about changing a child's behaviour over time. Admittedly, it will have an impact on discipline but only in the long term."
She added: "For years, teachers have laboured with resistant children and wondered: 'How can I unlock this person'. Once you have emotional literacy, then the learning can begin."
At Rockingham Primary School, which has 180 pupils, they have installed a dedicated Theraplay unit, complete with one-way mirror, run by trained therapist Jo Williams.
She works with a handful of children at the school and uses a variety of therapeutic methods to help children who are experiencing problems at home and at school, including calming music and lights.
In a typical session she might comb a child's hair, spoon feed them, put cream on their cuts and bruises or wash dirty hands.
"It's all about making them feel they're worth looking after," she said. "I had one child who was having trouble bonding with her child. There was little touching and eye contact.
"By the end, she was bottle-feeding him, he was stroking her hair. She said it was one of the best things that had ever happened to her."
The children who visit her are often from poor and fractured families. Often they come in groups while others come alone whilst a parent watches from a booth.
But campaigners claim Theraplay, by bottle-feeding youngsters as old as 11, holds them back and prevents them from growing up into adults.
Dr Dennis Hayes, leader of the education forum at the Institute of Ideas think tank, said: "This is part of the infantilisation of adult life.
"It's about keeping people permanently as children, not helping them to grow up."
It is not the first time that schools have looked to other non-conventional methods to discipline unruly children. Last year, it emerged children at Liberton and Gracemount high schools in Edinburgh were given lessons in anger management.
Youth workers visited the schools in a bid to reduce classroom violence and cut the number of exclusions. Teachers there reported a noticeable improvement in the children's behaviour during the pilot project.
The theraplay technique was devised in 1967 in Chicago in a bid to build strong families and emotionally healthy children and is now recognised worldwide.
They argue that warm and loving relationships are essential to a child's self-worth and as a result help them to gain mutual respect for others around them.
The Theraplay Institute, which has 60 therapists in the US and Canada, said it had seen a growing interest from the UK where it has a handful of therapists.
That is what I was thinking..
I haven't seen any posts yet that provide any actual REASONS for believing this kind of therapy is crazy.
How abaout common sense?
Common sense says that the earth is flat.
Who's common sense says that the earth is flat? Certainly not mine!
Just look out the window.
Actually, I see hills and valleys and a big lake. Nothing looks flat out of my window.
How about the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence that it works?
That adopted kids are not supposed to be "attached" to you because you are not their parents?
How about the fact that making a 14 year-old boy drink milk from a bottle while he "gazes lovingly into your eyes", or strapping him to his bed and leaving him a puddles of his own urine is just plain perverse?
Just say no, kids. Chalk this up as another idea that sounds good when one is dropping acid or smoking hippie lettuce...
I apologize. I should have said "many". Reactive attachment therapy centers or camps also tend to be concentrated in places like Boise or Waco, rather than places like Berkeley or Ithaca.
More than one poster here on FC has requested help because his family was on the run from Child Protective Services over the treatment. They were all of the "spare the rod, spoil the child" school.
Don't get me wrong, I spanked my daughter when she was little, and nothing disgusts me more than listening to some moonbat parent trying to explain how running into the street could get them killed, or how something they have done has "made mommy sad."
Two year olds simply don't have the mental abilities to understand such things. Better that they associate the thought of running out into the street with a sharp stinging sensation on the behind than that they pit their under-developed cognitive abilities against a speeding automobile.
That being said, after around age 7 or so, spanking really shouldn't be necessary.
Perhaps because the philosophy that dictates trying to explain to your two year old why something they have done has "made mommy sad" is so deeply entrenched there that nothing else can get a foothold. Not even the perfectly rational swat-on-the-behind-to-get-their-attention philosophy.
More than one poster here on FC has requested help because his family was on the run from Child Protective Services over the treatment. They were all of the "spare the rod, spoil the child" school.
I recall one such FR series, actually posted by a friend of the family in question. They had literally driven off with the kids minutes ahead of a visit from CPS workers who were planning to take them. However, they finally did end up in court, and even after their run, the court determined that their children weren't being abused and should stay with the parents. The outcome made me think it probably really was a case of overzealous CPS workers who were simply opposed to any form of firmly drawing the line with unruly kids. Sounded like CPS had jumped to the conclusion that the therapy the child in question was in, was of the RAD scam variety, when it actually wasn't.
But I see a big distinction between the RAD therapy scams and traditional beatings-are-good-for-kids philosophies. The RAD scams basically require parents to buy into a huge web of irrational psychobabble which rarely has any element of traditional religion woven in, beyond reassurance from the scammers that "Of course this is consistent with your religious beliefs" when that is needed to make the sale. The beatings-are-good-for-kids stuff is usually based on fundamentalist beliefs that boil down to "I'm doing this to save you from burning in hell for eternity" and that view fathers as authorized stand-ins for a perpetually angry God It's usually the fathers, rather than the mothers, actually perpetrating the worst abuse in the latter, while the RAD scams seem to revolve disproportionately around the mothers.
The basic hook for the RAD scams often seems to be an overwhelmed stay-at-home mother of an adopted child, who had very unrealistic notions of what raising a child was all about (i.e. imagined perfect peace and harmony in the home and a child who loved obeying mommy's every word). These mothers are stuck at home all day with one or more real children, and are easy prey for the purveyors of the fantasy claim that the "normal" attitude of a child is one of unwavering attention and obedience to parents, done joyfully due to a tremendous bond with and love for the parents, and that such an attitude can be achieved through "therapy". The fathers (when present in the home) seem to be on board with the program, but are not the ones who who took the initiative to sign on with it, and are not the ones carrying out the bulk of the home "therapy".
I realize that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but I have an uncle who is firmly of the "not sparing the rod" school. Of his four kids and one neice who grew up in the household one boy is now a registered sex offender, one has the maturity of a 19 year old (though he's pushing 50), the neice is still institutionalized and the daughter (who wanted nothing more as a teenager than to become a home bound mom and have lots of children) has gone through life childless.
Oh well, one out of five isn't bad.
I'm serious. Every day I'm wondering if real news stories are from The Onion.
"No, but for some reason foster parents who practice "Reactive Attachment Therapy" tend to be fundamentalist Christians."
Oh, you meant fundamentalist *Christian* foster parents.
This idea just totally sucks. Now I know for sure that I have lived too long.
Maybe that what all those female schoolteachers that have been arrested were doing? Reattachment therapy.
at CPAC.
Yikes! I hope you didn't have to spend much time with that charming uncle!
LOL!
No, only holidays...
How do you know that there's no evidence that it works?
Adopted children are not "supposed" to be attached to their parents??? Do you KNOW any adoptive parents and children??? Did you ever hear of "failure to thrive" on account of lack of attachment???
There was nothing in this article about urine. That was mentioned in some other posts.
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