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In Reply to: Re: from an SGA point of view posted by susie on August 19, 2004 at 22:23:15:
This was a series of GNs that came out in the early 90s, over 11 years ago, and had a great influence on how we at the HCS (and I suppose other places) handled and dealth with Jetts. Basically it seems Techi was having the same problems as Mene (maybe minus the coercian to have loveup time with Grandpa), but was handled in a very different manner, with more counselling, prayer and word times, and no beatings, at least not how I remember.
It caused us to start a 'revolution' in the lives of our Jetts (this is ages 10 to 13 I think, pretty young), and filtered down to pre-Jetts as well (Jetts stand for Junior EndTime Teens--the age group before the teens). We started doing introspection with the Jetts, reading things with them, GNs designed esp for them based on the doubts and problems Techi was having.
One issue dealth with was suicide as Techi was having suicidal thoughts. I remember one kid in my group, he was only like 10 years old, and here we are discussing "Have you ever considered suicide" and he said, "Oh yes, I have!" This put on the red lights for shepherds--"When, where, how..." and he "confessed" that he had wanted to jump out the second floor window of his bedroom cause he was in trouble.
The poor kid was living away from his parents for the first time, in a large group, and the youngest and newest in the group. He was having adjustment difficulties, and if I could go back I'd say "send the kid back, he's too young and not ready for this intesity (were any of those kids ready anyway?). But with me trying to be a good and strong shepherd, he was stuck there and I was stuck with him, so we had a lot of intense talk times and pow-wows, and OHR writing and special word times for him.
Years later I lived with him again when he was 17, he was in our halfway house and working an outside job. I asked him about that time, ahd he laughed and said he'd made it up cause he wanted to contribute something to the talk, but he didn't realise the trouble it would cause.
The point is, we didn't let our kids be kids, we made them grow up way faster than they should of, and gave them a load of guilt, condemnation and confusion along the way. It is quite amazing that any of us SGAs have turned out to be the people we are, and it's to our credit!
